PROLOGUE
PART 1
Christos
THREE MONTHS EARLIER…
I couldn’t bear to look at Samantha. Naked heartbreak strained her face.
Because of me.
At the end of my first day back at SDU, two cops stuffed me in the back of a police cruiser right in front of her. I felt like a complete douche nugget. You can romanticize it all you want, but getting arrested fucking sucks. Who wants to go to jail, really? I’d been locked up enough times to know.
Samantha tried to catch my attention as the cruiser drove me away, but I avoided her eyes.
I felt bad, but I was too embarrassed to look at her, no matter how many points I’d scored by cleaning up the coffee cesspool in her car before the cops showed up. I grinned to myself. That shit had been rank, but enduring the smell was a small price to pay for more time with Samantha.
The cop car pulled onto the freeway, taking the Five south toward downtown. Traffic was heavy. I’d have plenty of time to mull things over.
I wasn’t sure who was pressing charges against me, but my bet was that fat red-faced fuck who’d been harassing Samantha on the way to campus in the a.m. He tries to jump me, and I’m the one hauled downtown?
Fuck that shit.
I exhaled heavily and pushed away my irritation.
For a guy my size, the back of a squad car was cramped quarters. I wanted to slouch down and get comfortable on the bench seat, but with the cuffs on, it wasn’t doable. Instead, I leaned my shoulder against the door and rested my head against the glass.
Watching the familiar landmarks sail past should’ve been comforting. The mural with the waves and surfers on the storage building in Pacific Beach was pretty nice. But my favorite was always the huge mural of humpback whales on the side of the Chevrolet dealership. Those painted whales swam in a vast emerald ocean, elegant symbols of graceful mobility and independence.
Sadly, the artsy roadside surroundings, the blue skies overhead, and the Pacific Ocean a hop-skip to my right were now an infinite distance from my grasp. They taunted me with promises of fleeting freedom, a stark contrast to my current situation.
Screw it. I wasn’t letting the cage of this squad car trap my spirit. My mind was free to roam and seek safe harbor.
A smile crept across my face as I pictured Samantha in my mind’s eye. Not the downer moment when she’d panicked at the sight of the cops cuffing me, but all the magic moments before that, since this morning.
Like when I’d bumped into her coming out of the Student Center bookstore and she laughed when I told her my name was Adonis. I think that made her the first chick who’d ever openly mocked my middle name. Most girls melted when I said it, like I was some kind of celebrity movie star. Sure, I’d gotten giggles galore and countless stripper laughs from all kinds of bar babes in the past, but not Samantha’s sour-faced disdain. I kind of liked it. She was all spark and no bullshit.
It helped she was epic hot. Too bad she couldn’t see it for herself. But it was clear as day to me. Underneath her self-doubt, she was super-nova, incendiary hot. My lips curled in my trademarked cocky smirk. I could handle it. I liked fire.
Getting burned let you know you were alive.
The funny thing about Samantha was that, even though she was a total hottie, she was a complete spaz. Her firestorm emotions constantly tore up her good looks, turning her face purse-dog ugly half the time. Like when fatty had tried to climb into her VW on the way to campus, the look on her face had been the visual equivalent of nails grinding across a chalkboard. Totally heinous. But it was only temporary.
I dug the honest flow of Samantha’s emotions. It was way better than the contrived gamesmanship of Tiffany and her looney sorority friends with their Halloween-mask sincerity.
Samantha’s naked honesty and tumultuous emotions made me want to protect her that much more. She was some kind of rare and unique truth.
When she was calm, she was undeniably the most beautiful woman on the planet. I don’t say that shit lightly. I’ve been with more than enough hotties to know.
But with Samantha, it went far beyond her looks.
I’d totally flipped for her the moment I’d laid eyes on her. Even with her funky dress and that coffee smell and her jangling nerves, something about Samantha shone right into me like a beacon. Call it her spirit, her essence, I don’t fucking know. But sure as shit, I’d never felt anything like it coming off of any other chicks I’d ever met.
Samantha was in a class of her own.
She had a calming effect on me, like everything in the world had fallen into place at last, and the human race could kick back and sip Mai Tais into eternity. This was a unique experience for me. Ever since my mom had left my dad, my life had been a scattered vortex of recklessness. Peace and calmness were strangers to me. Daily disaster and emotional chaos were my resting state.
There was one memory of perfect calmness that I cherished, and I turned to it whenever my head was spinning out of control. It reminded me of the calmness my life could have, if only I could figure out how to hold onto it for longer than a minute or two at a time.
It’d happened two or three years ago, on a surfing trip down in Baja with Jake and some of our buddies.
We’d camped overnight on the beach, and I’d hit the waves first thing in the morning, before everyone else was awake. They were sleeping off the cases of Coronas everyone had pounded the night before. For whatever reason, I’d gone easy on the brews and was ready for an early start.
After I’d paddled out for the seventh time, I’d been sitting on my board in meditative silence, alone, lolling on a glassy ocean, waiting between sets, feet dangling in the tropical water while a perfect sunrise soaked the horizon. The entire world had felt like everything was as it should be, the way nature intended. For the first time since my mom had left my dad, I’d felt perfect, total calmness. For a fleeting moment.
