Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Though I had maybe told him one or two small things.
Like I'd told him I had punctured a lung once. But I hadn't given the details of how.
I'd told him that I had made a sort-of friend along the way. But didn't give names.
The fewer people who knew about what I was up to in my private time, the better.
I knew that.
But, somehow, there was no denying that it felt incredibly wrong not to tell him.
I wondered if I would feel the same with my family.
Or if there was simply something special here. Something leftover from how things had been in the past, full of possibilities we'd never had a chance to explore.
"I can't breathe," I admitted.
It was amazing how much emotional turmoil could have the exact same sensation of a collapsed freaking lung.
My chest was tight, my head fuzzy.
"They love you. And they have been waiting for this day for almost nine years."
"That's not a lot of pressure or anything," I grumbled, turning away, pacing the kitchen.
"No pressure."
"Easy for you to say. They aren't going to be disappointed in how you turned out," I reminded him as I placed my hands on the counter, head ducking down.
A snort sounded from behind me. Close. Very close. So close that I could feel the air on the back of my neck.
"You forget who my parents are? How disappointed they are in me?" he asked, and I could feel his body behind me.
"We're both just a couple of fuck-ups, aren't we?" I asked, turning, feeling my shoulder brush his arm.
"Guess you can say that," he agreed, arms moving forward, grabbing the counter on either side of my body, trapping me. Making that breathing thing I had been struggling with a moment ago a complete and utter impossibility.
In the past, attraction had always been centrally located in one region of my anatomy. It was a tingle and an ache.
It never went beyond that.
I didn't get breathless. My nerves didn't jumble. I damn sure never got butterflies.
Yet there I was, heart pounding, belly fluttering, chest tight, shivers coursing over my skin.
Just because of proximity.
His brilliant gaze held mine.
And all ideas of this being a big mistake, my possible undoing, disappeared.
My arms rose, a hand going behind his neck, pulling down, the other resting on his cheek, then sealing my lips over his.
There was a short moment of stunned non-reaction before his lips came alive under mine, before his arms curled around my lower back, crushing, pulling me off my feet as his lips got harder, hungrier, stripping away any ideas of not going down this route with him.
And, what's more, stripping away the shields I had worked so damn hard to build, to keep in front of me.
And what's most—I didn't even care. I welcomed the decimation.
Because that wreckage allowed warmth to flood my system, something starting at the base of my spine and spreading outward until it overtook me completely, until it chased away all the cold, until I was sure I would never be able to exist without it again.
Vance's hands slid down, sinking into my ass, yanking me up and off my feet, dropping me down on the counter. Then he was moving between my welcoming legs, everything in me honed in on his closeness, the need emanating from him as strongly as it was assaulting my system.
My legs angled up, slid over the sides of his hips, curled around his lower back, pulling him closer, eliminating any space between us, making his hardness press up against my need, something that made a shiver course through my body, making my hips do a shimmy, creating the friction I was dying for.
Vance's hands went to either side of my face, keeping me captive.
The very idea, just a few days before, would have sent panic coursing through me, would have made me fight to get away, to take back control.
In the moment, though, I wanted to be guided, I wanted him to own my body and soul. I wanted fulfillment to a wish I made something like twelve years before.
To touch him.
To be touched by him.
It was everything I had imagined.
More.
Better.
Maybe made especially so by the distance, by the changes life had thrown our way.
His body curved over mine, arching me back, letting me angle my hips just right to grind against his cock, to feel the pressure build, an acute, nearly painful sensation that promised completion like I had maybe never known before.
His hips shifted, pressed, pushed against me. More pressure. More need.
One arm released me, sliding down my side, teasing over the side of my breast, the slope of my waist, the subtle flare of my hip, down the side of my thigh, then around the knee, curving inward. Moving up.
Up.
My lips broke from his as his fingers pressed in at the juncture of my thigh, a surprised whimper escaping me, making his gaze find mine, eyes heavy-lidded, hungry.