Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
I arch my back against him, grabbing his heated forearms. “Smelled me. The night you took me. For the first time.” Then, “Actually, you’re always doing that. Smelling me.”
He hums, doing it again, his chest vibrating with satisfaction. “Scented your lotion, when I broke into your room that one time.”
“To plant the camera?”
He hums again, both smelling me and telling me yes. “Watched you night after night after night, rubbin’ it into your skin before you went to sleep.” He squeezes my waist again and my eyes almost flutter closed. “Wanted to see if you smelled like it. Like bergamot and hyacinth.”
“I—”
“You don’t,” he goes on.
“I don’t?”
He shakes his head, rubbing his nose into the crook of my neck. “You smell better. Your blue fuckin’ lotion’s got nothin’ on the scent of your skin.”
To demonstrate, he takes another whiff and this time, groans loudly. So much so that I know the bartender heard it. Because he goes even redder in the face and abruptly turns around. God, it makes me so wet. So shamelessly wet. It turns me on that someone can hear us, hear him being all unhinged and crazy. But that’s exactly why I ran away in the first place. It’s not that I don’t trust him; it’s that I don’t trust myself when I’m with him.
I dig my nails into his forearms, arching up against him again. Then, “I-I think we should talk about why I ran. I need to—”
He hums again, his fingers kneading the flesh of my waist, starting to create a burn that brings me this close to moaning just like him. Then, “You do that. While I try to check somethin’ else about my wife.”
I go still. “What?”
He keeps nuzzling the column of my throat as he replies, “That’s what I told him you were when I came in after you.”
I know he’s talking about the bartender, and I ask, in an almost hysterical voice, keeping my shocked eyes on the guy’s back, “You told him I was your wife?”
He nods, his stubble rubbing against my neck.
“But I don’t… Why?”
“If I’d told him you were mine, he wouldn’t have believed someone as pretty as a princess would ever agree to belong to an ugly monster like me, not willingly.” I open my mouth to object, but he keeps going, “Couldn’t have told him I was your brother, ’cause the way I’ve got you sittin’ all snug in my lap and the way you like it, like this is the best seat in the house and not my hand that you were sitting on with my finger stuck in your princess pussy, no brother would ever touch his sister that way. And I’m old, darlin’, but I ain’t old enough to be your daddy.”
Every word out of his mouth is filthy and sitting heavy in my belly. I want to say something, tell him to stop, but I don’t know how. And this is one of those times when he has no problem with saying all the things he wants to. I think he knows how crazy it makes me, his deep and rough, nasty words.
“So I told him you’re my wife. At least that way he can assume your piece-of-shit daddy forced you to walk down the aisle for land or some bullshit. Seemed more realistic than anythin’ else.”
“But—”
“Told him you ran off. We had a fight and you were mad at me. As you should be ’cause I screwed up and did it real bad. Told him there ain’t no excuse for the things I’d done. That’s why you came in here, ’cause you wanted to get away from me. And the reason you were flirtin’ with him was ’cause you wanted to make me jealous.”
At this, he squeezes me so hard I can’t help but moan, and I know the bartender heard that, too, because his back tenses. I clench my eyes shut at how crazy this is, how crazy wet it makes me. I go to tell him to stop, but he doesn’t give me a chance. “You wanted to make me regret all the bad things I’d done. Punish me for ’em; make me pay. Make me hurt worse than when I made you stab me with that knife, worse than when that bullet hit me.”
I shake my head. “No, that’s not why I flirted with him. I didn’t—”
“Told him I understand it ain’t his fault, but if he looks at my pretty little Princess wife again, I’ll have to do what any good, lovin’ husband would.”
He finishes that with another squeeze and I whisper, “What?”
Tilting his face to the side, he whispers in my ear, “Blind him.”
I flinch and pop my eyes wide open. “Is that why he won’t look at me?”
His chest moves with a breath as he replies, “Yeah. Told him it pisses me off. When someone looks at my wife. If I had my way, I’d keep her locked up on my ranch. Lock the doors, bar the windows. Shoot anyone who comes within a hundred feet of her.”