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)
It’s been a while, and maybe that’s what makes me so ferocious. I’m the one who bites first. Gently and playfully, grasping his bottom lip with my teeth and working it, then licking with my tongue and sucking on the spot. He nips me back, unrestrained and not-so-gently, but not near enough to truly hurt.
I wish he had more hair for me to bury my fingers in like he does to mine, but the close-cropped strands are softer than I ever would have bet. They’re ten times softer than mine, but dying your hair and not having uber-expensive shampoo and conditioner do a number on it.
He tilts my face back and kisses me so deep and senseless that I forget all about hair. My heart forgets everything but this man and what my mom used to say.
Hearts get sick. They forget how to work. They weaken, and they sicken, and one day, they stop beating, but they never, ever forget how to love. There’s infinite room in the heart. Room for forgiveness, for joy, for passion. Room for the whole universe.
I’ve opened myself up to so many people over the years, but never just for that special someone.
Is that what I’m doing? Is this kiss a door to the heart?
I stop, ostensibly for a breath, but really, it’s so I can gather myself and get my shit under control. I think I might be losing my mind.
I’m afraid if I walk through that door, I can’t walk back out. It’s hard to separate what my body wants from what’s the right decision. Then there’s the right decision for tonight and the right decision for tomorrow.
We have lives we’re not willing to leave, and now our business with each other is basically finished. We don’t ever have to see each other after today if we don’t want to. What’s worse? A single night where you give your all to someone and walk away in the morning, or a night you didn’t and transfer that giving and all to regretting you didn’t?
Regret sounds infinitely worse.
I’ve never been into protecting my heart because I’ve learned how to shatter and rebuild.
I just haven’t had the opportunity to do that in this way.
I know I can take a hit. I can take the hurt. I can walk away and hold the memories as a treasure inside me.
“Are you alright?” Thorn asks, his deep, velvet voice wrapping around me.
I stare right at his lips. His brow cocks, which makes my face get hot. He stares back at me, though. He wants me as badly as I want him. Can we want each other even after knowing we’re going our separate ways in the morning?
“I don’t want this to be a misunderstanding,” I say. One painful misunderstanding has already eaten him from the inside out for years.
“Neither do I.”
I brush my knuckles against his cheek and hold them there. His eyes glisten—intense, deep, and half-feral. “Okay.”
“Let me carry you inside.”
“I can walk,” I murmur.
He doesn’t try to convince me otherwise. I don’t like the damsel thing. It might be romantic, getting swept off your feet, but that’s not my version of romance. Getting kissed senseless to the soundtrack of the ocean under the moonlight? Now that’s romantic.
Thorn sets his hand tentatively on my hip like he’s asking a question. I brush my fingers over his and tighten them, guiding them around me so we can walk side by side across the massive yard.
He lets us in the way I came out, through the back sliding door. Then, he locks it behind us and kisses me. I pull him up against me while I swallow a gasp of delight. I open my mouth for him and let him pick me up. Wrapping my legs around his waist after I’ve half climbed him like he’s one of those alluring and lovely trees in the backyard isn’t the same as being carried. At least not the way I detest. There’s nothing distressed about the way I claw at his neck and shoulders through his shirt or how I open my mouth to him and kiss him just as ravenously. That’s not damsel-like. That’s holding my own and giving as good as I get.
He takes me upstairs on the fancy glass and metal staircase. The house is like the ocean, dark and endless, but it’s so empty—I mean minimalistic—that there’s nothing to distract us as we pass. I’ve seen the art. I’ve seen the sculptures. I don’t even notice them now.
The only thing I notice is Peach Lips on the end of my bed since I left the lamp on in my room. She’s all curled up, a happy cat.
Thorn stops. He knows I need to check-in. No matter what’s happened between us, the complicated feelings, the way things have changed, the wars and the ruination and the rebuilding, the rebranding, the change, and the challenges, if there was ever a time that I thought he didn’t care, I was wrong.