Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
My gaze was riveted on him as he rose, and I saw the wet spot on the front of his board shorts. He’d come giving me a blowjob. I was undone.
He collapsed into my open arms, and when his lips met mine, I tasted myself on his tongue. I held him close to my heart and kissed him breathless.
“You’re not going to get out of talking to me just because you sexed me up,” Owen murmured into my skin, licking the side of my neck before gently taking a bite.
“I feel like you want to eat me,” I croaked out, not used to speaking so freely with a lover. This was all new for me.
“That’s because I’ve wanted to put my hands and mouth all over you since I moved in,” he confessed. “The first morning I was there, you came out in sleep shorts and a T-shirt, barely awake, hair standing up, squinting at me—and I could scarcely breathe.”
But he was the beautiful one, with his gold skin and the dusting of freckles across his nose, the full, plump lips and smiling eyes. Just looking at him rendered me mute.
“You touch me all the time, Jared. Do you know you do that?”
I shook my head.
“Well, you do,” he groaned, sounding like he was in agony. “You hug me and pat my back and bump me, but sometimes, in the summer, when you fall asleep on the couch and it gets cold in the house at night with the AC on, you shove your feet under my thigh.”
The bemused look on his face made me smile.
“And I don’t move because I love that so much,” he admitted. “I don’t want you to wake up, so I sit there, even if I get cold, because that’s how I want it to be all the time.”
I nodded.
“You know,” he said, smiling, “after watching as much porn as I do—”
“Oh God,” I muttered. Only Owen switched subjects at the drop of a hat.
He chuckled. “I now realize that I really want to come on you and mark my territory so that any other man would think, He’s covered in jizz under that shirt. I bet he belongs to someone.”
“You’re horrible.”
He cackled, but it was muffled in the side of my neck.
“You’re a mess.”
Owen lifted his head and looked at me. “I want to make a mess all over you. You have no idea how long I’ve waited to be inside you. Please let me. Please just know I’m the best person for you.”
“I—”
“We will get married and live happily ever after.”
I took a breath. “Owen, honey, don’t you want to find a man to grow with and then grow old with? Don’t you want someone you can have kids with or—”
“I’m going to grow old with you,” he said, pressing kisses to the side of my neck. “And isn’t that my choice?”
“Don’t I have a say?”
“You have a say if you want me or not, but you don’t get to do my thinking for me or do what you believe is best for me based on some antiquated ideas about love and sex and marriage.” He thought a moment, looking away and then back into my face. “Not wanting me is one thing. Not wanting me because you don’t think I know what I want in my own heart, that’s another thing altogether.”
“I—”
“I’m a man, just like you.”
“You deserve to have everything.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” I was adamant.
“Then give me everything I’ve ever wanted,” he whispered in my ear. “Give me you.”
FIFTEEN
Owen was asleep in my bed. I’d left him there, after moving him up to the pillows, and he was still passed out hours later. He’d been through a lot. He needed the rest.
Dante was by the pool, his feet in the water, and I sat beside him. As usual, I didn’t have to say anything, and we sat in comfortable silence for a while.
Eventually, I asked him, “What made you think this had something to do with Ronan?”
“What else could it be? Ronan was involved with the triads, and you and I both know they use brutal methods and seek unconditional retribution against any enemy and their entire family. Owen’s parents were murdered for crossing them. The last stroke of cruelty was selling Owen to the Macau sex trade.”
I nodded.
“You did things to get Owen back that I know you’d do again, but the fact of the matter is, dealing with the fallout of Ronan’s clusterfuck comprises the entirety of your dealings in Asia.”
“True.”
“If you think about it, this whole thing, looking for Owen, you were basically put through the same exercise again, of searching for him. Fortunately, this time it only took days to find him, not months.”
Hearing the truth was made easier because of Dante’s voice. It was one of the most alluring things about him, sultry and silvery, one you remembered.