Total pages in book: 224
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
I start to walk toward the bathroom, and before I make it two steps, Reid catches my arm and turns me to him. He doesn’t speak. He just cups my head and kisses me, a deep, drugging, drive-everything-else-away kiss, before he says, “How about that walk?”
I think he knows what I was feeling, and I’m not sure what to make of his reaction. “I think that would be good,” I whisper.
“In more than a towel,” he teases, turning me toward the bed, where he’s set my suitcase. He unzips it for me and opens it before he steps to his suitcase right beside mine to do the same. Side by side, we go through our things and I pull out clothes while he tugs a snug black T-shirt over his head, and I’m reminded of how good he looks in pretty much everything. Feeling uncharacteristically shy, I grab my stack of clothes, walk to the bathroom, shut the door and I don’t give myself time to think. I quickly pull on boyfriend-style sweats and a tank top, minus a bra, that I cover up with a sweat jacket. My socks and sneakers are next, as is a quick trip to the bathroom. Once I’ve washed up, and am fully dressed, I press my hands to the sink and look in the mirror. “What are you doing, Carrie?” I breathe out, letting my chin fall to my chest. Reid’s not the guy a girl falls for, and yet I’m rolling right down a hill that has no bottom.
Reid knocks on the door and I inhale, I swear I can smell him everywhere, all around me, and on me. I love the way that man smells. I walk to the door and open it to find him standing immediately in front of me, big, broad and gorgeous in that snug shirt, and sweats, his hair mussed up, his jaw lightly shadowed. I like this Reid, the casual, real man. He rests his arm in the doorjamb above my head. “Everything okay?”
My hand dares to settle on his chest, and his heart thunders beneath my palm, suggesting the casualness of that question isn’t casual at all. “Yes,” I say. “Everything is great.”
“Yeah?” he presses, and I almost think I sense uncertainty in him. This confident, gorgeous, take-no-prisoners man feels insecure? It can’t be, but yet, I think—I think, yes.
“Yes,” I repeat again firmly. “Everything is great.”
His hand covers mine on his chest, and he closes his around it, dragging me closer, his hard body a warm shelter I find nowhere else, with no one else. “Let’s walk.”
“I’d like that very much,” I say, deciding not to let fear steal a moment I have with this man. No matter what we are or what we become, I have now. I want now.
I push to my toes and kiss him, a quick peck on the mouth. “Yes. Let’s walk.”
He’s stiff for a moment as if he’s stunned in some way, or that’s what I feel since the man shows no exterior emotions. And then suddenly, he’s cupping my head and kissing me again, a deep, drugging wondering kiss, before he laces his fingers with mine and leads me forward. Together, we walk down the stairs through the cottage and exit the house where we’d made love earlier and of course, my bra is lying smack in the middle of the patio.
I tear my fingers from Reid’s and scoop it and the rest of our clothes up. Reid laughs. “It’s a private beach, baby. No one is going to see our patio.”
“Oh. No?”
“No.”
I drop our clothes onto the chair we’d occupied earlier, and Reid slides his arm over my shoulders and pulls me close. It’s intimate. It’s what a man does to his woman, and I’ve really never wanted to be that with any other man. I mentally reprimand myself, telling myself to enjoy the moment, live in the now. We’re conquering the world together but as we step onto the starlit beach, a full moon our lantern, Reid’s emotions beat at me. He need to escape, and yet somehow it takes me with him, suffocates me.
We walk to the shoreline and cut left, the ocean crashing on the shore, the rush of water filling the air, but our words do not. We don’t walk far though before Reid stops walking and motions to the ground. “Elijah’s wife knew I was his rival,” he says, breaking the silence. “That’s why she picked me.”
“That was between them, Reid,” I say, halting and stepping in front of him. “You know that, right?”
“Exactly,” he says, but he turns away from me, facing the ocean. “It was between them.” His hand drags through his hair, an act that is more out of control, than in control, when he is all about control.