Total pages in book: 174
Estimated words: 172061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 860(@200wpm)___ 688(@250wpm)___ 574(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 172061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 860(@200wpm)___ 688(@250wpm)___ 574(@300wpm)
I knew in it was the old grief that had come back to haunt him.
I touched his face. “You protected us.”
Those hazel eyes jumped all over my face, no question unable to accept what I was telling him.
That I trusted him.
That I didn’t want to be anywhere else, either.
“Do you want me to walk out the door right now, Cash? Do you want me to pack my children’s things and load them in my car and drive away? Where would I go? Do you think we’d be safer out on our own?”
A growl rolled up his throat, and his other hand curled around my elbow and rode up my forearm to my wrist as I continued to let my fingertips trace the stubble on his cheek. This mercilessly callous man who had come to mean everything.
But he always had, hadn’t he? He was the capstone of that secret place I’d kept shored away for him. Hidden in a locked box that was bent and broken inside me.
His hand cinched down around my wrist.
“No. Because I’m a selfish prick who wants to keep you. You should know better than to let me.”
“You don’t think I’ve always been yours? Through time and space and distance, you think this ever stopped beating for you?” I grabbed his hand and forced it over the thunder that ravaged my chest.
“You should hate me,” he ground out.
“Hate you? I l—”
He had my back pressed to the wall across the hall so fast that I hadn’t processed the movement.
His big hand splayed across my chest and pinning me to the unforgiving surface.
I almost had it out that time before he gritted, “Don’t say it.”
Desire spiraled and coiled with the lingering fear.
With the confusion and the doubt.
Visions of what I’d made out through the haze of fog and smoke and gunfire clogging my mind.
The way the gentle boy I once knew had become a beast.
A battle-torn warrior with his tee ripped and blood smeared across the side of his face.
I should be terrified.
Packing my bags exactly the way he suggested I do.
But I was hooked.
Impaled.
Staked to the spot as he glowered down at me as if I were the source of every pain he’d suffered.
As if I were the picture of his regret and the culmination of his sorrow.
“Don’t fuckin’ say it,” he repeated, his voice going haggard.
I tilted my face up at him. “That doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.”
His eyes sparked—flared with greed—and his hand trembled where he had it pressed against my chest.
Every harsh muscle in his body flexed and bowed.
Our breaths hemorrhaged from our lungs and our hearts pounded in the murky darkness of the hall.
Energy lashed, and the restraint he struggled to maintain wound him into a quivering ball of lust.
My knees trembled as I stared up at him.
The last man I should want.
The broker of my destruction.
His wide, wide shoulders juddered up and down as the oxygen raked from his lungs.
Maybe a wise person would end this.
But I didn’t want to.
I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else than right there with him.
So I lifted my chin and begged him, “I need you to touch me. I need you to take the fear away.”
FORTY
CASH
I had her tossed over my shoulder in a flash. Taken by the lust that ravaged my insides. No rationale or logic left after the plea she issued in the night.
My crew and some of Silas’s men were outside, standing guard through the night.
I knew our surroundings were protected, so I couldn’t stop myself. Couldn’t stop myself from wanting to dig my fingers back into that sweet body and glut myself on her beauty.
Erase every blurred boundary.
My mind a fucking storm and my body a riot.
One motherfucking second from cracking.
The fury that still blistered through my veins was clearly driving me to insanity.
The horror I felt tonight that someone might get to them pushing me toward delirium.
The truth that I would take on every danger and every threat. Stand in front of every bullet. Die a thousand times over then fucking claw my way back through Hell to get to them so I could do it all over again.
So damned twisted.
Proof that I was nothing but a monster.
A fiend lurking in the shadows.
Every bit as vile as the creep who was after her.
Daisy needed to tell me no. Tell me to put her down. Tell me last night had been a mistake and we weren’t making it again.
But she was trembling with want. Her airy summer scent deepening to something musky and seductive. The sweet tenor of flowers darkening in desire as she expelled a ragged breath as I stalked with her across the house and into my room.
I set her down in the dim, blustery darkness.
The tiny diamond of that ring glinted in the bare light as she raked her hand over the fabric of her white tank. Her nipples pebbled beneath it like she was every bit as desperate as me.