Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 136559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 683(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 683(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
Her hand slides against my chest, right over my heart. I don’t know if it’s intentional—where she lays her palm—but it doesn’t matter. It makes that organ in my chest slam hard just the same, especially when she says, “Time doesn’t work the same way when you can’t stop thinking about someone.”
And now my heart is beating outside my chest. It’s beating so damn loud she’s got to be able to hear it. I want her so much. I need her so completely it’s terrifying and wonderful at the same time. A part of me wants to tell her, to blurt out you’re the one, but no way am I scaring her off before we figure out what this is.
Before I know if we’re both this caught up in each other.
I force myself to focus on the physical, and that’s not hard at all. I glance down at her shirt, my restraint hanging by a thread. I want her stripped bare. I want to take her apart, fuck her, make love to her, have her in every way. But I need to know—even in spite of her you’d look good in me remark—that we’re on the same page.
“Tell me I can take all your clothes off,” I say, my voice rough, my hands playing with the button on her jeans. “Tell me I can eat you. Tell me I can fuck you till you’re begging for more orgasms.”
She blinks, then shudders. “I would think you already know my opinion on that.”
“Tell me this one. Tell me now.”
My hand is restless at her waist, barely holding back.
She slides her fingers into my hair, her touch grounding and electrifying all at once. “I want all of you. I can’t keep fighting this, Miles,” she says.
And dear god, those are the greatest words any woman has ever said to any man. “Don’t fight it. Let’s fuck instead.”
She ropes her arms around my neck, and I scoop her up and carry her up the stairs to my bedroom.
But it smells like her, and it somehow, incomprehensibly, already feels like ours.
What a heady thought.
What a fantastic thought.
I set her down on the bed. Every instinct in me screams to tug off her black shirt, to peel away those jeans, but I force myself to slow down. I run the backs of my knuckles down her cheek. “Tell me what you need and don’t need from me,” I say.
But she’s already lifting a hand toward her right ear. “I’m taking them out,” she says wryly. “I don’t want to lose one—or both—when you fuck me into next year.”
My heart hammers so hard it hurts. I’m falling deep for her. The fact that she can make that joke right now—that she can let me see this unguarded side of her and still laugh—does it for me.
She rises from the bed, moving toward the bathroom with that confident sway I can’t look away from. At the doorway, she pauses, glancing back over her shoulder. “Maybe I was presumptuous,” she says, holding up a small case. “I packed my bag, but I left this behind.”
“You should be presumptuous with me,” I reply.
Her lips curve into a small smile before she steps into the bathroom and clicks open the case.
When she returns, her hearing aids tucked safely into their charger, she places a hand over my chest. “I can hear you,” she says, looking up at me, her gaze clear and steady. “You don’t have to yell or over-enunciate. But just know, if you murmur, I’m probably not going to catch it.”
I laugh softly, the sound catching in my throat as my laugh burns off, replaced by something raw, tinged with need. “I don’t think I could be quiet with you even if I tried.”
“Don’t be then,” she says.
“I won’t,” I say, as my fingers find the loose strands of hair curled behind her ear. I tuck it back gently, my fingertips grazing the shell of her ear for the first time.
It’s such a privilege to touch her like this.
Her breath halts and when she looks up at me, the softness in her eyes steals the air from my lungs. This moment isn’t lost on me. She’s letting me in. She’s trusting me when she’s at her most vulnerable. I swear to myself I won’t let her regret it.
First, though, I let go of her, take off my glasses, and set them on the nightstand. Then I grab her and haul her close, running my hands through her hair at last. “Fuck, this feels so good,” I rasp out, grateful to have free rein in these gorgeous locks.
She leans her head back, savoring my touch. “It does.”
I kiss her throat again then up her neck, then I nip her earlobe.
She gasps, melting into me. I kiss along her ear, flicking my tongue across the flower studs she wears every day. Every damn day. I’ve known this, but I haven’t entirely felt the magnitude of it till now. “I fucking love that you wear these all the time,” I say, then pull back to look at her.