Total pages in book: 211
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
His words shock but they don’t horrify. He’s testing me and I understand all the ways he needs to test me. I understand all the reasons he doubts me. I won’t fail. “Nothing you just said to me would destroy us.”
His phone rings and he grimaces, his mouth coming down on mine, hard, demanding, the taste of anger on his lips all over again. He’s still so very angry and I still don’t know why. I sink into the kiss, welcoming his emotion, the pain that’s hidden deep in the depths of it. The torment I believe he lets me taste. That’s his naked truth. That’s his path to me and mine to him.
I reach for his T-shirt, and he drags it over his head, tossing it, the logoed cotton that reads “Kingston Motors” somehow appropriately hitting the ground. “Don’t wear that shirt again,” I order. “It doesn’t fit you. And I’m not talking size, and we both know it.”
“And it does you?” he demands, his fingers tightening around my hair.
“No. No, it never did, but you do.”
I barely finish those words and he’s kissing me again, a deep intensity to the stroke of his tongue that is somehow both wild and controlled. I’m wild but not in control. I have this insane feeling I’m about to lose him if I don’t get close enough to him, if I don’t feel him deep enough. If I don’t let him know how much I hunger for him. My hands are all over his body, caressing the taut flesh beneath my palms, that beautiful ink that tells his story, drawing me in, making me hunger for more. I need more. And he touches me and kisses me like he wants all of me, but he already has me.
Somehow, I end up on top of the island and Eric’s low, rough declaration of, “I need inside you now,” has me fumbling with his pants even as he manages to drag them down.
And then he’s there, between my legs, thick and hard and pulsing, pressing into the slick wet heat of my body, driving into me, stretching me. He thrusts deep, settling in that deepest spot inside me and for a moment he’s staring down at me, studying me like he means to see my soul. “I will push you. I will take more than you want me to take and push you harder than you want to be pushed.”
“You can try,” I challenge. “But it still won’t drive me away.”
His thumb stretching to my jaw, tilting my mouth to his. “Remember you said that.” And then he’s kissing me again, taking me in that kiss, and in a thrust of his cock that rockets sensations through me. Taking and taking, but I am, too. I arch into him, lifting my hips, and soon he’s cupping my backside, arched over me, forcing my hands to the counter behind me. I’m not oblivious to the control this gives him. I’m not naïve to him needing this, but I want him to have what he needs. I want to heal the hundreds of cuts that bleed from his soul, and I will do anything to make that happen. The way he almost gave everything when he risked his life to save mine in that warehouse.
That is my last coherent thought as sensations rock my body, and his hand cups my breast and pinches my nipple. I arch again, lifting into his thrust and we shatter together, our bodies quaking, trembling and then finally collapsing. We come back to the present with a pounding on the door, and somehow, it feels as if the devil himself is our visitor. Somehow, I just know, maybe because of the fierceness of the pounding, that whatever is on the other side of that door is a problem and not a small one.
Chapter eighty-nine
Harper
I’m still naked on the island, with Eric leaning over me, when yet another pounding sounds on the door. “Damn it,” Eric grounds out. “What the fuck.”
“It must be because you didn’t answer your phone,” I say.
“Yeah, fuck probably.” He lifts me and sets me on the floor. “Or it’s Savage being Savage and over the top about everything.”
I laugh. “There’s that, too.”
He grips either side of the counter. “Eventually I’m going to get you alone and keep you naked for an entire weekend.” He kisses me and when he would release me, I catch his hand.
“Are you okay?”
He cuts his gaze sharply but then he’s back, and I’m staring into his clear blue eyes, the storm banked at least for the moment. “When I’m with you, I am.”
It’s a reply every woman would welcome from this man, and I do. Of course, I do, but it’s not quite a direct answer. It’s avoidance I want to poke holes in, but I’m naked and we have a guest at the door, so I let it go. And for now, only now, I let Eric go, too. He scoops up my clothes and sets them on a barstool. I clean up and start dressing as he adjusts his pants, and then grabs his T-shirt. It’s then that my gaze catches his tattoos, rows and rows of letters and numbers inking his arms and chest to total completion. Ink that tells his story and that’s a story that after today, I know I don’t fully understand. Just like the row of letters and numbers on the back of that business card tells a story. One I’m now reminded that Eric understands in some way that I don’t. And now, we have company to distract us, which isn’t well timed.