Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
“Is this what you want?” he asked, raggedly.
“Yes.”
“Good. Take what I’m not supposed to give you.” He vibrated with caged aggression, his need on a leash, but he was letting her have some of it and his erection elongating against her belly was like a feast after a famine. He raked his mouth up the side of her face, into her hair, and she almost dropped to the ground, it felt so divine. “Just don’t be angry with me,” he rasped. “I can’t stand it.”
Wait. She was angry with him?
Oh yeah.
She was angry with him.
“You aren’t in charge of my love life.”
“I am your love life, Chloe.”
A two-handed shove didn’t budge him an inch. “You’re not,” she said, frustration evident in her tone. “I want you to be, but you’re not. You can’t.” Saying these things out loud caused her throat to ache, but they had to be said out loud at some point, right? “Eventually we have to admit this relationship is unhealthy and just . . . just let it change.”
His head had been shaking the whole time. “No.”
“Yes.”
“You think we could feel like this with anyone else?”
“No,” she whispered, still drawing him closer, her neck lacking its usual strength and all because that part of him, so heavy and thick, was sandwiched between them. “But I want things you won’t give me.”
His head lifted, eyes burning into hers. God, she’d never seen him this way. No, he’d never let her see him this way. So intense she was having trouble holding on to her thoughts. “Like what?”
Detailing the way she longed for physical contact felt wrong, because she’d only wanted that contact from him since the night they’d met. Saying that out loud wasn’t going to support her point, though, was it? Only hurt her argument that their obsessive relationship wasn’t serving either of them. “I want to be taken to dinner and kissed on my stoop afterward,” she blurted. “I want to be told I’m pretty and feel your—a man’s weight on top of me.”
Slowly, his brows knit together, as if she’d spoken in a completely different language. “You want to be told you’re pretty?” He repinned her so hard against the door, the hinges rattled and she sobbed, not even bothering to try and get free, because she didn’t want to. His body against hers felt like being home for the first time in six months. “A man who calls you pretty, Chloe, is a fucking fool. You aren’t pretty, you’re brutally goddamn beautiful. You glow with life. You’re crazy. You have heart. You have love pouring out of you. You’re brilliant and creative. So gorgeous I’ve lost thousands of hours of sleep.” His mouth melded to hers in a messy rub of lips. “You have a body that demands someone spoil it often and fuck it twice as often. Pretty?” He shook his head. “I’d spit on a man for calling you pretty. You’re extraordinary. The first and last of your kind.”
“Sig.” Her throat felt heavy enough to drop into her stomach at any moment. Oh my God. Oh my God. Where had those words been hiding? Maybe their power is what she felt in her bones every time he looked at her. “How . . . I’m . . .”
“How many numbers do you have in your phone? For men.”
“I don’t like where this is going.”
“Too bad. How many?”
“I’m going to kick you—”
He dipped his head and sucked the side of her throat, long and hard, while she gasped, his hands scrubbing up the outsides of her thighs, all the way to her rib cage, then higher into her hair, his fingers spearing in deep and holding her head while she tried to get her breath. “F-friends, too?”
“No.” He stared hard at her mouth. “Men who are smart enough to be interested in you romantically. Past and present. Men who might show up and try to rekindle shit. Men who might lie about your dogs hanging out to get into your panties. How many of those you got?”
“I don’t know. Seven?”
“Seven? Jesus fucking—”
“How many women do you have like that?” she half shouted.
“One. You.” Leaving his left hand tangled in her hair, he dropped his right one and yanked her phone out of her purse, holding it up. “I’ll kiss you once for every one of those seven contacts you delete, starting with the baseball player.”
“He has a name.”
“Not to you, he doesn’t.”
“You’re pushing it, Sig. You’re really pushing it.”
“I know. You can be pissed as hell—just kiss me at the same time.”
Fuses blew in her brain. Pew. Pew.
Because oh lord, he was even more magnetic up close, every inch of him sealed to every inch of her, the power inside of him on the verge of erupting. Lust and affection were joining forces in the depths of his eyes to turn her breathless and oh, oh, he very slightly dragged his sex an inch to the left against her belly and they both shuddered. “You only want to kiss me when you’re jealous. Is that right?”