Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
“Say what you came to say,” I order, the pain of those words prickling sharply.
“I love you,” he dares reply, his hands scooping my backside, my breasts squeezed between us, my nipples puckered and aching. As if he, too, is aware of that fact, his gaze lowers, inspecting my nipples, before his eyes meet mine and he adds, “God, you’re beautiful.”
“You mean you love my breasts,” I accuse because no man who loves a woman leaves her like he did me. No man who loves a woman replies like he did to me downstairs. We aren’t married, Ana. No. No, we are not married. And he’s an asshole with a perfect body and a perfect tongue that he intends to use on me.
But that won’t change anything.
We are broken, two people who joined together, only to shatter like glass that dropped to the ground, and splintered into a million pieces. The kind of complete breakage and destruction that ensures you can never be pieced back together.
“Hell yes, I love your breasts,” he replies unapologetically. “I love every part of you, baby. That I won’t apologize for.” His voice lowers, roughens up. “I always have. Always will.”
Already he wears me down, stirs a longing in me for what we once were, what we once had together. And why am I aware of his cock at my hip when I’m feeling sentimental and angry at the same time?
“Say what you came to say,” I repeat.
“I love you,” he repeats. “All the rest is just white noise.”
“Stop saying that.”
“The only way I’m going to do that is to have something else to do with my mouth.”
“You couldn’t even talk about the sweeter side of our past. It was just a memory of a restaurant, Luke. You couldn’t even comment.”
He cups my face and stares down at me. “It wasn’t just a restaurant, Ana. The first time we went there, we walked the Cherry Creek sidewalks and you smiled up at me with that glorious fucking smile of yours. And I fell in love. That night, Ana. That’s when I knew.”
Emotions swirl inside me. “And yet you didn’t—”
“Want to talk about it?” he challenges. “No. No, I do not want to talk about the night I fell in love with you. Not now, when it reminds me that I can never have that kind of pure, untouched, untainted perfection with you again. But I forgot something important. We forgot something important. Sometimes when things break, they grow back stronger, Ana.”
Tears burn my eyes, and already he’s on the verge of tearing down my walls. “No,” I say. “We can never go back. You’re not wrong.”
“Maybe we don’t want to, Ana,” he says, dragging his hand over my scalp and tilting my head back, my gaze to his. My mouth exposed for his taking. “Like I said. Maybe we’re better because we crashed and burned and survived.”
“We didn’t survive, Luke.”
“We’re here right now, and baby, you’re the only reason the sun rises for me. It’s been dark as hell without you. Don’t expect me to go away this time without a fight. God, woman,” he murmurs, cradling my body to his, “you are my everything. I don’t know how to make you see that, but I’ll spend the rest of my life trying if you let me.”
I want to tell him he already showed me he’ll leave, he’ll leave again, but when we’re close like this, his naked body pressed to my naked body, I want to live in this moment.
The rush of heady emotion between us steals my breath, and before I can recover, his mouth closes down on mine and you might as well say he had me at hello. I moan with the lick of his tongue, with the way he lets me taste his hunger, with the way he kisses me as if I’m his next breath.
I’m lost in him, lost in his mouth as it moves from my lips to my neck, his hand on my breast, fingers teasing my nipple. I moan again, a soft whimper of a sound, that leaves no doubt how much I love his hands on my body.
He presses his cheek to my cheek, his lips at my ear, as he says, “I love those sounds. You have no idea how much I fucking love those sounds.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, reveling in the low rumble of his voice, in the tight pinch of his fingers on my nipple. Of his teeth nipping my earlobe. I think I might come just from the feel of him next to me, the touch of his hands. His fingers catch my jaw almost roughly and he drags my gaze to his, his mouth hovering, his breath a warm tease. His lips brush mine, and then his hands are pressing my breasts together before he’s suckling my nipple. More of those sounds slide from my lips and I don’t even try to hold back.