Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Thank God. A switch. “I’ll just turn this on.”
Click.
As illumination bloomed, she looked over her shoulder. Dev had hung back, and while he leaned against the wall, his hooded eyes were on her.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said as he nodded over his shoulder at the door they’d come through. “I can leave now that you’re safely home.”
She glanced around. The place was like a hotel room, in the anonymous sense of the words. Neat, tidy, with functional furniture in the right places. The color scheme of gray, cream, and white was clearly intended to calm the weary mind, and the view of the western horizon showing the twin bridges and the city’s twinkling other side was beautiful, but cold.
She met his eyes in the reflection from those windows, and all she could think of was that he was leaving Caldwell.
“No.” Turning around, she went over to him. “You’re going to stay.”
Reaching up to his windbreaker, she trailed her hands down the pads of his chest. Even through the layers, she could feel the heat coming off of him, and when she got to the lower hem, she didn’t hesitate. She lifted the folds up his torso.
He was hardening already.
It was obvious at the front of those jeans.
And seeing that… no, she wasn’t stopping this time. The thing was, this wasn’t a one-night stand. She’d been looking for magic, and even with all the shadows between them, she’d found some with him. Sure, they would only have right now, but she was going to remember him for a very, very long time.
Besides, hadn’t the last couple of nights—hell, the last month with her granmahmen—proved that there were no guarantees about anything? Even if they tried to date, who knew what would happen.
“You are so going to stay,” she repeated.
In response, Dev nodded and put his arms over his head, letting her do the work as she shucked the jacket off of him. Tossing the thing on the nearest armchair, she immediately put her hands back where they’d been, on his pecs. They were warm, and his muscles flexed under her palms like her touch was resonating through his body.
Lyric did not look at the strong column of his throat. She focused on his mouth, especially as she leaned into him.
“I can see how much you want to kiss me,” she breathed.
His hands slipped into her own coat and peeled it off her shoulders. “Yeah. It’s bad.”
“Good.”
She had no idea where he threw what he removed from her, and she didn’t care as he dropped his head. With his mouth just an inch above her own, she ran her hands up his back. The muscles along his spine rippled as he put his arms around her, and God, she loved the power in him. The hardness of him. So very different from herself.
With an easy shift, he picked her up and carried her to the sofa.
Laying her out on the soft cushions, he knelt beside her. “How far do you want this to go?”
“I don’t know. I’m not thinking too much ahead right now.”
“Good.”
Dev loomed over her, and then melded their mouths. With a moan, she arched into him as he kissed her, his lips stroking, seducing, none of that hard, hot passion from before—as if he was giving her a little time to consider what they were doing. And she had a feeling he was also giving her physical space because she could scent his arousal: He was ready to mount her and orgasm inside of her already, the mating instinct clearly not so different in humans.
But he was holding his body back, keeping things in check…
Even as he started to explore. With tantalizing deliberation, his touch drifted across her stomach, and she felt a tugging as he pulled the bottom of her blue sweater up from the slacks she’d worn. Then came a little skin-on-skin, his warm, calloused palm moving over her belly, going around to her ribs… moving up to right below the cup of her bra. Meanwhile, his tongue licked into her, and when she felt a moan rise up in her throat, she didn’t hold back.
His chuckle was very self-satisfied, the vibration on her mouth making her wonder what it was going to feel like when he was at her breasts—
On a quick shift, Lyric sat up and ripped the sweater off herself. Underneath, she had a button-down shirt on, and as she lay back down, Dev’s eyes raked over the next layer he was clearly going to take off her.
“Yes,” she whispered, answering the question in his hot stare.
Easing back on his heels, he went to work on the fastenings of her shirt, starting with the one at the bottom first. Then the next. And the next… the next. His eyes were hooded and volcanic as he looked at what he was revealing, inch by inch, the two halves of the shirt falling free as if the damn thing was complicit.