Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 76319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
At the same time, I know my need for her, this draw I can’t seem to control, is also dysfunctional. Then again, I haven’t been normal in a very long time.
Her lip twitches when I step in closer to her, and for a moment, I don’t know if it’s going to be a smile or a sneer. Maybe it’s the alcohol in her blood, but she doesn’t seem like she knows either.
With a rough hand, I pull her closer, locking her in place. I’ll be damned if I’m going to act like one of these college boys and fucking dance with her. She wiggles enough to keep her hips moving, a slow smile spreading across her face while keeping her eyes closed.
When her teeth dig into her lower lip, I realize she’s living some kind of fantasy behind her eyelids. Her mouth drops open when I grip a handful of her hair in my fist. I swear she makes a sound, maybe a dick-hardening whimper, but it gets lost with the music.
Her hands find my biceps, just resting on them at first, but then she moves them, her thumbs sweeping back and forth. Her eyes widen the second she slits them open.
I offer her a lethal sneer, pulling her head back even harder to reveal the perfect column of her throat. I’m torn between biting it and tracing the pounding pulse point with my tongue.
“I missed you,” she says, and I read her lips more than actually hear her.
It’s the very same thing she said last time, and the unprompted confession affects me in a way I should be immune against. It feels like a vulnerability, like I’ve offered her some sort of control over me, and that’s reason enough to hate this girl.
“Let’s go,” I growl, grabbing her arm and pulling her off the dance floor.
“Where are you taking me?” she asks, more unsure on her feet as we descend the front steps of the house than I originally thought she was.
“Home,” I grunt, slowing down enough that she isn’t struggling to keep up. I vow to make it the only fucking concession I’ll offer her.
The March days have gotten warmer, but the temps are still dipping into the forties at night, but I know the shiver she just felt that caused her to run her hands over her bare arms won’t stop her from leaving her dorm tomorrow night in such a small amount of clothing. The woman has no sense of self-preservation, and above anything else, it’s what rubs my ass raw.
I don’t release her arm the entire way back to her dorm, and she doesn’t attempt to pull from my grip either.
“Where have you been?”
I lock my eyes ahead of me. I answer to no one, especially petulant little girls.
“In the shadows?” she guesses.
I’m gone from here far too often to keep letting her think I’m watching her every night. If she’s getting that sixth sense that someone is watching her still, then she’s responding to someone else. I’ve been gone for weeks.
“I haven’t been back here since the last time you saw me.”
She freezes, her eyes widening, the fear so real in them that I halt all my movements.
“But last night—” she begins.
“Last night, I was in Mexico.”
She searches my face, her head shaking.
“You chased me. Last night, you chased me.”
I step in close, my anger barely contained. “Last night, I was in Mexico.”
The tremble in her body begins right in the center of her, but it doesn’t take long before it’s radiating into her extremities. I feel the vibration through my palm.
“Pl-please,” she begs on a swallow. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“I don’t fucking joke,” I growl, my chest starting to heave at the very real possibility that someone might have gotten close enough to hurt her last night. “Let’s go.”
The vulnerability in her eyes as she darts them all around gets me moving again. What might’ve been a close call could actually serve me the way I need it to. If she’s scared and realizing I’m not here all the time, maybe she’ll curb her irresponsible behaviors.
The attendant isn’t manning the front desk when she keys in her code to her dorm building, and as much as I want to shove her toward the stairs, I find myself walking in the direction with her.
“My roommate went home for the weekend,” she says as she pushes her key into the lock.
I know what her tone is suggesting. As much as my body craves everything she’s offering and more, it also serves to piss me off because there isn’t a hint of the fear I heard in her voice only moments ago.
The second the door closes and we’re alone inside her room, she turns to me, lifting up on her toes and attempting to press her lips to mine.