Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
She snorts. “Right. Yeah, no. If I knew you were coming, I probably would’ve made sure to leave something sexier here.” She shoots me a look. “Do you think I waited six months for you to come back, kept my virginity, and declined every one of those dates I was asked on for the sheer fun of it? Believe me. It wasn’t fun, and that’s not why, but damned if I’m going to put myself on the line again for you.”
Ah. The girl talks a big talk but can she walk the big walk?
Wait.
Kept my virginity.
Kept.
My.
Virginity.
When’s that goddamn snow coming?
CHAPTER NINE
Starla
I don’t really understand how men can sleep. My sister’s told me about this strange, complex phenomenon.
Eden and Sergio get into a fight? He tells her to get some sleep and is snoring before his head hits the pillow, while she ruminates and questions and wonders all night long about what they fought about. In the morning, he’s fucking forgotten they fought. I even talked to Eden’s bestie Quinn about it, because she’s an open book and her husband Adriano’s what one might call a hothead.
“Oh, we fight,” she said, shaking her head. “But he just like compartmentalizes it while my entire day is wrecked.”
“That’s so not fair.”
“Definitely not fair but I’m not sure what we can do about it,” she said pragmatically.
And now, when the tension and heat between us is so palpable I swear inhaling it will burn my lungs, Timeo’s asleep. Snoring, even.
Timeo, in all his sinfully delicious perfection. Even injured and recovering, every inch of him exudes unbridled masculine strength.
I turn away. I can’t look. Not now.
I lay beside him and resist the urge to wake him up. We've been apart for so long. I’ve missed him so much. I want to do what I’ve always wanted to do, from the first day we met.
Lay my head on his chest. Close my eyes and let him hold me. Feel with our bodies the connection I’ve felt from day one between our minds and hearts.
I know he feels it, too.
“Timeo,” I whisper as he peacefully sleeps. “I’ve missed you.”
But are we the same two people? Or have we grown apart, in a way we can’t bridge?
When I first left the fellowship, I needed some time. I had to figure out who I was and where my place was in this world, unburdened by the rigid rules and structures that confined me my whole life.
Eden and Sergio helped me, because for the first time in my life, I was under the protection of people who loved me unconditionally.
For a while, I told myself I viewed Timeo as a brother. I knew it was a lie from the first time we met, but it felt safer to believe that lie. It felt safer, under the protection of Eden and Sergio, not to cross that line into unknown territory.
But Timeo’s right. I am a woman now, in every possible way, even as the shadow of who I once was still lingers.
I want to wake him up and ask him to walk down to the beach with me, down where we wrote in the sand with our fingers and toes until the waves cleared our tablets away.
I want him to sit with me on the rocks by the beach and throw stones into the ocean, where we used to talk about our hopes and dreams as we watched the rocks we hurled sink into the endless depths, like little silver-finned minnows.
I tap my chin thoughtfully.
It is winter. The beach will be frigid, the rocks probably encased in slick ice.
The ocean’s beautiful in winter, though. It’s beautiful always, but in winter there’s a lonesome sort of chill filled with promise, that life may have quieted for a time but will flourish in the spring.
In my eyes, the Montavio brothers are bossy and headstrong and sometimes downright scary… Fearless and protective, brilliant and loyal. Even heroic and almost…god-like.
But Timeo always became a little human for me.
Five years earlier
"Let's go for a walk."
Sergio and Eden were traveling, leaving me and Timeo almost alone. Almost, because our ever-present guards and residual family members still lingered.
“A walk? Are you crazy?” Timeo frowned as he picked up his enormous sub filled with Italian meats and cheeses and took a bite reminiscent of a dinosaur.
“Hungry?” I muttered, shaking my head. “Yes, a walk. You know, with two feet, like civilized people?”
“But I like racing on all fours,” he said with a narrow-eyed look at me. I pretended that didn’t make my heart beat a little faster.
Savage.
I continued in a lowered voice so Tosca and Nonna wouldn’t overhear. Even though no one ever forbade me from going anywhere alone with Timeo…something told me they might not approve. I wasn’t sure if it was the residual rules of the fellowship that hung about me like scabbed-over wounds, or something else, but it still felt best to keep my plan a secret.