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)
My hand skimmed up her cheek and into the long length of her hair.
Fisting it, I tugged her head back, probably a little sharper than necessary, but she needed to know what she was playing with.
This storm that would forever rage inside me.
Volatile and explosive.
She gasped, and those cornflower eyes widened.
Trust striking in the mesmerizing blue flames.
“That what you want? You want me to touch you?” It rolled out of me like a threat.
Her fingers sank into my shoulders, and her lips parted on a shaky, “Yes. You are my fiancé, after all.”
There was a challenge to it. One I was a fool to heed.
I had her propped on the vanity in a flash, shock raking from her lungs as she was swept off her feet.
“Cash, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
There she was, offering all that care. Like I counted. Like I mattered.
My hands gripped onto the soft flare at the outside of her thighs, and my mouth dove into the delicate flesh at the front of her neck. “Just fine when I’m next to you, fiancée,” I rumbled back.
Stupid.
Playing this dangerous game.
But I didn’t know how to stop myself right then.
A surprised mewl rolled up her throat. Vibrating through me like a foolish invitation.
“You have any idea the ways I’ve imagined having you, Daisy? All these fuckin’ years picturing you showing up at my door so I could devour you the way I always wanted? And here you are…real and alive. Shining all that beauty you always did. My Little Wallflower.”
Grief wound with the last, and a flash of fear tightened every muscle in my body.
I needed to remember why she was here. That I was responsible for her.
But I knew with every fiber of my being there was no chance I’d allow that monster to get to her.
She was safe from him, but I wasn’t so sure she was safe from me.
Not right then when I felt myself splintering apart.
Every restraint I possessed crumbling at her words.
I exhaled a broken breath at her neck as my hands flexed on her thighs. “Don’t want to hurt you, Daisy. Never wanted to hurt you.”
Electric fingertips dragged up the back of my neck and into my hair. Both gentle and pleading. “You won’t. Why do you think I’m here? Because I know you, Cash. I know you better than anyone.”
“I’m not that same kid you once knew.”
I’d been telling her and telling her, but she still couldn’t comprehend it.
“It doesn’t matter. I know you. I know you,” she rushed into the air that whipped and stirred around us. A heatwave that blasted and ricocheted against the walls.
It didn’t matter that there were still a billion barriers between us. Obstacles we could never surmount.
I let my tongue run down the length of her neck.
Lips plucking as I went.
Tasting her delicious floral scent.
Woman like the sun and the air and new life that beat through the middle of me.
Her head tipped back farther, and her fingers curled in my hair.
“Cash.” My name coming from her mouth hit me like a prayer.
Like I could be more than the beast I’d become. More than bare strength and brutal barbarity.
But she didn’t know the darkness I held inside. Didn’t know the lengths that I’d gone.
She might have had some idea, but until you witnessed that type of ruthlessness, you could never grasp what it meant. It would only ever be a figment. Outside of true reality.
Because if she could?
She never would have asked me to stand for her children, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be begging me to touch her this way.
“Please,” she mumbled into the disorder.
“You need me to make you come, sweet girl? You need me to make you feel good?”
A needy sound dripped from her mouth. “I need it so badly I can’t think. I always did. But since I came here…”
I splayed my hands wider on her hips and tugged her to the edge of the counter. My hips wound between her legs. Heat radiated from her, compounding the greed that blazed a path through my insides.
“You don’t want to know the ways I’ve been dreaming about doing it,” I grumbled at the pulse point in her neck. “The way I’ve been imagining peeling you out of your clothes so I could get to the goodness underneath. Every night, lying on that couch thinking about you in my bed. Wanting to consume you in the same way as you’ve been consuming my thoughts.”
I shouldn’t admit it, but maybe I needed her to know. Maybe I needed her to know she was slowly driving me out of my mind and pushing me toward complete devastation.
“I’ve been doing exactly the same. For years. Since the day you left me.”
My chest squeezed in a fit of regret, and a groan rolled up from the depths. From that sacred place that had forever been reserved for her. The place that only she could fill that was crying out for her to take up residency.