Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
For a few seconds, I think I’ve asked too much of him. He won’t do it, and he definitely won’t do it for the reason I’ve asked him to. We may share a connection and I may be his distraction that he desperately needs, but I don’t rank all that high in his life. Just as I feel the sting of rejection settling in, he lets the guy go. I hear the sounds of crashing and thudding in the background, mixed in with some grunts and groans. But I only have eyes for him as he straightens up and towers over me. And before the world can intrude on us more, I grab his hand and pull him away from the table. I drag him across the floor and through the crowd. I take him where I always do when he’s all agitated and angry. When he’s breathing the way he’s breathing now, fast and wild, and when his heat is threatening to burn even me.
Our usual room is empty, but I don’t give him a chance to open it for me like he usually does. I get to the knob, turn it and enter, all in one breath. But that’s all the leeway he’ll give me because as soon as the door closes behind us with a thud, he pulls on my hand, causing me to crash against his hard body. He spins us both around a second later and pins me to the door, putting his entire weight into it.
He presses his chest into mine and his abs into my belly. He even goes so far as to force me to spread my legs so he can fit himself between them. So he can push into my pelvis with his. Not that I mind, I welcome it. In fact, I go one step further. I go on my tiptoes and wind my leg around his densely muscled thigh. I arch my back and tilt my hips so he can fit even better.
Like we’re two pieces of the same puzzle. Or maybe we aren’t puzzle pieces at all, we’re mutual destruction. I’m his strawberry and he’s my sharp teeth. He’ll eat me up piece by piece, and I’ll kill the poison running through his veins.
Whatever we are though, I know we can’t get enough of each other. I know I’m gobbling him up with my eyes and he’s doing the same. I’m pulling at his hair and fisting his t-shirt, and he’s kneading my waist, tugging at my hair.
“You were scared,” he growls.
I swallow, tugging at his shirt. “A l-little, but—”
He squeezes my flesh, making it hurt. “No, a lot.”
“I-I’m fine though. I’m—”
“I could see it.” He leans closer, digging his belt buckle into my tummy. “I could sense it.”
Yeah, I bet he could. He’s my mind reader, isn’t he? I cup his face and say, “But Shepard—”
“You shouldn’t have stopped me. You…” He takes in a deep growling breath. “I need to go back out there. I need—”
“No, you don’t,” I tell him, squeezing my limbs around him tightly. “Stay here. With me.”
He looks at me angrily. Like he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like that I’m making him do this, stopping him from whatever hell he’s planning on unleashing on those three idiots. But I don’t care. I don’t care if he hates it. I want him here. I need him here. So I keep holding on.
“Did he touch you somewhere else?” he asks then.
I shake my head, urgently. “No. No, he didn’t.”
“You sure about that?” But he doesn’t give me a chance to either confirm or deny, as he keeps going, “Because if he did, if he got his hands anywhere else, I’ll—”
“No, Shepard, listen to me,” I say, my heart pounding urgently, my heels digging into the back of his thigh. “You arrived way before anything worse could’ve happened, okay? And you stopped it. You saved me.” Then, “You’re the only one who ever did.”
He is. From getting my pervy boss fired all those months ago to arranging my shoes in the closet in the middle of the night. From giving money to someone so they’d stop calling me a bitch to wanting to take care of my debt. He’s done so many big and small things for me. And he’s the only one who’s ever done that.
I’ve had to protect myself, and my sister too, for so long from the world filled with assholes that I didn’t even think anyone else could share that job with me. I didn’t even know what it would feel like if someone did. I didn’t know it felt like this: cherished and light. They say being strong is good, but what they don’t tell you is being strong is also fucking exhausting. Being a big sister is wonderful, but there are no breaks, except the ones he has given me. So yeah, this feels like walking on clouds. This feels like being carried through a field of flowers and into the sunset. Although right now, everything is so heavy and drenched in so many emotions, it’s like I’m going to burst.