Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Because as long as I’m with Grant, nothing bad will happen.
Nothing else can hurt us besides my own desperate mistakes.
9
ONE AND DONE (GRANT)
This is new.
Waking up with warm flesh curled against me, tucked so close in this lush weight at my side.
What the hell?
I know it’s her before I even open my eyes.
I know Ophelia’s scent.
I know her feel.
I know how she takes up space with just her presence. This aura surrounds her until even when we’re not touching, it’s like I feel her with every tortured inch of my body.
Worse, I now know how she tastes when I damn well shouldn’t.
The only question left is why she felt the need to crawl into bed with a desperate, chaotic fuck who can’t keep his lips to himself.
I blink my eyes open slowly, lifting my head and trying not to jostle her as I glance down at her.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have dozed like the dead while I was waiting for her to finish putting Nell to bed.
The fact that I’m buried under multiple blankets with no recollection of piling them on?
That brings back memories from half a lifetime ago.
She always thought I was asleep during those calm nights ages ago when she’d creep up on me and fix the covers over me after I’d kicked them around in a mess.
Every time, I felt her cover me.
I knew.
I just kept stock-still so she wouldn’t run or die of embarrassment.
Same way I hold still now, letting myself take her in.
She forms this compact bundle like a house cat, small and soft against my side.
Considering how we come at each other with our teeth bared so often, it warms something inside me to know she trusted me enough to settle in this close.
Especially after how awkward last night got—how reckless I made it.
Still can’t believe she just kissed me out of the blue like that.
Still can’t believe I kissed her.
I’m dumbfounded that I gave it back, stoking the messy brushfire she started into a proper fucking inferno.
Not that I’m complaining.
I just feel oblivious when she’s been trying to tell me something since we were kids, waving flags in front of my face, but I’m too damned dumb to read the signals. Or maybe I didn’t want to.
Of course, Nelly-girl had to go and open her little mouth about the lady.
Fuck.
I don’t know if I want to hug the kid or ground her until she’s twenty.
I let my gaze drift over the morning light turning Ophelia’s hair into white gold, pouring an amber glaze over her skin.
For a Florida girl, she’s just a hint brown, her summer tan fading fast.
She’s still wearing her t-shirt and jeans, but the oversized shirt has fallen off one shoulder in her sleep, baring smooth, curving flesh.
A pale-blue bra strap begs me to tear it away with my teeth, all so I can kiss the crest of her collarbone.
Her body heat soaks into me everywhere we press together.
I feel like a wild animal sunning itself on a hot day, content and relaxed aside from the need building in my blood.
I don’t understand.
Ophelia should’ve hated me all these years after how we left off.
No, I don’t just mean the shit I said to her then, pushing her away.
It wasn’t just Ethan’s disappearance that forged a rift between us. It was more, somewhere around the time when she stopped being the kid and started turning into a girl.
Maybe when I started seeing her, little hints of a ripening woman.
Suddenly, I was speaking Martian and she was speaking Venusian.
We couldn’t agree on anything.
I start to pry myself free as my stomach growls, thinking about coffee and a cold shower to blunt the hard-on from hell I can’t do shit about.
It’d be nice to surprise her with some breakfast—but the moment I move, she stirs.
Her eyes blink open and she yawns.
For a moment, that glimmering green gaze is lost, drowsy, unfocused—before clarity sharpens her vision.
She goes tense, tilting her head back with her cheek rubbing sweetly against my arm, peering up at me through long, pretty lashes I can’t keep my eyes off of.
“Oh,” she says uncertainly. Sleep gives her voice a husky burr. “Hi.”
“Mornin’,” I answer, arching a brow.
She smiles back sheepishly.
“Um, I meant to wake up before you.”
“And sneak off leaving me none the wiser, huh?”
“Yeah. Kinda the plan,” she admits, shifting to sit up with the blankets wrapped around us both, tumbling down to her waist. With another loud yawn, she rubs at her eye and glances at the clock over the mantel. “Ick. Way too early.”
“Not used to waking up before noon?”
She wrinkles her nose. “No, if I’m being honest. I usually pulled overnight shifts where I’d sleep in past noon.”
“They must be missing you. Your work, I mean.”
“Not really,” she answers wryly. “They fired me right before I got the bad news about Mom. Budget cuts, you know. Half the staff got dropped like hot potatoes, but I guess the timing couldn’t be better.”