Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
His arms come around me. The world narrows to his hold. I shake once—a full-body shudder—and then go still, inhaling his neck. He smells like soap and cedar and Henry.
“Tell me what you need,” he says.
I tilt my mouth to his jaw. “You. I always need you.”
He goes very still. His pulse thumps once beneath my lips. Then he exhales slowly. When he pulls back enough to see my face, I wonder if he’s reading me. The look in my eyes, the invisible tremors.
I lift my chin. I don’t want his slow and reverent stuff. I want hard and fast. The way he took me in the barn.
The way of us.
I kiss him. It’s not neat.
It’s heat and hunger and the merciless relief of drowning out a siren with a thunderclap.
His hands find my back and my waist. Mine find his shoulders and then his hair.
He breaks the kiss only long enough to rest his forehead against mine. We breathe each other’s air for a few seconds, and he strokes my cheekbone as if he’s smoothing the nightmare away.
His eyes darken with the kind of understanding that makes my chest ache. He kisses me again, slower at first, coaxing, and then deeper. The pace builds the way a storm does, like a distant rumble before the sky breaks open.
He slides his hands under my shirt, his palms hot against my skin. Every inch he touches wakes up, most intensely between my legs.
It’s almost too much, the care and the yearning tangled together. I lean into it and let both undo me.
“I need more,” I whisper.
“Show me,” he says.
I do. I tug his shirt up, and he helps, arms crossed and lifted so I can pull it over his head. God, his corded neck, hard chest, defined abs. I press my hands to him, infuse myself with his warmth and strength.
He cups my face, and I can’t tell if I’m shaking because I’m cold or because all at once I’m burning.
He kisses the corner of my mouth and then my jaw and then lower, a path that makes my breath catch. I tilt my head back, give him full access, while I slide my fingers over his strong shoulders.
“Tabitha,” he says against my skin.
I pull off my shirt.
He looks at me, and even though it’s dark, I see him so clearly.
It hits me then, sudden and bright and terrifying, how much I love him.
It’s crazy.
How did I think I could live without him in my life?
But if he doesn’t feel the same way…
He must, though. He had decided to come to me before the accident. I was the one he wanted when he woke in the hospital.
But those thoughts drift away until only feeling remains.
He stands, lifting me with him, and I wrap my legs around his waist. The room tips. He walks to the couch and lays me down, making sure my head is rested on a pillow.
He leans over me.
“Tell me if you want to stop,” he says, but the way he says it—low and fierce—makes it clear he’s not going to.
I’m good with that.
This is the Henry I know and love, the one who takes, and when he takes, he gives me what I need.
“I won’t,” I whisper. “Don’t stop.”
Our clothes disappear. I’m not sure how. I don’t care.
All I want is Henry. His mouth on me. His body on top of me, freeing me from the nightmares, the demons.
When I arch into him, he catches me with his body, with his hands, with his groans that unravel something stubborn and knotted inside me.
He’s all tension and heat, and when I push, he gives with a restraint that feels like power offered, not taken.
He kisses me like he wants to memorize me. I kiss him like I want to reverse every terrible thing my body ever learned about fear.
The room falls away. The house, the night, the past… All gone. There is only us together, the way he speeds up when I gasp, the way I pull him closer when I need more. It’s frantic and tender at the same time, and I can’t get enough.
When I grasp his erection in my fist, he inhales sharply.
“Fuck, Tabitha.”
“I want you in my mouth.”
“I’d be an idiot to say no.” He moves up, sitting, and I kneel between his legs.
His cock is big and beautiful, jutting out from his dark-blond bush and marbled with two purple veins. I slide my thumb over the head, massaging it lightly, swirling the pre-come over him.
“Damn,” he grits out.
“Good?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
His voice is ragged, breathless. He thrusts a hand through his hair, eyes wild and focused intently on me.
I grin up at him, teasing. “Then I guess I should keep going.”
The words are barely out of my mouth before I’m leaning forward and sliding my tongue over the head of his cock. His sharp intake of breath is music to my ears.