Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 33333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 167(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 167(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
“Been that all my life.”
She laughs, short and incredulous. “And somehow I still show up.”
“You shouldn’t feel like you have to prove anything to me,” I say, not a question.
She shifts in my arms, hips brushing the seam of my jeans like a minor war. “You think I do?” She bites her lower lip, the little motion that makes me forget to breathe.
“Maybe I’m selfish,” I admit. “Maybe I need to know that no one can just walk in and make you laugh like that.”
She stares at me, the way I stare when I’m trying to decode her. “Everyone makes me laugh,” she says. “Not everyone makes me want to move in with a man who hoards wood for no reason.”
I plant my hand at the small of her back, fingers splaying like I’m claiming the space where her spine meets muscle. “Then stop making it easy for them.”
Her eyes darken. “So possessive.”
I lean my forehead to hers. “Possession is a warm thing.”
She squeezes my hand, teasing, brand-new mischief in her face. “You say that like it’s a compliment.”
“It is.”
A slow heat coils through my gut at the thought of all the men who tried to take what’s mine. She’s not property. She’s a person. A wild thing. A hurricane that wears lipstick and tells me to stop being dramatic.
“You’re also spectacularly infuriating,” I tell her, and it’s true and I mean it and it’s also a declaration.
She snorts, then her expression folds under something tender. “You know I don’t do easy, right?”
“Good,” I rasp. “Me neither.”
She turns her head, and I catch the arc of her jaw, the line down her neck. I can smell the flowers in her hair—crisp, like autumn. My hand slides up, under the hem of her dress, fingers finding the warmth of her thigh. It’s a small, deliberate movement meant to say more than my mouth ever can without sounding like an apology I’m not ready to give.
Her breath clips. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t tell me to stop. She leans into the motion like someone leaning into a promise.
I press closer, not enough to break the rules we wrote for ourselves, but close enough that I can see the pulse in her throat, bright and dangerous.
“Why haven’t you touched me yet?” she asks, and the words are raw and brittle with truth.
The question hits me like a slap. Not because I don’t want her—God, I want her—but because the thing lodged under my ribs is delicate as bone. I built walls with wood and silence. Touching her has always felt like breaking something I’m not ready to fix.
“Because I’m careful with the things I don’t want to lose,” I say, the answer thin with confession.
“That’s not a good reason.”
“No.” I swallow. “It’s a coward’s one.”
She laughs, short and almost unbelieving. “You’re terrible.”
“Yeah,” I rasp. “I am.”
Her fingers curl into my flannel at my chest, anchoring us both. “Then touch me,” she orders, and the word is the sweetest kind of dare.
I don’t move with the skillful patience she expects. I move with the ugly, dangerous honesty I should have learned how to have sooner. My hand slides higher, under lace and leather, coaxing the heat of her skin to the surface. I stop, thumb hovering at the edge, where private heat begins. I don’t cross. Not in front of people. Not like this. But I let my fingers rest there, the softest of claims.
“You piss me off,” she whispers in my ear, voice small and big and everything in between. “And also—everything else.”
“You make me want to annihilate anyone who looks at you wrong,” I confess, and the words sound like a threat and a vow.
She breathes out a laugh that sounds like surrender. “That’s poetic in a problematic way.”
I bend my head, my mouth almost to her ear. I whisper something filthy and private—something that makes her shiver and laugh and suck in a breath that promises a war. “You’re mine, Aspen,” I say, low and unrepentant. “All of you. Don’t make me prove it.”
She closes her eyes like she’s tasting it, like it’s the sweetest poison. For a stolen second, everything is slow and hot and we are the only two people who exist in this room of music and fog and false courage.
Then a clumsy hand slaps a shoulder near us—Perry, blissfully oblivious—and everyone’s attention flickers. The world tilts back. Social obligation tugs at the corners of the moment and something in me snaps like a twig underfoot.
I pull back, fingers trailing down her thigh in a final, possessive stroke. My eyes pin her with something fierce.
“Come with me,” I say, but I don’t mean to the corner behind the bar or the back alley. I mean home.
She searches my face like she’s trying to read the truth from the map of it. “What if I tell you I like it here?” she asks, half-mocking, half-pleading.