Page 154 of Poison Aches

They crash all over me and the cold liquid spills over the front of my clothes.

Instead of this waking me up, the squeezing in my chest only intensifies.

“Hey, are you okay?” Gorgeous Italian guy speaks. “Come this way.”

I feel a firm hand at the small of my back, then I’m being guided somewhere, but I can’t breathe.

“Oh dear, is she okay?”

“She just needs some fresh air.”

“She looks like she’s choking to death!”

“Melissa, shut up.”

“Also, who is that guy?”

“Melissa! What have you done?”

“What? Did you think I’d go along with everything without putting up a fight?”

The conversation drowns in and out but I know they are right behind me.

“Ignore them,” the Italian guy mutters in my ear, but it’s too late.

I’m falling apart.

I’m starting to wheeze, gasping for air.

“Should we call for an ambulance?”

I can hear people getting closer to me, but I can’t respond. I just stare at the blurry floor, trying to claw at my chest to restart my lungs as the pressure in my ears condenses and intensifies.

“No, we can’t afford a scandal,” a voice I can now identify as the governor’s says firmly.

“Why is nothing ever surprising with you, Governor Hughes?” a new voice speaks above the noise. This one is more sure, calmer, resolved, and easily dripping with power andauthority that silences the room immediately. “You always can’t afford a scandal.”

As if my entire life has just been shocked, I pause.

Through a blurred vision, my spinning head and a furiously racing heart, I look up to see, to confirm, to make sure my maladaptive daydreaming hasn’t taken a new form of delusion.

Emmett stands there, in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing his thick, sexy, tattooed forearms.

The collar is open and he’s wearing black suit pants and simple dress shoes.

An outfit I know costs more than half the art on the walls of this mansion.

He looks casual, but because Emmett is a huge, muscular guy, he looks several degrees intimidating and dangerous… with an air about him that I’ve never seen before in all the years I’ve known him.

This is evidenced by the way everyone pauses, as if they’ve all stopped breathing.

A deadly silence falls over the room and even the hand at the small of my back belonging to the Italian guy has tensed up.

All of these reactions… at Emmett’s presence.

What the hell is going on?

Before I know it, I feel pressure closing in on me.

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