Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
She catches me staring. “What? Do I have food on my face?”
“No. Nothing.” I take a bite of my own sandwich, barely tasting it. “Just thinking.”
“About cheese?”
About how I want to lick that grease off your fingers. About how you look in this light. About how if I don’t get my hands on you soon, I might actually lose my mind.
“Kind of.” I pause. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
Her expression softens. She sets down her sandwich, wipes her hands on one of the napkins Danny included, then shifts closer to me on the hay bale, close enough that I can smell her underneath the burger grease, that natural clean, warm scent that’s become my favorite thing in the world.
“I’m glad I’m here too,” she says quietly.
The light continues to change, amber to bronze, the shadows lengthening across the hayloft floor. Through the gaps in the barn walls, I can see the sun touching the mountains, painting the sky in streaks of orange and red. We have maybe an hour before it gets too cold up here, at least too cold for her.
An hour is plenty of time.
She reaches up to brush a strand of hair from my forehead, and I catch her wrist. Gently. Hold it there, her pulse fluttering against my fingers.
“Mia.”
“Yeah?”
I don’t have words for what I’m feeling. The tenderness from our conversation earlier is still there, but underneath it something else is stirring, something darker, hungrier. All that vulnerability, all those wounds I showed her—they’ve cracked something open in me, and now, I need to feel her. Need to claim her. Need to remind myself that this, at least, is real.
“I want you,” I say. Simple but true.
She studies my face, swallowing hard. “You have me.”
“No.” I tug her closer until she’s nearly in my lap. “I want all of you. In ways that might…scare you.”
That doesn’t seem to faze her. Her pupils dilate, her lips parting slightly.
“What do you mean?” she says, her voice dropping an octave, husky in a way that makes me want to lose my mind. “Tell me.”
I bite my lip, exhaling sharply through my nose. “My tastes are darker than you’d expect. Sometimes, I don’t want to save someone. Sometimes, I want to hunt them down. Tie them up. Have my way with them in exactly the way I want it.”
“Alright.” She bats her lashes. “Show me then.”
Fuck.
My hands fist in her hair, angling her head where I want it, and I kiss her like I’m trying to devour her whole. She gasps against my mouth, and I swallow the sound, my tongue sliding against hers with feverish need.
“I want—” I pull back just enough to speak, my forehead pressed to hers, my body practically rippling with self-control. “I need to tell you something first.”
“Okay…” Her voice is breathless, her hands clutching my shirt.
“Sometimes, I get…intense. More than I should, as I’m sure you already know. And I don’t always know when I’m pushing too hard. It’s hard for me to I know my own strength.” I force myself to meet her eyes. “I need you to have a word, something you can say if I go too far. If you need me to stop.”
Understanding dawns on her face, followed by relief. “Oh. A safe word.”
“Yeah. That.”
“Kinky.”
“I mean, if the shoe fits.”
She’s quiet for a moment, thinking. Finally, she says, “Milkshake.”
Despite everything, I laugh. “Milkshake?”
“It’s memorable. It’s very us. And I’m definitely not going to say it by accident during sex.”
“Fair point.” I brush my thumb across her lower lip, watching it tremble. “So, if you say milkshake, I stop. Immediately. No questions.”
“And if I don’t say it?”
“Then I don’t stop.” My voice thickens. “No matter how much you beg.” I lean in, mouth at her ear. “And I really want to hear you beg.”
Her sharp inhale is the only answer I need.
I flip her onto her back on the hay bale, covering her body with mine. She’s so small beneath me, so fucking breakable, and the contrast makes something dark and possessive coil in my chest. I could crush her without trying, could pin her down and take whatever I wanted, and she couldn’t do a damn thing to stop me.
The thought should horrify me.
It makes me harder than I’ve ever been in my life.
Control yourself. She’s not a toy. She’s—
“Nate.” Her voice cuts through the spiral. Her fingers rest on my cheekbone, drawing my attention back to her eyes. “I trust you.”
Three words. They shouldn’t mean so much, but coming from her, after everything she learned today, they do.
“I’m going to ruin you, darlin’,” I tell her. It comes out like both a warning and a promise.
“Not if I ruin you first,” she says with a smirk.
I grin like a madman and kiss her again, harder this time, my teeth catching her lower lip. She moans and arches into me; I can feel her heat through the thin fabric of her pants. I want them off,, want everything off. Want her bare and spread beneath me in this place where I used to hide from the world. I want to make her my world.