Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“Making someone stop thinking is kind of the goal,” I countered, trying for a reasonable tone. “And someday, you’ll meet someone who wants nothing more than for you to lie back and be pleasured.”
“And this is where you tell me it can’t be you.” Pushing up from the couch, Declan clomped over to stand in front of the bed and scowl down at me.
“It shouldn’t.” I gazed up at the ceiling light, anything to avoid meeting those compelling eyes of his.
“Which is different from can’t.”
“I don’t want to argue semantics—”
Declan cut me off with a rude noise. “I’m not sure what that word is. School wasn’t my strong suit. Never fit in there. My whole life, I’ve just wanted somewhere to belong.”
Oh, Declan. My heart twisted painfully, and I could no more avoid looking at him than I could skip my next breath. His soft blue eyes were so sad that the urge to touch him finally won, and I took his hand in mine.
“I’ve been there.” I squeezed his hand. “But you have your family—”
“The infamous Murphy clan.” Declan snorted and shook his head. “They’re great in theory. But I always feel slightly out of step with the rest of the family. The cousins were all Mount Hope locals, while we were the out-of-towners. My sister had a big group of nerdy friends who tried to include me, but I didn’t fit there either. Then, out of all the sports I tried, I thought I’d found my place with motocross. And I tried so damn hard to belong there.”
He sounded so heartbroken that I was powerless to do anything other than pull him onto my lap.
“I tried to fit in with my family as well,” I admitted in a broken whisper. “Tried to follow the prophet’s rules. My efforts didn’t matter in the end. And with who I am now, I know I never would have belonged there, but that doesn’t make the rejection sting less.”
“Yeah.” Declan released an unsteady breath, slumping against me. He wasn’t a small guy, but his weight on my lap felt incredibly right. I wrapped my arms around him, as much to keep him there as to prevent us from tumbling backward. “I guess I’m lucky no one ever rejected me as terribly as your family—”
“It’s not a competition. Pain still hurts.”
“And that’s the point I’ve been trying to make. It hurt thinking I was broken and bad at sex—”
I cut him off with a growl. “You’re not broken.”
“For the first time, I might believe you.” He let his head fall against mine. He smelled like shampoo mingled with some sort of expensive aftershave. “The other night with you, that was the first time I felt like I truly fit somewhere. I didn’t need to make myself smaller or bigger, less or more. I could just be, and I want that again. You can tell me it shouldn’t be you, but what if I never get to feel that way again?”
“You will.” I stroked his hair and face. He’d recently shaved, and the smoothness of his cheeks against my fingertips made my stomach quiver. “I promise you will.”
He gave me the softest kiss ever, looking up at me with big eyes. “Please?”
“I don’t think I know how to tell you no.” I brushed the uneven sections of hair off his forehead. “A secret fling is a terrible idea.”
“I won’t tell.” He smiled slyly.
And that right there was a huge part of the problem. I groaned. “I know.”
“Kiss me again,” he demanded as if there was a chance I might refuse.
Chapter Thirteen
Declan
After the quickest of all kisses, Jonas gently pushed me off his lap and onto the bed. I opened my mouth to protest, but he held up a hand.
“I need to lock the door.”
“Yes.” My triumph as he trotted over to the stairs and locked the basement door before flipping on the dryer on his way back to the bed was on par with the adrenaline of winning a qualifying heat. I kicked off my slip-on sneaker from my uninjured foot, already thinking ahead to potential naked time. “I win.”
“You win.” He didn’t sound too sad about that turn of events. I grinned up at him as he sat back down on the bed. Riding the high, I straddled his lap again. I arranged myself so I wasn’t putting stress on my walking boot before pushing him backward.
I’d waited to seek him out until the house was largely quiet for the night, and he was in a soft gray sweatshirt advertising some sort of nursing union and blue flannel pants. Between the flannel and his lumberjack beard, he looked like an ad for the best pancakes on earth, and I couldn’t wait to gobble him down. I had to laugh at my awful internal joke.