Total pages in book: 199
Estimated words: 200280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1001(@200wpm)___ 801(@250wpm)___ 668(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1001(@200wpm)___ 801(@250wpm)___ 668(@300wpm)
“You’re such a —”
“Not until you calm down.”
I don’t.
I fight him harder, kicking at his thighs with my heels, rolling my hips. “Fuck your calm down. Fuck you. Fuck —”
“Jesus Christ,” he snaps. “Calm the fuck down or you’ll hurt yourself.”
I open my mouth to tell him that he’ll be the one ending up hurt at the end of this when his torso slams down so hard on me that I lose my breath. Making me think that up until now he wasn’t really trying to subdue me. He wasn’t really trying to pin me under him like the firefly I am.
But he is now.
And I have no choice but to lay still under him.
Still and panting and hating.
When he knows he has me under his control, he loosens his grip from around my wrists. Not enough for me to be able to do something about it but still loose enough that he isn’t cutting off my blood supply.
He’s panting too.
But I think it’s more because of the agitation, the absolute concern that I see on his face.
“Are you insane?” he asks, his voice rough and raspy.
“No, you are. If you think you can keep me here.”
“Are you fucking insane?” His face drops closer to mine, his voice rough but now rising in volume.
I get up in his face too. “Let me go.”
He narrows his eyes. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
“Where do you think, asshole?” I buck my hips again, or rather try to but of course get nowhere. “Away from you.”
“Did you, for one second,” he goes on, slowly, kinda menacingly, “stop to think how dangerous it is to be out in the woods in the middle of the night?”
“No.” I clench my teeth and fist my fingers. “Because I’m willing to take my chances out here rather than be in there with you.”
A muscle jumps in his cheek. Jumps and jumps and he gets so close to me that the tip of our noses brush against each other with every breath we take.
“Especially,” he rumbles roughly, “when you could be pregnant.”
I swallow.
And suck in my belly. Because I feel a twinge, a tug in my womb.
But more than that I swear he can feel it.
He can feel that pull in my belly because in response, he presses back with his stomach.
“Especially when you could’ve gotten hurt out here.” Then, “You and her.”
I swallow again.
I also steel myself against him, against his concern, his very obvious distress that I’ve been ignoring ever since I got a glimpse of his face.
It’s becoming harder though.
Much harder as the seconds pass and as I wonder if what he’s saying could be true.
What if she is in there and all this running and stumbling has hurt her?
I know all of this is irrational and crazy and just a figment of our imaginations. I read online that it could take up to five to fifteen days for the implantation to occur or whatever it’s called but… But just the idea of hurting her is abhorrent to me. Just the idea that maybe she’s trying to work her way to us inside of me right this second makes me want to kick myself for being so reckless.
“N-nothing has happened to her,” I tell him.
He clenches his jaw. “You don’t know that.”
“Well, you don’t know if I’m pregnant yet.”
“You fucking could be.”
“I’m not,” I insist, even though I’d like nothing more. And just because I’d like nothing more, I add, “And I hope I’m not. Not with y-your baby.”
A sting pierces my heart.
And it’s so vicious that I flinch.
He flinches too I think.
But I can’t be sure.
“Don’t you fucking understand?” he says then, his voice sounding even rougher than before.
More sanded down, more guttural.
“Understand what?”
“You could’ve…”
“I could’ve what?”
He doesn’t reply right away.
First, he swallows. Thickly and jerkily.
Then, his eyes rove over my features, my throat, down to my chest, and I think it’s not without purpose. I think he’s trying to check me out, determine whether I’m okay or not.
“When I woke up and didn’t find you in the bed, I thought…” Another jerky, awkward swallow. “I thought I’d never see you again. I thought I’d… I thought you ran away and something happened to you. Something… bad. Something awful. These woods, they’re not… You can’t wander through them if you have no idea where you’re going. You can’t…” Then, with his fingers squeezing my wrists, “You were about to fall.”
“I was fine,” I tell him, struck by how he’s stumbling and tripping over his words.
He mashes his teeth before he attempts to speak again. “You could’ve… You could’ve twisted your ankle. You could’ve broken your leg, hit your head on the ground. You could’ve been…” He clenches his jaw again. “Bleeding. In pain, and it could’ve taken hours for me to find you. Hours for me to get to you and come to your rescue and if something had happened during that time. If something —”