Page 6 of Moon Destiny

I reached for my face.

Or tried to. My arm was pinned above my head. Both arms.

Panic streaked down my spine. Despite the pain, I started to struggle, tugging at my wrists. As I did, I realized my ankles were bound, too. I pulled harder, a whimper escaping me.

Footsteps rang out, and then a deep, male voice reached me. “Don’t struggle. You’ll hurt yourself.”

I stilled, my head cocked toward the sound and my heart galloping like a racehorse. Hurt myself? Reason rushed in, dispelling some of my panic. I was in a hospital. That was the only rational explanation. Maybe they’d bound me so I didn’t pull at my bandages or rip out my IV. Hospitals did that sometimes.

“Untie me,” I said, my voice hoarse. As I spoke, I realized I was thirsty—like insanely thirsty. “Water,” I croaked.

“In a minute.” The man’s voice slid over me like a warm, gentle current. I should have hated him for denying me the water I desperately needed, but I couldn’t. Instead, I found myself holding my breath, anticipation shivering through me as I waited for him to speak again. Even in my blind, dehydrated state, I recognized how weird that was.

“I’m going to remove your blindfold,” he said.

Blindfold? The panic came surging back. Hospitals sometimes restrained patients for their own safety, but they most definitely didn’t blindfold them.

Which meant I wasn’t in a hospital. I’d been kidnapped.

Immediately, my heart rate kicked into overdrive.

Gentle hands touched my chin, turning my head against the pillow. Did kidnappers give their victims pillows? The thought slipped away as a scent drifted around me. It obviously came from the man, and I drew a deep breath, inhaling evergreen and leather and a hint of cologne.

It was…captivating. To my horror, my body responded, my nipples drawing tight and a rush of heat rolling through me. What the fuck?

His fingers brushed my hair, obviously working at some kind of knotted cloth. A second later, the darkness lifted from my eyes, replaced with blinding white that pierced my skull like a hot knife.

I squeezed my eyes shut and cringed away, only to have those fingers take my chin in a firm grip and force my head back to the center of the pillow.

“Don’t fight it,” he said, his voice maddeningly calm. “You’ll only delay the inevitable.”

Delay what? Burning my retinas? I tried to jerk away. “Let go!”

“Brooke. Stop this. Now.”

The warm current flowed again, stealing my breath and holding me in place. I couldn’t move—and it had nothing to do with whatever bound my arms and legs. All I could do was lie there and wait. And wonder how he knew my name—and why my stupid body liked his voice.

Slowly, the white light receded and the outline of a man formed in the center of my vision, like someone standing in front of the sun. As my heart continued to pound, the pain faded from my eyes. My vision sharpened, and the world snapped into focus.

The man stood over me, his brow furrowed above clear green eyes. He was handsome, I realized with a start. Like really handsome, with dark brown hair that waved back from a broad, unlined forehead. His firm jaw was shadowed with stubble, and his gorgeous green eyes were fringed with thick, dark lashes. He was attractive but also kind of…wholesome. Like a sexy Clark Kent who moonlighted as a firefighter and also a lumberjack. It was difficult to judge his height from my angle, but he had to be at least a couple inches over six feet. He was dressed simply in jeans and a gray T-shirt that strained across a muscular chest.

And there was something strangely familiar about him.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “What have you done with Alex?”

An emotion moved in his eyes—there and gone so quickly I couldn’t decipher it. He turned and pulled a chair from somewhere, then sat next to the bed. His scent reached me again, and I stifled the urge to drag more of it into my lungs.

“My name is Hugh Dalton.”

My eyes went wide. This was Alex’s father? Reclusive millionaire and CEO of Dalton Security? The man who didn’t have time to meet me?

“You can’t be,” I rasped. Alex was twenty-eight. I was one year younger and my mother was fifty-three years old. This man was nowhere close to fifty. He barely looked thirty.

He rested his elbows on his knees. “I assure you, I am. Alex was my son.”

I didn’t miss the past tense. My heart pounded harder. It was hard to get words past my aching throat, but I forced myself to ask, “Where is he?”

“Dead. He was already gone by the time my men and I arrived.”

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