Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 148704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 744(@200wpm)___ 595(@250wpm)___ 496(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 744(@200wpm)___ 595(@250wpm)___ 496(@300wpm)
“Why today, Davis?” Even I can hear the weight of rejection in my tone.
Call me pathetic, but this shit stings. I waited to touch her, to have her. I fucking left her for Christ’s sake, twice, tearing myself in damn two to protect what I hoped we could one day be.
To protect her from the bullshit I was caught up in until shit was normal again.
Legit.
Safe.
Davis smiles, and it’s as tender as they come, as is the touch of her hands when they weave around my waist, her chin lifting to press into my chest.
On instinct, my arms do the same, locking and holding her to me, the need to be near her, to be touching her, deep on a subconscious level.
“Monday was payday for me, but life has been the best kind of busy, so I hadn’t made it down yet, that’s all,” she murmurs. “But this wasn’t a random thought trip. I’ve been waiting for this, I—” She blushes. “I wanted you to be the first person to see it. You and Memphis worked so hard on the truck, I wanted you here for its first time back on the road. It’s what I thought about the day I dropped it off and the first thing I thought of every time I came to make a payment.”
The warmth of her words, the shy, reluctant way she spoke them, thaws the ice in my veins a bit, and as if she senses it, a hopeful glint flits through her brown eyes.
She said I was the first she thought of, the first she wanted to see.
Me, not her brother.
Not her dad.
My forehead falls to hers.
“This past year, while we weren’t speaking, I would come up with conversations in my head on the way home from here,” she shares.
“What kind of conversations?”
“The kind that would convince you to go on a drive with me the day it was ready.”
She doesn’t have to say the in-between; we’re both thinking it.
I would have told her no and she wouldn’t have understood why.
Last year, and the one before, were ten times harder than this one’s been, and this one is no cakewalk, so that’s saying something, but she has no idea the shit I’ve struggled with. Because I didn’t allow her the chance to find out.
She did what I hoped she would and poured all her focus into school, herself and her future. I told myself she wasn’t missing me, that if I crossed her mind at all, it didn’t hurt her the way it did me to miss and think of her, to worry about her or secretly check up on her, like I had so many times.
It doesn’t take a genius to know I was wrong. She wasn’t the only one blind to things around her. Clearly, I was too.
She wanted, maybe even needed, me all along.
“Don’t be mad at me,” she whispers, her eyes closed. “Promise, I’m not giving it to you. It’s too pretty for that now.”
An unexpected chuckle leaves me, and Davis grins, her lids slowly opening.
“You saying I’m not pretty, Sweets?”
“You are so far from pretty, you’re like… Atomic Fireballs hot.”
My head falls back with a laugh, and then I’m pushing forward, her back against the sleek ride, in one swift move.
Davis’s eyes flash wide, desire quick to darken her pupils. “Okay, this is a whole new level of fantasies. I feel like if I knew what I was doing, I’d have dreamed of this when I was young, when I would stick around and wait for you to strip out of your shirt after an hour of being under the hood.”
“You watched me, Sweets?”
“Straight perved. It was all part of my routine.”
“What if I said there were times I watched you, too?”
“I’d say I’m going to need a list. Chronological order, please.”
I grin, and a groan quickly follows.
Fuck, this girl, she kills me.
Her big brown eyes implore mine, but she doesn’t wait, knows she doesn’t have to.
That I’m hers.
She takes what she wants, pressing her lips to mine for what I thought might be a sweet, soft, please forgive me kiss, but that’s not what I get at all.
Davis crashes her mouth to mine, fists my shirt to drag me closer and dives right inside my mouth, hungry for me. Starved to know I’m not angry with her, and, oddly enough, I realize I’m not. Her explanation was sincere, her words far more powerful than she realizes.
The girl has no fucking clue how long I’ve wanted to be the first thing on her mind.
It’s like I told her this morning, I wanted to be the lucky motherfucker who coaxed her eyes open in the morning after satisfying her all night.
In a way, these things mean more than being the first inside her body, though that was a gift I’ll forever feel a need to repay her for. Preferably in bed. Naked.