Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
“It sounds great,” I told them. Then I had a sudden thought and looked down at myself. I’d only taken a few changes of clothes to Ecuador. The clothes I’d been wearing when I was kidnapped were pretty much just rags: torn, soaked, burned, and blood-stained. When we got back to the field hospital, I’d been able to finally get changed, but I’d been wearing those clothes ever since, plus they weren’t exactly party material. “Not sure I have anything to wear, though.”
“Not a problem,” said Bethany. “I can lend you something. Stop by our place before the barbecue.”
Then Gabriel was slipping his arm around my waist, and Cal and Kian were not-too-subtly prying Bethany and Emily away, too. The message was clear: there’d be time for chat later. But for tonight, these guys needed to be with their women.
We walked in comfortable silence down the hill towards the town. The sun was just going down, and Mount Mercy was undergoing that magical transformation into nighttime, the sky changing from pink to a deep, cool blue, the strings of lights that hung across the streets starting to come on. I looked around in wonder and took a big lungful of crisp mountain air. The cooler summers would suit me and my pale skin better than the ferocious Arizona ones, although the harsh winters would take some getting used to. I wondered how deep the snow got up here.
We strolled into the town, past people taking their dogs for an evening walk or heading to the bar for an after-work drink. I saw an old garage, a little bookshop, a cafe…and it was friendly, people nodded to us in greeting, even though they didn’t know us.
It felt like a good place to make a home.
As we turned a corner, Gabriel’s steps started getting faster. When a small apartment block crept into sight ahead of us, they got faster still. His arm tightened around my waist, and by the time we were fifty feet from the door, he was marching as fast as he could without actually breaking into a run, towing me along beside him. It was only when I looked up at him and saw the determination in his eyes that I understood. For the first time since we’d met, we were going to have proper privacy. A deep, hot throb rippled down through my body and detonated in my groin.
He managed to control himself until we got inside the block’s front door. Then, in the hallway, he groaned and pushed me up against the wall. His hands cradled my face, his fingertips sliding into my pinned-up hair, and he kissed me long and deep. His body pinned mine to the wall, the heat of him soaking through his shirt and the thin cotton of my blouse. The kiss turned urgent, his lips chasing mine. His pecs swelled against my breasts as he panted, and I went weak as I felt his cock hardening against my thigh.
He grabbed me around the waist and hauled me with him across the hallway and towards the stairs. We corkscrewed up them, still kissing, until we reached the third floor.
I broke the kiss for a second. Immediately, my lips throbbed, needing him back. “Which one?” I panted.
“3A,” he panted back. And then we were kissing again, his hands on my ass, keeping my body molded to his as we moved. We stumbled down the hallway to 3A and he slid the key into the door. Then suddenly he was lifting me, drawing a startled yelp and a giggle from me, and carrying me towards the bed, kicking the door shut behind him.
“I hope you don’t have anything you need to be doing for about the next eighteen hours, Doc,” he told me. His hazel eyes were molten and glittering. “Because I’ve got a lot of plans for you.”
I didn’t trust my voice, so I just nodded hard. “Mm-hmm!”
He threw me onto the bed. And until noon the next day, he showed me how deliciously wicked he could be.
I stopped and stared. “Wow.”
It was early afternoon and the parking lot of the base had been transformed. Music was playing. Tables groaned with enough food for at least twenty people: bread, rainbow and regular slaw, grilled corn salad, spinach strawberry salad, mac and cheese…and that was just the sides.
Colton was grillmaster, working an immense charcoal grill that he must have brought with him from Missouri. There were huge, dripping steaks, racks of sticky baby back ribs, and glistening, vinegary St. Louis pork steaks. Stacey was standing behind a table loaded with beer, liquor, fruit, mixers and a huge bowl of ice, mixing cocktails. “What’ll it be?” she asked us, grinning.
I went for a Sex on the Beach: I’d always wanted to try one and I’d always been too self-conscious to order one in a bar. Gabriel went quiet for a moment, just staring at the bar, then asked for a bourbon on the rocks. He held it up to the light, swishing the liquor and making the ice cubes clink. “Three years,” he murmured. “It’s been three years since I had a drink with ice in it.” He took a sip and sighed in satisfaction.