Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Let me tell you something. I wouldn’t ever forget that moment for the rest of my life.
It was by far the best and most beautiful thing I’d ever experienced in my life.
It was better than graduating culinary school. It was better than getting my first apartment. It was better than being warm.
It was… everything.
When we were done, and I lay repleted on the bed with my arms up over my head, and Jeremiah’s dick still inside me, I said the words.
“I love you, too.”
It was sudden.
It was stupid.
It was going to break me.
But I was going to let the man know how I felt.
I was going to push through those barriers and hang on for dear life.
“Knew you did,” he grumbled, pulling my body with his as he fell to his side.
His cock dislodged from my pussy, and I felt the wet rush of his release start to trickle out onto my thigh. Yet neither one of us moved.
We basked in the feeling that, for a short amount of time, everything was right in our world.
At least until the incessant knocking sounded, along with an amused male voice saying, “The sausages are ready!”
“Who is that?” I snickered, burying my face in between Jeremiah’s pecs.
“Shine.” Jeremiah had zero hesitation in his voice. “I think he makes it his life’s mission to make my life as annoying and unruly as possible.”
I smiled. “Sometimes you need shaken up, Jeremiah. You sound like an old, grouchy man set in his ways.”
“I am old,” he disagreed. “And I am grouchy. Also, I’m most certainly set in my ways.”
I rolled out of his arms and headed to the bathroom to clean up, then started getting dressed.
He watched me with lazy amusement.
“Where ya goin’?” he asked curiously.
I gestured toward the door. “Where the sausages are.”
He sighed and got up, but I didn’t wait for him to go outside.
I went by myself, surprised to find a small army assembled practically right outside our door.
“We moved everything to you,” Easton said as he looked up from where he was sitting on my porch with a computer. “That way, you’d have to come outside eventually.”
I smiled at him, but it was lost on him, seeing as he was already back to doing whatever he was working on.
Jeremiah slipped outside just as I was making my way down the porch steps.
My eyes automatically started to take everyone in, and I wondered what in the hell they put in the water here.
Jeremiah was big, just like all of his nephews.
Even though a few of them appeared to be the same age as Jeremiah himself.
Some ‘uncle.’
Jeremiah caught my hand and started leading me toward the large gathering.
I met everyone then.
I met Shine’s wife, Iris.
I met Price’s wife, Sabrina. Haggard’s wife, Sofia. And Sofia’s best friend, Clem. Who also happened to have been Haggard’s daughter. I met Tide’s (or Rook as Cannel called him) Coreline and Easton’s Banger—god, I just loved that name. I met Cannel’s husband, Will. And Jeremiah’s brother, who was so much older than him, Derringer. And Derringer’s wife, Reedy. Who was the mother of Haggard and the whole bunch, minus Easton. Though, she claimed Easton all the same.
And every last one of them welcomed me with open arms.
It was the oddest experience.
The only couple that was missing was Bram and Dory.
“Where’s Dory?” I asked curiously. “She’s not on the welcome committee?”
I hadn’t focused on anyone in particular. But my gaze snagged on Haggard’s face when he heard me mention her name.
“Dory isn’t around anymore,” Haggard mentioned.
That surprised me so much that I couldn’t stop the way my eyebrows went up to my hairline.
“Really?” I asked in surprise. “That’s odd, since I just saw them together at the shop last week. And I have a coffee appointment with her tomorrow.” I paused and looked at Jeremiah. “Am I still allowed to go with her to that?”
Please say yes. Please say yes.
I hadn’t really gotten an updated version on what had happened.
Seconds after the near miss, and the subsequent sequestering in his office, as well as the questioning, we’d come straight here. I’d then been deposited into the cabin by Cannel, while Jeremiah had stayed behind to talk to the Battle Crows.
I was out of the loop.
“Umm.” He hesitated. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Shoot.
“I’ll go.” Sofia lifted her hand. “And all of us will go, too. Banger’s a beast with her baseball bat. We’ll totally be okay.” She hesitated. “And you just said that you didn’t think that Gracie here is the target. We can totally watch out for her, though.”
I loved that Sofia wanted to go but I said no, anyway.
“I’m sorry, but though I really like y’all, I have a feeling that might overwhelm Dory. Especially since…” I nearly stumbled there, letting her family know that she was pregnant with Bram’s child. “Since everything that’s going on with her and Bram. I got the feeling that she thought y’all didn’t like her. She might not want to go if she knew y’all would be there…”