Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 96850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Maybe if he was convincing enough, it could be their real future.
“Christmas lights. I like that idea.” He tried not to moan over her fingernails on his scalp. “We’ll pick a color no one else has. Purple, maybe. And when I fly into LaGuardia after being on the road, I’ll be able to pick out our apartment from the sky.”
“Everyone on the plane will wonder who buys purple Christmas lights.”
“And I’ll just smile to myself. Because I know it’s us.”
She pressed a smile against his spine, and in a state of total bliss, he searched for a way to keep the game going. “We’re not one of those dinner party couples, are we?”
“God, no. But we make up for never hosting because we always bring some obscure dessert from the cool, experimental downtown bakery. Like matcha rice pudding. Everyone rolls their eyes at us for being city people, but we have the last laugh because we come home to no dirty dishes.”
“And we never have to shovel the snow. But we tip the super generously.” Madden turned around because he couldn’t stand not seeing her face anymore. “Although someday, I wouldn’t mind shoveling the snow again.”
Eve nodded, following his line of thought while shower water trickled down her cheeks, the makeup smudging around her eyes. And if he had a camera in that moment to steal the image and make it immortal, that photo would be the next one he framed for her, because she was magnificent in her relaxed, playful state. “You’ll retire, naturally, and . . .”
“And what?”
She took a moment to breathe. “And Lark and Landon will be in college by then, so we’ll just . . . go anywhere we want. Maybe Wyoming or South Dakota.”
“Definitely somewhere I can shovel snow.”
“And I’m a new face to all our neighbors. I’m just Eve. New in town. No one knows anything about me. ‘She’s kind of serious, but she does her part for the neighborhood.’ That’s what they’ll say.”
“And her husband kisses the ground she walks on,” he added, even though his throat was burning over the wistful wish she’d just made. For a clean slate. What he wouldn’t give to hand her that wish on a platter, even if he hated the fact that she needed one. Everyone else should have to change. Not his wife. “Her husband decorates the whole house in those purple lights every year, because it’s tradition.”
She slipped her hands up his wet chest, tracking her progress with glassy eyes. “Deep down, we’re still those annoying city folks who never host the dinner party.”
He pressed his mouth to her temple. “We like our privacy.”
“Yeah,” Eve whispered, lifting onto her toes to rub their mouths together, her fingers finally, finally, cupping his erection, running her palm all the way down to his balls and massaging their way back up. “Most of the time.”
Madden’s pulse was already pumping a thousand miles an hour, but the implication of the words most of the time brought him back to the parking lot a week earlier when he’d fucked his wife against the side of the building, because a little risk of exposure fulfilled her needs and his job was to make that happen. Every goddamn time she asked.
Without taking his mouth off Eve’s, he reached over and slapped off the shower.
His shoulder could have been blown off by a shotgun that afternoon and he wouldn’t have felt the pain in that moment. There was only getting inside his wife and in the immediate interest of that, he ripped the plastic bag off his shoulder, using his one good arm to lift her out of the tub, leading her out of the bathroom.
She didn’t ask where they were going. And the expression on her beautiful face when he pulled her out onto the balcony into the warm spring night was so trusting, Madden had to swallow the words I love you and, Jesus, they were heavy and got stuck in his windpipe, even as he sat down on the one reclining deck chair that had come with the condo, Eve gasping for air as she came down on top of him, straddling his lap, their mouths fusing in a frenzied, moaning kiss, her silk-covered pussy pressing down in just the spot and gliding front to back. Fuck.
“We can only fuck out here if you’re going to be quiet, love,” he said, gripping a section of her hair and holding her steady so he could look her in the eye. “Eve?”
“I’ll be quiet. I’ll be quiet,” she babbled, mascara under her eyes, her long blond hair stuck to her cheeks and shoulders. Disheveled. But her gaze was so clear when she looked at him. There was lust, aye, but there was knowledge there, too, that her request for risk had been heard loud and clear. That he wasn’t a man who only talked the talk, he walked the fucking walk too. And it got her hot. “You’re going to relax and let me do the work tonight,” she said, reaching back to unsnap her bra.