Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Soul telepathy.
I might have remained frozen for eternity, lost between indecision, between wrong and right, regret and fear and longing. Suspended in time, moving on with my life while she moves on with hers. I might have spent hours debating with myself over the capacity of my heart or whether it’s just an alleged organ that went wrong somewhere for me. The moment might not have even happened if she hadn’t been the one to surge up and kiss me.
She slams her mouth to mine and grinds her body—a body that makes me crazy fucking hard and hot and lost—against me.
And the moment happens.
Chapter twelve
Ephemeral
For the first few seconds, I think I’ve made a mistake and misread all the signs. His body, my body, and the stuff that’s been happening from the first time we set eyes on each other. There’s always been a wild spark ready to combust. Dislike is as strong as like in many cases. You can be physically attracted to a person even if you don’t fully understand why or don’t even want to be.
That was me when I first met Thorn, but not now.
He pretends to be all heartless and hard. I think he might even believe that. But after what he just told me, there’s no way I’ll ever think that about him again.
We were both rejected, in a way, by our families. It was so much more different for me than it was for him. He still cares. Deeply. I don’t know if he’s scared of making connections with other people or if he’s just been too busy, but he also seems like me that way. Always surrounded by people but so alone.
I don’t think Thorn has allowed himself a moment of self-care or self-love since he was probably a little kid and didn’t even know what that meant. He grew up far too fast, long before he faked his age and did what he had to do in order to keep his family together. I saw the doubt in his eyes when he talked about his mom and brothers. He wants to contact them so badly, but he’s worried they still won’t want him, even though that was never the way it was in the first place.
Kissing is intimate, and intimacy can be comforting. I’m not sure this is the right comfort, the kind of comfort either of us needs, but maybe it’s all we need, and our brains haven’t clued into the fact.
After the first few seconds of nothingness, no response whatsoever, just me kissing the ever-loving loons out of Thorn, he responds.
Holy taco-smelling toe beans, does he ever.
I know thinking and overanalyzing is a bad habit, so right now I stop doing that and just feel.
I feel his lips moving against mine and his hands wrapping around my waist as he groans low and soft in his throat.
God, this man. He makes me crazy. All kinds of crazy. He’s a golden retriever in a stacked and feral body, hiding a heart of pure gold.
I savor the taste, which is warm and a little bit like licorice and spice, like a comforting cup of tea on a cold night. It is a cold night. It might be hot during the day, but this close to the water and with the wind blowing like this, it’s cold enough that even in Thorn’s hoodie, I was all goosebumps before I started kissing him.
He pulls me in close as he starts to attack my mouth. His heat spreads through me, pebbling my skin. It’s not just his body heat that flows through me. It’s the kiss, his lips working against mine, the finest mystery, the hottest fire. I can barely breathe, but who really needs to when they have the world’s hottest man giving them the hottest kiss of a lifetime?
My other hand joins the first one at his neck, and I brace myself against his hard body, holding onto him like the restless Pacific Ocean just beyond is going to rise up and sweep us away. If it comes, I’m not even sure a huge wave can separate us. We’ll go under together.
I think we might be under right now.
Fire or water, drowning or burning.
“House?” Thorn grunts, panting, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. He goes back to plundering my mouth like an expert pirate. Like my lips were made just for this, waiting for him to come and lay claim to them.
I taste him, take him into my mouth, and let his tongue stroke mine and ignite fires all throughout the center of me. I’m not normally the one who takes the lead. I never did much of this as a teenager, and then my mom got sick, and I lived that life. Anyway, my boyfriend really wasn’t much more than casual at the time. We were young, and neither of us thought we’d end up together. When he bailed because he couldn’t take what I was going through, I never blamed him. He didn’t put me off dating and sex. I just…haven’t since we broke up.