Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Since there wasn’t really a movie being shot and no tours needed, I was going to have a lot of free time on my hands. I plan to be there when Lyon and his men go on their rescue mission; I’d already asked and was approved by the big man. As long as I kept my ass out of the way and out of the line of fire, he would let me tag along.
I needed to see with my own two eyes that the girls who had been taken were safe. I’ve already organized in my head how I was going to set them up for life once they were freed. Lyon assured me that they had medical staff on hand to treat the victims as soon as we brought them home, and we’d found most of the parents; some had died in the interim, and some families had been broken apart.
Whoever we find will be compensated by me. Aside from what had been done to me and Elena, that was the hardest thing to deal with about this whole mess. I still stay awake late at night thinking about my own stupidity and wishing I’d been a better person.
My blindness and sheer stupidity had caused all of this, and this woman across the room from me had suffered. My heart will never forgive me for that.
Chapter 67
*Elena*
“Where are you? Have you seen this?”
“What? Did something happen?” I was barely awake when Sydney called, still caught in the throes of sleepy pleasure after the morning and night Ryder and I had spent together.
I felt the aches and pains as I tried to sit up in bed and couldn’t help the smile that flitted across my face. I was almost afraid to be this happy or to admit to myself that our time together was so much better this time around than the last.
Don’t get me wrong, our relationship had lots of good times, but the bad somehow had grown to overshadow them. But this time, for some reason, I feel it deep inside that things are different. That he is, we are.
Of course, we’ve grown, but it’s almost as if he’s a different person. I can’t say that I’d imagined him becoming the man he is today, and though I wouldn’t wish the last five years on my worst enemy, a part of me can’t help but be grateful in a way for all that we’d gone through, if it meant that we could be here today. It’s too confusing to put into words just yet, especially when I have sex fog brain.
I was a bit shy about fooling around in someone else’s home, but the fact that we were literally on the other side of the house, away from everyone else, soon had me getting over that feeling, not to mention the fact that Ryder was being so sweet and romantic that all my defenses just crumbled beneath his soft touches that I’d come to crave once again.
It started when I was standing at the bedroom window gazing out at the night view of the park, and he walked over and stood behind me with his arms wrapped around me. I blocked out everything else at that moment and just concentrated on what his closeness made me feel.
I can’t express how I felt, how all the memories came crashing down on me at that moment, and I just started bawling my eyes out like a baby. The way he turned me into his arms without saying a word, the way he softly sang our favorite song in my ear until I calmed down, only made me fall deeper in love with him.
I didn’t want to think about all the ugliness, not Rachel, or his ex, or any of the other horrible things that I’d had to face lately. So, when he nudged my chin with his finger and tipped my face up to his, looking deep into my eyes in the moonlight, the romance was overwhelming to the point that I forgot about our hosts.
As with the week we’d spent together, I found his lovemaking to be much more mature than in the past. He was no longer a selfish lover but took his time bringing me along with him, rejoicing in my pleasure as much as his own.
And when I cried from the sheer beauty of it, he’d kissed the tears from my eyelids and down my cheek until our lips met once more in a passionate kiss that took my breath away. His hands were gentle yet forceful as they moved over my body, touching me in all the right places and awakening something inside me that I had thought long dead.
When he slipped into me, we came together as if for the first time. I don’t know what it was about that night, what made it seem as if I’d finally let go of everything I’d been holding onto, but something vital had changed between us, and we both felt it.