Deceived by Stephanie Nelson Read Free Book Online

worried awareness shone in his glazed eyes. He’d be charged with a DUI at the very least and vehicular manslaughter if the young girl died.
    Footsteps approached behind us. I turned and saw a tall man with long black hair that hit just above his shoulders and was as dry as the desert. I blinked a few times to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. None of the abusive rain beating against me touched him. He wore black dress pants that fit snuggly against his legs and a black V-neck sweater that hugged his broad chest.
    “Hey, don’t touch her!” I yelled as the man reached his hand out to the young girl. He turned his head towards me, and I froze in my place. His eyes swirled with different shades of gray like an angry thunderstorm brewed deep within him. He had to be a supernatural, but I’d never seen anything like him before.
    The man smiled and gripped the young girl’s shoulder. A rush of cold air whipped all around the car and penetrated me to the bone. I shook violently against the icy coldness. “What—who—are you?” I stuttered through my rattling teeth. The man didn’t answer and as soon as I saw the ghostly figure of the young girl float out of the car, I knew what the answer was. My mouth hung open, and I stared wide eyed at the spirit who was staring down at her dead body.
    “You’re a reaper, aren’t you?” I managed to choke out. The man smiled, and then the wailing of sirens made me turn my head. When I looked back, the man and the ghost were gone. The drunken man didn’t seem to notice what had just happened.
    Paramedics rushed to the girl and the drunken man, but there wasn’t anything they could do for her. I gave them all the information I had, which wasn’t much, and then called Aiden for a ride. Within ten minutes, he pulled alongside the road in a black escalade.
    “What happened? Are you hurt?” He threw the questions at me in a hurried rush while his arms wrapped around my soaking wet frame. I absorbed what little heat he provided.
    “I’m fine. I was in a cab when the accident happened,” I said against his chest. Aiden guided me to the SUV, and I happily climbed out of the rain. The ambulances took off with the man while the other medics were working on lifting the girl out of the car and onto a stretcher with a black body bag. My heart sank when they laid her atop the bag and began shuffling her arms and legs into it. I hated death, no matter the cause, but especially when the victims were young.
    “How did you end up standing on the side of the road?” Aiden asked as he cranked the heat to full blast. The contrast of the warm air hitting my frozen body made me shiver.
    “The cab driver wasn’t going to call the police, so I jumped out and called them. I wanted to make sure they were all right,” I told Aiden. Out of my peripheral I could tell he was staring, but I ignored him. Aiden was really protective of me, sometimes to the point of being annoying.
    “Look, I’m fine. I did the right thing, who knows how long it would’ve taken the police to get here if I hadn’t called them.”
    “Why didn’t you call them from the cab? Why did you have to stay, in the middle of a thunderstorm no less?” Aiden’s voice was calm, but a twinge of anxiousness colored his tone.
    I let out a heavy breath . “I don’t know.” It was the truth. It had been stupid to jump out of my cab in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t helpless though, I had magic on my side. “Can we just go back to your hotel, please?”
    Aiden pulled back onto the road and within ten minutes we were in his hotel’s parking deck. We walked to the elevator and rode up to the sixth floor in silence. When the elevator doors opened, I followed Aiden down the long skinny hallway and to room 614. Once the door was shut, Aiden’s arms wrapped around me and our mouths met, eager to make up for lost time. It didn’t matter that he was annoyed with my stupidity or that I was ticked he thought I was as