Total pages in book: 178
Estimated words: 163885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 656(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 656(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
“Why did you let me get so tough on you?” He kept his hands gentle. Needing to be gentle with her, even though the monster in him roared with happiness. He smoothed the lotion over the roundness of her cheeks, following the dark red prints to the sensitive seam connecting her cheeks to her thighs.
She didn’t answer him, her blue eyes drifting over his face. Sometimes he swore she saw right into him, into places so deep he didn’t even see.
“You going to answer me?” he finally asked, because if she wasn’t answering, that meant something.
“I’m thinking about it. I need to shower. I like to go for a walk after dinner. Finding out I like dirty and sinful a little too much is shocking, especially when it involves you smacking me when I’m using a toy. I have to spend a little time contemplating that.”
“Are you going to get embarrassed on me and throw me out?”
“No. Should I? I asked to learn something dirty and sinful, and you gave me what I asked for. Something.”
“Something simple,” he clarified, hoping to intrigue her. He pulled away from her. The now dark purple prints on her beautiful, perfect bottom were beginning to make the monster in him crave more. He rolled off the bed and set the bottle of lotion on the nightstand. She’d need more to ensure she didn’t bruise.
“Great. Now I’m going to have to wonder: If that was simplistic, what would be even more?”
He gave her a grin over his shoulder as he pulled on his jeans. “Something a little dirtier and just a little more sinful. You’ll have to tell me what you want to learn next time. I’ll get those grills cleaned while you take your shower. We can walk afterward.”
He wasn’t going to let her separate herself from him if he could help it. Even if he had to find a way to give her up as a partner, he knew he would need her in his life. He just had to figure out how to keep her safe. He was already close to the end of one of his cycles. He could feel the darkness rising in him like the inevitable tide. It was bound to swamp both of them if he let it.
Savage resisted giving her a swat on her gorgeous ass, but it took discipline to walk to the table, recover his boots and make his way outside. He heard the shower go on a few minutes later. That woman. Why in the hell did a woman like her put up with him? They had a connection, a deep one forged when she’d saved his life, delivering herself up like a sacrificial lamb. Hell. He already thought of her as his. That was so fucking dangerous.
Seychelle came out of the house looking like an angel. Dressed in soft leggings that clung to hourglass hips and thighs. Lavender with little sprigs of flowers running down them. He wanted to smile when he saw the pattern because it was so completely absurd but so utterly perfect on her. Her T-shirt was ribbed, a soft pastel that matched the darker purple of the floral roses scattered in the leggings. A heavy knitted cardigan fell to her knees, but was open.
Savage held out his hand to her and waited until she took it. There was just the slightest hesitancy, but then she stepped forward and allowed him to close his much larger hand around hers. That hesitancy worried him. Seychelle, for all her innocence, wasn’t a woman inhibited in any way, especially with him. She wasn’t embarrassed by what they’d done, and she’d fully participated. She was receptive to him whether she wanted to be or not.
“You going to be warm enough? The fog’s rolled in.”
He began walking toward the bluffs across the street. The mist was heavy, rolling in off the ocean, a heavy gray film that was going to obscure vision on the roads soon. He brought her closer to the warmth of his body, tucking her under his shoulder, matching his longer strides to her shorter steps.
“This sweater is surprisingly warm.” She was silent a moment. “My mother made it. She made three different sizes of the same cardigan because I said how much I loved it.”
There was an ache in her voice, and he tightened his arm around her. She was giving him things he knew instinctively she didn’t give anyone else, just as he gave her things he never gave to anyone else.
“I was nine when I told her I loved the pattern.”
“She loved you a hell of a lot, moy angel. I know you didn’t have her for very long, but she loved you. That matters.”
He made the mistake of looking down at her. Those eyes saw too much. That woman could see inside him when no one else could. Damn her. Damn him for being so fucking exposed. He didn’t know how she got in like she did. He didn’t want her sacrificing herself for him because she pitied him, but then who the hell was he kidding? He’d take her any damn way he could get her. But he wanted her to want to be with him for him.