Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
“I’m twenty-nine. I’m the oldest member of the squad. And let’s be honest, I’ve got maybe two more seasons before I’ll be too old to achieve the look.”
“You’re stunning, Emily.”
“I’m also old.”
“Twenty-nine is not old.”
“It is in dance.”
“Then they’re fucking stupid, because you’re the most beautiful person on that field every time your sneakers touch the turf. You steal the show. You…” I laughed. “God, Emily, you make it impossible to look away. Trust me, I know. I’ve tried.”
She paused, eyes slowly finding mine as a smile curled on her lips.
“I’ve noticed.”
Again, the words sat like an anchor dragging the sand between us.
After a moment, Emily sighed, her eyes on her nails again. “I always thought I’d have it all figured out by thirty, you know? Have the job. The house. Maybe the husband and the kid. I watched my parents have it all so effortlessly, I just assumed that was how it was.”
She flicked a piece of her mat away.
“You love this,” I said. “Dance. I’ve seen the way it lights you up. You beam when you’re on that field, when you’re in rehearsal.”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “But I have an expiration date. And then what?”
“Whatever you want. Keep dancing. Find a new studio. Go on Broadway.”
She laughed.
Then, a thought came to me, a memory of the flag football jamboree.
“What if you taught?”
Her brows crested. “Taught what, exactly? How to fuck around so much in your twenties that you end up jobless and broke by thirty-one?”
“Dance,” I said, not entertaining her deflection. “I saw you with the girls at the football event this summer. You were so good with them. You loved helping them, and the way you talked to them and made them feel seen… that’s rare, Em.”
That earned me a smile. “I like that,” she said. “When you call me Em.”
There it was again — the shift in the air, the charging of electricity.
“Yeah?” I asked, nostrils flaring. My heart kicked up the pace in my chest, the pounding of it thundering in my ears.
Nothing had happened.
But my body knew before my brain did that I was about to do something reckless.
“Should I say it again?”
I reached out, finding the strings of her hoodie and toying with them between my fingers. The moment I made the connection, Emily’s next inhale stalled in her throat.
Stop.
Don’t do this.
Her eyes dropped to watch my fingers playing with the strings before she slowly dragged her gaze back to mine.
It was heated now.
She was meeting my dare like it didn’t scare her one bit.
“You’re fucking beautiful, Em,” I said roughly, twisting the strings over my fist once.
It gave her no choice but to lean forward, and I mirrored that movement, slowly decimating the space between us even as every alarm in my head blared for me to stop.
But it was no use.
She had me under a spell — willingly, if I was being honest.
And we were alone in a small, dark room where it felt like nothing and no one else mattered.
“You drive me mad, Em. You and the filthy words you say, the way you’ve carved yourself into my brain, the way I can’t stop thinking about your smile, and your laugh, and your sweet little hand on my cock.”
Her breath caught when I rolled the strings again, tugging her closer.
“I want you, Em.” My next breath was a low, guttural thing. “So fucking badly. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“You want to be my undoing, don’t you? You want to be the very thing that kills me.”
I twisted the strings again, and we were so close now that our lips brushed, our warm breaths dancing between us.
“No,” she said, surprising me.
And then she crawled right into my lap, eviscerating any space left between us, her hips grinding against me as her arms slipped around my neck. Her hands wove into my hair and tugged, forcing me to look up at her.
“I want to be the very thing that makes you live.”
I kissed her.
I couldn’t not fucking kiss her — not with her sweet hips in my hands, her lush mouth right above me, the dare and promise dancing in her eyes. There was no other option but to press my mouth to hers.
The moment I did, my entire existence shifted.
It was like an earthquake ripping through the foundation of who I was, the way her mouth covered mine so perfectly, the way our lips pressed warm and firm. We held that bruising kiss for only a moment before she was opening her mouth and I was, too — our tongues searching, teeth nipping, hands roaming.
We were ravenous, like starved predators who finally got their kill.
I held her hips tighter when she rolled against me, and both of us let out a moan when she dragged against my cock. I was hard the moment she climbed into my lap, but now, it was almost painful. I wanted her so badly my body didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t had an erection this hard since I was a horny teenager.