Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
“How will I possibly survive without you for fuck knows how long?” Phoebe laments dramatically. “In that case, I might as well just throw myself down the stairs.”
“Yeah?” I skim the length of her.
“All the way down.”
“Let’s see it then,” I challenge.
Phoebe, stubborn as always, isn’t relenting. “Here I go.”
“I’ll help you.” I seize her waist, then push her so she careens forward.
“Rocky!”
I never let go, and I pull her abruptly back into my chest. Her sharp breath is a slight moan as she presses against me. I see her lips crawl into a smile, one she’s trying to hide.
My smile feels less bitter. “Adrenaline junkie,” I tease.
“You are, too,” she snaps back.
I don’t disagree. When she spins around, one stair below mine, her eyes cradle more questions. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Want? No, but I need to be at this party.” I slide her hair tie off her wrist.
“I meant with Varrick. My dad.” She lets me run my fingers through her blue hair, collecting the strands. “You understand what this means?”
“It means I have to make nice with a sick, malignant tumor. What else is new?” I tie her hair into a high pony. “This has been my life since forever.”
“It doesn’t have to be your life forever,” she whispers into the echoey stairwell.
I search her eyes at rapid speed.
Phoebe so rarely talks about weeks from now, let alone a forever from now. I wonder what she wants—if she’s even figured that out when she’s spent so long being told what to do, when to do it, and who to do it with.
I look her over. “You want me to quit grifting with you?”
She shrugs. “I mean, it’s an option.”
Now I’m on unsteady ground. “I love the control,” I remind her. “You can quit, but I can’t. I’m not going to.”
She nods a few times, staring at her feet, then the wall. “Yeah, I get that.”
“I’d believe you more if you weren’t talking to the stairs.”
She glares right at me. “I get it.”
I stare into her, my muscles cramping. We’ve always been the same, me and her, but I can’t forge an identical path to the one she is now. I’ve never imagined a life without deceit, but I also can’t lose her. “This doesn’t change us.”
“You said befriending Trent is testing your limits. I’m just worried about what this might do to you on a visceral level. Varrick isn’t some random tech boy billionaire with sadistic tendencies. What’s new is that he has history with all of us.”
“What’s the alternative?” I ask, my voice flaming like the end of a match. “We hand over the reins to the godmothers? We run from this town? I want to be in the driver’s seat, Phebs. Not our moms. Not my dad. I need to be behind the wheel.”
She crosses her arms, nodding, understanding. “Control freak,” she teases with a slight smile.
“You love this control freak.”
“Barely.”
“Tell me more lies.” I wind her pony around my fist.
She makes a breathy noise and fists my button-down. “Rocky.” It’s a warning as much as a plea. I pull her pony, wrenching her head backward. Her chin up. She tries to look away from me, and I cup her jaw with my other hand. Not letting her move at all.
Her body flushes with aroused heat. Radiating against me. “You like this,” I whisper over her lips.
“No,” she lies, her knees nearly buckling.
When I share her stair, my legs thread through her thighs, and I bear my weight against her, pinning her to the wall with my build. She tries to move forward, but I press harder into Phoebe.
Her breath shortens.
Hot blood drives straight into my cock. “You want me to kiss the fuck out of you?”
“No,” she says, too breathlessly. “I want you”—she licks her lips, stares me down in challenge—“to fuck off.”
“Keep lying,” I whisper-hiss against her ear. “Tell me how you don’t love my cock deep inside your tight cunt. Tell me how you haven’t been thinking about me pounding into you all night.”
“I’ll tell you something,” she contends in a panting breath. “You can’t have me.”
I grip her face tighter. “Bad girl.”
She lets out a strangled whimper, one that morphs into a high-pitched cry when I cage her hands above her head. Stretching her arms high. “Fuck…off.”
“How about I just fuck you instead, little nightmare?”
“No, stop.” She’s out of breath. I skim her features urgently. Her hips arch into me. Okay…she’s fine.
I resist even kissing Phoebe, the strain obliterating me as much as it does her. Tendons shriek in my arms and neck. My cock is yelling at me to ram inside her, but I go nuts inside this overwhelming, mind-altering, unhinged feeling.
“Let me go,” she tries to growl, but it comes out breathy again.
“The biggest lie of all.”
Her lips part into another soft moan. She tries to push against me. I push against her. Her heady, loving gaze clings to mine with hot depth I could burn inside. It’s a blistering tug-of-war with no release. I’m high on the edging as I nip her bottom lip, as she tries to take more while simultaneously yanking her wrists against my hold.