Bargains and Betrayals Read Online Free PDF

sorry. You aren’t an approved visitor.”
    My throat tight, a sigh still slipped loose and Pietr’s eyes, blue and stormy as a distant sea, rose and caught mine. My knees softened under his powerful gaze.
    “Jess.” He vaulted over the nurse’s desk and had me in his arms before the giants could block his path. His lips on mine, arms tight around me, I realized what Pietr Rusakova was doing even as the guards bent to pull us apart.
    Pietr was counting.
    How long did we have before they grabbed him? I clutched his T-shirt’s collar, slipping my hands around his neck to hold on as long as I could.… How soon before they threw him out?
    Pietr would know soon enough.
    I kissed him back. Hard .
    His eyes snapped open for a moment, but I knew the clock was quickly running down on our little rendezvous.
    But by counting the time between his arrival and the guards’ reactions he’d be better prepared next time. Prepared for whatever that beautiful brain of his was already plotting.
    I had never appreciated simple numbers so much as when we counted the moments together with our kisses.…
    The taste of Pietr’s lips lingering on mine, he was heaved up by one giant’s massive hand to dangle before me. His spiky hair obscuring his right eye, he winked for only me to see and it was then I noticed the still-healing cut on his face.
    To not be healed more than a week after a fight … My heart clenched and I reached out to him, fingertips brushing his jaw.
    For a moment everything was quiet, everyone still, the few wandering patients of Pecan Place frozen in speculation. The world faded away and there was only Pietr.
    And me.
    The guards moved as if thawing out after independent thought had stunned them. Pietr glanced at the tattoo exposed on the guard’s wrist and then at his face.
    Pietr’s jaw tightened.
    He knew something.
    The nurse, hands on her hips, glared at Pietr as he did the finest display of passive resistance I’d seen short of school DVDs about the civil rights movement.
    The guard lumbered toward the door with his more-than-human burden. He pushed one door open, inside the first set of reinforced glass doors, bracing it with a huge booted foot. He pulled back his arm and tossed Pietr unceremoniously out.
    Anyone but a Rusakova would have landed badly. But the grace and strength of the wolf within—that wildest part of Pietr—was ever-present.
    Especially when he stared down into my eyes and crushed his lips to mine.
    The few patients in the hall near me went wild with whooping and cheering—for which side, I couldn’t tell. And babbling. Both the patient who obsessed over ceiling fans and light switches and the nurse who was taken totally by surprise.
    “Gonna have to up everyone’s meds this afternoon,” she snapped, shuffling her papers back together.
    “It’s love! It’s love! Crazy, crazy love!” a woman shouted as she danced in circles.
    I tried not to agree with the already medicated population of Pecan Place, Junction’s one and only mental institution. But, watching the woman dancing her loose-legged jig, I thought she just might be right.
    Crazy, crazy love.
    My guards took a single step toward the thin but rebellious crowd and everyone fell silent, eyes wide. Patients hugged the wall, slinking back to their rooms.
    Terrified.
    And the list of questions slowly developing in my mind doubled.
    Jessie
    When my door opened and the nurse appeared, standing beside a laundry cart, emotions battled just below my skin. Having seen Pietr made me itch for activity. The journal rested under my bed, page after page filled by my thoughts after having seen—and kissed —him. But there were strange things going on here. Maybe staying in the solitude of my room was the best bet.
    “Laundry detail’s really simple,” the nurse encouraged me. She patted the stack of folded clothing. All the same lifeless shade of blue—the one color Pietr’s eyes never became. “You’ll deliver the laundry to our