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)
Each stroke is a promise. Every thrust a confirmation of my desire, of my need for her.
I see the pleasure etching her face, hear it in the soft moans escaping her lips. She’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever witnessed, and I know, without a doubt, that I would do anything to keep her, to make her happy.
I sink into her depths, consumed by the heat of her, the softness, the wetness. Her breaths come in short gasps, matching rhythm with my own.
She whispers against my ear, some unfinished sentence caught between gasps of pleasure and passion.
She holds my face, pulling me closer until our foreheads touch. She looks in my eyes with a vulnerability I’ve never seen in her before.
But I don’t dwell on it. I can’t dwell on it. Not when I’m thrusting, thrusting, thrusting…
Fucking her with powerful strokes…
Then it crests…and she breaks around me with a low moan.
I’m right there with her, holding, anchoring, giving, and the relief of it is so sharp. So perfect.
A tear flashes in her eye. One quick at the corner.
I kiss it away, my cock still pulsing my release.
Afterward, we don’t move for a long time. I’m half on her, half beside her, dragging my fingers over her breasts.
She touches my face so tenderly I want to break.
But I won’t.
For Tabitha, I will stay whole.
Twenty-Nine
Tabitha
He doesn’t ask me what I dreamed.
I don’t tell him I love him.
Right now we’re speaking only with our bodies.
We lie in the quiet night, listening to our breaths turn from ragged to steady. He draws small circles over the hollow of my throat, and each one seems to erase a little more of what haunts me.
“You okay?” he asks eventually, voice barely there.
“I am now.” The truth of it surprises me. It settles in my bones like warmth after a long cold.
He kisses my hairline. “Good.”
I turn my face toward him and study the strong bridge of his nose, the lashes that are too pretty for a man, the mouth that can be soft and ruinous in the same minute. I trace his lower lip, and he catches my finger with his mouth, a gentle bite that makes heat uncoil low in my belly again.
“I needed you,” I say.
He tightens his arm around me. “Anytime,” he says.
Anytime.
How easy it is for both of us to be what each other needs in the darkness. In bed.
If only it were this easy in daylight.
I lie there counting our heartbeats.
A moment later, he rises, grabs a blanket, and covers me. Then he walks to the blankets on the floor by the hearth.
“Stay with me,” I murmur.
“There isn’t enough room for both of us on the couch,” he says. “If I roll over, I’ll crush you.”
I sigh. “Not a bad way to go.”
His silhouette darkens in the moonlight. “Don’t make jokes about that.” A pause. “About death.”
Nice move, Tabitha. What a stupid thing to say to a man who ended a life and nearly had his own ended.
My sister, Sam, always says I use humor when things get dark. She’s right, I guess. I mean, I could have met my end that night before the seminar began. Who knows what could have happened if Lance hadn’t shown up?
Ugh.
Just what I don’t want to think about.
That night. The nightmare that woke me up in the first place.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say.
He doesn’t reply, simply lies down on the blankets by the hearth.
I rise, go to him, and lie down.
Again, he says nothing, but he pulls the blanket over my shoulders.
I snuggle to him, my knee tucked between his. He strokes my back in slow lines.
Somewhere in that deepening quiet, my mind edges toward sleep without the cliff underneath it.
Before I slide under, I press my mouth to his shoulder. “Thank you,” I whisper.
He answers with a kiss to my forehead and, “Always.”
My last conscious thought is a vow I make to myself. If the nightmare returns, I will meet it with this.
The weight of a man who holds me like a promise.
Thirty
Henry
The dreams come hard.
Too hard.
I’m back under the half-finished beams of my house, sawdust in my hair, Zach barking so frantic it shreds my nerves. Then the crack. It’s not thunder this time, but wood giving way. Weight drops white-hot through my skull, and the world splits into pain and light.
I jerk awake, drenched in sweat, but the cabin ceiling doesn’t move. The beams hold.
Tabitha’s hand is on my chest. My heart hammers, and my lungs refuse to slow.
“Henry.” Tabitha leans over me, hair falling like a curtain, eyes searching.
I know she sees it—the way my fists are clenched, the way my body is locked as if I’m bracing for impact that already happened.
“You’re dreaming,” she says, steady, like she’s talking me down from a ledge. “You’re here. You’re safe.”
Safe. The word scrapes raw.