Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 98398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
“Absolutely. Finally, we are in agreement. Get your ass up, and we will leave.”
“You need to leave without me.” I poked my head back out. “I refuse to be some side chick that you’re fucking and cheating on your fiancée with.”
“It’s not cheating when she and I are not in a romantic relationship, but fine, we don’t have to have sex. That’s fine. Deny how much you want me all you like. Fucking me is not a stipulation of you being in that apartment. Get your ass up, and let’s go. I’m hungry. I want food and to actually eat somewhere where I’m not going to have to fight off cockroaches the size of dogs for a slice of pizza.”
“I’m not going with you, Mr. Astrid.”
“Really, we’re back to that?” He started to pace around my tiny apartment. He would take two steps in one direction and have to turn around again. It would have been funny if his being here didn’t hurt.
“Apparently,” I quipped. I looked down at the floor to where the pieces of my door were lying and sat straight up. “How am I supposed to keep this place warm now that you broke my door?” I screamed.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but it actually got warmer after I broke the door. Get up. We’re leaving now.”
“No.” I dug my nails into one of the blankets, trying to keep myself from doing something stupid, like taking a swing at him or throwing myself into his arms.
“Get up now, or I will pick you up and drag you out of here again.”
“Leave.”
“Fine,” he said.
I thought that meant that he was going to leave, so I lay back down to try to find some warmth in my little nest of bedding.
Instead, he grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet.
CHAPTER 24
HARRISON
This woman.
This stubborn, pig-headed, obstinate woman was going to be the death of me.
If anyone else, and I do mean anyone else, had given me the attitude she had, I would have left them here to freeze to death.
Her feet tangled in the bedding she had been wrapped in and she stumbled and fell against me, the blankets dropping away as she ended up pressed to my chest.
She was trembling in my arms, and I didn’t know if it was from rage or the cold.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she shrieked.
It’s both.
“Do you think you can just walk in here and take whatever the fuck you want? This place is mine. It’s not much, especially not compared to what you have, but it is mine, not yours. You don’t get to just barge in here and—”
I cut off her yells with a brutal, almost barbaric kiss.
She tried to break it, but I wouldn’t let her.
I needed to feel her against me. I needed to warm her up and protect her from her own obstinance. Mostly, I needed an outlet for my rage.
She was going to obey.
I needed her to understand what I couldn’t say. I needed her to know that I had somehow grown attached.
I didn’t love people, not in an emotional way.
I loved my sisters in a way that came from the familial duty I felt toward them. I loved my father in the way that I was grateful for the lessons he taught me even though he didn’t have to once he found out that I was a bastard, not his heir. I even loved my mother in some convoluted way that ensured I put up with her meddling and antics time and time again.
Romantic love was something that I was not made for.
I had found women attractive before, and I wanted to fuck them. I had a few female friends whose company I enjoyed but had no interest in anything even resembling intimacy with them.
Until her, never had I found a woman that I wanted to possess so completely, mind and body. So, I was unpracticed in how to express the affection that had somehow grown so quickly between us.
Eddie was the first woman in the office whose physical appearance I had noticed, and yes, when I saw her in my bathroom, I wanted her.
I’d been willing to pay anything to have her before I knew she was a paralegal, but then when I found out that that beautiful body, that angelic face framed by those golden locks, also possessed the brain that had put together some of the most eloquently worded and poignant arguments that I had ever seen, I was fascinated. She had made connections between cases that most experienced lawyers wouldn’t have seen in a million years if they were staring directly at them.
The way her brain worked was enthralling.
I didn’t possess the words needed to convince her that I didn’t want the harpy that my mother had arranged for me to marry.