Page 1 of Before We Fell

Prologue

Noah

The irritating buzzof a mosquito swarmed my ear. I opened my eyes to swat it away and closed my eyes again. Curling away from the relentless sound, I rolled right into a warm, soft figure in my bed.

“Shit,” I groaned, pushing myself to my back and opening my eyes.

She wasn’t supposed to stay. What we had was simple. She came over. She came in a more pleasurable way. I came. And then she left.

Peyton Hudson sleeping next to me, curled to her side and hugging my pillow was not the arrangement.

I wiped a hand down my face and sat up, only to realize that mosquito buzzing in my ear wasn’t a bug, but my phone. My screen lit up again and I grabbed it, cursing as I saw the number for the concierge desk, along with the time.

Two o’clock in the morning? I’d been asleep for less than two hours.

“Hello?” I asked, already shoving off the bed and reaching for my discarded jeans. Nothing good would come from a phone call at this hour.

“Mr. Wilkes, this is Patrick Morrison at the front desk, sir.”

“What is it?” I stood at the window, zipping my jeans. The view of St. Louis with its arches in the distance was the main reason why I bought this condo after winning an incredibly lucrative court case early in my career.

“There are two police officers here, demanding to see you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, sir. They said it’s urgent.”

Did I have to tell everyone how to do their job? “Then send them up, Patrick.”

I disconnected and tossed the phone to the bed where it made a soft thunk. Shit. I still had to get rid of Peyton. For tonight and forever if this was where she thought we were headed.

I wasn’t opposed to relationships. They were always a possibility in the back of my mind, in thatsomeday when I’m done making millions, sort of way. But that’s not what Peyton and I had, and it wasn’t something I wanted, not with her, anyway.

I grabbed my shirt off the floor and tugged it on before heading to the other side of the bed.

I lived on the twenty-eighth floor, but it wouldn’t take long for officers to get here.

“Hey.” I shook her shoulder gently but hard enough to wake her. As her eyes fluttered open and her lips lifted into a grin, I scowled. “You need to get up and go. Now.”

“What? Oh…did I fall asleep?” Peyton was beautiful. As one of the best prosecuting attorneys in St. Louis, she and I often found ourselves on opposite sides of the aisle during trials. It was her fire and her passion for her job which equaled mine that initially made my dick hard. Her large boobs, curvy hips, thighs that showed how often she went to her kickboxing class didn’t hurt, either. Her pale brown eyes went from sleepy to happy in a blink and I stood back.

“You need to go. I got shit to do. So get moving. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

With coffee going because if cops were showing up at my door, it meant very bad things for someone at my office or my clients.

I filled my machine with fresh water and turned it on, already sliding into defense mode and by the time I slipped a pod into my coffee maker, three firm knocks hit my door. As my long strides ate up the space to the front door, Peyton met me at the hallway.

“Who’s here?” she asked. Her handbag was in one hand, red and spiked high heels dangled in her other. Strawberry blonde hair, thick and wavy only a few minutes ago in my bed was now patted neatly into place.

“Cops. I’ll call you later.”

“Cops?” Her brows arched and her head whipped toward the door as another knock hit it. This time less patient and louder. “What for?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I’ll call you later.” I wouldn’t end it now without giving her the time to throw the tantrum I figured would come. Arguing with Peyton made my dick hard inside and outside the courtroom, and it wasn’t just there where we differed. It was pretty much every single thing we believed. I always figured it was what made the sex so damn hot between us. Our explosive tempers couldn’t help but overflow into shirt-ripping, mind-blowing orgasms.

I opened the door and two of St. Louis’s finest stood in front of me, grave expressions on the faces of two men I recognized and had worked with before.

Awkward. Cops gossiped more than my younger sister and her girlfriends ever could.

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