Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
But it wasn’t just that. She’d felt simmering attraction to this man since she first laid eyes on him, but she’d desperately tried to hold that back. His supportive words, his touch—the way he was looking at her—was crumbling her resistance. And once it started crumbling, it crumbled fast.
When she gripped his hand back, his eyes moved to their fingers, laced together. She saw his nostrils flare very slightly, and a muscle jumped in the corner of his eye. She became very aware of him, too, the air between them charging. Electricity sparked in her stomach, but it wasn’t at all unpleasant—not like the buzz of anxiety she was so used to feeling. Ambrose Mars made her feel alive, energized, but in a way she loved and hadn’t felt in so, so long. She leaned over, and she brought her mouth to his. He froze, obviously surprised, and she moved closer, bringing his hand inside her robe and covering her breast with it. She pressed her palm over the top of his, and he moaned, seeming to break out of the momentary shock he’d been in, using his other hand on the back of her neck to tilt her head so he could kiss her in earnest.
Without breaking their kiss, she climbed on top, straddling him, her blood heating when she felt the hard evidence of his arousal between her thighs. God, he tasted good, and he felt good too. Sleek and solid. Their kiss deepened, and he made that sexy sound of desperation in the back of his throat again. It sounded raw and primal, and it drove her higher, her pulse pumping blood to her core, nipples tingling. Life. This was life. Not death. The opposite of the thing she was trying to shrug off from today, to deny, to turn away from.
He flipped her off him, onto her back on the couch, and she bounced slightly and laughed. And then he was over her, claiming her mouth again, pressing his groin into her and grinding slightly. “Is this okay?” he asked, holding his weight off her. And that’s when she realized that he’d thought about the fact that he was putting her in the same position she’d been in today when she was victimized, and he didn’t want her to be reminded of it in any way. But she hadn’t thought about that, and the realization brought a surge of relief.
“It’s better than okay,” she said. She’d needed this. She hadn’t realized how much. She pulled him back toward her so he was once again pressing right where she needed him. Tingles of pleasure radiated from the place where he pressed, and she gasped and broke from his mouth, tipping her head back so he could kiss her throat.
He brought his mouth to her skin, dragging his warm lips down her bruised neck, feathering them over her wounded skin and then kissing the hollow at the base of her throat as he ground into her again. Everything drifted away, and she realized what a weight she’d felt hanging over her—not just today, but for such a long time. She suddenly felt unencumbered. Free.
Kissing him like this on her couch reminded her of those teenage make-out sessions, but ten times better. All lips and tongues and still-clothed pressing bodies, hormones rushing crazily. She felt dizzy with lust. She’d forgotten the joy there was to be found in sex, the way it made everything brighter and hotter. She’d needed this. God, she’d needed this.
But she also needed more. And she wasn’t a teenager anymore. There were no limits, no boundaries. She was a fully grown woman, and she could have sex with this man on her couch if she wanted to. It’d been years since she’d been with a man. Years! It made her want to laugh.
She wrapped her legs around his circling hips, tilting upward as her robe fell open, and she felt the cool air of the room on her naked breasts. Ambrose exhaled against her skin, lifting his head as he met her eyes. Oh. She blinked, momentarily stunned by his beauty: not only his face and his features, but the way those bedroom eyes looked when they were filled with lust. There was something else there, too, however. A vulnerability. A tentative joy that she’d never once seen on any man’s face, ever. She felt inexplicably awed by it, even as she couldn’t explain why or how or even who. Was it she who’d put that look in his eyes?
He exhaled, leaning back, his gaze moving from her face down to her breasts. She was glad to let him look, wanting a few moments to study him, too, to soak in that expression in his eyes that made her feel both honored and confused and slightly overwhelmed.