Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 90075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
“Ella...care to tell me what you’re doing here?” Nick asked, deceptively soft.
Hunter stiffened.
Giselle flicked him a look from the booth.
And I stayed silent, tripping over words I would never say.
Shame shot down my legs, moments away from bolting from everyone.
But then...the hottest, dirtiest groan tumbled from Nick’s throat, wrenching my eyes to his.
The moment I looked at him, the world stopped spinning.
I jerked at the sudden stop.
I gasped at the sharpest punch of connection.
His nostrils flared as he drank me in. Glowering at me in another man’s embrace. Hatred swirled with unfiltered, unhidden, undeniable lust.
Lust?
My dead heart struck up a thrum again, racing, racing, racing.
Lust for me?
But how?
When?
Surely, not.
I would’ve sensed it, wouldn’t I?
After eight months of living together, I’d never caught him checking me out unless it was with that usual air of annoyance.
I could never do anything right. I couldn’t load the dishwasher right, hang out the washing right, even hoover our apartment right. Everything I did was wrong. Everything I said was a nuisance.
Yet here he was...staring at me as if he was fucking starving.
No, not starving...ravenous. A violently ravenous beast eyeing me up for his final meal.
“Ella...I asked you a question,” he seethed, his fists tightening into rocks.
Hunter shifted me deeper into his side, squaring off with Nick. “She’s here for the same thing you are. To get fucked. And if you’ll excuse us, we’re about to get started.” Barging past Nick, Hunter dragged me with him. “Run along, man. Pick your own partner because you’re not having mine.”
“Wait.” Nicholas’s hand shot out, latching around my wrist.
He didn’t hold me gently.
He bruised me.
Squeezed me.
Struggled to hold back whatever mania coursed through him.
I froze and looked at where he grabbed me. “Nick...let me go.”
His fingers only tightened until blood pumped there, blocked by his grip. The tips of my fingers throbbed from the restriction.
He swallowed hard. “I-I thought you went to bed?”
Bed?
What?
“I was reading my book!”
“Yeah, but...you normally go to bed early.”
“To avoid you!”
He stiffened.
Nervous laughter spilled out of me. “And I thought you were going to a bar, so don’t you get all shitty with me, Nicholas Davis. Not tonight.”
His jaw clenched. “Well...obviously, we both lied.”
“Obviously.” I sneered, letting Hunter tug me toward the looming purple and grey big top. “Have a good night, Nick. Goodbye.”
He stayed rooted to the spot for a moment before giving chase. “Stop. Wait...just for a sec.”
Hunter sighed heavily but obeyed. Keeping a claiming arm wrapped around me, he barked, “What? What do you want with my Ella? If you know each other, then you know it’s against the rules to approach each other if the other party is unwilling.” He pressed a doting kiss to my cheek. “So, I ask you, little witch. Are you willing? Because it sure as hell doesn’t seem like it.”
“Witch?” Nick wrinkled his nose. “She’s not a witch.”
“Tonight, she is.” Hunter grabbed himself and stroked the large bulge between his legs. “She cast a spell on me the moment I set eyes on her.”
“Fuck, I know the feeling,” Nick groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Wait...what?
What the hell was he playing at?
This wasn’t him.
Where was the coldness? The criticising? The cryptic asshole I barely tolerated?
“What are you doing, Nick?” I narrowed my eyes. “This isn’t you. Go home, or better yet...go bother someone else.”
“You heard her.” Hunter chuckled. “Plenty of other partners here to play with.”
Nick reared back as if I’d physically slapped him. “Y-You’d be okay if I went and slept with someone else? Now you’ve seen me here?”
I shrugged even as my heart pinched. “Makes no difference to me who you sleep with.”
“Says the girl who fucks a vibrator every night.”
I went still, so very, very still. Every part of me surged to deny it. To trip over myself with explanations that I tried to wait when he was out of the house, but some nights...when he’d been particularly chilly toward me or been working late with his nerdy, sexy copper-rimmed glasses on, I just couldn’t help myself.
I’d keep it short.
A few seconds was all I needed to penetrate myself, line up the little rabbit wand, and picture Nick throwing me over the very kitchen table where he worked, scattering his papers, and pouncing on me.
I’d come. I’d wash my toy. And then go to sleep with tears in my eyes.
Dammit, he was ruining my night.
I didn’t want him here.
I thought I did when I’d run out the door—some masochistic part of me using the emotional pain he gave me as a trigger to want him, but now, with Hunter’s heavy arm around me and his taste still in my mouth, I got angry.
Fuming angry.
So, so angry it completely shocked me with its severity. Eight months’ worth of holding my tongue, not fighting back, not calling him out on his bullshit. I took his icy behaviour at work. I tolerated his stiffness at home.