Then it was gone.
Samantha had brought that peaceful feeling back ten times over. I’d felt it continuously since meeting her, and it spiked whenever I was in her presence. Too bad the cops trashed my vibe the second they took me away. Fucking five-oh. I shook my head.
Samantha…
I needed more of her. I was hooked. I mean, junkie hooked. She gave me something I couldn’t give myself, no matter how hard I’d tried.
Samantha…
Bouncing around inside the rolling jail with the two cops sitting in front of me suddenly yanked me painfully out of my private reverie.
Bars, handcuffs, no escape.
I struggled to keep my feelings for Samantha protected from my grim predicament. I didn’t want my current situation tarnishing my memories of her in any way. After taking a deep, calming breath, I dove back into comforting reminiscence.
I recalled Samantha’s surprise when we’d first locked eyes in Life Drawing class. Watching her struggle not to stare at my package while she’d been drawing me naked was probably the comedy highlight of my year. She’d been ready to boil over with embarrassment.
Despite her nearly perpetual awkwardness, I totally dug her, no matter how off-kilter her mood.
Stalking her at the Eleanor M. Westbrook art museum was probably the calmest I’d seen her. The deserted museum was a quiet and relaxing cocoon, making it easy to let your guard down. I’m sure Samantha was so busy marveling at the paintings, her worries had fallen away. I knew the experience well. I felt it every time I went to a great art museum myself, and slid into the colors and shapes of the paintings, escaping my own inner turmoil for brief moments.
While Samantha had stood mesmerized in front of my grandfather’s painting, Shrouded Paradise, I witnessed her truest beauty come out of hiding for the first time like some timid field mouse sniffing the air for danger. That crazy beauty was such a fragile, fleeting thing, like a snowflake or a perfect sunset. You could only appreciate it if you stopped yourself and really took it in before it was gone, maybe forever.
I wanted desperately to protect Samantha from whatever haunted her because I knew her insecurity ran deep, just like mine. The only difference between me and her was that I hid it, and she didn’t.
I couldn’t decide if she was the bravest person I’d ever met, or the craziest.
It didn’t matter.
I wanted to wash away her tears and fears so that the amazing young woman I sensed beneath her teenaged anxiety could finally emerge.
I already knew beyond all doubt that I would do anything to help Samantha find her way in life.
The fact I was parked in the back of a squad car because of her, ten hours after we’d met, was living proof.
I sighed heavily again, my heart accelerating while my chest tightened around it. Man, I knew Samantha was going to be trouble for me. Maybe even more trouble than where I was heading in the back of this black-and-white. I grinned to myself. The good news was, this shit was temporary.
I looked forward to finding out how much trouble Samantha could be the second I got out of whatever steaming mess I’d tripped into with the cops.
Because whatever was brewing between me and Samantha felt permanent.
Eternal.
PAINLESS
At last! The exciting, steamy, action packed conclusion to the Story of Samantha Smith! PAINLESS follows Samantha through the remainder of her first year in college at sunny San Diego University.
Oh, and what about that hot hunk Christos Manos? When we last left him, his life balanced on the brink of disaster. What is going to happen to him? You’ll have to read PAINLESS to find out!
Find out what happens to Samantha, Christos, Romeo, Kamiko, Madison, Jake, and everyone else in PAINLESS, the third and final volume of the series!
This book is full of surprises!!
SAMANTHA
Dread.
The gloom of the deserted Manos Mansion pressed in around me, suffocating me. I sat on Christos’ bed in his empty bedroom, clutching his sketchbook to my chest in my quivering hands. His haunted words echoed in my mind.
“Alone
I must brave this day
Alone
I have sealed my fate
Alone
I will touch the sky
Alone
I must die”
No! I must have read them wrong! Christos would never…
I couldn’t even think it.
My heart rabbited in my chest and threatened to seize as I re-read his lonely poem under the dim light of his bedside lamp. Christos was in dire torment. His heart was breaking. I could feel his pain as if it were my own. He was in trouble, and he needed help.
Panic and a sense of helplessness spun through me. How could I help Christos if I didn’t know where he was? He hadn’t answered any of my calls or texts for over an hour. I desperately wanted to do something otherwise I was going to splinter into a million pieces.
But what?
The heavy silence pressing in around me was broken by the clatter of the front door opening downstairs.
“Christos!” I yelped as I shot up from the bed. I sprinted out of his bedroom and down the darkened hallway. Relief washed over me as I pounded downstairs. I was going to throw my arms around my man and hold onto him and tell him everything was going to be okay. I knew my love would heal the pain and self hatred that had been eating him up from the inside out for way too long.
At the bottom of the stairs, I turned and skidded into the entry hall. “Christos!”
“Samoula?” Spiridon smiled, his keys jingling in his hands. “What are you doing here?”
“Where’s Christos?” I blurted anxiously.
“Isn’t he with you?”
“No,” I muttered, disappointment darkening my voice.
“He’s not in the studio working?” Spiridon asked.
