Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
“Work!” My head snapped back, but I kept my hand on his chest, right over his pounding heartbeat.
“You promised to take the week off,” he reminded me.
My mouth opened and shut a few times before I sighed. “You’re right. I did. I’m sorry. But that still doesn’t touch the reasoning behind your nightmares.”
Deflect. Deflect. Deflect. I’d gotten pretty used to Nixon’s go-to move in a fight.
“Let it go,” he begged, his voice dropping.
I glanced at the powerful chest under my hand, the physical proof he was healthy. Then I blinked at the clock inked beneath my fingertips. 7:12. “I thought you said this was your first tattoo?”
His brow puckered. “It was. Why?”
“Huh.” I lifted my eyes to his, but I couldn’t see much in those dark depths in this lighting. Go figure, even his eyes are hidden from me. “That’s the day you went to rehab. Talk about a coincidence.”
The way his muscles tightened told me it wasn’t. “Zoe. Baby.” He took my face between his hands. “Let it go. Please.”
“I don’t understand.” I was missing something. A piece of a puzzle that was all one color and mixed in with a thousand just like it.
“You don’t have to.” He shook his head gently.
“Yes, I do!” I snapped, the frustration bubbling over and pricking my eyes. “That’s part of being together. Helping each other. I’m supposed to understand. I’m supposed to help you.”
“Why?” He retreated again. “Why can’t you just accept that there are things about me you don’t get to know? Things I don’t share with anyone?”
“Because I love you!” I shouted, my voice breaking.
His face slackened.
“Because I love you,” I repeated, this time softer as my vision blurred. “Because I fell for you, and now I’m yours. My family is yours. My hometown is yours. My entire career has been wrapped around yours. And it hurts, Nixon. It hurts to know I don’t even merit a visitor’s parking placard in your head when you own me, body and soul.” I batted away the tears that streaked my cheeks.
“God, Zoe.” He moved toward me, tense with an emotion I couldn’t name.
I stepped back, but he followed, holding my face between his hands and brushing the tears away with his thumbs.
“Don’t cry. Fuck, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“I can’t help it.” I blinked rapidly, hoping to make the tears stop. “I love you. You have to let me in. This won’t work if you don’t let me in.”
He pressed his lips to my forehead. “I know. I know. I know.” The words came between kisses as he moved down to my temple. My cheekbone. The corner of my mouth.
Then he took my mouth like it was…his. And the little alarm of logic flared in my brain. Deflecting.
But I didn’t care. I’d told him I loved him, and he hadn’t run. Hadn’t laughed. Hadn’t made a quick joke and rolled his eyes. Hadn’t declared this all some sick joke he’d been playing since August. He was kissing me like I was the most precious thing in the world to him. Like I was more necessary than air.
He kissed me like he might love me, too, and I let him.
He lifted me to the counter and stepped between my thighs, kissing me over and over, tangling his hands in my hair, then sweeping them down my body. My breasts, my waist, my thighs—I felt him everywhere, as though he couldn’t touch me enough.
He untied the satin belt at my waist and parted the fabric but didn’t slide it from my shoulders. My head rolled back as he pressed openmouthed kisses to my neck, lingering on every spot he knew would make me gasp as his hand slid up my thigh.
My body melted under his.
His fingers swept between my thighs, and we both groaned.
“You want me.” His voice was a step above a growl in my ear.
“I always want you.” There was no use denying it. Whether it had been an hour or a day, it didn’t matter. My body responded to his the second he touched me.
“I don’t deserve you,” he said against my mouth.
“Yes you—” He stopped my words with another kiss, this one deeper and hotter as his fingers set me on fire, ceaselessly building that tight coil of need within me until I was ready to snap, ready to scream, clawing at him for more because it was right there.
He slid a finger inside me, then two, and I whimpered. It wasn’t enough.
“I need you.” I shoved at his waistband.
“I’m here.” He dropped his shorts, and a second later, I felt the head of him against me.
I grasped greedily at his back as he drove home, sliding to the hilt and filling me with one smooth thrust and ripping a cry from my lips.
He stilled, tensing unnaturally.
“What’s wrong?” My hips rolled, and he moaned but held tight, pinning me to the counter.