Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
“One of them dared.” I leaned in, hovering a breath away.
“Yes, well, I’ve spent a lifetime taking risks.” He brushed his lips against mine. “But none so satisfying as the one I took with you.”
Then he took again, with his hand in my hair and his tongue in my mouth. That hot stolen kiss, from the man who broke my heart, did exactly what it meant to do.
The tension in my limbs loosened. The ice in my veins thawed, and the shreds of my reason disintegrated as I sank into his splendor. His addictive taste, his confident touch, his throaty sounds, his salt-water scent—all of it would forever reside among my best and worst memories.
I could’ve spent an eternity feeding on his lush lips. The seconds in which we fell into effortless passion would’ve required weeks with anyone else. Our bodies came together in a mutual grind. Hearts finding the same beat. Tongues sliding in sync. Breaths melding as one.
He broke the kiss.
I followed his glance to the side, watching as he flipped over the hourglass, initiated the trickle of sand, and slid a hand beneath the skirt of my shift.
With a single finger, he traced my thigh from knee to hip before sinking between my legs and tunneling directly into my soaked heat.
I ceased breathing, and my pulse ran away from me as erotic tingles swept through every inch of my body.
He slowly eased out and drew an unhurried circle around my entrance, once, twice, igniting spasms along my grasping, greedy muscles. Then he plunged that finger again, groaning when he felt how hot and tight and wet and needy I was. I might as well have been a virgin, given the way I responded to his intrusion. It’d been so damn long since I’d been touched.
This was dangerous. Insane. Unsound. And so very right.
I had years of regrets, but denying myself one last ride on his experienced hand would not be one of them.
And so it began. In and out, around and around, he fingered me with a skill of a libertine. I liquefied around every curling pull and moaned with every leaden thrust, sagging against the pillar of his torso as shivering bursts of pleasure wound me tighter, hotter.
I was slippery and unashamed, and he was the intoxicant, spinning me and drowning me with his mastery of my body. Relief was so close I could feel the shimmering, taunting edge of it.
At the centrum of the sensations was his mouth—his hot, treacherous mouth moving against mine in a languorous slide of damp flesh and heated breaths. He tasted like the ocean, deep and turbulent, liberating and comforting, familiar and sacred. There was a time when he’d represented all those things.
Sinuous pressure coursed through me, gathering around the stroke of his finger. But a peek at the sandglass filled me with dread. Such an insignificant amount of grains had passed through.
“By my estimate, that’s one minute down.” He crooked his finger inside me and dragged my lips back to his, panting hungrily. “Nine more to go.”
He didn’t need ten minutes to give me a release. He could do it in two. But outlasting the clock wasn’t my aim.
With his breaths crashing against my mouth and the impossibly long, swollen length of him pressing against my inner thigh, it was time. He was mindless enough, his guard effectively compromised as he closed his eyes and drove his finger deep into the drenched folds of my flesh.
My throat constricted as I put my lips at his ear and whispered, “Let this be a lesson in betrayal.”
“Wha—?”
I shoved his chest with all the strength in my arm and smashed the bottle of rum against the side of his head. Through a spray of liquor and glass, the world stood still as he stared at me in disbelief.
Then he slumped like a sack of grain. His back hit the mattress. His body went limp between my legs, and blood spurted from the jagged wound near his temple.
He was unconscious.
The rancid taste of grief flooded my mouth. My sinuses burned, and fire scorched the backs of my eyes. What kind of woman hurt the man she loved?
“I’m so sorry.” I lay my cheek on his chest and released a choking cry of relief and agony.
I cried for the marriage I’d bungled so miserably. For the man whose faithlessness had taught me a hard lesson in trust. And for the love I was letting go after so many years of holding on.
It was time to move past this. Time to find the compass, lock my demon in the bilge, and hold him captive until he was as finished with me as I was with him.
Wiping away tears, I stretched toward his face and kissed his slack lips. It hurt to do so.
It hurt to climb to my feet and not kiss him again.