Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Did he know? Did he suspect she was going to end their relationship? She turned away from him, wanting to hide, but there was nowhere for her to go. Light bathed the room. She didn’t have clothes nearby. She felt vulnerable and exposed. Not just her body, but raw feelings that shouldn’t ever see the light of day.
“Get on the bed.”
His voice had turned gruff. He wasn’t asking. Sometimes when he did that, ordered her around, she wanted to defy him, to tell him she wasn’t about to follow an order. Other times, like now, she was grateful she didn’t have to think. She just had to do what he said. She hurried into the master bedroom, uncaring if he thought she was running from him. She was.
The bed was positioned across from the long bank of windows so, if the lights were off, she could see into the swamp. She shivered and rubbed her arms, staring out into the night. With the light on, the room, and everything in it, was illuminated, but that didn’t matter because she heard the music that always lulled her into peace. She slowly unwound the towel from her head as she sat on the very end of the bed, her feet firmly on the floor, facing the windows, needing to know the swamp was close and she could run if she had to.
“There’s no drying my hair tonight. It would take forever. I’m going to have to braid it and dry it in the morning. The pillow’s going to get wet.”
“I’ll dry it,” Joshua said. “I had Alice, one of the women working here, get me a blow-dryer.” She’d gotten a few other things he thought his woman might need as well. “I fell in love with your hair and imagined… things.”
He stood in front of her, naked, all muscle, his cock still semi-hard after the wild sex they’d had, armed with a blow-dryer. She burst out laughing because Joshua managed to make everything fun. “You’re crazy, you know that, don’t you? Absolutely crazy. What can you possibly do with a blow-dryer besides dry hair?”
He thumbed the switch, turning it on and off, brandishing it like a weapon, a little smirk on his face. “I’ve got a vivid imagination, darlin’.”
She rolled her eyes, but held still as he climbed onto the bed behind her. He slid his legs on either side of her hips, surrounding her with him. His scent was fresh, clean and wildly masculine. She tried not to breathe. Tried not to inhale him, but she had no choice and then he was inside her – deep. In her lungs, moving through her bloodstream, everywhere, until she knew she would never get him out of her. She’d never be free.
She sat quietly while he brushed out her hair. The tug of the brush, the bristles sliding through her hair felt good. She swallowed hard and kept her eyes glued to the windows. She couldn’t see out, not with the light, but the swamp was her lifeline and it was there, just behind the glass.
“I was sixteen when my mother got sick,” Joshua said. “It started with a small wound on her leg that just wouldn’t heal. I didn’t think anything about it, but within days she was tired, black circles under her eyes. She couldn’t eat anything. Drake Donovan came with the doctor, but I could see it on their faces the moment they saw that wound. It had grown so big, eating away at her.”
“A bite of some kind?” Sonia guessed, her heart hurting for that sixteen-year-old boy. She’d been sixteen when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She remembered the terror of realizing she could lose her. Her mother had been the most important person in her world.
“I didn’t have anyone else. My mother was… extraordinary,” he said, his voice soft with love. “You would have liked her, and I know she would have liked you.”
Sonia felt a fraud. She was certain his mother wouldn’t have been very happy with her for exposing her son to the very real danger of the Russian mob.
“I remember her laugh. I think that’s one of the things I miss most about her.” He brushed a kiss on her bare shoulder. “Hold still.”
Triggering the blow-dryer, he began to dry her hair. Ordinarily, Sonia would never have used the dryer. Her hair would have been frizz, but he was careful, using a lower setting and drying small sections at a time. She couldn’t believe his patience.
“My grandfather raped women. That was his thing.”
He rubbed his chin along her shoulder, right over the spot where he’d kissed her. The shadowy stubble on his face scratched across her bare skin, sending fingers of awareness walking down her spine.
“No one was spared. Not his daughters, or granddaughters. Not his daughters-in-law. He took it as his due that he could have any woman he wanted, no matter who they belonged to. I think he lived in a fantasy that he was a feudal lord. He liked hurting both men and women. The more others suffered, the happier he was.”