Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 136743 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136743 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
“Don’t get me wrong. I love sex, and I’m not saying I only ever had it with Tremaine, but I was married to her for over a decade. Before that, it was usually in a committed relationship. It’s… well, I guess it’s a trust thing. Is there anything more intimate? And I don’t trust easily.”
“And you’re saying you trust me?”
“I’m saying,” he replies, dragging his thumb over my ear, down the curve of my jaw, over my lips, “that when I fuck you, it will mean something to me.”
His words are as raw as the need in his voice. The rough edge of it mirrors mine like a shard of glass, slicing through inhibitions and reservations. Through my resolve. It’s been so long since a man looked at me the way Judah does, with blazing interest. With such steady, heated intent. But his touch? It has been centuries since I was touched this way. With tenderness. With barely checked desire. The longer we stand together like this, the harder he becomes. His arousal insists where our bodies touch.
I can’t give him everything, can’t have everything, but maybe tonight I can give him one thing. I can have one thing.
“Kiss me.”
The words bolt from my mouth before I have time to stop or rethink them. He doesn’t hesitate, dragging kisses over my jaw, under my chin, along the curve of my neck. It’s torture the way he explores me with soft presses and tender licks, like he’s sampling me before he takes his first bite. Open-mouthed, he sucks at the tendon running along my throat, and a current runs to my core. The purse drops from my nerveless fingers as his touch cracks me open and strokes the center of my body, lighting me up until I’m like a wax candle burning down to the wick. He’s everywhere but where I need him. I want to taste him too. I fist his shirt and yank him forward until our lips meet. He smiles into the contact.
“Had to make sure you really want it,” he says.
“I do.” I cup his face, bracketing the high cheekbones between trembling hands. “Just one kiss.”
“Then I better make it count.” His hand travels up the center of my body, up my torso between my breasts to grip my jaw. “Open your mouth.”
As soon as I do, he dives in. The seeking, searching kiss goes fathoms deep, and all rational thought flees my mind. Judah is so controlled, so meticulous in all he does, I expected his kiss to be like that. It is instead a force unleashed on me. Wild and sure and ferocious in its hunger, like he’s been starving it in a cage and now… the feast. He presses my lips against my teeth and presses my body into the door. I widen my mouth for the deep stroke of his tongue as he tastes me, takes me. His other hand grips my hip and he pulls me impossibly closer until the fabric, the millimeter separating us, the reasons I shouldn’t do this—they all dissolve and it’s just naked desire writhing into naked desire. It takes flight and catches fire. I know I need to smother this flame, but can’t bring myself to do it.
He dips his head, breaths ragged at my neck. “I don’t want to stop, Sol, but you said one kiss. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
I bury my head against his shoulder, face on fire, lungs burning with labored breaths. I’m not sure I would have stopped if he hadn’t. I think I would have screwed him against this door, fully clothed, panties pushed aside, legs wrapped around him like ivy. Screaming his name while they ate their fondant potatoes up the hall. My knees wobble and my heart slams against my ribs in a frantic fuck-me rhythm. I force myself to pull away, out of his arms. With the cool air of our separation comes a rush of reality. So much for my resolve to not get involved any deeper with this man.
“Thank you,” I tell him, running a hand over my unruly hair. “I probably look a mess.”
He smiles faintly. “You have lipstick everywhere.”
“Shit.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Let me.”
He pushes aside my hand and with gentle fingers wipes around my mouth, his eyes fixed on my lips. Brushing the tousled hair away from my face, he lowers his forehead to mine. Every touch with him feels as intimate as a kiss. Even something as simple as this is charged with potent possibility. This nameless thing I feel when he is near, it lurches in my belly. It brushes across my heart and heats between my legs and rips through my good judgment. With no more than a glance, he can enflame my senses. It frightens me how little command I have of myself when he’s this close. He draws me in, and if I’m not careful, he’ll draw me away from the work I know still needs to be done in my life before I tangle it with someone else’s.