Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 207002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1035(@200wpm)___ 828(@250wpm)___ 690(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 207002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1035(@200wpm)___ 828(@250wpm)___ 690(@300wpm)
He’s alive.
He’s here.
Slightly damaged and quietly secretive but alive.
I kissed him harder, pouring every part of me into him. I wanted him to taste how much I’d missed him. To feel my blind loyalty, shaky guilt, and absolute mad belief that he would return.
He’d once told me he would come back if he was able.
He’d demanded I promise I’d never go to Turkey after him.
I’d broken my vow, but he’d kept his.
He’s here.
I couldn’t stop thinking it. A mantra to keep me spiralling and dissolving into body-shaking sobs.
You’re here.
You’re here.
You’re really, truly here.
I threw my arms around him and kissed him like the siren he called me.
I caught his bottom lip in my teeth.
I sucked on his tongue.
He attacked me back with an edge of violence I knew and loved.
His touch teased with pleasure and pain.
His kisses sharp and punishing. His breath haggard and harsh.
I tried to roll over him. To sit on top of him and sink down his length.
But he kept me pinned.
His hips between mine.
His hands in my hair.
His mouth stealing every indecent, erotic, sinful thought in my body. He kissed me the way I needed to be kissed. The only way we could kiss.
With accusation and apology.
With promises and penance.
I knew him.
Every part of him.
Yet he was different too.
A familiar friend and lover returned with secrets and a cursed last name.
He sucked on my bottom lip, scattering my thoughts as he drove his trouser-clad hardness against the throbbing in my core.
The need between us went from blazing to out of control.
Panting hard, he trailed his lips from mine to my jaw and down my throat. “Fuck, I missed you.” His teeth scraped along my collarbone as he ducked down my body and took my left nipple in his mouth. He sucked me, licked me, worshipped me.
My back arched.
My hands landed in his gorgeous thick hair, tugging on the dark-sable strands. No sign of bronze from the salt and sun. He was darker. Inside and out. His eyes weren’t haunted anymore, but they held things he hadn’t shared. He still carried shadows, but there was also a glow—a strange sort of light that lit up those shadows. A glow that grew brighter the longer he kissed me and switched to my other breast, kneading me with greedy hands, making me whimper beneath him.
“Aslan.” I moaned, trying to pull his mouth back to mine. “I need. God, I need—”
“I know.” He shifted over me, sinking between my splayed legs, rocking his delicious erection against my wetness. His trousers were still in the way. They were the worst barrier imaginable. “I wanted to make this last, but...I don’t think I can.”
“Me either,” I panted. “I just...I need you. Right now. I need to trust this is real before I wake up screaming.”
His eyes locked on mine.
Shifting to his left elbow—the same arm that was now naked of our ink—his other hand went to his belt. He winced as he tried to undo it one-handed.
“Here.” I dove my hands between us. “Let me.”
Bracing himself over me, his fingers feathered through my hair as he arched his hips and bit his bottom lip as I undid, unzipped, and without any hesitation, pushed his slacks and boxer-briefs down his thighs.
I waited for him to roll off me and kick them away. To toe off his shoes and return to me fully naked.
But he didn’t.
Instead, a darker shadow swirled in his eyes. A slight pucker between his brows. Another secret he wasn’t ready to share.
I never looked away from him as my fingers curled around his hot, hard length. He filled my palm with impressive girth. I’d imagined touching him like this so many times but to finally be able to do it?
To have him in my hold?
To have him quaking the longer I touched him?
I shivered.
I needed.
He groaned.
My hand remembered him.
Every ridge and shape. All his heat and size.
An eternity could pass, and I would never forget how he felt. How perfect and velvety and big.
He hissed as I stroked him, up and down, slowly pressing my thumb against his crown and smearing the slickness I found there.
“Fuck, Neri.” He growled, his hips pumping into my hand. “Have you forgotten how sensitive you make me, canım? It’s been too long. Far too fucking long, and I—”
“You want me?”
“I’m aching for you, aşkım.”
“Then take me.” I squeezed him hard.
He bucked in my hold. A guttural groan echoed in his scarred chest. “Keep doing that and I’ll come before I’m even inside you.”
A confession spilled out of me. “I’m slightly afraid.”
His eyes flared, and he cradled me close. “Afraid? Of me?”
“Of this,” I rushed. “I’m afraid of how much I want this. How much I need you to be real. Every part of me desperately wants this to be true, but what if it isn’t?” Tears stung as they pooled and rolled down my cheeks. “What if I’m about to wake up like I always do, and I’m in bed, alone, like so many other nights?” I stroked him again, memorising his shape, his heat. “I don’t think I could stand it, Aslan. I barely survived losing you once. But to have you back, only to risk losing you again...” I couldn’t finish.