Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
I didn’t take her to my bed.
I set her down on the black leather sofa under the window.
A goddess sitting in the silvered, fluttery rays of moonlight that filtered in through the thin drapes.
Her chest jacking with each strained breath and eyes doing avid, feral things.
A thrill bolted from her being in shocks of electricity that blasted through the room.
Dressed in black, that flimsy, silken skirt hiked up high around her thighs.
Long, toned legs draped out in front of her, bent at the knees with those heels planted on my floor.
Knees just spread.
Trembles rocked through her with the furor of an earthquake.
This goddess? I was pretty sure she would prove lethal. Touching her condemnation and blame. But there I was, sinking to my knees in front of her.
Nothing but a beggar at her feet.
But it was Brinley who was going to be doing the begging tonight.
My palms landed on her knees.
Flames flashed.
In a surge of desire, she arched from the couch. Body bowing in a petition.
“Silas…”
My name wisped out into the night and curled around me like a lucid dream.
There was something deeper and more profound in that single word coming from her mouth than any other that had ever touched my ears before it.
Like it might mean something.
Like I might mean something to her.
Guilt tried to rise to the surface. To force me back into the order where I knew I should stay.
But there was something about Brinley Webber that had me pinned.
I couldn’t help but think maybe I might have a little more to offer. Giving her this.
Dominance and control capped off in a blitz of pleasure.
“You want this, Brinley?” My voice was low and raw. Cutting through the charged air in the slice of a warning. “You want me to wipe away that flash of terror you were feeling today? Replace it with everything that I am?”
Her gaze darkened, toiled with old wounds and debilitating horrors and sheer, absolute want.
She knew I wasn’t referring to the fuckwit who tried to drag her off but rather whatever’d had her recoiling at my touch.
Referring to the ancient fear that would glint at the farthest recesses of her fierce, ferocious gaze.
Something she guarded like family jewels that had been tarnished.
And somehow, I was able to see it.
Maybe it was sick that I wanted to be the one to hold it.
Sick that I wanted to be the one to have the honor of sending her soaring. The one who would cause her to give in and let go.
Realizing in it, she was the one who held all the power. Because I knew I couldn’t erase it or be the one to fix her, but maybe through me she’d see how fucking strong she was. See she could rise above the brutalities that had been committed to her.
“Yes, I want to feel you. I want to feel everything,” she rasped, squirming on that leather cushion.
“You’re going to let me give you this? The little that I have?”
Fire flamed in those harvest eyes, and Brinley kept flipping between innocent and vixen. “And what’s that, Silas? What is it you have to give?”
“Pleasure and the promise that you’re in control while I’m giving it to you. Just for a little while. While you’re here and under my roof. Then, when you walk out of here, safe and whole, you’ll realize the sick fuck who hurt you no longer has any control over you.”
I gritted my teeth at the mention of the faceless degenerate. I’d try to get her to give me the name later. But not right then.
Not when I was trying to inject her full of belief.
“He has no say in the way you live or the things you want. Has no control over your fantasies or desires.”
A wave of that desire flooded from her body, and Brinley’s lips parted on a breath of passion and yearning.
Trust filtering out into the fervency that carved the room in lust and something far bigger.
Something I knew should send me running.
Instead, my hands clamped down tighter on her knees as I tried to force myself into a cool that had been obliterated the second this woman had stepped onto my land.
“Don’t know what you’ve done to me, Brinley. Don’t know how you have me so spun up. The way you have me ignoring every rule that I’ve ever made for myself and this club.”
She huffed a disconcerted laugh. “It’s you, Silas. You who has me so twisted up that I don’t recognize myself. I shouldn’t be letting you touch me like this. I don’t…”
Her eyes squeezed shut as her words trailed off.
My heart took that time to be reckless, stretching out for hers, wanting to assuage the flash of pain that struck through her being.
“You don’t let men touch you?” Maybe I was the twisted one since it crawled out like possession.