Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

big
four-poster bed piled high with thick pillows and draped with filmy
white netting. In front of the kiva fireplace was a sitting area
furnished with an olive-green velvet sofa and chair. Outside the
French doors was a lovely rock garden filled with big ceramic pots of
flowering cacti, and beyond that, the gleaming lights of the city.
    “It’s very nice.
Actually, better than nice. It’s perfect.”
    “Are you sure?”
Drex asked. “There’s a larger room but it doesn’t have a view.”
    “Okay?” I almost
laughed. If he knew what I’d done, where I’d slept, the kind of
person I was, he wouldn’t have let me in the front door.
    “It couldn’t be
better,” I said. “Really.”
    I reached out to touch
his arm but retracted my hand at the last instant. Tension sparked
between us, a connection like crossed wires in a lightning storm.
God, I was pathetic. Pathetic and apparently, very deprived of human
contact.
    “Good,” he said.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
    “Wait, Drex?”
Drawing a breath, I forced confidence into my voice. “I hope you
meant what you said about a housekeeper. I’ll earn everything
you’re doing for me.” Down and out though I was, I could not – would not – take
charity. I had nothing left but my pride, and I wasn’t about to
give it up.
    “I meant it,” he
said. “In fact, I saw a uniform hanging in the maid’s quarters. I
think it’ll fit you perfectly.”
    There was no sign that
he was joking, only his gleaming eyes burning into my mine. The
humiliation of the last three days was about to get worse, and a lot
more personal.
    “A maid’s uniform,”
I repeated, trying very hard to be humble.
    “Yes. You’ll need
something to wear while you’re cooking and cleaning, won’t you?”
    I bit back a retort.
Hungry girls without pants could not be choosers. “I guess I will.”
    Uneasiness shivered
through me at his smile, along with a sizzling heat that settled
between my legs.
    Who was this guy? One
minute he was kind and considerate, the next he was an arrogant ass.
My physical response made no sense, unless I took into account how
lost and alone I felt. It didn’t hurt that he was the sexiest man
I’d seen in seventy-two hours, and probably a lot longer than that.
    “I’ll leave a shirt
and running shorts outside the door,” he said. “They’re the
only things that won’t fall off you, and they probably will anyway.
You’re so slim, and…tiny.”
    I couldn’t look away.
We stared at each other as if he’d said something forbidden he
could never take back.
    “Thank you,” I
managed to say. “For everything.”
    “Enjoy your bath,”
he said, turning suddenly as if he couldn’t wait to leave. “If
you need anything, just ask.”
    He walked out and shut
the door behind him.
    I stood in the middle
of the room, torn by relief and the deepest loneliness I could
imagine. As soon as his footsteps faded away, I sat on the bed and
cried for what felt like the first time.

CHAPTER FOUR
    I’d thought I was
done making huge, irreversible mistakes. Clearly, I was just saving
all of my fuck-ups for one day. Today.
    It was bad enough that
I’d shown up at The Dead End after five years and been recognized.
Maybe the guy was so drunk my face wouldn’t stick in what was left
of his feeble brain. Or maybe, with a little digging, he’d figure
out the stunning number of people I’d relieved of their savings
before reinventing myself half the state away. The gambling addicts
I’d ruined, the college boys I’d trounced without a second
thought.
    Life savings – gone.
Pension fund – ditto. I’d been a one-man Wall Street, marauding
my way through every pool hall in the state. Too cocky to fail.
    The scary thing was how
easy it had been. A few years of bar brawls and lucky breaks and I’d
funded an empire, mostly on the backs of fools who couldn’t afford
it. And all because I was competitive as hell and knew how to use a
cue. It wasn’t the drug runners