Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 23821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
“What do you mean?” I sat back to look down at him.
“It was time that you had what you always wanted and needed. Your whole life couldn’t just be about me.”
It took me a moment. “You stayed away on purpose.”
“Yeah.” He nodded and reached up to knot his hand in my sweater and draw me back down to him.
“Why?” I put my hands down on each side of his head. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I knew if we talked, I’d ask you to come back on the road with me.”
“So?”
“So, if you didn’t, I’d be crushed, and if you did… were you supposed to give up on all your dreams for me?”
“Oh,” I whispered, getting it suddenly, the reason for the silence between us. “That’s why you didn’t visit or call or… you were thinking about me.”
“I do that on occasion,” he said huskily, moving his hands to my hips. “Think about you.”
“Varro.”
“In fact,” he said as he pulled me down so our foreheads touched, “I think about you all the time.”
He did? “You do?”
“I do. I was coming to tell you.” He tilted my head back and pressed his hot mouth to my throat, kissing and sucking. My whimper came out deep and low as my eyes fluttered closed. “And I was going to go alone back to the Isle of Man because the job offer is contingent on one more successful run of—”
“I hate that race.” I shivered, only partly from his closeness.
“And I love it.” He chuckled, kissing my nose and then my closed eyes. “But I need you there with me, because it’s dangerous, and now I have something to lose, and that kind of scares me to death.”
Lulled by the heat rolling off him, his warm hands on my skin, the rumble of his deep voice, it took a few seconds for his words to register. I jerked back, and he groaned as my weight pressed down on his hard, swollen erection.
“Please, Brian.”
“Varro.”
“Last time, I promise. We’ll go, and then we’ll come back and live together in your sweet little house. I’ll still have to drive, but I’ll come home.”
My mouth was open, but no words were coming out.
“We can get a dog.”
“Varro.”
“I know you need a home, baby. I do. I’m gonna be that, I swear.”
I was going to pass out. “You don’t want me. You just want a babysitter.”
“No,” he growled as he sat up, grabbed hold of my ass, and yanked me onto his lap.
I gasped as he caught my bottom lip between his teeth and bit down gently, then harder, sucking it into his hot mouth.
My bucking against him could not be helped; the coursing sensations annihilated me. I had waited my whole life to be where I was right now, clutched tight, his hands digging into my flesh.
When he leaned back, I caught his look, the sweetness in it.
“We need to talk,” I managed to get out.
“After,” he whispered. “Can you get up now and take me inside and show me your bed?”
“It doesn’t have to be that,” I said, because I wanted him to be sure.
“What do you mean?”
God, what was I even saying?
“Come here,” he said warmly, hands on my face as he drew me forward. He smiled against my lips. “Do you want me?”
“That’s the stupidest question ever.”
The laugh lines around his eyes crinkled, and I saw the curl of his beautiful mouth, the full lower lip, the thinner upper one.
“You kiss everybody the way you just kissed me?” he wanted to know.
“Another stupid question.”
“Okay,” he said, and just then I got that he was nervous too.
I stood up slowly, not wanting to spook him, and picked up his duffel. “Follow me.”
“Have been all my life.”
SEVEN
My house was cozy and I loved it: the warmth in the soft browns and creams, uncluttered but not sparse. I could tell he liked it when he closed the door behind him and inhaled deeply.
“Feels like home in here.”
He could have said nothing better. “Lemme show you—”
“Where’s your room?”
I walked him from the living room, which was the center of the house, past the guest bathroom, by the guest bedroom, and five steps down what was not even a hallway. I pointed out my office and finally got to my bedroom with the tiny bathroom attached.
“So where is your job?”
He put his duffel and garment bag on the overstuffed wingback chair next to the window. I sat in it sometimes and watched the rain.
“It’ll be all over the world. I’ll travel a lot. Lots of courses, lots of conditions, but all of them closed. I’d be the only guy on whatever road I was on. They’d make certain.”
“And this builder is going to make a bike to rival Honda and Yamaha, Ducati or Kawasaki? That’s their plan?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is the company based out of?”