Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Fuck.
If I’m going to have to meet the parents and explain myself, then I’m going to have to do it freshly showered and changed into a good old clean Henley.
Aspen’s voice continues as I walk to the bathroom. I feel more than guilty about all this. I never should have let it get this far. I never should have opened my door for her and let her into the house. But I did. And I agreed to the marriage, sham or not. I let Aspen touch me. I let her in, into the cracks that shouldn’t exist.
Also, just by existing, I’ve become the thing in her life that shouldn’t exist.
I strip down and get into the shower. I’m so focused on what an arsehole two thousand I am that I don’t hear the bathroom door open. I’m not the kind of person you can easily sneak up on, so that proves how distracted I am.
I have both hands braced against the tile when Aspen clears her throat.
“Hey.” Her eyes are surprisingly dry and clear. She hasn’t been crying. She looks focused and determined. She looks like pure sugar and sweetness. She looks like a good wind could blow her right over, but she’s so much tougher.
I’m so naked.
She slips out of her T-shirt and shorts and joins me in the shower. This might be the last time. It should be the last time. No, there should never be a last time because there shouldn’t have ever been a first time.
“Your parents think you’re impulsive. They’re worried about you. They probably think I’m a carnivorous monster,” I mutter.
She shakes her head at me, smiling of all things. “Well, you have eaten me before. You could do it again…”
And that’s how the shower goes. It goes and goes because I can’t say no. Because I don’t know if I even want to say no anymore. I had this life, and I was set in my ways. They might not have been good ways or the right ways, but perhaps I would have figured it out. Now there’s Aspen, and when she leaves, there will have been Aspen, and I won’t ever be the same.
She dries me off after like I’m a child, and I don’t fight her. When she kisses me, I kiss her back because god help me, I want to. I don’t want to tell her I’m dirty anymore. I don’t want to chase her away. I don’t want to protest and come up with a thousand reasons why this is wrong. I don’t want to keep trying to put up ineffectual shields to keep her at bay. Because they don’t work. She only tears them down.
“I’m staying because I want to stay,” she tells me, completely naked and utterly gorgeous. “Needs and wants, Rick.”
“Are your parents going to show up here? Is your dad going to break down my door? It won’t be the first time I’ve dodged bullets, but I like to know in advance what kind of battle I’m going to have to face.”
“No,” she says as she wraps a white towel around her slender body. Her wet hair drips all over her shoulders. She’s still coated in water droplets, and I want to lick every single one of them off of her sweet, soft skin. “I mean, they could show up, but they won’t be firing at you. I do promise that. They told me they were going to calm down, and we’d talk about it in a few hours when they had time to process, but I can’t guarantee they won’t get on the first flight here.”
“They don’t have a tracker on your phone?”
Aspen gasps. “Goodness, no. We don’t have that kind of technology. We’re not spies.”
“It’s an app, Aspen. Parents use them all the time.”
“Oh.” Her chin wobbles, and her eyes nearly pop out. “Oh, shit. Okay, well, they might show up then. I don’t really know. If they do, though, it’s fine. They still won’t come armed.”
“If I have to take a black eye for the team, I’ll do that.”
“My dad doesn’t hit people,” Aspen says.
“What about your mom?” I ask.
“Gah! Definitely not my mom.”
She’s not even dressed, and we’re still in the bathroom, but I feel like it’s only appropriate that I try again to be the asshole that makes her see reality. “I’m afraid you have this starry-eyed wedding bells fantasy, and that’s not how this is going to play out.”
“Don’t worry, Patrick McDonald. I know you’re only in it for the sex.”
My mouth drops. Aspen, on the other hand, throws her head back and laughs. What a wicked, wicked woman she can be. She’s disarmed me and put me in my place with that laughter. I just said I like to know what kind of battle I’m fighting, but nothing on earth could have prepared me for her. She’s the battle I’m not going to win. She might be the one I won’t survive. She’s the one who could truly wreck me, even after everything I’ve lived.