Gone With the Wolf by Kristin Miller Page B

pulled up. Someone had covered her.
    Instinctively, Emelia clutched at her chest. Beneath her hands, her ribs were sore and tender to the touch, but a tank top covered her breasts and pants covered her bottom. She was still dressed.
    Thank God .
    Where the hell was she? The room was cloaked in shadow, with heavy drapes covering the entire wall on the left side of the room. A flat-screen television—had to be at least a 90-inch, the biggest she’d ever seen outside of a theater—was mounted on the wall in front of her, and below that was a small table filled with breakfast goodies.
    Towers of pancakes, an opened box of doughnuts, plates full of bacon and sausage, and—heavenly Keurig above—coffee ripped Emelia out of bed. She scrambled to the table, shoved the first cup she spotted under the Keurig machine and punched brew . The lapping sound of coffee hitting porcelain made her stomach clench into a hard fist.
    How long had it been since she’d eaten? She was starving…and determined to mow down the entire breakfast spread before someone opened the door and caught her. She shoved a doughnut into her mouth, chomped away, and chased it with a taste of coffee. If she was going to get out of here, wherever “here” was, she would need her strength. Yup, that was it: doughnuts plus coffee equaled strength. She’d always been killer at math.
    She groaned, savoring the sticky glaze of the doughnut, as someone knocked on the door. Nearly choking down the food, Emelia frantically searched for a way out. Windows? Bathroom? Could she fit under the bed?
    “Emelia, you awake?”
    Drake.
    “Mmeah,” she fumbled with a mouthful. “But donncomein, I’mmnotdecent.”
    The knob turned anyway. Damn it. Emelia dropped the mangled doughnut on the table, set down the coffee, and wiped her mouth with sticky fingers.
    Drake strode inside the room and flicked on the light, stopping when their eyes met. Emelia felt like a deer in headlights, frozen when every instinct in her body should’ve been screaming at her to scramble out of there. He wore dark dress pants slung low on his hips and a steel-gray dress shirt rolled up at the sleeves and unbuttoned to mid-chest. Ripples of tan muscle bulged beneath the shirt, leading to biceps that might’ve been bigger than her thighs. He seemed to flex and tighten under the weight of her stare.
    The sheer size of him, and the way he stood so stoically as if he didn’t know what to say, brought memories of the night in front of the Knight Owl raining down.
    “What happened?” Emelia fired. “Where am I?”
    “You’re at my place. I hope you slept all right.” He paused, staring at her face, her lips, then reached out for her mouth. “You’ve got—”
    She flinched, not trusting a single move he made. “What are you doing?”
    “You’re…” His eyes squinted to dark and stormy slits. Drake swiped his tongue over his bottom lip and reached out hesitantly. “You’ve got something…”
    “What?” She backed away, rubbing her bottom lip, her cheek. “Spit it out.”
    His stony demeanor cracked as a smile curved his lips. “You’ve got a glaze mustache.”
    Disaster. Drake was drop-dead gorgeous, and wore business attire in his own damn home. Emelia was a doughnut-slathered, hyperventilation-prone bartender, wearing the same clothes from last night. They were in two completely different leagues. The unevenness of their pedestals had never been clearer.
    Wait, she scoffed to herself, who cared if Drake was once nominated as Forbes Businessman of the Year? He’d shot down the biker on the street like it was nothing!
    Emelia smothered her lips with a napkin. “Better?”
    Drake nodded, shoved his hands into his pockets, and took a giant step back. “I didn’t mean to disturb your breakfast. I thought I heard stirring up here and came to take a look.”
    She swiped her hands on her jeans and licked the last traces of sugar from her lips. Drake’s eyes seemed to darken, shadowing