Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
He was still growling.
What he was not doing was panting or even breathing heavily.
Ugh!
He was the worst.
“Get off me,” I demanded.
“No fucking way. Ye might run again.”
I was never running again in my life.
“You tackled me,” I accused.
“Aye, because you were running from me.”
“Take a hint, hotshot, a woman runs from you—”
His big hand covered my mouth, and that pissed me off so badly, I felt my eyes nearly pop out of my head.
“You’ve said your words, lassie, and now I’m going to say mine.”
I glared at him, even knowing I looked like a moron lying in damp leaves, my hair a wet, tangled mess. I hadn’t put makeup on that day (which turned into a boon because in this weather, it’d be all over my face). And I was doing this under a mountain of muscle with his hand wrapped over my mouth.
But what else could I do?
“Are ye going to keep quiet so I can talk?” he asked.
“Fuck no,” I said behind his hand, which came out as “Fug nah.”
He understood it anyway, which was why he said, “Fine. We’ll do it like this.”
I tried to heave him off.
I didn’t so much as budge him.
God!
I kept glaring.
“I’m in love with ye.”
I stopped moving entirely.
I even stopped breathing.
“I dinnae give a shite if ye were a bitch to your sister,” he carried on. “Or ye were arrested. I want to know the houseboat story, but I dinnae give a shite if ye come off bad in that one too. That isn’t the woman I fell in love with.” He pressed everything into me, his body and his hand over my mouth. “This is.”
I remained frozen beneath him.
“And dinnae take that as me giving a shite about any of that at all, lass. It’s you. It’s what made you. It was the path you took that led you to me. And since it was, I’ll take all of it and be glad to have it when it comes to you.”
Oh my God!
He’d just winded me again (without landing on me).
And he wasn’t done.
“Ye are not Helena,” he asserted. “You’re not one thing like Helena.”
Oh God.
I started squirming.
“Stay still,” he grunted.
I bucked.
He didn’t shift an inch.
God!
I gave up.
He kept at me.
“You were a girl who was lost. You found yourself, Blake. Dinnae lose yourself again because I was piss poor in communicating my shite to you.”
I went back to glaring.
“I got in my head. You mentioned we should be freaked at how good it was between us, then Rix told me about Alex, and I got stuck in my head. I did that because it started the same with Signe. Nothing but good.”
With that, I began struggling in earnest.
He took his hand from my mouth to grab both my wrists and pull them over my head.
“Get off me, Dair!” I shouted.
He transferred both wrists to one hand, held them easily (he was totally the worst!), and put the other over my mouth again.
GAH!
His face came so close, he had to be speaking against his hand. “You are not Signe either. My concerns were relevant. I got burned. I fell in love with a woman who didnae exist. That boiled up and it made me fuck up. I should have explained that to ye better. I should have explained where my head was at. But I treated you like a child. And I said shite to you that should never have come out of my mouth.”
“Yes, you did,” I said into his hand. But it came out “Hes, hu deh.”
His beautiful gray-blue eyes melted, and he whispered, “Baby, I’m so fucking sorry.”
Oh no.
That got to me.
I turned my head away and his hand came with it.
So he rested his forehead against my temple and spoke in my ear.
That got to me too.
“I ken who ye were, and I ken how ye changed. When I told Mum what I did to you—”
Shocked he spoke to his mother about us, I righted my head with a snap, which wrenched my back, and damn.
I had a feeling I might have actually hurt myself.
“She tore me a new one, hen,” he said quietly after he caught my eyes. “It was only me promising to come down and sort it with ye why she’s not down here herself, blackening my name and disowning me.”
I just stared at him.
“You two girls were alone. Ned was lost in the fuckup of picking Helena. But Mum told me that you were the focus for Helena. You bore the brunt of it. Maybe she was jealous of ye. Maybe she thought she was doing what she was supposed to. I dinnae fucking know, and I dinnae fucking care. She didnae mark you. She scarred you. And I didnae take that into account when I spoke to you. I didnae take into account ye just lost her and you were trying to understand how you felt about it. I didnae look after my woman, and if I lose ye because of it, I’ll regret it ’til my dying day.”