Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79499 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79499 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
“You want to bury your feelings?” Danny asks.
“I don’t know what I feel,” I say. Liar, my internal voice says as Danny’s hand rises slowly, his fingers trailing over my cheek, eliciting a shiver. He’s watchful of my responses, trying to work out in the most subtle of ways if Mark and Alden are right.
“I can’t,” I say, my denial sounding foolish. Can’t what? Deal with five of the sexiest men I’ve ever seen standing close and declaring their intentions? Can’t accept that they would want me? Can’t deal with the feelings that are bubbling in my chest?
It’s all of that and more.
“You can,” Danny says, those terribly amazing fingers trailing down the sensitive length of my neck and brushing over my décolletage.
Swiping at his hand, I slide further along the counter so he’s not so close. “I can’t, and I don’t want to.”
“You do,” Tobias says softly. “I know you feel it too. The connection between us…it’s real. I feel it and I know you do too.”
“Real or foolish?” I say. “You hated me five minutes ago, and now what? Your feelings have flipped one-eighty?”
“We didn’t hate you, Cora,” Alden says. “It was all a stupid game.”
“Danny hated me.”
“I didn’t,” he says, moving closer again. “I just…” He draws in his bottom lip and releases it looking glossy and perfectly kissable. I can’t blink. My whole body is frozen but vibrating beneath the surface with want and need that I don’t understand.
These are Carlton men, and Carlton men are my enemies. They’re supposed to be horrible, but when they look at me with kindness and longing, and when they treat me like a princess, I don’t know how to reconcile it with my feelings of resentment.
It’s too confusing.
They’re too different from what I built them into in my own mind. Too different from what I expect from every man I come across, except Charli.
“We want you,” Alden says, and his brothers all turn to look at him as though they’re as surprised to hear that as I am.
“We want you,” Mark says. “We want you the way Dwayne and John and the rest of those men want Maggie.”
“You don’t.” I shake my head, so determined to deny what he’s saying that I cause a nerve to twinge.
“You can deny it,” Tobias says, “but that won’t make it any less true.”
They all take a step forward, and then another until Alden and Mark are to my left, Danny and Tobias to my right, and River directly in front.
They’re all so huge, looming and brooding with hungry eyes and lips just calling out to be kissed. I’m so confused because my heart is pounding, and I’m warm and achy between my legs, but there’s a hot lump in my throat that just won’t go away. A lump that feels a lot like brewing tears.
“I can’t handle this,” I say in a voice that doesn’t sound like my own.
“You don’t need to handle anything.” River’s hand reaches out to take mine, his thick fingers sliding between my slender ones, and my eyes watch it all as though it’s happening to someone else entirely. I never understood what an out-of-body experience would feel like until now. “We’ll take care of you, baby. We’ll take care of everything.”
His words settle over me like a soft downy comforter. How does he know what I most need to hear? It’s been so long since I’ve been able to put aside my worries and relax in my life. The little girl I was before Dad left didn’t know insecurity. She didn’t know how tough she’d have to become to get through life without breaking apart.
All I want is to know is that someone has my back. I want the comfort of arms around me, and a strong masculine force who can help me take on the world.
It’s lonely to have to face all my worries and troubles alone.
River has summed up all my needs in just those few words.
I rest my hand on his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart, his coiled strength and solid form, craving to shove him as far away as I can but also to acquiesce and let him closer. I’m trapped between the fear of allowing anyone near and the fear that I’ll always be alone.
“Just let me go,” I say, finding just enough strength to push him out of my way. As I start to stride away, Tobias takes hold of my wrist.
“We don’t want to let you go, Cora. We want to show you what it would be like to build something great together.”
“But I’m…I’m…” I stutter, the words not wanting to escape my lips because voicing them will make them real.
“Scared,” Mark says softly. “It’s okay to be scared.”
“It is?”
“Of course,” he says softly. “Do you think any of us is standing here right now without a little fear about moving forward? Taking chances is always difficult. Not knowing how things would turn out. We get that.”