Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
He frowned. “How?”
“If you can catch me! Don’t trip this time!” she called as she took off running.
She heard an incredulous laugh behind her and ducked between two trees, not running very fast, not really trying to get away from him at all. His stitches were healed nicely, and she didn’t fear that he’d tear them, but she wasn’t going to risk it.
She could hear Sam behind her, and something about being pursued by him made excitement thrum through her veins. How very different from how their story began. Only then, she’d thought it was a bad dream. Then, she hadn’t known who was in pursuit. She laughed out loud as he caught up to her, his staggered breath and the crunch of his heavy footsteps directly at her back. He touched her and she laughed again, tripping over a root and pitching forward. Sam reached out and caught her around the waist, steadying her, but she went to her knees in a bed of pine needles and then rolled to her back, laughing up at the canopy of trees above. Sam dropped down beside her, rolling to his back as well.
For a moment, they lay there as they both caught their breath, the last rays of sun filtering through the dimming woods. Beautiful. Peaceful.
“You’re healed,” she declared.
He let out an agreeable grunt. “I know.”
He’d said he would leave when he was healed, and Autumn had asked him to stay. He’d given her a half-hearted yes, but she was afraid that he wouldn’t honor it. And in all honesty, she didn’t exactly know what to do with him once they left this temporary home. Would she take him to her small house? Leave him there while she went to work every day? It was all so up in the air, and it made her feel slightly desperate and very unsure. Because although she had no plan, her heart—her heart didn’t want to let him go. And in many ways, she knew even trying would be an impossibility.
Autumn turned, going up on one elbow and gazing at Sam, her eyes moving to those soft, soft lips of his. They’d been this close once before, their faces nearly touching. And even though she knew now it’d been reality, sometimes that long-ago moment still felt like a dream. “You almost kissed me once,” she murmured.
He turned his head, his expression surprised as their gazes met.
“In the woods, when I tripped you,” she said, as though he might not remember. And maybe he didn’t. But she had a feeling he did. “Do you ever think about what it would have been like?”
“All the time,” he answered. “Every day of my life.”
Oh. Sometimes he could be so incredibly honest that it stole her breath. She hadn’t expected that, and it made her pulse jump, her heart pick up speed, her blood moving more swiftly through her veins than when she’d been running.
Autumn reached out and laid her hand over his heart and felt the strong pulse under her palm. He was growing used to her touch now, and he no longer flinched. But that was all brand new, and she couldn’t help wonder… “Have you ever been with a woman, Sam?”
He turned his face away from her, looking back to the gap between the trees where the sky had turned dusty rose.
Part of her didn’t want that answer as she didn’t want to picture Sam with any other woman. She was also surprised by the fleeting wish that she hadn’t been with anyone and that Sam might be her first. But either way, she knew it would be good to verbalize this between them. “Have you had relationships?”
“No, but I know pleasure,” he said in answer. But the bleak look on his face told her differently. Of course he knew the mechanics like nearly every other adult human and brief, blissful relief. But judging by his expression, it was one that quickly melted into melancholy, a dissatisfaction he might not be aware of or know how to explain. That wasn’t true pleasure.
“It’s different when someone else gives it to you,” she said. From what she now understood, he’d only ever known another’s touch to bring pain and anguish. He didn’t know how to let his guard down. And what she wanted was suddenly as clear as day to her. She wanted to teach him. She’d teach him what gentleness felt like but also sexual pleasure. She understood what it was like to believe that bodies were mostly made for misery, for your bones to feel like prison bars. She’d been released from that terrible hell, and her heart’s desire was to break him free too.
Why?
Why do you want that?
Was it selfish? Partly. There was the undeniable fact that she was attracted to him and also that it would bring her joy to see him happy. But there was a selfless element involved too, because she sensed that freeing him from one cage might mean he left her, even though she’d asked him to stay. And that would bring her pain. Yet even still, she wanted to see him learn to receive.