Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
I would never get tired of this — this man, this home, these fucking hands.
“Vince,” I said, more of a question than anything as he flexed inside me.
“It’s a ring, Maven,” he said, answering what I hadn’t yet asked. His lips were right by my ear, his breath warm against my skin. “A big, expensive, shiny fucking ring.”
“You didn’t properly ask me.”
“You want me on my knee for you?” he teased, licking the skin at the back of my neck. Then, he twisted me, my back hitting the edge of the island as he knelt before me, holding my hand in his.
My hand that now sported a very large, marquise-shaped diamond ring.
“Marry me,” he rasped, his throat bobbing with the words — as if he was actually nervous, as if I could ever say anything but yes.
“That’s not a question.”
“And I didn’t stutter, did I?”
I bit my lip against a smile, pulling him back to his feet and finding his mouth with mine. I left my answer there on his lips, kissing him so deeply he groaned before I was being carried to whatever the next room on his list was.
We fucked in every corner of that house until the sun started to rise, and then, he pulled me out onto our private beach, and we went one more round for good measure.
When we were both so exhausted and sore we could barely move, Vince wrapped me up in his arms, our eyes on the water as the sun transformed it from dark blue to a turquoise masterpiece.
With my head against his chest, I held out my hand, the diamond glittering in the light, and I laughed to myself. Flashes of the last nine months hit me like a film reel. It felt like another lifetime, that first night I met him at the gala, but I smiled at how I could still remember the way he set butterflies free in my stomach and made me mad with rage at the same time.
I could still remember how light my chest was that first morning I showed up at his place, how I felt when I saw his pottery corner, saw him drinking coffee without a shirt on. I could still close my eyes and feel the heat from when he cornered me outside Boomer’s, how he kissed me even before I could admit that was all I wanted him to do. I hoped I’d never lose those memories. I hoped I’d always remember how it felt to fall in love with Vince Tanev against my will.
“What’s got you smiling like that?” he asked, kissing behind my ear.
I turned in his arms, framing his face as he wrangled my hair in his hands.
“You know how much I hate to say this, but I think you were right.”
He bit his lip on a moan. “God, that is such a turn on. Say it again.”
I poked his ribs, and he laughed, kissing my nose before he pulled back to watch me. The blue of the water played with the green in his hazel eyes, bringing it to life more than I’d ever seen before. Those eyes were mine to stare at now for as long as I wanted.
“What was I right about?” he asked.
I leaned into him, planting a kiss to his chin. “I really did meet my match.”
The laugh that barreled out of him was my favorite sound in the world.
And he was my favorite person.
The End
We Ride At Dusk
Jaxson
She blew back into my life not like a storm, but like the sun — hidden behind a dark cloud but still shining all the same.
There wasn’t a day that had passed where I hadn’t thought about Grace Tanev, about the night I spent with her. It was just a party bus and a rowdy night out with the team celebrating Vince winning the Calder Trophy, and yet, it had been like an awakening.
My whole life, I’d been waking in a fog, in a dense and heavy cloud that I thought would stay with me forever.
But one night with her had brought in the sun.
Of course, I’d spent the better half of the last two weeks doing my level best to erase her and that night from my mind. Because it didn’t matter how easily the conversation came, how heartily she’d made me laugh, or how my body had hummed to life with her hips in my hands as we danced in a crowded club.
Grace was off limits.
Not only was she already in a relationship, but she was also eight years younger than me.
She was also my teammate’s little sister.
That was a hurdle not even I could jump.
I’d done a somewhat decent job of letting the idea of her go. I had resisted the urge to look her up on social media, had ignored the fact that she’d given me her number, that she’d put it in my phone before we said our goodbye.