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)
So maybe, maybe if I move my mouth a little, it would be okay.
If I part my tingling and sore lips, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Because how many kisses would feel like that? How many kisses consume your entire being like that?
This kiss is one of its kind.
A kiss of cold.
A kiss of fire.
Besides, let’s not forget this is my very first kiss, so I guess it’s okay. And just because I’m grabbing hold of his strong, massive, sculpted shoulders—shoulders I used to dream about—doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven him. Just because I’m fisting the collar of his suit jacket—the jacket that I also used to dream about and have one in my closet right now that I wear over my sleep pajamas some nights because I miss him—doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten everything he’s done.
I don’t have to love him to kiss him back.
Or at least I think so.
In any case, my thoughts that I was so focused on have taken a major dive in the last five seconds. Ever since I opened my mouth and he snaked his tongue inside. Or rather thrust his tongue inside and took over my mouth.
He took it and invaded it and conquered it. As he tastes me from the inside. As he curls and swipes his tongue. As he touches the roof of my mouth, tangles his tongue with mine. He even swipes it along the sharp edges of my teeth.
He goes for every corner and every cranny and he’s not gentle about it.
Why would he be?
Assholes are not gentle. And he’s an asshole in disguise.
Assholes are plunderers and conquerors and oh my God, so fucking masculine and dominating, and I just want to smack him and fist his hair and eat his lips back.
Especially when the moment I do all those things—I punch his shoulder and pull his hair and bite him back—he emits a war cry.
Or in this case his groan.
This needy and tortured sound he makes in the depths of his gut.
His chest. His throat.
All of which vibrates against my body.
All of which makes me moan in response.
And my moan is needy and tortured as well.
My moan is fucking horny.
Because God, I am horny.
And I just kiss him.
And kiss him.
And kiss him.
And keep kissing him until he remembers that we have to breathe too. We have to break the kiss and he has to rip his mouth away from me, and instead of heat and warmth and cigarette smoke and marshmallows, I taste… stupid air.
I drag a lungful of it as I say, “I… I’m s-still angry.”
His fingers on my waist tighten and flex—I don’t even know when he put his hands there because last time I checked, they were on my face—and he pants, “I know.”
“This d-doesn’t mean anything,” I tell him again.
He fists my hair with his other hand. “I know that too.”
“You’re not a plane crash,” I say next because I cannot, absolutely cannot, let him think that about himself even though he hurt me.
I don’t even know why he thinks that, but I can’t let him do it.
He huffs out a breath. “I am.”
“Or a highway accident.”
“I am that too.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say vehemently, automatically.
“You should start believing the things I say,” he says back.
Maybe I should.
Maybe I should grow up and stop believing in fairy tales.
He’s shown me enough times that he’s cold and cruel. He’s callous and calculating. He’s unpredictable like the fire.
Like me.
I flick my eyes over his face then.
His flushed cheekbones. His kiss-blown eyes, made even darker and more dangerous by that black mark around it. His rose mouth, all swollen and red and ruined probably as much as mine. And that pulsating bruise on his jaw that squeezes my heart.
I bring my hand down to his forehead and flick the strands that have fallen over his brows. “I ruined your hair.”
His own fingers swirl in my hair. “Fuck my hair.”
I look at the wrinkled collar and creased lapels. “I also ruined your jacket.”
“Fuck my jacket.” He waves away the comment, roving his eyes over my face. “Never like wearing them anyway.”
“So then…”
I trail off when I find the answer for the question I was going to ask. Instead, I fist his lapels again. “You do it for me. You wear your jackets for me.”
“Yeah.”
“Was it your jacket?” I ask then. “The one Shepard put on me that one time.”
His jaw tics. “Yeah.”
My heart clenches.
There are so many things, so many, many things he did and said that I hadn’t known until now. So many little pearls and gems hidden under the treasures of things he said to me these past weeks. That I know I’m going to keep finding for days to come.
“Is that when you started wearing your jackets?” I ask. “Because you didn’t have one on the first night I met you.”