Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 88262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“Lily gave me these,” he said. “It’s not considered breaking in if I have keys. Didn’t know which key it was, so I was trying a few.”
I breathed deep and my heart rate finally started to even out. “You could have just told me that the moment you saw me with the goddamn stick.”
“No fun in that. I liked feeling out how you fight.”
“Why the fuck does it matter how I fight?”
“I also liked seeing how you looked when I pinned you down,” he continued, looking down at his sleeves and brushing them off. “Spitting in my face was a nice touch.”
“I was desperate.”
He looked up at me. “I know. You were starting to make my cock hard.”
I glared at him. “Bullshit.”
“It was pretty inconvenient in a fight.”
My chest was molten.
It was the first time all night I’d felt like he admitted I had any effect on him at all.
My sister’s fucking boyfriend got hard from my spit on his face?
For Christ’s sake, when was my life going to go back to normal?
“Why would my sister tell you to come into my barn unannounced?” I asked, changing the subject as fast as I reasonably could.
Draven’s gaze skated over my body as I stood up. He was really watching me now. I wasn’t quite as tall as him, but I was still six foot and had gone to the gym four times a week for the past five years of my life. I wasn’t exactly a weakling, either.
“She said you were out at work bartending,” he finally told me. “Said you wouldn’t be back home for at least another hour. But when I asked about whiskey, she said your barn had a whole lot more liquor in it than your parents’ place does. Told me to go grab some. And then she tossed me the keys.”
“I swear to God, Lily,” I muttered.
Lily had always had more of a… things will always work out attitude than I did.
I enjoyed my life, but that didn’t mean I liked change.
Change usually just meant bad things. When you live in the same small town for your whole life, you start to notice it. People you loved moved away. Places you’d gone for your whole life closed down.
Sadistic people showed up at your doorstep.
My sister was more adventurous than me by a long shot, which is why she’d moved out to Montana, and probably why she’d gotten involved with a man who seemed to require heavy sedation.
I looked across the field toward my parents’ place again. I could make out one window upstairs glowing in the night, which was the guest room, where my sister Lily was staying for the next few weeks. With this man, apparently.
She’d mentioned that her boyfriend was a rancher from Montana, but I’d never met a rancher like him before.
Why did he know how to restrain me like a professional fighter?
Why did he seem glad that I’d bitten him?
I needed to have a talk with Lily. Not that she ever listened to any cautionary things I said.
Draven’s expression was cold now, like he’d gotten bored of me now that I wasn’t posing a challenge to him. He frowned, his eyes scanning over me like I was just an obstacle, dark lashes flicking down and then back up again.
Now he was all business.
“Someone breaking in wouldn’t use the front door,” he said, his voice cold and clinical now. “They’d use that wide open window by the kitchen. You should know that, if you have a stalker. Now can you spare a bottle of that whiskey on your breath?”
I turned and went back inside at a fast clip, my bare feet pounding on the hardwood floors. I headed for my collection of liquor and closed my hand around the glass neck of a bottle of Glenfiddich Gran Reserva, the best bottle of scotch whiskey I owned. It had been a present from Kane on my last birthday, but I didn’t care right now.
Anything to get Draven the fuck out of here.
When I turned back, he was inside, waiting right by the front door. His arms were crossed, and his hat was on.
He looked even taller, inside the barn. Imposing. Like some sort of dark cowboy prince.
My chest tightened. Having him in here felt like having a live bomb inside my home with me.
Apparently he could sense my reaction as I shoved the whiskey bottle at him. He took it without looking, then spoke.
“Scared of me?”
“Just want you gone.”
His gaze was like green fire again. “I told you. If I came here to hurt you, it would have already happened. If I came here to fuck you, you would be bent over outside on your porch right now, and my cock would be shoved so deep inside you that you’d be saying my name like a prayer until I stuffed my fingers in your mouth to make you stop.”