Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
He tucks his face in the crook of my neck and keeps breathing me in. “Yeah. Couldn’t see you. Couldn’t smell you.”
“Oh, Arsen, I—”
“So I came to your door.”
My heart skips a beat. “You came to my…”
“Stood there a long time.” He sniffs my neck as he says, “Kept taking a whiff of the wood, tryin’ to smell you through the barrier.”
I swallow. “I didn’t… I didn’t know.”
“Kept tellin’ myself to leave,” he goes on, rubbing his nose in my pulse. “Kept tellin’ myself I couldn’t bust down your door, couldn’t go in there. Not after everything. Not after how I’ve fucked up with you. Told myself you needed peace, you needed to be free. From me. That you aren’t my wife, not really. It doesn’t matter how much you feel like it. I’ve got no right to you, to go in your room.” Then, pushing his forehead against my neck, he goes, “I wouldn’t have climbed on though, I swear. I wouldn’t have gotten in the bed with you. I wouldn’t have touched you. Tell me you know that. Tell me you know I’m not lyin’ about that.”
He says it so urgently, so sincerely, I have no choice but to nod. “I do.”
A breath of relief pushes out of him. “Because I wouldn’t have. It would’ve been hard. It would’ve taken every shred of decency I’ve got left in me to not touch you, everything that my mama taught me before she died, everything my brother taught me about how to treat a girl, but I would’ve done it. I would’ve watched you. Smelled your hair. Your skin. Watched the moonlight play with it. Like I’ve been doin’ for the past week. And then fallen asleep for a little bit, just under the window.”
“God, Arsen, you—”
He shudders. “So when it became too much, I left. Went for a ride.”
I swallow again, flexing my arms around his neck. “On Rebel?”
“Yeah.” He nods, his open mouth dragging up and down the column of my neck. “It’s been eight years since I saw him but he remembered me. He remembered that I was the first to break him.”
Warmth spreads across my chest because I can hear the pride in his voice, the joy, and it sounds glorious. It makes his voice a little deeper and rougher, more of a growl that scrapes over my skin so good that I can hear it for days. I tilt my face and rub my chin in his soft hair. “Like your dream.”
Finally, he moves away from my neck and looks up, his eyes heavy-lidded. “Yeah, my dream.”
I see the scratches I made on his face. His jaw specifically. A cut on the side of his mouth, his high cheekbone. I bring my fingers to stroke the cuts I gave him lovingly, tenderly, as I whisper, “So it was real? What happened between us?”
A tightness flashes over his face that resembles torture as he replies back gutturally, “Yeah, darlin’, it was real.”
A relieved breath escapes me. “But you didn’t… You didn’t say my name.”
His jaw pulses beneath my fingers and his fingers in my hair fist. I don’t know what it says about him or about me, about us, that he knows exactly what I’m talking about. Actually, I do know. It says that maybe we’re both branded. He branded me, but maybe I did the same to him.
“I shouldn’t get to breathe the same air as you, let alone look at you when you’re in the same room as me.” My gaze scurries up and I look into his glittery, molten eyes as he keeps going: “What makes you think I should get to say the absolute fuckin’ dream that is your name after everythin’ I’ve done and everythin’ I’m going to do?”
“You—”
“This isn’t the first time, is it?” he cuts me off, his voice all rough edges. In fact, ever since we arrived at the ranch, his voice has become even more of a drawl and even deeper. Like he’s exactly where he belongs even though he’s struggling to fit in.
“What?”
“That you’ve cried.” His eyes rove over my features, his thumbs still circling on my cheeks. “Your friend, she said it. Yesterday. That you never cry. Except when it comes to me.”
I shake my head. “That’s—”
“Made you feel bad about yourself at that goddamn café when the truth is that I stopped thinkin’ the moment I saw you walkin’ through that door. I got fucked in the head the moment I heard your voice. And then I put you through hell. Lied to you. Tied you up, drugged you. Stripped you naked, humiliated you. I did everythin’ to break you, but you didn’t break. Not until now. Not until I once again made you feel less than.” He moves his jaw back and forth. “Instead of tellin’ you the truth, I made you feel like you’re the one lacking. You’re not. You’re a survivor. You didn’t let anything that happened to you in the past break you. Your daddy beat you; your mama let him. She used you to protect herself instead of protectin’ you and yet you wanna help people like her. Do you realize how beautiful that is? How brave you are. How fuckin’ stunning and breathtaking. I told you it’s hard to breathe around you, didn’t I? It is. It’s hard to not look at you, to not ask Haven and my useless brother about you. It’s so fuckin’ hard to let you go. But I’m tryin’, darlin’, yeah?” He swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple jerking. “Because if anyone’s lacking between the two of us, it’s me. I’m a piece of shit. You call me your criminal asshole cowboy and that’s exactly what I am. I’m a selfish fuckin’ piece of shit, baby, because I’ll take what you give me and I’ll steal what you don’t. So the reason I don’t look at you is because I’m not the kind of man you want starin’ at you. I’m not the kind of man you want sayin’ your name.”