Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 84533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
I waited, wishing he would say something, needing words from him again, needing fucking something, but only silence and Crow’s now detached brown gaze met me.
I closed the door, started the car, and pulled away. When I glanced in the rearview mirror, he was already gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Crow
Me: Tonight. Eight o’clock.
Bruce: You know I always have room in my schedule for you.
He ended the text with a smiley-face emoji. I would never understand using those. I had never used one myself, and as big of an asshole as it made me, I had to fight myself not to let things like that annoy me.
Bruce was easy. I’d found him online, and we always met at a hotel outside Tranquility, where he’d take my dick, then my money, and didn’t require words or anything else from me. And ever since Cyrus left yesterday, I was on edge and needed to fuck.
I could smell Cyrus in my home, smell his sugar and musk on my couch, and I’d sat there, sniffing the cushion while jerking off, but it didn’t take the edge off.
I had never wanted inside someone as much as I wanted inside him.
I had never wanted anyone at all, not once in my life until now, and it had me angry at him, wanting nothing to do with him because I didn’t know how to feel anything after so long, but it also made me want to go into Tranquility and claim him.
I didn’t understand it, none of this. What was it about him? I could build anything, fix anything. I’d learned technology on my own and the internet on my own. We’d always had it here, but no one was allowed to use it except Chosen. But I could make sense of all those things. That was how my brain worked, how I functioned, but this want? This craving I had for him? The way I’d touched him and cared for him…it was wrong and foreign to me on every level.
My arms ached from all the manual labor I’d done today, but still I swung the ax one more time, let it get stuck in the wood, and walked away.
I went into my art room, thought about him while I washed my hands. Felt his soft skin against mine and remembered the way he’d trembled against me.
“I’m sorry I invaded your mountain…and that I hurt my ankle, so you felt like you had to bring me here. I know this is sacred to you—your home. I’ll go as soon as I’m done.”
He’d apologized for bringing me food, and then again for hurting himself, as if he’d done it on purpose. I was the one who’d stalked him and let him wander before I helped him. He was just trying to be nice, but I was…me.
And when I’d pulled away, he’d felt rejected. I’d hurt him again, and that filled me with rage at myself for paining him and allowing myself to feel anything at all.
I pulled out a canvas, hoping it helped to clear my head, but I didn’t start with my paints. Instead, I plucked a charcoal from my supplies and began to draw, trying to convey how soft his hair was, and every curve of his face.
*
My hands shook as I knocked on the hotel door.
Bruce opened it a moment later, his red hair messy and a smirk on his lip. “Hey, baby,” he said, flirting. He always spoke to me like that, in ways I’d never spoken to another person but knew people off the mountain did. It was just another thing I didn’t understand, and that frustrated me. “It’s been a while. Been missing that big cock of yours.”
My skin crawled because it wasn’t him I wanted; it was Cyrus. Talking during sex bothered me. I’d tried with Hillary, but I was sixteen years old, confused, and didn’t want to do what I was doing.
I nodded, and Bruce knew that meant I wanted him to take off his clothes. We didn’t kiss, didn’t touch or cuddle or hold each other afterward. In all the years I’d been taking him, I’d never spoken a single word to Bruce. I fucked him hard and then left, and he liked me for it. He kept my secret because he liked my cock and loved knowing he got to screw the Tranquility Mountain Man.
You spoke to Cyrus.
I fought to tamp down that thought.
Bruce stripped, and then asked, “How do you want me?”
We never fucked in the bed, so I took the condom and bottle of lube he’d set on the table, and led him to the small hotel-room couch, where I bent him forward so he lay over the arm. I slicked my fingers, started with one, then two, opening him up and getting him ready for me.
He moaned and made noises, begging for more, asking for my dick. After pulling out of him, I opened my jeans and shoved those and my underwear down mid-thigh. I never went further than that. I slid the condom down my erection, lubed up, then thrust into him swiftly.