Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 89012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
She shrugs like that’s fair.
“Most women, especially at our age, are looking for their person,” I say honestly. “That’s my experience, anyway.”
“And you aren’t looking for yours?”
Her voice is soft and tentative. This is why I’m not looking at you.
“You want to know what I think?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“I think that everyone probably does have a person for them. I’ve seen it too many times to say it’s not true. Mom and Dad. Moss and Brooke. They aren’t them without the other.”
The room is quiet.
“But there’s a lot of work that goes into that,” I say. “There’s compromising. There’s putting someone else before yourself. There’s the time all of that requires that takes you out of the things you want or need to do to survive.”
I turn my head to look at her. She’s watching me. I can’t read the look in her eyes, but I give her a little grin anyway. I know this isn’t what you want to hear.
“Before you know it, you can’t eat in bed anymore or have fun sex or take the excursion you want on your honeymoon because the other person is a dick about it.”
Subtly, she nods.
I shrug. “I think we all have a person and sometimes it works out. Again, Moss and Brooke are a good example, as are my parents. But most of the time it doesn’t work. Or it works, per se, but no one is happy. What you’re having for dinner is a fight and someone is withholding sex. You’re stuck with the responsibility of making the other person happy and that’s unfair.”
“Yeah.”
“Relationships are the fastest way to ruin something good, to take two people who got along and make them hate each other for taking the good out of their life.”
Her brows pull together as she processes what I’m saying.
“Okay. Fair,” she says. “But if something is good and you aren’t in a relationship with them, how do you keep the good?”
“Fair.” I sigh. “I guess … I guess you entertain it as long as it’s good and enjoy it until it stops working—until the responsibility of someone else’s happiness becomes too much. Then you walk away before you hate each other.”
You can walk away before they walk away from you. Ashley knows that more than anyone.
What makes her so into relationships, anyway? And why, having come from such a solid marriage, do I fear it just as much?
She searches my eyes as if she’s trying to read my soul. I don’t blink or turn from her—I let her see what she wants. Because when it comes to her, I’m all about enjoying it until it stops working. But especially when it comes to her, I’ll end it before it can go bad. I won’t let what we have devolve into ruination.
“Well,” she says, moving the crackers and pepperoni onto the table. Then she climbs out of bed. “That makes sense in some jacked-up way.”
She disappears into the bathroom.
“I didn’t say I liked it,” I say after her. “I just said that’s the solution that I’ve deduced from what I’ve seen in the world.”
I listen to her rummage around. What’s she doing?
“Hmm,” she says from the other room.
I laugh. “What are you doing?”
She flips off the light and comes back into the bedroom. Instead of walking to the other side of the bed, she crawls onto mine.
I grip her hips as she straddles me. My cock instantly hardens.
The moonlight streams through the open door, illuminating her from behind. Her hair is down from the towel and falls just below her shoulders.
My God, she’s an angel.
She leans forward and places a sweet kiss against my lips.
As she sits up, her pussy rocks against my cock. I can feel the heat radiating from her body and the dampness as she sits on me.
“Enough serious talk. I have you for a few days,” she whispers. “I don’t want to waste time.”
I dip my fingers deeper into her skin. “Whatever you want.”
She scoots off me. The tear of a condom wrapper breaks the silence. She palms me and then rolls the protection over my shaft.
How did I get this fucking lucky?
I guide her back over me. She lifts her hips, and I position myself against her opening.
She slides onto me slowly, inch-by-delicious-inch. Her moan tickles my ears.
“You’re perfect,” I whisper as she rocks against me in no hurry. Like she has all the time in the world.
Something inside me stills.
Neither of us says a word.
I let her take control. I watch her silhouette on top of me, circling my cock. Her head falls to the side, her hair falling in front of her face, hiding her features from me.
This isn’t fucking. This is something else—something I’m not about to name.
“Kiss me,” I say, lifting my head toward her.
She lowers her head and does what I did to her earlier—she says everything she wants to say with her body.