Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 101398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
“What the hell is your problem?” Norah yells from the passenger’s side of my truck, and I groan.
“Good grief, you’re like mold, you know that? I can’t seem to get rid of you.”
“God, you are so infuriating!” She slaps her palms against the sides of her thighs. “When I realized I bought your groceries, I stayed in an effort to mend fences. I thought you might need them, but maybe I’ll just egg your truck instead!”
“You do that, and you’re going to find yourself in a whole shitload of trouble, sweetheart,” I growl, rounding the truck to snag the bag from her before she can follow through.
I grab at the plastic, and she pulls it back, devolving us into a ridiculous game of grocery bag tug-of-war. When I inevitably win, her fists ball up at her sides in anger, and then suddenly, without any warning, the flat of her palm lands on my cheek in a cracking blow.
When she lifts her hand again, clearly ready to give me another strike, I step forward to grab her by the arms, to calm her down and stop my racing heart while I’m at it, but for some dumb, inconceivable reason, my lips end up on hers.
I kiss her. And she kisses me right back.
I take and taste and delve my tongue along the side of hers, and she lets out a needy little gasp into my open mouth. I slide my hands into the soft waves of her hair, and the movement presses our bodies tight against each other. I’m breathing heavily and so is she, and I’m no more than two point five seconds away from ripping our clothes off and pushing our bodies together in a way I know we would fit.
Call it intuition from years of stupidity, but this is the kind of passion I fucking know would translate into the bedroom.
It takes every ounce of control I have left, but so did starting my life over… I can do this.
I set her away punitively, as though she’s the one to blame, even though we both know that’s not the case.
But my eyes home in on her mouth. It’s pink and swollen from the kiss, and I witness her top teeth dig into the plush flesh of her bottom lip.
Her brown eyes are huge as they stare up and into mine. Big and beautiful and fucking tempting me to make them fall closed again.
I want to hear the way her breath escapes her lungs on a needy gasp again. I want to feel the way her lips meld perfectly to mine. I want to dive my tongue back into her mouth and taste her.
I want to feel all of her perfect curves with my big hands.
I want to know what Norah Ellis looks like when she really comes undone. I want to know what she feels like, sounds like, when she’s too busy chasing her pleasure to run that rambling little mouth of hers.
Fuck.
It takes everything inside me not to kiss her again.
“Get out of here, Norah.” My words come out like a harsh demand, but deep down, I’m begging her to get the hell out of here so I don’t lose control.
“Bennett—”
“Leave,” I snap, effectively sending her away to her pile of bagged milk and down the sidewalk in a hurry.
A stupid kiss and even stupider reaction.
I guess, no matter how hard I try, I’m never going to grow out of being a dumbass.
Tuesday, August 10th
Norah
For three days, I’ve thought of nothing but the kiss.
The way it felt, the way I gave in to it so quickly despite my very complicated life, the way it ended—and how every part of all three of those is a recipe for devastation.
I don’t need some macho, grumpy man who hates me riling me up and stealing kisses in parking lots. I don’t need to throw my life into another man and another disaster when I’ve not fully escaped the last. I don’t need to be feeling the things I’m feeling or wondering how to decode Bennett Bishop’s mystery.
I need to focus on me. I need a job. I need a purpose. And I need all those things pronto.
As such, begging Josie to have the morning off today so I could pursue other employment seemed like the most logical choice, and now, as I drive toward a random address outside of town in Josie’s old Civic I got started by some miracle, I’m starting to feel like I can breathe.
An artist’s assistant.
It’s the perfect outlet for my creativity and design, and much better than bagging groceries at Earl’s or shearing sheep for the supposedly hot Farmer Tad, as Josie refers to him, or even breaking all of my sister’s hard-earned equipment at CAFFEINE.
And I think Josie is coming to that realization too. The gusto she used to agree to my morning off to job hunt—even though she had a meeting with Eileen Martin scheduled about running coupons in the paper that meant she wouldn’t be working either—proves it.