Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 129460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Her lips raise against my pec before my honesty gets rewarded in the most brilliant way. A second after her head pops off my chest, her lips seal over mine, and round two commences.
“Caleb…” A smirk tugs at my lips when Jess’s voice registers with the same breathlessness it had last night. “You need to get up.” She pushes my shoulder again before her voice becomes distant. “We slept in.” My eyes finally listen to the pleas of my brain when she says, “Tivy is probably worried sick about you.”
After scrubbing a hand over my tired eyes, I drag them over Jess’s outfit of choice. “What the hell are you wearing?”
She stops threading a fake rope belt through the floral dress that’s hem sits halfway between her knees and ankles before spinning around to face me. “I have a family event this morning, remember?”
“And you need to dress like a nun to attend it?”
She thrusts a horrid white clutch under her arm before stabbing gross plastic earrings into her ears. “My father is… traditional.”
“Traditional… right. So is that dress from his closet or yours?”
My pounding temples are left for dust when she pegs her clutch at me. It smacks me fair in the chest and has me flopping onto the sticky sheets we messed up last night. “You’re an ass, Caleb.”
“Never denied it, Jessie,” I say through a breathy chuckle. She has so much oomph in her hits that at times, I’m tempted to feel sorry about the beatdown she gave Warren.
Although I doubt it compares to the special attention a police officer gets in a maximum-security prison.
Warren pled guilty and was sentenced to seven years.
I think he should have been given life.
After slipping her feet into a pair of white wedged sandals, Jess snatches her purse out of my hand, presses her lips to my temple, then spins as if she is oblivious to my nakedness under the thin white bedsheet.
My ego leaps as heartedly as my cock when she murmurs, “You’re giving my dress hell, but your cock seems to like it.” After drinking in the outline of my package long enough for me to want to forget her worry that Octavia will be panicked about my whereabouts, she tells me to lock up on my way out before she hightails it to her front door.
I consider going back to sleep for barely a second. I left a note on the refrigerator for Octavia last night saying I was heading to the gym before going out with some friends, so I have a bit of leeway, but Octavia knows better than anyone that I rarely do sleepovers.
Jess has been the only exception to that rule for the past seven years.
“Fuck it,” I grunt under my breath before rolling over and flopping my legs off the bed. They’re blissfully exhausted from pinning Jess to the wall partway between her room and kitchen with my crotch so I could ravish her delicious mouth before dropping my attention several inches lower.
My brows furrow when the early morning sun beaming into Jess’s room glistens off her keychain. She only has one set of keys, so how is she meant to get back in if she forgot them?
While grinning about her forgetfulness, I toss on my jeans sans underwear, snatch up Jess’s keys and my shirt from the floor, then take off after her.
The loose gravel at the back of our building digs into my feet when I race out of the foyer, but my speed means I catch up to Jess just as she is being greeted at the curb by a man in a long, black robe.
He bands his arms around her waist, his smile picking up when he affectionally presses his lips to her temple. I should be envious of their obvious closeness, but the quickest dawn of recognition stops an emotion I rarely feel in its tracks.
Jess’s greeter is her father.
Jealousy isn’t felt when Santiago pulls Jess back to an arm’s length so he can inspect her hideous floral dress, but sick, unhinged anxiety is in abundance. He isn’t giving the gangsters of New York a run for their money by wearing black trench coats in the middle of summer. He is wearing a priest’s robe, and the rosary beads he hands Jess before guiding her into the back seat of a blacked-out SUV are a replica of the pair that dug into my flesh when his grip was too firm.
Her father is a priest, an exact reproduction of the man who sexually abused me for years in the very church he preached godliness in, and I just slept with his daughter.
CHAPTER 23
JESS
Stupid nerves take flight in my stomach when I spot Caleb’s exit from our apartment building. He’s been a little hard to reach the past week. I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s been avoiding me, but he hasn’t made contact easy, either.