Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
She has a vibrator?
“Seriously,” she says. “It’s waterproof. Aro and I bought them online one night on a high of rum.”
She reaches over to the dish and grabs a new bar of soap. I take it from her, wetting her washcloth and soaping it up. I hand both to her over her shoulder, tempted to wash her myself.
“I haven’t even opened it.” She continues facing away from me, rubbing the cloth over her breasts slowly. I stare down over her shoulder, watching her.
“I was so nervous when it came in the mail,” she whispers. “I thought the box might read Giant Vibrating Penis on the side.”
I chuckle, despite the ache in my groin. Her dad would not handle that well. I grab the soap from her and start running it over my chest.
“I haven’t had a chance to try it out with no one in the house yet.” Her soapy fingers massage her breasts before gliding down to her stomach. “I just hid it in my hope chest.”
“Your hope chest…”
I remember that. A huge treasure trunk that sits at the foot of her bed and holds her dreams. Traditionally, girls back in the day put things in there to start a home with their husbands when they got married. Linens, china, family photos.
Dylan, daughter of Tatum Brandt, was never taught to do that. She used it to hold her secrets. Pictures of her celebrity crushes, a Mercedes hood ornament she ripped off the car of the doctor who stole her mom’s promotion at the hospital when Dylan was thirteen, and her bloody bandages sealed in a Ziploc bag from skinning her arm in her first motorcycle accident that her parents never found out about.
She also kept pictures of places she wanted to go, notes she and her friends passed in class, and the ashes of Madman, her parents’ beloved dog. Their honorary “first born.”
I don’t know what she keeps in there now. I mean, other than a sex toy.
“Aro says an orgasm from a vibrator is ten times better than one from my fingers,” she tells me. “I’m hoping that’s true.”
The soap pops right out of my fist and falls to the floor. Jesus, Dylan. My heart tries to beat a hole out of my chest. What the hell?
Images of her in her room at home—in her bed that I’ve crashed in a hundred times—sweep through my head, and I feel like I’m sweating. I draw in a deep breath, but I can’t breathe in here.
“Can I turn around now?” she asks.
She starts to twist, but I close the distance between us, pressing my chest into her back and stopping her.
Unfortunately, it’s not just my chest pressing into her, though. She freezes.
I tremble. Shit. I didn’t want her to see it, but she definitely fucking feels it.
“Are you…hard?” she asks softly.
“Yeah.”
She moves just a hair, like she’s about to turn, but she doesn’t. I grab the shampoo and squeeze some on top of her head and then on mine.
“Don’t read anything into it,” I tell her. “I’m eighteen. It’s hard all the time.”
The corner of her mouth reveals a smile. “Can I see it?”
I don’t reply. Instead, I pull her back with me a few steps, using the shower to lather up her hair. I rub her scalp with both hands.
No one’s ever seen me. I don’t know if I want mine to be the first one that she sees, either.
“Do you remember that week of snow days we had, like four years ago?” she asks me, her head moving as I scrub. “It was in February, I think?”
“I remember.” We had four days off from school in a row. Trees were down, some homes in the rural areas were out of power.
“I hated it,” she gripes. “The extra time off school only meant we’d have to make up the days, which would cut into our summer vacation, but…” She pauses. “More than that, I was sick of the snow. It was bitter cold. Everything was wet all the time. The world sounded dead because no one was outside.”
I sink my fingers into her locks, vaguely remembering how bored she got that year. I couldn’t care less about being outside. She and Kade both needed to feel the wind. Not me.
“It was gray everywhere,” she continues. “Gray smoke from the chimneys. Gray snow from greasy cars and tires. I wanted to swim. Ride our bikes. Smell my dad’s grill in the neighborhood.”
I tug her backward a little, guiding her head back and rinsing her hair. I watch the suds cascade over her ass and down her thighs.
I lower my mouth to her hair, closing my eyes. Fuck.
“So you told me,” she goes on, unaware of how turned on I am. “You told me ‘to make it beautiful.’”
I said what?
She continues, “You said there was a way to find beauty in almost anything. To think about things I like and apply them to how I see. To frame it in a way I find alluring.”