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)
The rickhouse felt old. Like a labyrinth that had been built in a cave.
Beside the door, there was a barrel standing on its end and a small high top table. On the tabletop, three tiny, bell-shaped glasses had been set out, plus plastic cups that contained what seemed to be a chocolate bon-bon.
Brent used a rod-looking tool to extract some bourbon from the barrel and filled the glasses with the amber colored liquor. Just a finger’s worth for tasting.
I didn’t care that it was only ten in morning, I was too excited to try it. The bourbon had a warm, oaky flavor, and I sipped it and nibbled on the chocolate while the men talked about what they’d been up to for the last eighteen years. Of course, Ethan’s version was mostly vague half-truths. Brent had no idea the guy he’d played high school ball with was a deadly CIA operative.
I smiled, glancing up at Ethan and tried to picture him as a gangly teenager in a basketball uniform. “Were you any good?”
“What he lacked in skill, he made up for in height,” Brent teased.
Ethan didn’t argue his friend’s assessment. He looked a little embarrassed, like he didn’t like my knowing he wasn’t great at everything he did. But that was real and just made me like him more.
When we finished our samples, Brent put away the whiskey thief, tossed the empty plastic dishes in the garbage, and gathered up the glasses.
“Okay, I’m going to let you two explore for a while.” There was a strange smile tilting his lips. “Just make sure you’re out of here before noon because I’ve got another tour. The door will lock behind you when you leave.” His smile widened into a shit-eating grin as he glanced at Ethan. “Y’all have fun.”
“Thanks, man.”
As they shook hands, I blinked back my surprise, my face turning warm.
Brent gave me a final look, all but winking at me, and then he was gone, the door thudding shut behind him.
I stared at Ethan with pure disbelief. “Did you, like, get his approval for us to fuck in here?”
“Does that bother you?” His smile was wicked. “He owed me a favor.”
Before I could say anything, he took my hand and pulled me deeper into the rickhouse, away from the windows. Our footsteps creaked quietly across the wooden floor until we were surrounded by the tall, long walls of racks. It was darker here, but there was still enough yellowy light to make out the different years marked on the barrel heads.
Ethan pulled to an abrupt stop, dropping my hand, and turned to face me. He braced his hands on his hips, showing off the lean sculpture of his frame, and gave me that intense look I craved. “I have to tell you something.”
My pulse picked up as I gave him a skeptical look. “You brought me in here to talk?”
“Among other things.” He wrapped an arm around me, one of his large hands settling on the small of my back and urging me forward until I was pressed against him. His other hand found its way to that same spot, locking me in his embrace. “I have plans, Olivia. Plans of getting you to tell me what I want to hear.”
“Spoken like a true CIA agent.”
He gave a smile that would please the devil.
My breath caught, and the irises of his eyes heated to inky pools, darker than black lava.
Oh, I didn’t have a chance in hell of resisting him, and I was sure he knew. One of his hands slipped beneath the bottom of my sweater and the camisole I wore beneath it, touching the scarred skin there, before sliding toward my stomach. His warm palm glided up, up, up . . . until it gripped my bra-covered breast. I moaned just as his mouth covered mine, his kiss passionate and uncontrolled. Like there was no more need for restraint and no need to rush.
It was just us now, all alone in these stacks of bourbon.
“Do you want me?” he asked.
God, with every cell in my body. “Yes.”
“Why?”
I stared at him, unsure how to answer, but he continued to move. He lifted the sweater and camisole together, peeling them up and working the fabric over the unsexy cast on my arm so he could drop them to the floor. He used the pad of one fingertip to trace the edge of my bra, dragging it slowly across the cup of one breast, down the hollow between, and over the top of the other. Goosebumps burst across my arms.
“Because,” my breathing went shallow, “I . . . need you.”
No hesitation. “Why?”
His fingertip following the band around my body, and a moment later my bra went slack. He set his mouth in the crook of my neck, his unshaven face brushing over my bare skin, his lips following my bra’s descent.