Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“I’m still mad at you,” I whisper, biting into an irrepressible smile. “For doing me like that during the budget presentation.”
He slips his hand into the waistband of my jeans, plunging his fingers into my panties and rubbing my clit.
“You feel mad.” He laughs, pulling wet fingers up to his mouth and licking them clean. “You taste mad too.”
Our laughter dies, and he lowers his nose to my neck, inhaling and kissing his way down, nudging the collar of my blouse aside to suck the top curve of my breast.
He palms the indent from my waist to my hip and grinds his erection into my stomach. My body autoresponds, melting into the unyielding line of his tall frame. I grab his neck and draw him down to me. When I suck his tongue, he groans and sends his hand back into my pants, into my panties. Without prelude, he fingers me, rubbing his thumb over my clit, pulling back to watch desire splash across my face. It’s so erotic, looking into his eyes while he plunges into me over and over.
My arms fall to hang loosely at my sides. I’m addicted to his touch. Nonsensical sounds spill from my lips. He palms my throat, his fingers tightening until I can barely sip air, somehow the struggle to breathe and the sensations taking hold of my body intensifying the pleasure. The heat of his hands, his eyes, burns rational thought to the ground. I grind against him mindlessly, no shame, all hunger.
“That’s right.” His gaze is riveted on my face. “Ride my hand. Come all over my fingers.”
A sob explodes from me, and he clamps his hand over my mouth, shaking his head.
“Quiet.”
I’m falling apart, and spilling onto his fingers, tears leaking through my lashes. I bite his hand covering my mouth.
He laughs and dips his head to the curve of my neck. “You’re vicious. Don’t stop.”
He drops his hand from my mouth and kisses me instead, swallowing my cries. He thrusts and rubs, strokes until my body weeps for him. The release quakes through me with core-racking shudders. I slump against him, overtaken by sensation, spent. He lifts my chin to kiss one corner of my mouth and then the other, dotting more kisses over my wet cheeks. I rouse myself to reach for his zipper, but he stays my hand.
“You don’t have to,” he says. “I wasn’t gonna leave you hanging like that. Plus, I just wanted to kiss you.”
He has always loved kissing for the sake of kissing. My heart constricts. This is how he won me all those years ago, and this is what still holds me. On the surface, he’s often hard edges and curt cynicism, but with me, those layers dissolve and I’m left with a romantic. A man who pulls me into the shadows to kiss me and wants nothing in return. It means so much that he shares those parts of himself with me, and something withers inside at the thought of him divulging these vulnerabilities to anyone else.
“Si, do you…” I falter, not wanting to squash the tenderness that has sprung up between us, but needing to know. “Are you…seeing anyone else?”
The granite line of his body stiffens.
“Are you asking if I’m seeing anyone else, or if I’m sleeping with anyone else?”
I let my head fall back to rest on the wall, considering him with clear eyes and rapidly cooling passion.
“Both.” I hold his stare. “I mean, if you are…well, we said no strings. And if we find someone else, then it’s fine. That it’s quits so—”
“Have you found someone else?” His expression darkens, brows dipping into a deeper vee.
“No. I’m messing this up.” I let out a sigh of frustration. “Hen and Sol saw some of our texts. They found out about us, but they won’t tell anyone.”
“Okay.” He shrugs. “It’s fine.”
“Well, they…they asked if we’re exclusive, and I—”
“Do you want to be?”
I force myself to look at him, jaw tensed, teeth clenched. It’s a risk, confessing even this secret of my heart when I’m holding so much else in reserve, but if this is my second chance, if it can become our second chance, then I’ll take a chance.
“Yes,” I breathe the word out, braced for whatever he says in response.
“I do too.” He lifts my chin, holds my gaze. “I don’t want anyone else, Yas.”
This thing between us is a living organism that keeps twisting, evolving, remaking itself. It has since the day we met. There was no iteration I ever envisioned where he was not in my life, and I was not in his, but I thought that had, admittedly by my own hand, been damaged irreparably. But it surprises me again, regenerating, starting as something that has no strings, but sprouting strings and wrapping them around my heart.