Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
My cheeks were red.
My lips swollen and bruised.
But my eyes were too wide. Too wild. Gone to a place where I shouldn’t have let myself go.
To him.
I felt shattered.
Broken into a million pieces.
Pieces that I was never going to mend or reclaim because every touch he stole belonged to him.
Tears blurred my sight, and I stepped away and forced myself to focus on pulling on the night slip and a pair of new underwear considering mine were tattered on his floor. I was a fool to think covering myself would shield me from the hope that kept trying to sprout.
It was dangerous.
Dangerous to my heart.
Dangerous to the man that I loved.
But how could I stop it when he touched me that way? When he held me that way? When he looked at me as if I were a treasure?
I froze when I felt the shift in the air, the intensity that lapped, the energy a cloud that hazed common sense.
Logan appeared as if he’d been summoned. Vapor that’d become whole.
He towered behind me in the doorway of the bathroom, the man staring at me through the mirror where I faced away.
He wore the same expression I needed to hide from.
Feral, savage possession.
Bridled violence to be unleashed at any moment.
A veil of protection shimmering around him to reach out and cover me.
He took a step forward.
Warmth skated through the cold air. It curled down my spine like an illicit embrace.
Wrong. It was so wrong. So wrong that I moaned when he stepped even closer. He reached out, pulled my hair aside, and pressed his mouth to the spot where my shoulder met my neck.
“Do you think you can hide from me, Aster?”
He reached around to touch the star that dangled between my breasts.
“I think I should run from you. Before something happens we can’t take back. Before it’s too late.”
“It was too late the moment you stepped foot in that basement.”
“Logan.”
Big hands banded around my waist, and he slowly turned me, his gaze fierce and unrelenting.
The scariest part was he already knew who he was dealing with. He wasn’t going into this blind.
“You are worth it.” His words were a crack in the dense air.
And I realized it then…he didn’t care. He didn’t care about the cost.
He would pay it all, but that was a consequence I would never survive.
Expression hard, he hoisted me up. A tiny peep of reserve whisked from my lips.
Still, I wrapped my legs around him with a breath of surrender, the same way as I did with my arms, the same way as my face pressed to his pulse that thudded and boomed.
I tried one more time. “We shouldn’t do this.”
His arms tightened around me. “My rules, Aster. My rules.”
I clung to him as he carried me out of the guest room and through the apartment. He didn’t slow until he was kicking his bedroom door shut and carrying me to his massive bed. He pulled the covers down and laid me in the middle.
My spirit clutched as he loomed over me at the side of his bed.
The man was so gorgeous he made it difficult to breathe. His profile sharp, every chiseled line powerful. Cut in stone. Harsh and hard.
But then he smiled. He smiled soft and slow as he reached out and fluttered his fingers along the curves of my face, and I could see all the way down to the boy who’d once dreamed so free.
“There. Right where you belong,” he murmured.
I couldn’t do anything but take his hand and press it to my cheek. “I always wished that.”
“It was always the truth, Aster. We were always supposed to be together. We just got lost along the way. I mean, come on, look at me…” He stretched out his arms and cracked a giant smirk at that. He still was without a shirt, his chest wide and shoulders muscled, his waist trim and his abdomen packed with rippling strength. “Have you seen me? Like you could forget all of this.”
His tease filled the air and sweet amusement had me biting down on my bottom lip, a lightness taking hold as he gazed down on me like he was looking at eternity.
“I never forgot.”
His smile slowed, and he unbuttoned his pants and let them drop to the ground. He kicked them free of his ankles. He stood there in nothing but a pair of black underwear, and I swore, it had me blushing like the teenage girl I’d been when he’d first touched me.
Redness heated my cheeks, and I buried my face in the pillow, but not far enough that I couldn’t peek out with one eye.
“You are so beautiful,” I mumbled because I didn’t know how not to give him that.
He climbed onto the bed and slipped under the covers. He pulled me against him, tucked my head to his chest, and gently stroked his fingers through my hair.