Hunger

Hunger Monique EdenWood Hunger by Monique EdenWood Copyright © 2023 by Monique EdenWood All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations in a book review. ISBN (E-book): 9781777820022 ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-7778200-3-9 Cover design: Monique EdenWood Cover photo of couple: Depositphotos.com/HayDmitriy Red and green butterfly: Depositphotos.com/leopolis This book features the poem “Wind and Window Flower” by Robert Frost (1915). This poem is in the public domain. Proofread by: Ashley Olivier Green Proofreads (secondary proofreader) Created with Vellum Contents Acknowledgments Foreword Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Afterword 63. Playlist Also by Monique EdenWood About the Author Acknowledgments I could not have brought this book out without the amazing support of my street team: Debra Gates Creed, Shafeequah Slarmie, RaBea Mmcghie, Monica Gronau Vazquez, Margie Lugg, Dorothy Sankey, Terri West, Kathy Simms Gentry and Jane Hope. I’m so grateful for our amazing little family. Thank you endlessly for your love, support, encouragement and help. I’d also like to thank Violet Rowell Gillis, Tommie White, Erika Bradley, Becca Loves Books, Lori Rivera and Zoe Knight for all your support in helping me to get Hunger out there, and to anyone else who has been kind enough to help spread the word. Thank you as always to my angel friend Sophia Sommerville for being my therapist as well as beta reader and being the person who lets me know it’s okay to publish. Thank you to the wonderful Potter’s Editing and to Linda Marie Pankow for ARC reading and helping me to find the straggly typos. Anna, thanks to you, the book once again took a certain turn... Thank you to my wonderful author friend Shantel Brunton who did some last-minute reading for me. I’d like to thank my gorgeous author friends for all their amazing support and for making me laugh out loud every day. And lastly, to my amazing readers who take a chance on my stories. This book is a departure from the Black Oak series. It is not quite as dark but I needed something different after three long years of writing this challenging series. Hunger is a story I’ve seen wandering around my head for a long time, so I hope you enjoy the adventure and can feel the heat between Greyson and Indigo. Foreword Hunger is a dark romantic suspense novel. It is book one out of a duet. Book 2, Surrender will be out in April 2023. All scenes described in Hunger are consensual, though please be advised that a character discusses trauma connected to a previous non-consensual experience. The experience itself is not described in any detail. Reader discretion is advised. To those with wild hearts and messy hair whose pain has made them perfectly imperfect. Prologue LOVERS, forget your love, And list to the love of these, She a window flower, And he a winter breeze. Robert Frost, Wind and Window Flower (1915) 1 Greyson Washington, DC I park the car, shaking my head as I turn the engine off, my hands trembling after having had to dodge the moron on a bike who abruptly drove into my lane not fifteen feet ahead of me. I take a moment to breathe before undoing my seatbelt and climbing out. “Grey!” I acknowledge Gideon standing across the parking lot next to Kennedy as I slam the car door shut, throwing an infuriated glance over at the idiot I nearly ran over who I now spy getting off her bike. I press the key fob to lock the car and head towards my friends only for each step I take across the tarmac to leave me bristling with irritation at how recklessly these cyclists ride their bikes around DC. As I get close to my friends, I find myself veering off course, pivoting to the left, deciding to give the cyclist a piece of my mind, if only to scare her into not doing anything that dumb or dangerous again. “I could have hit you back there.” She’s bent over a rusty old bike which looks like it was made twenty years ago, threading her bike lock through the front wheel and around the metal bar of the bike station. She looks up at me, her eyes dissimilated by the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses. “What?!” “I said I could have hit you.” “Oh, you’re the Bentley,” she scoffs as she clicks the lock into place. “Not into subtlety, hey?” My body stiffens. I bought the fucking car because it’s one of the safest in the world and because around here, people drive like… well, with about as much self-restraint and competence as she cycles with. “I suppose you think riding like that is funny, do you?” She stands up straight, squaring her slim frame at me remarkably boldly. She must stand around five feet three, about a foot shorter