Immortally Theirs [Legends & Myths] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read Online Free Page A

so confident in his control over Claire that he’d taken a limo to the airport and left the keys to his BMW in the drawer of his nightstand.
    His mother’s sudden and severe case of the flu after Mark left was the perfect opportunity Claire had been waiting for. She had played the dutiful daughter-in-law for the first day, waiting on Mark’s mother and seeing to her needs without complaint. Claire grinned as she thought about the pot of chicken and rice soup she had cooked for the old hag. The sleeping pills she had slipped into her mother-in-law’s soup had done their job well. Claire would bet she had made it to the Colorado state line before their effects wore off.
    Her grin faded. She wished she had known who Mark was, what he was, before any of this had become necessary. But she had been young and in love. Or so she had thought. In reality, she had been blinded by Mark’s extravagant lifestyle and his sometimes charming demeanor. She had sensed a darker side to him from the very beginning and had even been attracted by the excitement of it. She hadn’t seen the cruelty he was capable of inflicting until he had her trapped. And his mother had been a willing accomplice, taunting Claire at every opportunity and laughing at her pain.
    But no more. Claire had found out what Mark was when she snuck into his private study during the middle of the night. Mark would barricade himself in it for hours and she wanted to know what was in it, but she was never allowed to enter. Her curiosity got the best of her, though. She had waited until he was asleep one night, took his keys, and then she snuck downstairs to find out what was so mysterious behind the always locked door.
    The dread she had felt while sneaking through the house, worried what Mark would do if he woke up and found her, was nothing compared to what she had felt once she gained access to his office. An open file had been sitting on his desk. Claire still felt appalled by what she had seen in the file that night. There were photos, instructions, and a personal profile of the man in the photos, the executive of an overseas shipping conglomerate. The instructions and Mark’s reason for having the file were clear. Claire’s husband was a paid assassin.
    That was the night Claire had solidified her resolve to get away from him. She had looked through the other files he kept in his desk drawer, her disgust rising with each folder. All those cities he had dragged her to, leaving her in hotel rooms and threatening her not to leave, were so he could kill another target. It still made her sick to her stomach to know that the house she had lived in had been bought with blood. She knew that’s where Mark was now, hunting down his next victim. She wondered what the target of Mark’s latest contract had done to be put on a hit list.
    Claire shuddered at the knowledge that the man in the photograph she had seen on Mark’s desk might already be dead. Under the circumstances, she realized a ghost tour hadn’t been the best idea. It had sounded different and exciting, and besides the tour and lunch, it was the first extravagant thing she had done for herself since she’d left Denver. But now she was just tired and spooked. After the long drive and walking around the Historic District all afternoon, her right leg was aching. It had ached for over a year now, thanks to another one of Mark’s punishments. At least he had let her get medical treatment for that injury, but the bone-deep ache never seemed to go away. She wondered if it ever would. It was a little after eight o’clock in the evening, much earlier than her normal bedtime, but all she wanted to do was crawl into a big, comfortable bed and sleep.
    Claire’s heart sank. She had been sleeping in the car all week in an effort to stretch the money she had managed to hoard over the last few months. She had also stopped at a pawn shop on her way out of Denver and sold her wedding ring and a few other pieces of jewelry.