Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 51624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 258(@200wpm)___ 206(@250wpm)___ 172(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 258(@200wpm)___ 206(@250wpm)___ 172(@300wpm)
“I’m still here, Livy. I’m not gone yet. Feel me. Feel my heart beating against your hand. I will fight the devil himself to stay with you. My love for you will keep me going. It’s there with every beat.”
“Bear …”
“Feel me,” he implores once more.
I lean down and kiss him. Bear’s in bad shape, but I can feel the way his cock is hard against me. I know it’s risky and I know I shouldn’t, but the two of us are going to die here. I want to make love to him before our deaths. I move so that I’m sitting on him. His cock is pressed against my center. I don’t take off the dirty brown shirt I’m wearing. There are scars on me I don’t want Bear to see. The light in here is so dim that he cannot see the cigarette burns and knife cuts covering my body. He knows I’ve been whipped, so I’m sure he can guess, but the darkness transforms our secrets into white lies that help us survive hour by hour.
“Bear,” I whimper as he slides inside me. I’m sore from the abuse I’ve suffered. Hell, I may have a disease I don’t know about. It doesn’t matter. Bear and I are both marked for death. For this small space in time, I just want to pretend that Bear and I have a future—the one we always dreamed about.
“Livy … What are you doing?”
“I love you. I just want us to disappear from here, even if it’s only for a small amount of time, Bear. I want the world to disappear and be only you and me,” I beg.
“Then feel me, my love. Feel me inside you. Feel my heart beating only for you. Feel my love…”
(End Flashback)
I push the memories aside, wiping a stray tear from the corner of my eye. There’s no way you can replace that kind of love. I won’t even try. Bear is and will always remain my world. I struggle to contain my emotions and step through the doors that open to the small space behind the counter.
When I look up at my customer, I gasp before I can stop myself …
2
A DEBT I CAN NEVER PAY—BUT I’LL TRY
LAKE
“What are we doing here again?” I ask, Ray.
“I know you’re dead below the waist, but the rest of us aren’t. I’ve been trying to get Olivia to go out with me for the last two months. She keeps pushing me away. I wanted to surprise her at work.”
“She new?” I ask, not recognizing the name.
“Nah. She was here before I was hired. You don’t know her?”
“Never heard of her. Can’t tell you if I’ve seen her or not. It’s a big ranch,” I explain.
“If you saw Olivia, you’d remember. She’s gorgeous. Thick, honeyed, chestnut hair, hazel eyes that could haunt your dreams, and a sweet voice that could calm a wild stallion. The woman is perfect. She’s soft, too. Not like most of the ballbusters you run into these days. Meek and mild, just how I like my women. I bet she’d get down on her knees with one command.”
I roll my eyes. I tolerate Ray. It’s unclear to me why Carson and his brothers brought the creep on. I keep waiting for the day he fucks up and gets fired. It hasn’t happened yet, but I know it will. Ray is the type of cowboy girls gravitate toward. Thick brown curly hair, bright blue eyes, and muscles. There’s not a scar on his pretty-boy body. He’s totally unlike me. Hell, most are though. There’s nothing pretty about me. Scars riddle my body. The ones on my face are so distracting that I finally just let my beard grow out to hide them. It makes it easier. I keep my hair shorter because it’s just cooler out on the range. I’m no woman’s idea of a fantasy, though. I’m a guy, so that stuff means shit to me, but I know Ray is the type women weave dreams around—at least until he shows them who he really is.
We walk into the office. I expect to see this bombshell Ray is horndogging over behind the counter, but the room is empty. I roll my eyes. She’s not working. Maybe she’s as much of a fuck-up as Ray is. I really don’t have time for this bullshit. I’ve got a semi out there full of feed that I need to unload. It’s backbreaking work, and my old injuries slow me down. I still work harder than most of the men on this ranch. Carson and his brothers took me in when I had nowhere else to go. I won’t forget that. When they found me, I was on death’s door. They took over my medical bills—which were so fucking huge, I would have been better off dead.