Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
I mean, we had to wait so long to do it again.
If I’m being honest, it was easier the first time around. That year that I waited—that he waited too; now I know—was easier to survive somehow. But these two weeks were hard. They were probably the longest and hardest two weeks of both our lives.
Maybe because now we know what it feels like.
The taste, the feel, the heat of our mouths.
So I’m glad that when he begins to walk, he doesn’t break it. He keeps our lips fused. I hear the thud of the door closing and yet we’re still kissing each other, thank God. Although I will say that I’m a little miffed when my back connects with something—a wall, maybe—and he pulls away.
But I guess it’s okay. I’ll allow it.
Because there are things that need to be said. Things that need to be cleared up so when he gives me a chance to breathe, I pant, adjusting my thighs around him. “Thanks f-for saving me from those guys.”
He comes to settle between the cradle of my thighs, pushing our lower bodies together. Then his hands that have come up to my face tighten as he growls, “Because somehow you always need saving, don’t you?”
I wrap my arms around his neck and thrust my fingers in his hair. “I’m glad I have y-you.”
His features ripple with anger as he fists my hair too. “Yeah, well it makes one of us.”
“But I’m safe now. You don’t have to be angry.”
“I’m always angry,” he corrects me, pushing into me some more, making me arch my back. “And the fact that I left you where you shouldn’t need to be saved in the first place is what’s making me want to put my fist through the wall.”
“What?”
“He was supposed to look out for you,” he keeps growling, his words hot, his breaths hotter. “He was supposed to not fucking let you go off on your own. What he wasn’t supposed to do”—he tugs at my hair—“was chat up a bunch of girls who aren’t his fucking fiancée.”
“I don’t care,” I say truthfully, tightening my thighs around his waist. “Stellan, I don’t care. I—”
“I’m going to fuck him up,” he promises, cutting me off.
“What?”
“I have to fuck him up. I have to teach him a lesson. I have to teach him how to fucking do his job right. How to fucking watch you and look after you and—”
“No,” I tell him, digging my heels in the backs of his thighs. “You’re not doing anything. You’re not saying anything. You’re not fucking him up, okay?”
“He needs to—”
“No, Stellan, promise me. Promise you’ll stay out of this.”
I need to handle it.
Me.
No one else.
I need to tell Shepard that this isn’t working. That I know he was trying to help me and I know that he loves me, but I… I don’t. I can’t. All my love is already taken. I also know it’s going to hurt him. And God, I’d do anything to avoid it. But I already did that before and look where we all ended up. So no, this time I’m going to be truthful and I’m going to come clean.
I’m going to break off the engagement.
But it will be me who does that, not him.
So when he still doesn’t say anything, his eyes promising punishment and retribution for his twin brother, I insist, “Stellan, I need you to promise me that you won’t say anything. And neither will you mess with him. Like you did before. No messing with his game, Stellan.”
He growls low in his chest, his eyes flashing.
His jerks my head back a little. Then, leaning even closer to me, his heavily breathing chest dragging across my breasts, he goes, “You know this doesn’t bode well for him, don’t you?”
“W-what?”
“You,” he seethes, “begging me to leave him alone. Pleading with me to spare the man you’re going to marry. That’s exactly the kind of thing that’ll earn him extra laps around the field tomorrow and every day for the rest of his fucking life. Or until his legs give up, whichever comes first.”
“Stellan, you—”
“And this is what he does. He slacks off on the job. He never puts his mind to anything other than his precious fucking soccer. So then I have to come in and pick up his slack,” he says. “And I do it because that’s the only way I can make up for not being there, for not being his shitty brother. That’s the only I can make up for all of it and—”
“Why can’t you be there for him?”
Because I want to know.
I need to know. I need to know why he thinks the way he thinks. There has to be a reason.
He looks at me like he’s only now remembering that I’m here and he’s been saying these things. Then, swallowing, “Because I can’t.”