Total pages in book: 28
Estimated words: 26597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 106(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 106(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
I vow it to myself, to the universe, and to her.
We’ll be together. I don’t care what I have to do to make that reality happen.
She struggles as she pulls that big heavy case up the stairs and my chest tightens with something savage. Something primal. A strong need to take care of my girl makes itself known.
I want to take that case from her hands and carry it for her. She should never have to lift a heavy thing again in her life. That’s my job from now on.
I’ll protect her, shield her, fight for her, and kill for her. She’ll never want for anything again. Not while she’s mine.
All I can think about is how fast I can get her alone, how soon I can taste her soft skin, and how quickly I can make her scream and beg for my thick, hard cock.
Everything has changed.
She has no idea yet. But I do.
She’s not just a girl. She’s the girl. My angel. My soulmate. My obsession.
And god help anyone who tries to come between us.
CHAPTER TWO
Ellie
Another day, another town, and another crowded festival. It’s been non-stop this summer. It seems like everyone is having fun at these things except for us.
My quartet has been booked solid. The money has been great, but the wheels are starting to fall off of our little foursome.
We started Angelic Divine three years ago. I met Sloane, Tessa, and Mira at St. Elara School of Music and Fine Arts, a prestigious music conservatory we attended in our early twenties. We played together for a project once, and our sounds fit so well together that we decided to form a quartet.
I play the harp, been playing it since I was six years old. I touched one in my grandmother’s basement twenty-one years ago and since then, not one day has passed that I haven’t touched the smooth, taut strings of a harp. My mom even brought one with us on our vacations.
Sloane plays the violin. She’s the one who got us all together in the first place, but she’s getting more and more checked out. I think she wants to move on and settle down with her fiancé. She hasn’t said anything yet, but I suspect she wants to start trying to have a baby. I can tell by the way she acts whenever we see newborns or little toddlers running around. She gets so happy and misty-eyed. Our days with Sloane are numbered.
And then there’s Tessa and Mira. If Sloane leaves, we’re toast. I can’t handle those two on my own. Tessa plays the cello and Mira sings and plays the Bodhrán, which is a handheld frame drum. They’re always at each other’s throats. I’m getting so sick of being the peacekeeper of the group.
I’m getting sick of traveling too. Every weekend, another small town, another crappy motel, another diner with nothing healthy on the menu. It’s exhausting. And listening to Tessa and Mira bicker and argue constantly is just so draining.
I hear them argue, and then after I hear Tessa venting about Mira, and then I hear Mira venting about Tessa. I’m the sounding board to all of their issues and it’s getting unbearable. I want out.
“Not these guys again,” Tessa says as we walk onto the festival grounds. “These are the carnies that were in Holbrook.”
“Oh yeah,” Mira says, looking around. “They had the creepy guy that was always hitting on Ellie. What was his name?”
“Cooter,” I say, cringing as I look around for him. He didn’t leave me alone the entire day. It was horrible.
I pull my large harp case closer to my body as we hurry to the stage. Hopefully, we can get set up and start playing before he notices that I’m here. After that, we can make a quick getaway.
That guy was uber sleazy. He smelled like cheap beer and chewing tobacco and kept winking at me and calling me sweetheart. I still remember how his crooked gold tooth sparkled with the sun every time he said something that made my skin crawl.
We make it to the back of the stage without any carnies spotting us and we start to unload our gear.
“Here’s the setlist,” Mira says, handing out cue cards.
Tessa’s forehead scrunches up when she looks it over. Oh crappers, here we go.
“I thought we agreed to open with a slow ballad,” Tessa says, already worked up. “That way we can ease the crowd into it.”
“We need to start with something upbeat,” Mira says, dismissing her. “The setlist is already in ink so there’s no changing it now.”
Sloane just rolls her eyes and pulls out her phone to text her fiancé. She’s already over this. We used to diffuse the Tessa-Mira bombs together, but now I’m on my own dealing with all the crazy.
“You always do this,” Tessa says, crumpling the paper up in her fist. “We should make decisions together. As a group.”