Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“Hey.”
“Hey,” she said, giving me round eyes. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, baby, everything’s fine. The whole club is working on this now.”
“Are you being punished?”
“Punished? No. I mean, I’m not allowed to leave here. Neither are my brothers. Or you. But aside from that, it was more just some uncomfortable conversations about why I’d been keeping shit from the club and my family all this time.”
“Do they blame me?”
“No, of course not. You didn’t do anything.”
“I tried to kill you.”
“Eh, hardly. You were working with bad information. That’s not really your fault.”
“Was that your dad? Who showed up by the beach?”
“Yeah.”
“You look just like him.”
“Yeah, his genes are strong.”
“And he’s not mad at me? That I tried to kill you?”
“Baby, no one is mad at you. Shit happens. Trust me, this isn’t even the craziest story of this club’s generation, let alone our father’s generation. Did I tell you how my dad met my mom?”
“No.”
“My father was doing a drop.”
“Guns?”
“Yes. And my mother… stole the gun. She was an arms dealer too. So, trust me, he gets the crazy shit that can happen around the club.”
“But maybe they see it through a different lens because those are, you know, their love stories?”
I slid an arm around her, pulling until she moved to rest her head on my chest.
“Are you so fixated on this because you think they might hurt you? Or because you’re concerned about what they might think of you?”
“I trust you if you say they don’t want to hurt me.”
“So, you’re anxious about what they think about you.”
“I guess. A little.”
“Because you want them to like you?” I asked.
Carmen shifted, her body tensing up on me again.
“I care that Sofia likes me too,” I told her. “And Chip. I know he’s not technically your family, but he’s something like it.”
“Sofia loves you. And Chip really respects you.”
“And you want my family to like and respect you too.”
“Yeah.”
“Because you are thinking that you might want to keep being a part of my life?” My heart thrummed at the idea that she might be having the same kind of future thoughts that I was.
“I’m going to be here until we figure this out.”
“Baby,” I said, but said nothing else, waiting until she fought back her anxiety and angled her head up to look at me. “What’s going on in that head of yours about this?”
“This?”
“Us?”
“Us?”
“There’s some kind of us going on here, don’t you think?”
“I… don’t know?”
“No? Feels like there’s something to me. Know you didn’t know me before the whole attempted murder thing, but I’m not a man who spent all his days hanging out with a woman. At least not just one woman.”
“You’re kind of stuck with me?”
“Am I? Have I been? At your house? At the hotel? Here? I could be sleeping in the prospect room. But I’m here. Where I want to be. With you.”
“What are you saying?” she asked, voice small, hopeful.
“I guess I’m saying that my crazy ass is starting to fall for the woman who spent a year tracking me down to kill me.”
Her lips twitched at that.
“That’s not quite as crazy as starting to fall for the guy you spent a year hating and plotting to murder.”
“Touché.”
“You don’t have to say you’re interested in me just because we’re, you know, kind of involved.”
“I think it’s more than ‘kind of,’ and I would never say something I didn’t mean. I’m not saying I’m good at this or know what I’m doing. But I am saying… I’m interested in giving it a shot. If you are too.”
“My life isn’t here, though.”
“Maybe not. But I’m not suggesting you uproot your life and move into my windowless clubhouse bedroom. You don’t live that far away.”
“True. But what if…”
“What if things go well?” I asked. “You’re already expanding your business. You could hire someone to take over the jobs you do and run your business from Navesink Bank. You could even open another branch of it here. But I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Right now, you’re here. I’m here. We’re both interested. We can… explore that more.”
Carmen sucked in a deep breath and crawled up my body until her face hovered over mine. “Like this?” she asked.
Then her head dipped and her lips pressed to mine.
It was a soft kiss at first—a little hesitant and uncertain. But it wasn’t long before the desire was building, before Carmen’s knees were planting on the sides of my thighs, so she could shift upward and feel the hard press of me against her.
A groan slipped out from between her lips, muffled by mine, as every instinct told me to grab her hips and use them to grind her against me.
“We shouldn’t,” I murmured against her mouth.
“Yes, we should.”
“Your ankle,” I said between kisses. “And hand.” Her lips moved from mine to my neck, her tongue tracing the pulse point there, making desire shoot down my spine. “And ribs.”