Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 117201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Burgess’s chest rose and fell in a plummet. He ducked beneath the waterfall into the hollow behind it and Tallulah followed, the world turning darker and more muffled in an instant.
“Why?” he said, raggedly, taking her by the meat of her arms, his intensity yawning the pit in her stomach wider. Wider.
Once again, her wounded heart intervened, lassoing the words I love you and dragging them back into her mouth. The disappointment of her not saying those words were a visible blow to him. He closed his eyes and she closed hers, too, even while sliding her arms around his neck, her thighs wrapping tight to his hips, water lapping around them. “Can I show you, instead of tell you?”
“You’re not all here with me, Tallulah.” Their foreheads met, his hands slipping down her wet back to clutch her buttocks and rock her closer, his hips tilting in a way that drew a whimper from her throat. “Please, gorgeous, don’t break me like this.”
“I need you.”
Those three words weren’t fair, because she knew he’d cave.
Knew she could get what she desperately needed—to be connected to him again. It had only been a few hours since he’d started to shift away and her entire being bled as a result. Couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t intimacy be enough for now?
“You need me? Is that all?” Burgess waded out of the water, carrying her into the opening of the cave with his teeth bared against her mouth. “My survival depends on you.”
“I’m giving myself to you,” she whispered, rubbing her bare sex on the ridge inside his shorts, eager to be filled by his strength, his heat and hunger and urgency.
“You’re not giving yourself to me completely. You don’t think I can read you by now?” Even as frustration rippled through that harshly delivered statement, he was reaching down to untie his board shorts. “Fuck it, though, right? We’ll call it a massage.”
“No.” Slowly, she parted his lips with a lap of her tongue, suctioning him gently, before sinking into a long, wet kiss, their tongues meeting and retreating, going deeper, deeper until he was groaning, slapping her sex with the hard inches of his, stroking himself, his fist knocking into her inner thighs as he moved it, fast and rough. “It was making love and we both knew it,” she breathed against his mouth. “Every time we touched, that’s what it was.”
Burgess made a sound, a shiver wracking his big body. His voice was thick with rust when he spoke. “And now?”
“Now I’m scared to trust what I’m feeling.”
“How do I fix it?” he demanded, pressing the head of his arousal inside of her. Thrusting his hips in an upward drive and seating her in one savage move, leaving them both panting against each other’s mouth. “Tell me how to make you love me again,” he rasped, gripping her butt hard and working her up and down the stiff jut of his erection, his breath pelting her lips. “I will never, ever, hurt you again, Tallulah. I’ll jump off a much higher cliff first.”
He didn’t give her a chance to respond, because his mouth found hers and ruined it forever, kissing her with so much passion, tears formed in her eyes and her hips eagerly demanded more, more, bucking in time with the jerks of his hands, his thickness finding the deepest angles of her core, their wet bodies slip-sliding together, their groans steadily growing louder until the waterfall was no longer drowning them out and he had to keep his mouth stamped over Tallulah’s while he fucked her, raw and hard, while her toes dangled somewhere in the vicinity of his bent knees.
“God, Tallulah, baby, I need to come so bad.”
“I want it. Let me have it.” She rained kisses all over his perfect face, her hips hinging up and back, thighs beginning to tremble, along with the rest of her. From the intensity of the act, the riot of emotions breaking free and running like escaped felons inside of her chest. “Don’t keep it from me again, please.”
“I can’t. I’m not strong enough.” His eyes met hers, glazed, his tongue licking the side of her neck in a wonderfully obscene way, before finding her lips and weaponizing himself against them, lapping the inside of her mouth with a growl. “I’m hungry and your body is the only one that feeds me.”
“Devour me, then.” She constricted her inner walls, watching his face transform with the agony of pleasure, her own following suit with great pulses and the locking of muscles, the rocketing of her hips. “I’m going to eat you up, too. You feel that?”
“Feel it?” Burgess’s pumps grew disordered, his breath turning shallow, fingers digging harder into the flesh of her backside. “You smile at me, Tallulah, and I know I’ll feel it for centuries. You have no idea what this does to me. Fucking you. Making love to you. Watching my cock turn your mind blank. No. Idea.” He growled one final word. “Mine.”