Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 60418 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60418 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
“I love that, too.”
“I’d always put myself in a caretaker role, all my life,” he murmured. “For the very first time, I’m learning what it feels like to have someone take care of me, too. I can’t even tell you how much that means to me.”
That actually made my heart ache. It wasn’t fair that no one had ever taken care of him, including his workaholic parents. “I’ll always take care of you and cherish you, Eden,” I whispered. “That’s a promise.”
He cupped my cheek and kissed me tenderly. Then, when my stomach loudly and unflatteringly rumbled with hunger, he smiled against my lips. “Wait here, baby,” he said, as he climbed out of bed. “I’m going to make us some breakfast.”
“I’ll help.”
“No need, I’ve got it.”
“Okay, but you literally just called us partners.”
He flashed his perfect smile, which brought out his lone dimple. “Lunch can be a team effort. But I have a surprise planned for breakfast, so let me take this one.”
I stretched out lazily and grinned as I murmured, “If you insist.” He kissed the tip of my nose and pulled on a pair of sweatpants before leaving the bedroom.
A few minutes later, he returned carrying a tray, and I propped myself up with a bunch of pillows. A huge smile spread across my face, and I told him, “I was expecting something healthy, like oatmeal. But you actually made my favorite, chocolate chip pancakes.”
As I took a sip of coffee, he said, “I wanted to do something that would make you happy.”
“Mission accomplished. But where’d you get the chips? We didn’t buy any when we were at the market.”
“I chopped up a chocolate bar from the emergency candy stash you keep in your backpack.”
I chuckled at that. “Sometimes I forget how well you know me.”
He caressed my cheek and murmured, “There was a time when I thought I knew everything about you, but I was wrong. I keep learning more, every day. Every minute. You’re so much more than I realized, and I could spend a lifetime discovering you.”
“I feel the same way about you.”
Eden settled in beside me and kissed my forehead. After we enjoyed our decadent breakfast in bed, he took the tray back to the kitchen. Then I pulled on a pair of shorts, and we both relocated to the couch.
We stretched out side-by-side and spent the next hour or two alternately talking and kissing. Once in a while, he’d slip a hand into my shorts and play with the base of the plug in my ass, twisting or tapping it, or seeing what else he could do to make me sigh with pleasure.
This felt like slow-motion foreplay, and I thought he might fuck me while we were cuddling on the couch. But after a while, he sat up and asked, “Do you feel like going for a hike?”
What I really wanted was to bounce on his dick like I was riding a bull at the rodeo. But I wanted him to decide when he was ready to fuck me, so I got up and said, “Sure. Let’s do that.”
I took out the plug, because it didn’t seem like the best idea for a hike, and we both got dressed. Eden packed a backpack and brought it with us, and as we climbed into the frankencar, I asked, “Do we have an actual destination?”
Eden nodded. “I was reading up on our location on my phone yesterday, and I found a couple of hikes that looked interesting.”
He drove a few miles and parked in a dirt lot. Then he put on the backpack and led the way to a barely visible trail head.
We climbed steadily for a while, catching glimpses of the highway winding through the hills far below us. When we came to a crude rock fortress, I asked, “What’s this?”
“From what I read, several of these were built in the eighteen-hundreds by a small group of people who were preparing to fight the U.S. government. The president at the time sent in troops to put an end to the Utah Territory rebellion, but it ended peacefully.”
We both sat down on a rounded boulder behind the rock wall. Eden opened the backpack and handed me a bottle of water before getting one for himself. “Just imagine it,” I said. “There was probably some young guy sitting up here when that wall was built, thinking he was going to take on the U.S. Army. I wonder if it was even his idea to fight, or if other people in his community put him up to it. Like, you’re eighteen, you’re a man, so get out there and defend us. I bet he was scared. I know I would have been.”
When I turned to look at Eden, I found him studying me. “You have an amazing amount of empathy,” he said. “I just thought this was an interesting piece of history, but you put a human face to it.”