Total pages in book: 21
Estimated words: 19985 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 19985 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
This gorgeous girl comes from a different world than mine. A world where trust is offered, not weaponized.
She is the light, and I am the darkness. I should let her go. But I know I can’t.
Reaching in, I push the dress the rest of the way down her hips. It falls to the floor, leaving her standing before me in nothing but pair of white bikini panties.
I nearly smile when I see the wet spot. Yes, she does want this.
She makes a small sound, and her arms twitch at her sides, as if she’s about to cover herself. But she doesn’t. She stands still and lets me look. Admire.
And goddamn do I ever.
Her body is perfection. Her breasts are full enough to fill my hands, with light pink nipples that stand out straight, begging for my mouth. She has faint tan lines from her bathing suit, and the contrast between her sun-kissed skin and the paler flesh beneath has my mouth watering.
Her stomach is flat and her waist is thin, but her hips curve out with such femininity.
“You’re an angel.”
She blushes hard, like no one has ever given her this kind of compliment. And the thought that Avery doesn’t fully understand the devastating effect of her own body causes something feral to rise within me.
Possessive thoughts take over. A dark voice snarls in the back of my skull.
Mine.
I move forward and cup her breasts with both hands, my palms full, feeling the warm weight of her perky flesh. Her breath stutters and her head falls back as a whimper escapes her parted lips.
A sound she didn’t mean to make goes straight to my cock and turns it to steel.
I gently roll her nipples between my fingers. She gasps and grips my forearms with both hands. Hard. Her nails bite into my skin. Her thighs press together on my bulge, and her hips rock forward in an involuntary thrust.
Her body is begging for it, searching for a touch she doesn’t know how to ask for.
“I’m going to give you what you want,” I murmur against her cheek, squeezing her breasts harder. So shapely. So supple. “Do you trust me, Avery?”
“Yes,” she replies without hesitation. It’s a word you hear often, but it means nothing from most people. Yet from her, it’s everything.
I hook my thumb into the waistband of her panties and pull them down, over her hips and the curve of her ass, until they fall to her ankles. She steps out of them and is fully naked before me.
I’m still fully clothed, and she stands in front of me, a slight tremble in her stomach, fingers curling and uncurling at her sides. Such courage to simply be naked in front of a man she barely knows.
Only she does know me. She’s been watching me for weeks, filing away details. She sees things in me that no one else does. The man beneath the discipline.
And she’s not afraid of him.
I strip off my T-shirt and toss it aside. Her doe-eyes travel across my chest, my arms, my abs, then back to the tattoo that wraps my bicep. Her gaze catches on the scar below my ribs.
A knife wound from a job in Detroit that I couldn’t go to the hospital for. It healed ugly, and her expression does something I don’t expect. It softens with such tenderness and such concern that I almost can’t process it.
She reaches out delicately and traces the scar with her fingertip, gently, like she’s touching something sacred.
“What happened?” she whispers.
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “It’s not important.”
I don’t want to tell her. I can’t tell her. All that will do is scare her away. She doesn’t need to know about the man I am when I’m away from her. This is who I want her to see. Who I am right now.
I lift her up, my hands on her sculpted ass, and hoist her off the floor. She wraps her legs around my waist, and her hot, wet center presses against my bare stomach.
A growl rises from deep in my chest, animalistic and uncontrolled. The slick heat of her arousal tells me everything.
She’s drenched. Soaking. This girl from her sunlit bookstore with her warm eyes and pretty little sundress is dripping for me, and knowing that I’ve done that to her—with my rough hands and scarred body—fills me with something dark and possessive.
I lay her on the bed beneath me. Not gently either. My mouth instantly finds her throat. Hungrily, I bite the skin where her neck meets her shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to mark.
She arches beneath me with a cry that vibrates through my bones.
“Chris—”
“Yes, baby. I know.” I drag my mouth down to her collarbone, tasting salt, warmth, and desire. I move lower, closing my mouth around her left nipple.