Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 98767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
I shuddered with the aching violence in his voice. I didn’t doubt him.
“Take me back to the hotel, Elder.”
He grabbed my cheeks, holding me tight, his fingers biting into me. I didn’t gasp or flinch. I let him tilt my head so he could search my eyes for something he needed. Something he must’ve found because a second later, he let me go and captured my hand.
Dragging me up the beach, he growled, “So be it.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
______________________________
Elder
I HAD NO appetite, yet I ordered room service.
I had no desire to rest, yet I commanded Pim to sit beside me while some shitty soap opera played on TV.
I had no thoughts apart from fucking her—even the Chinmoku threat didn’t compute—yet I did everything I could to forget what we were about to do and focus on everything else.
I leapt to my feet when our food arrived.
I over tipped.
I growled too loud when Pim complained she wasn’t hungry and couldn’t eat the rich lobster bisque.
I paced too fast when she refused to watch TV and stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.
I stopped breathing as she bent and pressed the off button to silence the actress moaning about being stood up, and hushed the pictures of a simpler, less X-rated world.
Silence fell like a curtain around us, thick and soundproof, heavy and final like that on a theatre production after the final encore.
That was what my life boiled down to.
I was an actor who finally had to stop pretending. My life had been a performance, and now, the production was over, and I had nothing left. No lines to rehearse, no actions to perfect, no director to tell me how to behave.
This was all on me.
The entire outcome of tonight was on my shoulders and without cues from stage-hands or prompts from script-writers, I would fuck it up.
I just know it.
Pim linked her fingers together, coming toward me on bare, hesitant feet. The blue dress she’d worn today fluttered around her legs, making her seem like a virginal goddess dressed in clear cerulean sky.
The Japanese dictionary she’d stolen for me rested on the coffee table. Each time I glanced at it, my heart did a strange tumble-trip, making me fight overwhelming instincts to crush her close and kiss her.
She was the first person to give me something with thought behind it. To treat me like a lover and not a captor. In her presence, I was more accepted and cared for than I had been in years. The loneliness I was so used to was now a third wheel with her around.
I should meet her halfway.
I should join her on the carpet and make this easier for her—take away the nervousness of being the one to make the first move. I should sweep her off her feet and lay her on the bed and be gentle and kind and sweet.
But fuck me, I couldn’t.
The moment I touched her, it would all go to shit.
I knew that.
Already, my mind turned from sleek order into chaotic chaos. My disorder pulled on every trick and mechanism to stay sane and not start rearranging the pillows into odd numbers or run back to the Phantom to play a concerto precisely seventeen times until the strings became slippery with my blood.
I was fucking broken.
I hid the depth of that fact from everyone (including myself) through sheer determination.
But here was Pim asking me to throw away every tool I used and hope to fucking God I remembered how to find my way home.
I stumbled back a step as she forced herself to stand before me. The tips of her toes turned white from digging into the carpet.
She’s afraid.
She should be.
She shouldn’t be.
Fear.
An emotion no one should suffer when approaching a person they wanted to sleep with. Why was she doing this to herself and to me? Couldn’t she see I was moments away from losing it?
I’d forced myself on her that first time.
I’d already been inside her twice.
I couldn’t have a third.
I’d fucking snap.
But the memory of her this morning—of the spirit and fire and desire—I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t resist her, and that was the real reason for my ruin.
The reason I’d stolen her in the first place.
The reason I’d kept her when I should’ve sent her back to her mother.
If I’d done that, I wouldn’t be standing here about to shatter everything I knew. I wouldn’t be worried about her safety knowing war was coming for me. I wouldn’t be on the brink of destroying my way of life—my very world. To her, I was just a night or two—a man who could show her pleasure. She was using me to be free of her past.
I liked that.
I wanted to be the one she remembered for helping rather than hindering.
But to me? She was fucking everything.