Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
I’d had just an ounce of bourbon, but I felt drunk. Dizzy. It grew in intensity when he bent me back over his arm and used his mouth to capture my nipple. My body responded to him immediately, tightening to a hard bud, and a soft whine escaped my lips.
The desire for him threatened to crush me into a million pieces. Just the soft pass of his lips over my skin and I was coming undone.
“Tell me,” he whispered.
My eyes fell closed. I tried to focus on the sensation and the fire burning hot inside me. When my hands found wool beneath them, I gathered it up, pulling the shirt up his back, yanking it over his head. He straightened and finished taking it off, turning to toss it away, and I saw the black stitches holding his wound closed.
Thank God that knife hadn’t taken him from me.
“Ethan,” I said, a half plea.
The feel of his warm skin against mine was erotic and dangerous. It was hurling me to the point of no return, and I was going to have to make my final stand. I wrapped my arms around him, trying to get as much contact as possible, my cheek pressed against his chest.
“You make me feel alive,” I whispered.
His hand slipped between us and captured my chin, tilting my face up to his, but I kept my eyes closed tight.
“Look at me,” he said. “I have a theory about why that is.”
I opened my eyes, his intensity drilling down into me, stealing the last of my breath.
“Maybe you lost a part of yourself on that mountain,” he said. “And maybe I lost a piece of myself every time I had to take a life. So, on our own, we both feel half alive. Incomplete.” Those dark eyes swirled with real, raw emotion. “But together, two halves . . .” His lips brushed mine, sparking. Just a taste of the nuclear kiss between us. “Whole again.”
“Oh, God,” I said. “I love you.”
I surrendered completely. He wanted inside my heart, whether or not it was cold and lonely in there.
He took an enormous breath, my arms rising and falling on his broad shoulders, and victory flashed in his eyes. “I told you.”
My mouth dropped open and my head spun, weak from the overpowering emotion. “Not the three words I was hoping for.”
“I’m sorry.” He grinned, and that only made my head spin stronger. “I love you,” he said. “I am very much in love with you.”
Warmth came over me, not cold numbness at his words. “Better.”
Our lips came together then.
I wasn’t sure who exactly had started it, not that it mattered, anyway. The intensity of his kiss raced down me, all the way to my toes and back again. His hand closed on the back of my head and smoothed down, his fingers inching along my spine, and I sighed with relief at his touch.
We worked in concert with each other to get our pants out of our way. Mine came off first, then his down past his knees. His fingers dove beneath my panties, a finger spearing inside me when he discovered just how turned on he’d made me.
I shuddered with pleasure. My hands flattened to his beautifully scarred chest that contained his heart, which beat a furious tempo. Proof he was alive. Proof he was mine.
My hands drifted down, sliding over each scar, each rib, each notch of muscle until I reached the thin cotton standing between us. He exhaled at my touch and groaned when I pushed a hand inside his underwear and stroked him. But like the first time we’d been together, there was too much desperation in us for foreplay.
We’d confessed our love, and now we hungered for all the connection we could get.
He stripped off my panties and added them to my pile of shoes and clothes so I was completely naked, before bending and extracting a condom from his pants pocket. I watched him shove his underwear down his legs, tear the wrapper open, and roll the latex on.
The words were forming in my brain to ask him how we were going to do this, but I should have known he had it covered. He grasped my hip with one hand, dropped a hurried kiss on my lips as we shuffled back a step, then he urged me to turn away from him.
“Feet together,” his voice was hushed but full of gravity. “Up on your toes. I’m going to need all the height you can give me.” He stepped out of one pant leg so he could use a wide stance.
I stared at the barrel heads in front of me as I stepped my feet together and sank my teeth into my bottom lip. Since the night on the mountain, I hadn’t let anyone have me like this. I’d always turned off the lights and hidden this part of myself.