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)
We breathe together until reality returns. I feel full and emptied and a little bit wrong that anything in the world could feel this right when we have to break it in an hour.
She opens her gorgeous eyes. In the glow, they look like something I don’t deserve. I brush the hair back from her face.
“Again,” she says, voice wrecked and quiet.
It’s not polite. It’s not a request. It’s a demand. It’s hunger getting one last say.
I don’t answer because my body answers for me. We tangle up all over again, kissing, my fingers inside her pussy, her hand sliding along my length.
Moments later, I’m inside her again, this time from behind. It’s quick and filthy with need, and it steals what we’ve got left in the best way.
“God, yes!” she shrieks as she comes around me, pulsing.
She milks my cock in the best way, and before I’m ready, I’m shooting into her again.
God, again…
Quiet once more.
But this second quiet is different. Heavier. Her breath is slower against my mouth. I can taste blood where I bit my tongue and didn’t notice. The blankets are damp in places. My shoulder is going to be a problem tomorrow.
I don’t care.
None of it matters.
She curls into me.
I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of sex and musk and Tabitha. “You make me alive.”
We lie like that for a moment. Or an hour. I’m not sure.
A bird chirps outside.
Tabitha traces circles on my shoulder.
I don’t ask her to stay. I hate the honesty in me that knows she has to go.
“Shower?” I ask, just to say a word that isn’t a sentence.
“In a minute.” She nudges my jaw with her forehead. “Kiss me again first.”
So I do, slowly this time, because the animals have been satisfied and we can afford a little gentleness.
We pull ourselves up eventually. I press my mouth to a red mark on her collarbone and make a second one almost by accident. “Souvenir,” I say against her skin.
“Possessive,” she murmurs.
“Guilty,” I say.
“Shower?” I say again.
“Only if you join me.”
I kiss her lips. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
We walk to the master bedroom where I turn on the shower. Once it’s good and steamy, we get in, let the hot water pelt over our skin.
We don’t fuck again. Instead we wash each other and laugh when she gets soap in my eye. It feels like the kind of life you build, not the kind you steal on a late Sunday afternoon.
That thought hurts.
When we’re done, we dry each other off. Her blond hair hangs in damp waves around her gorgeous face, and I look at her.
Just look at her, memorizing every inch of her from her gorgeous amber eyes to the tips of her pretty little toes.
She leaves the bathroom, and once I’m done toweling my hair, I leave the bathroom and find her already dressed.
“Hey…” I say.
“I know. I have to go.”
I nod. “I know.”
I dress in a pair of lounging pants and an old Steel Vineyards T-shirt, and then I pick up her suitcase and carry it out.
At the door she pauses and looks around like she’s taking a photograph inside her head.
“Henry.”
“I know.” I grab her, pull her to me.
She kisses me once more and steps back.
“Maybe call me?” she says.
I pull out my phone as I nod. “I will.”
Then it buzzes.
And she sees the screen.
Her brow furrows. “Uh…who the hell is Francine?”
Thirty-Seven
Tabitha
My heart drops to my stomach.
Francine.
A woman.
God fucking damn it all.
“No one,” he says.
“No one? Then why is her name coming up?”
He sighs. “It’s not what you think.”
“You know what?” I open the front door. “Maybe I just don’t care anymore.”
I walk to the car.
He follows.
I wave him off. “I have to go. If I don’t go now, I…” I inhale a deep breath. “I just have to go, Henry. Please.”
He stops. Nods.
He gets it.
Right now, I’m choosing the seminar. My career. I’ve been honest about that.
As if on cue, as soon as I’m out of the driveway, my phone buzzes with a text from Blake with instructions for tomorrow’s class and a list of cases to be familiar with before the cadaver lab.
He couldn’t have gotten these to us on Friday, when I had time to study them?
I sigh.
This is what I’ve chosen.
This seminar.
My career.
And I’m going to own it.
Thirty-Eight
Henry
Once Tabitha’s gone, I return Francine’s call.
Why did she call me anyway? I’ve always been the one to call her.
And her timing was pure shit, at that.
“Hello,” I say.
“You were never supposed to find me.”
Her voice slides through the speaker like smoke.
“Well, I did. Why are you calling?”
“Why not? You called me twice. Maybe I felt like returning the favor. Invade your life. See how you like it.”
I glance toward the window. Outside, the rain’s back, dropping slowly on the glass. Tabitha’s on the road. It’s not a long drive to Boulder, but I hope this rain is short-lived.