Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 80664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Tretch struggled, his legs kicked out from underneath him. The muscles in Bear’s forearms flexed and strained while he held tight to the man dying between his hands. My own hands automatically went to my neck, tracing the swollen fingerprints Tretch had left behind.
Bear’s eyes found mine and didn’t leave. The whites of his eyes turned to red. He gritted his teeth.
Tretch looked to me with bulging eyes, one final plea for his life, knowing I was the only one who could grant it to him.
I didn’t want to.
With one last angry roar Bear squeezed the last of the life from Tretch, his eyes rolling back in his head. His chin fell to his chest.
Bear released his hold on Tretch, shoving his lifeless body sideways onto the floor. Bear reached into his boot and pulled something out. He flipped it open, a serrated blade sprang out. I was sure Tretch was already dead, but for whatever reason Bear had, he crouched down and gashed Tretch’s throat wide open.
As a former member of Future Farmer’s Daughters of America, we’d taken a trip to the slaughterhouse, and the way the blood poured from Tretch’s neck reminded me of watching the pigs get slaughtered one by one.
Only this animal happened to be human.
WAS human.
I shifted off the bed and stood on unsteady legs, holding on to the end table for support.
Bear’s boots crunched over shards of ceramic from a vase broken in their struggle. He made his way over to the now empty vase stand and picked up a lace doily. He wiped the dark red from his knife before shoving it back into his pocket and threw the bloodied scrap of lace at Tretch’s feet.
Tretch might have been dead, but Bear’s anger was alive and well.
So much so the room was thick with it.
Bear stood there, silently, for what felt like hours. Finally, he looked down to his hands and stepped toward me, bringing his hands up to my face. I covered his hands with mine.
“He could have killed you,” he said, his voice unsteady. His eyes unfocused. I left his hands on my face and reached up for his, rubbing my thumbs over the freckles underneath his deep blue eyes.
“He didn’t,” I said, my voice sounding more like normal, the pain in my neck subsiding to a dull ache.
“Ti, he tried—” he started again, but I wouldn’t let him go there. I couldn’t.
“But he didn’t,” I repeated. “He didn’t.” I locked my hands around his neck. I stood on my tiptoes and planted a small kiss to the corner of his mouth. His beard tickled my lips.
Bear’s eyes locked onto mine and turned darker than I’d ever seen them. He was searching my face. Searching my soul, but I had no clue what it was he was looking for. He craned his neck down and pressed a tender kiss against the swollen and injured flesh on my neck.
Suddenly the air shifted and it was no longer thick with anger, but something else entirely.
Something even more powerful.
Lust. Need.
Bear’s chest was damp with sweat. He smelled like pure man and looked like pure muscle. Every bit of him invaded my senses.
Bear forced me backwards onto the mattress. Our lips connected but only for a brief second. He lifted me up by my waist and tossed me further back onto the bed.
The thrumming of my erratically beating heart and the sounds of us coming together filled the silent space. The creak of the bed springs. The smack of our lips. His boots falling to the ground.
His zipper.
Bear grabbed onto the waistband of my shorts, yanking them down to my feet, tossing them over Tretch’s body, which laid across the open doorway. He pulled off my panties with one hand and crawled on top of me, pushing his jeans down over his ass until I could feel him. Large, hot, hard, pressed right up against my core. I closed my eyes and moaned, the contact too much and yet nowhere near enough.
I needed more.
So much more.
I reached for the hem of my shirt and Bear lifted up off of me, just enough to allow me to pull it off and chuck it to the side.
Then we were skin to skin.
My softness against his hardness.
Tortured soul against tortured soul.
The feeling of him between my legs, his weight on top of me, the need for him to be inside of me had me shamelessly spreading my legs as wide as they could go, inviting him into the place I needed him most.
Bear kissed the spot where my neck met my shoulder, over the bite mark he’d made the night before and I saw stars. Maybe I was dying again. Except this was a death I wouldn’t fight. This was a death I’d go to gladly.
Bear’s tongue licking behind my ear, sucking at my skin, kissing, teasing. His hands kneading my breasts and pinching my nipples. I grabbed on to the globes of his glorious ass, pressing him in closer, needing him to close the torturous gap between us.
“You were made for me,” Bear said before his lips met mine, and I was lost in the sensation of his tongue dancing with mine. Tangling with one another.
He groaned and I lifted my hips, again searching for more.
Begging.
A few minutes earlier I’d thought I was dead, and now I’d never felt so alive.
Bear rocked against me, running his hard length through my wetness, and I relentlessly ground against him like I couldn’t get enough.
Because I couldn’t.
I didn’t want to.
Not then.
Not ever.
I didn’t care about the corpse in the corner or the blood on the floor. Both old and new.
All I cared about was Bear.
He reached between us and ran his fingers over my clit. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t even that nice. He was downright rude to it. Pushing hard and circling it like he was punishing it. Punishing me.
“You want me, baby?” he asked, pulling back and searching my eyes. “You want this?”
I reached out and brushed away the hair that had fallen into his face. I knew he wasn’t just asking if I wanted his cock, he was asking if I wanted this life.