Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 130048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Wait, what?
I froze with my jacket dangling in my hands.
That wasn’t true.
Is it?
I’d only known the girl for a single day.
I owed her nothing.
You’ve known your brother for a single night.
Yet you’re giving him everything.
What was the difference?
Q might be blood, but Ily…what if she was something more?
Fuck, do you hear yourself?
I snorted under my breath.
This crush was pissing me the hell off. How did other men get shit done when their entire body and mind became obsessed with a single person? I’d always guessed I had issues and not just the sadistic devil inside me. If a psychologist ever got their hands on me, I’d expect them to say my need to deliver pain to others came from my own deep-seated agony at not receiving any touch, love, or affection in my childhood.
I’d loved my mother; God rest her soul.
I’d been her only caregiver as she declined.
Yet she never hugged me.
Not once.
I couldn’t even hate her for being cold to me because I understood how hard it would be to love someone who came from a rapist who destroyed you.
Fuck’s sake, stop.
This is not the time for a walk down shitty memory lane.
Gritting my teeth, I laid my jacket on the bed. Making sure to avoid Ily and forcing myself not to look between her bare legs, I spread the sides of the expensive blazer and ran my fingers over the silk lining until I found the secret pocket along the bottom.
Cursing my big fingers, I pried the bronze handled knife loose. Keeping my hand low and hidden by the blankets, I ensured the mechanism operated correctly. Thin and heavy, the blade popped out with a quick press of a concealed button, becoming a lethal little switchblade.
Good.
At least I could gut a few people if they started asking questions.
Inhaling with courage I didn’t exactly feel, I went to slide the blade back into the handle—
“What’s that?”
Merde.
Squeezing my eyes closed for a second, I fortified my fraying self-control and snapped the knife closed. Shoving it into my other pocket, I looked up.
Ily rubbed her eyes, blinking away sleep. Comprehension slammed into her. “You…you have a—”
Before she could tell every camera watching, I launched onto the bed and tackled her to the mattress. Pinning her with my entire half-naked body, I whispered in her ear. “It’s a knife, but don’t say a word about it in case they’re listening, got it?”
Pulling away a little, I glanced down at her.
I expected to see annoyance at me pouncing on her, followed by a healthy dose of apprehension, but what glimmered in her stunning sunshine stare fucking broke me.
It took an axe to my chains and a blade to my ropes.
It threatened to unleash me with a single look because it wasn’t just a look.
It was an invitation.
A plea given in a flash of honesty.
A summoning from a girl to a boy, angel to devil, and my body reacted far quicker than my mind.
I groaned as I hardened.
I clenched my teeth as her hips shifted beneath mine.
And I fucking snarled as she reached to cup my cheek—
I snatched her wrist and pinned it above her head. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She blinked as if she wasn’t entirely sure—almost as if she’d moved without thinking, driven by the same urges I drowned beneath. Her gaze darted over my bare chest, no doubt seeing a few of the scars I’d earned in my childhood. Innocent scars from doing innocent things. Unlike the fresh one on my thigh where I’d tried to butcher myself.
“Sorry I…” Licking her lips, she shrugged a little. “You have lint on your cheek.”
My cock bruised as it nudged against my belt. I hadn’t even kissed her, yet this moment was somehow the hottest, rawest of my life.
Feeling her beneath me.
The smallness of her.
The rightness of her.
It was too much.
Too addictive.
Far, far too addictive.
Get off.
Now!
Loosening my fingers from her wrist, I went to shift away, but her hips went with mine as if they were bound together. Her delicate hand landed on my bare side, sending electricity frying through my blood.
Moaning as deliciously as she had in her sleep, she arched and kept us pressed where we definitely shouldn’t be pressed.
I choked on a groan.
I fought all kinds of urges.
Instantly her cheeks turned into red, red roses.
Dropping her eyes, she tore her hand off me, leaving an imprint of her fingers in my motherfucking soul.
“Sorry. I-I don’t know why I did that. God—” Her bottom lip wobbled, and if she dared fucking cry, I’d have her on her knees and my cock down her throat before the first tear fell.
“I keep ruining this.” She looked to the side, her entire chest going pink. “I-I keep expecting things that aren’t real. Forgive me.”
I tried to move. I really did. But my cock ached where it pressed against her. The thought of removing myself from that sweet, sweet heaven was utterly impossible.