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)
“Sure didn’t seem like that when you first throated my cock.”
He’d tossed back my own statement at me. I looked back up at him.
“I want to strangle you,” I told him.
“See?” he teased. “You wouldn’t have said something like that before all of this happened.”
“You bring it out in me.”
“Or maybe it was already there,” he said, leaning in and kissing the spot below my ear.
The deep well of desperate frustration built inside me again.
He was so close. And I wanted one thing that should have been so simple, but instead, with Draven, felt like an impossibility.
I wanted that last bit of distance between us to be gone.
To move just a few more inches, and have his lips on mine, rather than on my neck, or my nipples, or on my cock.
As he kissed my neck I reached up, gripping his hair with my fingers the way I knew he liked it—a little rough, and deeply possessive. I moved backward a little on the seat of the bay window, giving myself more space.
And then I tipped my head back, moving roughly as I kept my hand planted at the back of his hair.
I could see a hunger in the green of his eyes. See how tired he was, just like me.
I fucking knew he wanted it, too.
I closed the distance between us and moved in to kiss him, knowing that this time, he was going to give it to me.
My lips were almost touching his when he moved to the side, biting down on the edge of my jaw instead.
My stomach hardened. I let out a breath and closed my fists in on themselves, biting back every word I wanted to say.
I pulled away from him, putting the distance back between us. I carefully controlled my tone as I spoke, holding back my anger like a dam about to burst.
“Still, huh?” I said.
Putting a crack in the dam.
Draven lifted an eyebrow at me. “You good, Max?”
The words were white-hot as they came out of me.
“I’m done.”
Chapter 18
Draven
I’d known that I might regret bringing Max to Montana. But I never knew just how bad of an idea it truly was.
It only took an hour for the mistake to become obvious.
Max should never have had to be brought to this place.
And I never should have let him believe that I was someone worthy of his affections.
I knew he wanted to kiss me.
I couldn’t fucking say it, though.
I couldn’t give it to him, over and over again, because I knew the moment I did that, it would be over. I would never be able to let him go. He would be trapped in the golden cage that was my life.
Or would I just be trapped with him, forever?
Wanting him? Needing him? Even when he inevitably realizes that I am nothing but bad news?
I watched as Max stood up from the bay window, crossing over to the other side of the bedroom, suddenly acting like he was a caged animal, crazed, like he had nowhere else to go.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I demanded. Knowing what he was thinking. Wanting to hear it from his lips.
“Better if I don’t.”
I felt myself darkening. “That’s very unlikely to be true.”
“You can whisk me away, bite me, touch any part of my body you please, but you can’t kiss me, can you?”
His words spilled out like rabid animals, finally off leash.
No.
Just fucking stop, Max.
Now, more than ever, I would do anything to keep him from being pulled deeper into my world. Into me.
It was like I had to hold two universes in each of the palms of my hands, carefully keeping them separate.
My world that I didn’t want Max to even touch, here in Montana. Where I’d stupidly brought him, on a whim, because I wanted to keep him safe.
And the new world I knew in Tennessee.
One where Max was my top priority, without any close second.
“Sometimes I still feel like I shouldn’t be with you at all,” I said, my voice coming out cold and detached. “You just got done telling me all the reasons your life is worse, lately, and I’m half of them. The more you get involved with me, the worse that would get. But I am with you. I keep coming back. I’m invested—”
“Because you want to baby me, like I’m a little project for you to protect.”
“No, because with you, everything actually feels real,” he said.
He hadn’t been watching me, instead staring at a far wall with my built-in fireplace. I came up to his side now, touching his arm, turning to look him in the eye.
I’d never felt so out of control.
I was always in control. The only thing that had come close was when I’d arrived to the crime scene with a burning hatred in my heart and a possessive rage I couldn’t contain.