Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 125465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
And her smell, dear god, hits me all at once, rolling through me like the thunder now rolling overhead, so loud and strong, it causes the earth to shake beneath my boots.
Or that could be me.
It could be the force of finally placing my hands upon her while pressing my body to hers that has me feeling as though the earth itself shakes.
After so much waiting and wanting, sometimes barely existing from one second to the next, here she is. It had to be tonight. I couldn’t wait another day. Not when she’ll be leaving soon, away from me to the one place I can no longer venture. The one place I will never be able to follow her as I’ve been all this time. Here we are. Just as I imagined.
Except for one small, inconvenient point—she’s not playing along. She might want to melt against me—she came close—but she’s fighting it. Fighting her instinctive impulse to give herself to me once again.
She’s fighting me. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
“Fucking stop,” I grunt close to her ear, though I doubt she hears me.
Not when she’s jerking her shoulders back and forth, trying her best to swing her fists, even though I’ve pinned her arms against her body, holding her in place. She may as well try to hit one of the trees surrounding us for all the good it does.
She draws as deep a breath as she can, the steel bands of my arms restricting her, and I realize almost too late what she’s going to do. My reflexes are as sharp as they ever were. Even so, I barely have time to clamp a hand over her mouth before she lets out a harrowing scream.
I’m grateful to the heavy rain now pelting us like bullets, big, fat, and heavy, and along with it, a clap of thunder that would have drowned her out anyway. There’s no way anyone inside can hear her—I could march a band through this garden, and there’s a chance no one would notice.
Mother Nature herself is on my side. The rain will wash away my footprints and the tracks from my tires. I couldn’t have chosen a better night, though there was no choice in the matter. It was now or never.
Everything is on our side, down to the neglected gate embedded in the garden wall. It’s covered in vines that have grown thick and healthy for years, camouflaging the gate until it blends into the vine-covered stone to either side. Somebody might have known it was there at one time, but it’s been forgotten for years, and the rusted lock was easy enough to pick.
Sometimes, I wonder if Xander is as on top of things as he wants everyone to believe. Sure, he can post guards all around the compound, and they can watch all they want. But when it’s late at night, and their reflexes are a little slow—especially when I haven’t shown so much as a hair on my ass, so they are bound to start questioning whether there’s a chance I’ll show up at all—it takes nothing to sneak up behind a man and knock him unconscious.
It’s all going according to plan.
It confirms what I’ve always known: this is meant to be. She’s meant to be with me and only me. Everything has come together to make this night possible.
She is the only fly in the ointment.
Apparently, she hasn’t gotten the memo as she’s still fighting; her bare feet slide over the wet grass as she struggles to get back to the patio, knocking me off balance. My boots make deep grooves in what’s becoming dangerously slick mud, and it’s all I can do to keep from screaming at her to stop before we both end up face-first in the muck.
Yet that’s precisely where we end up when my balance gives way due to her frantic struggling. Even now, my instinct is to protect her, and I manage to twist to the right and avoid crushing her beneath my body, the two of us landing on our sides. She slides against me and almost gets loose for the briefest instant, but I tighten my grip and roll, pinning her beneath me.
Panic threatens to erase my confidence. Why is she acting this way? Have I been away too long? While it feels like an eternity, she can’t have changed this much. The depth of her love for me can’t have gone shallow. Not my Scarlet.
If she’s angry with me for having seemingly abandoned her all this time, we can work that out. She’ll understand once I have a chance to explain myself.
I just need that chance, and she’s not giving it to me.
I’ve never been one to react well to being misunderstood.
Perhaps that’s why I see red when she somehow manages to drive an elbow into my ribs. I have never had a reaction like this to her, but she’s never driven me to this point, either. Refusing to give in though it’s clear she wanted to at first.