Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
“What are you doing awake at this time of night?” His voice was gruff. Held in the tumult that howled through the rambling room.
I edged forward. “I could ask the same of you.”
He stifled a rough chuckle as he glanced back. “Not used to going to bed until three or four. Am usually still at Kane’s closing up at this time of night.”
Questions stirred. Those reservations I couldn’t shake. I inched forward, trying to gather myself. To focus on what was important.
The little girl upstairs.
Only my breath locked at the base of my throat when he fully turned around. Wide chest fully on display. Rippling with fettered strength. Designs played over the hard, packed lines of his pecs and abdomen.
The man a painting of awestriking, terrifying perfection.
I attempted to clear the roughness away as I eased forward. I had to keep on track. There was a real reason I was here, and it wasn’t to ogle this man.
The first man who sent me sailing right past those barriers I’d hedged. Beyond the anger that had held me back.
“And how is that supposed to work when you’ve insisted on raising a little girl?”
I remained on the opposite side of the island.
Again needing the physical barrier between us.
He roughed a tattooed hand through his hair. “Gotta work some stuff out.” He stalled, obviously reticent to say whatever was on his mind.
He looked to the floor as he mumbled, “And I have a work trip I need to take in two days. Something that was planned long before I knew about Maci. Don’t want to leave, but I have to. I can have her stay with my family, but I think she’d be more comfortable if you stayed here with her.”
Disbelief blustered through, and I shook my head. “You’re leaving? In two days?”
More hesitation, his thick throat bobbing in something I couldn’t quite read.
Guilt, I thought.
“I’m sorry. But I have to do this.”
My brows lifted in challenge.
Sighing, Kane planted those big hands on the glittering veins of the quartz countertop. “Listen… Won’t pretend I have everything figured out right now, but I can promise that I’m going to make this work.”
Rejection puffed from between my lips. “Make this work? She can’t be some extraneous piece that you try to stuff wherever you can make her fit, Kane.”
Those magic eyes pinched at the sides. “Is that what it looks like I’m doing right now? Because what I’m trying to do is give my all. Every good part of me.”
Not even close to being a good man.
My insides flip-flopped.
“And what are the bad parts?” It raked out on a disordered gush. “You told me that you aren’t a good man. You told me you’re the dragon.”
I wouldn’t tiptoe around it.
The air shivered when he straightened, the man rising to his full, imposing height. He began to slowly weave around the island, eyes never leaving me.
His head cocked when he came around the side, and the ground trembled beneath my feet as I stood there without anything separating us.
No barrier for the energy that pounded through the atmosphere.
“You want to know what my bad parts are, Emery?” His voice had dropped to a jagged blade. “They’re the parts of my life that have shaped me. The ones that made me who I am. Some of them were mistakes. And others I would never fucking change.”
My pulse thrummed into turbulence, both alarmed at the foreboding he emitted and wanting to rest in the safety of it at the same time.
He took another step forward on bare feet.
A shockwave rolled the ground.
He came so close that I could smell him. That warm cedar and clove scent that covered me in a jumbled, disorganized comfort.
His voice dropped even lower as he inclined his head my direction. Words raw, unbridled temptation that he whispered far too close to my lips, “You didn’t seem to mind a whole lot about that on Friday night.”
Shivers raced.
“That was obviously a mistake of my own,” I managed to say.
“That so?” he rumbled, inching even closer.
I released a shaky breath, one he seemed to inhale, and a big palm came to rest on the side of my neck.
Heat blistered at the contact.
A roar that burned through my veins.
“Yes,” I forced out through the desire that flickered through my nerves.
A dangerous smirk ticked at the edge of his mouth.
“I think you’re a liar, Little Warrior. I think you want this every bit as badly as I do. Do you think I can’t feel what’s coming off you? Way your body lights up the second I come near you?”
His hand slid up from my neck to tangle in my hair.
He tilted my head back. Mayhem ripped through me like a tornado. How out of control I felt. The man holding all the power.
And I was nothing but a fool. The way I wanted it. The way I wanted him to take that power and rule me.