Total pages in book: 205
Estimated words: 204377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1022(@200wpm)___ 818(@250wpm)___ 681(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 204377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1022(@200wpm)___ 818(@250wpm)___ 681(@300wpm)
Before she can respond, I swing open the door and stand behind it to shield my body from view.
She blinks, staring out into the night, the sky aglow in grayish blue, the color of moonlit snow. Without another word or glance in my direction, she leaves, closing the door behind her.
I collapse against the wall, hands on my face, cock still hard, panting, stark raving mad with desire, and fighting the urgent need to go after her.
But I don’t. I can’t. I have to pretend nothing happened. Keep up appearances. Maintain the status quo.
Even if it kills me.
In that moment, I rise to a better place. I could’ve forced her. I could’ve done so many things to her, all the things I crave in my darkest imaginings. But I didn’t.
I did the right thing. I’m a better person, lifted above my circumstances. If only for a fleeting second.
Because of her.
Doesn’t stop me from racing through the workshop, shoving through the interior door to the other side, and speeding to the front wall where the window glistens with snow.
Where I can watch her from afar like a creeper.
36
Kodiak
—
A primal rage builds within me, seething through my veins and setting my teeth on edge.
I’m going to kill him.
It’ll be easy, too, as I watch him burst in from the backroom of the workshop with his dick hard and a distracted glaze in his eyes.
What are you thinking, Leo? You dumb fuck. You know better than to let your guard down. Yet here you are, so high on pussy you don’t even notice me. I should kill you just to teach you a lesson.
He bolts past me, inches away from my position beside the shelf of tools. Clueless about my presence. About my outrage. What if I was a starving wolf? An angry bear?
What if I was Denver?
I press my back to the wall, boiling with homicidal thoughts. Meanwhile, his attention stays on the window, on Frankie, as she crosses the yard to the cabin.
He grips the windowsill, muscles taut, watching, drooling. When she disappears behind the front door, he loosens a long, heavy breath.
She’s safe for now.
That’s more than I can say for him.
I click on the overhead lights.
Whirling, he widens his eyes on me before quickly adopting a lazy, hooded expression.
“What the fuck have you done?” My hands ball so tightly my knuckles crack.
“You’ll have to be more specific. I’ve done a lot of things.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Mm.” He strolls to the snow machine and lowers to slide beneath it as if he’s been working on it this entire time.
“The walls are thin, idiot.” Prowling forward, I grab a large wrench off the shelf and weigh it in my hands. The size of my forearm, it’s heavy enough to shatter bones.
He eyes the tool. “Go on, stalker. Tell me what you think you heard.”
“Keep your dick away from her.”
“Worry about your own dick.”
“Goddammit, she’s hurting.” My ears pound with the roar of my pulse. “She’s grieving and vulnerable, and you took advantage—”
“Don’t kid yourself. You wanted to find me with her. Bet you had your ear pressed to the wall and a fist around your poor virgin chub, straining to hear what it’s like to fuck a woman. But you didn’t hear shit. If you did, you would’ve stormed in and smashed my face already.”
That last part is true. But when I came in here looking for him, looking for her, I heard something through the wall.
Force me. Make me hate it. Make me hate you.
I heard her demands and charged toward the backroom with the intent to kill.
Then I heard his objections.
It’s the only reason he’s still breathing.
I’m trying to wrap my brain around his endgame. He has the same testosterone-fueled need as the rest of us. We’re horny beyond reason, insanely lonely, and she’s the most attractive woman we’ve ever seen—in the flesh or on screen.
Yet he didn’t fuck her. Not even when she begged.
“I heard what you offered her, what you’ve hidden from me all these years.” I can’t decide if I’m in awe of his devious mind or outraged that he risked his neck to smuggle birth control, the one thing that’s considered contraband around here. Then I remember he deceived me, and my temper flares so hot I can barely contain my whisper. “We don’t keep secrets from each other. What else are you hiding?”
“Nothing. That’s it.” He holds up a hand as if to neutralize my rising temper. “I was protecting you.”
“Protecting me?” My face twists. “Is that what you were doing with her ten minutes ago?”
We don’t need to rehash how he acquired the pills. I heard him explain it to her. And I get that he didn’t want me to carry that secret, but if Denver finds out, none of us will escape the consequences.