Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
“Shit, Delaney—”
She held up a finger at the pitying tone Lucas took one, and wanted to stop that in its tracks. “I learned something when they did that to me—when they took skating from me. They taught me something important about my family.”
“What did it teach you?” Lucas gestured at nothing in particular, muttering, “I can’t imagine that would teach a teenage girl anything good—to what, hide her body even in sport because she’s responsible for the thoughts of the opposite sex?”
Delaney nodded. “No, I was already used to being told things like that. If you were alive and had a vagina, you’d hear that nonsense coming out of church every sermon.” From the time she could walk and talk, really. As soon as she understood that she was the girl, and by default, always the reason in a bad or inappropriate situation. Especially when it came to men. “They taught me if I had to question them, or the things they told me, they were probably wrong.”
A small smirk pulled at the edge of Lucas’ lips. “Oh?”
She pointed at her head. “Like I said, I started to think with my own brain instead of the way they told me how. Every question I had for God didn’t seem to be answered in the Bible, and I wasn’t exactly encouraged to think outside of our safe little box. The voice I heard in my head when I was alone didn’t sound like the one they wanted me to listen to when I started asking the questions I thought were important. It sounded real—more like me.”
For her parents, that fucked up everything, and it changed all their lives forever. She refused to apologize for that.
“Jesus, okay,” Delaney said suddenly, needing to get them off this conversation and back to the happy place the two of them had found moments ago. She kicked off on the ice, starting a wider circle around Lucas than he had previously done to her. He, on the other hand, began a slow skate backwards. “Are we skating, or what?”
Lucas flashed a cheeky grin. “Want to race?”
Did he really have to ask?
She couldn’t say no to a challenge.
Delaney spun fast, and headed for the far side of the rink with a holler, “First one to that side and then the back wall wins!”
“Brat!” She heard him shout.
Hey.
He had way longer legs.
She deserved a head start.
To be fair, Delaney really had to work for that win. Cold air whipped past her pumping legs even as she came to a dangerous stop at the back boards before jetting toward the other side of the rink. Lucas was not far behind.
She barely got herself stopped at the other side and turned around before the man rushed her. All of him. Every towering foot of him that loomed over her as he shredded ice again to come to a stop mere inches in front of her at the back boards. She felt the prickles of ice shavings dance up her bare legs, but she couldn’t even make herself look away from Lucas as he inched closer until her back pressed against the boards and his hands caged her in on either side.
He grinned big.
Even when she peered up at him and whispered, “I win.”
Delaney earned herself that bruising, breathless kiss she’d wanted in the car. He didn’t ask for it, but he didn’t have to this time around. Her tongue tangled with his—so demanding, taking more even when she gasped for air around their trembling kiss—as their bodies melted together against the boards. She enjoyed the sensation of being pinned under him a little too much for her own good, but she couldn’t bear to push him away.
So, she didn’t.
“I’d break my rules for you,” she told him, shivering even though she wasn’t all that cold anymore once Lucas had pulled back from the kiss. “I would.”
If her cousin wasn’t at the apartment waiting …
If he just kissed her like that again …
She would break every rule.
He made her think it might be worth it.
Lucas wet the seam of his lips with the tip of his tongue as he tried to catch his own breath. The way he stared at her—hard and long, unmoving—said he wanted her to do exactly that. Break every and any rule.
His mouth said something different.
“Don’t,” he told her, shaking his head and pushing away from the wall to skate backwards. “Don’t ever lower the bar for me. Set it even higher.”
Goddamn him for saying that, too.
It made her like him even more.
“Best two out of three for the race, then?” she asked. “If you want a chance to save your pride, I mean.”
Lucas laughed loudly. “You bet your pretty ass. It’s so on.”
Chapter 13
“Delaney?”
Bexley’s muffled voice filtered from deep within the darkened apartment when Delaney finally got the door open after she wiggled the key the right way in the lock to loosen the final tumbler on the deadbolt.