Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 96292 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96292 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
We make it to the door and kiss again. He hikes my legs around his waist and carries me upstairs, stopping several times to kiss me without falling backward. My back thunks against the door, his lips demanding, hands palming my ass.
“I think I’m going to love you,” I whisper when Flynn kisses my neck below my ear. “So, just be prepared.”
He lifts his head, eyeing me with an unreadable expression.
My heart sinks.
Shit. Shit. Shit!
Say something. What is he thinking?
“Why wait?” he says.
I might cry because I haven’t been in love like this. I haven’t allowed myself to feel this deeply since the day I was taken on my twenty-first birthday. Routine has made every day simple, a steady wave of emotions. Nothing too high. Nothing too low. Years of self-medicating with monotony and a numbingly boring social life.
“I mean,” he begins, saving me from my drowning thoughts, “I’m not waiting.”
I lean the back of my head against the door and close my eyes, quickly wiping my tears.
“Or we can wait.”
“No.” I laugh, opening my eyes and grabbing his face to kiss him again.
We jolt, beginning to fall backward, and he grabs the doorframe to keep us upright when Ally opens it.
“Whoa. What’s going on? I was just leaving to—”
“Go,” I mumble over his lips as he walks us toward the bedrooms.
Ally laughs. “Have fun.”
“This one,” I say, breaking our kiss before he passes my room on the left.
He kicks the door shut behind us.
“Love you,” he whispers, framing my face, thumb touching my scar. He does it every time he cups my face.
And every time I melt, feeling beautiful in his eyes.
Can I let him love me when he doesn’t know everything about me? My brain says, no. Stop. Slow down. My heart is nothing more than a wild horse with the wind at its back. Maybe it doesn’t matter who I was, if I’m no longer that person. This can be my life.
I close my eyes and move my head a fraction to kiss his thumb, a silent thank-you for accepting all of me. “I love you,” I whisper.
My body aches to be as close to his as possible, but my heart doesn’t want to rush a single second. And the way he slowly unbuttons my blouse leads me to believe that he doesn’t want to rush this either.
“I need a better vocabulary,” he murmurs, our gazes meeting after he slides my blouse off my shoulders and removes my shorts, leaving me in my bra and underwear.
Goosebumps erupt across my skin. “Why do you say that?”
His gaze drops to my breasts and lower, taking in all of me while wetting his lips. “Because I just keep thinking that you’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen, but”—he shakes his head—“that word doesn’t feel big enough for what I really see when I look at you.”
A new round of tears threatens to escape as I remove my bra. With my jaw cradled in his hands and his lips moving with mine, I hear Bach, “Cello Suite in G Major Prelude.” It’s beautiful and haunting, the way I’ve always imagined it would feel to fall in love. The highs and lows. Thrumming the strings that attach my soul to my earthly body.
Love is passion. Desire with purpose. Life well-lived.
My mom said those words to me when I hit a low point, certain I could live forever without this kind of love.
Flynn removes his shirt and unbuttons his jeans. Then he steps behind me, gathering my hair and gently placing it over one shoulder so he can pepper kisses along my back, easing my underwear down my legs. It’s slow, almost agonizing, as he shows control while my chest feels like it could rip open from my heart thrashing around in its cage.
My jaw unhinges with a gasp when he playfully bites the flesh along the curve of my butt. He chuckles softly as I rest my chin on my shoulder, angling my gaze down at his mischievous grin.
The impatience to feel more, feel it faster, more intensely, wins over my desire for the moment to last, so I turn in his arms and kiss him, sliding my hand down the front of his briefs.
“Jesus,” he whispers, dropping his gaze between us, mesmerized by my touch. We stumble the last few steps to my bed, discarding the rest of his clothes, save for a condom from his pocket. He sets it next to my head as I lie on the bed. The music in the back of my mind is almost deafening as our naked bodies intertwine, moving together like a bow across the strings.
“Flynn …” My fingers curl into his hair as he kisses my inner thigh.
When he crawls up my body, I peel my eyes open for a few blinks, admiring the lines of his body, taking a few extra seconds to feather my fingertips along the mottling of scars, each one squeezing my heart like I can take away some of the pain that they once caused him. What kind of monster does that to another human, let alone a child?