“No, I checked. He’s not in the house anywhere.” For a moment I felt nervous, worried I would have to explain to Spiridon why I was wandering through his house uninvited. Which was weird, because Spiridon had already invited me to move in with him and Christos. He’d even given me a house key. So why did I feel like a snooping criminal? Oh yeah. My parents. The Source of All that is Evil.
Them.
Telling my parents over the phone that I was moving in with Christos had freaked them out. Which led to me hanging up on them and Christos freaking out because my parents were freaked out.
And the worst news of all: Christos’ pending Valentine’s Day trial, only two days away.
Why hadn’t Christos told me until now? Was the trust we’d built together a lie? What else was he hiding? A shudder shook me to my bones. My heart accelerated into overdrive as the stressful events of the last few hours reignited in my mind. My life was unraveling by the second. I felt light headed as my chest tightened, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Was I having a heart attack? Was that possible for a nineteen year old? At that moment, it definitely felt like it. Every cell in my body screamed that Christos was in immediate danger, wherever he was. My eyes flashed panic. I needed to protect him any way I could. “I need to go find Christos!”
“Calm down, koritsáki mou,” Spiridon reassured. “Come into the kitchen, Samoula. Maybe you should sit down. You don’t look well.”
My hands shook uncontrollably as he led me into the kitchen, pulled a chair out from the table for me, and opened the refrigerator. He grabbed a pitcher of water and poured a glass for me as I dropped into the chair.
“Tell me everything,” he said as he set the glass on the table and sat down. He took my hands in his and rubbed the backs of them affectionately. “Whatever it is,” he smiled, “everything is going to be fine.”
My throat closed to a pinhole as I realized the bitter truth. Even if I could somehow find Christos and rescue him from whatever fate awaited him tonight, he faced the likely possibility of going to jail for who knew how long after his upcoming trial.
I rambled, “Christos, he’s…I don’t know…I think he’s…” I was torn between my worry for Christos and the warm, loving way Spiridon was comforting me. His compassionate gaze made me oddly nervous. I wasn’t used to any kind of tenderness from other people, or the way it lowered the walls around my emotions.
Other than the intimacy I’d shared with Christos over the last five months, I’d never opened up like this in front of anyone. Especially not an adult. And never in front of my parents.
I had never let my my guard down around them.
The night Damian Wolfram had run over Taylor Lamberth, I’d freaked out big time. There was no way I would have shared my feelings about it with my parents. I’d made sure to avoid them until I’d had a chance to collect myself and stuff my feelings back inside the box I’d built around my heart when I was little.
I don’t know when I’d started building that box. It was never a conscious thing. It was a defense mechanism. Probably one that everyone had. The idea of sharing my naked feelings with my parents had always felt like an invasion of my privacy. They didn’t understand feelings. When I was little and showed my feelings to my mom, she frowned and scowled at me and told me to get a hold of myself like a big girl, or else. When my dad saw my feelings, he pulled out a calculator and tried to solve them like a math problem. If that didn’t work, he tried to sterilize them with logic. That was why I never shared anything with my parents. Not anything that mattered.
But looking into Spiridon’s deeply compassionate eyes, I felt safe. He wasn’t freaked out. He was calm, confident, and loving. I wish he could give my parents lessons. In that moment, I felt like I could tell him everything, and he would understand. He wouldn’t lecture or reprimand, and he wouldn’t measure, calculate or solve. He would simply listen. And in that listening, healing occurred. Christos had taught me that. Had he learned it from Spiridon? It seemed likely, looking at him now.
Sitting in the Manos’ kitchen, I felt comforted, swaddled in the warm embrace of the tangible love emanating from Spiridon, a love that circulated throughout his house, as if it had gently flowed out of his being for decades and soaked into the wood. This home, this kitchen, was a sacred space.
My tears welled. I was about to spill everything, tell Spiridon about the nasty things my parents had said, and the threats they had made on the phone. I knew in my heart that Spiridon wouldn’t judge. He would listen with understanding and love. I longed for that sort of comfort, the kind of comfort Christos had shown me many times already.
But more than anything, I wanted it from Christos.
Christos…
Coiled resolve unwound inside me. My feelings about my parents could wait. Christos was in mortal danger right now. I needed to do something to save him. Could I tell Spiridon that deep in my bones I felt certain his grandson’s life dangled on the precipice of disaster? I would sound like a lunatic. To my parents, anyway.
“What is it, Samoula?” Spiridon asked softly. “You can tell me anything.”
I believed him and trusted him completely. I lifted my heavy head and met his eyes with mine. “Christos is in terrible trouble.” It frightened me to say it, as if voicing my fears might magically make things worse.
“I know, koritsáki mou. I know,” he said heavily as his head bowed solemnly and his eyes darkened.
His words carried such sadness, such poignancy, I felt my heart beginning to shrivel and sink into blackness…
Christos…
Oh no…
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Addison Moore is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author who writes contemporary and paranormal romance. Her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan magazine. Previously she worked for nearly a decade as a therapist on a locked psychiatric unit. She resides with her husband, four wonderful children, and two dogs on the West Coast where she eats too much chocolate and stays up way too late. When she's not writing, she's reading. 
