Total pages in book: 25
Estimated words: 28434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 142(@200wpm)___ 114(@250wpm)___ 95(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 142(@200wpm)___ 114(@250wpm)___ 95(@300wpm)
“You get them while doing club shit?”
“Club shit?” I snap, giving a bite to my words and letting him know he’d better watch his step.
“Just answer me, Mackenzie,” he says, placing another kiss on one of my scars. His mouth eases my tension. He’s worried.
“No. Not from there either.”
“You going to make me drag it out of you?” he asks, running his tongue along another scar, making me moan. I’m learning this is his game. He likes to tease my body until I tell him what he wants to hear. It should piss me off that he can do that, but I’d be lying if I said I don’t love it. My body craves him like it never has anyone else before. I find myself allowing him liberties I’ve never allowed another soul.
“I got them before I was in the Air Force.”
“But you were eighteen when you enlisted.”
“I was,” I confirm, letting him see a part of myself that few others know about.
“Oh, Mackenzie.” He breathes against my back, peppering kisses up my spine, and letting me know that my scars make no difference to how he feels about me. That he isn’t disgusted by them. He may change his mind if he finds out what I did because of those scars. He could recoil at the ugliness I’ve been party to. It’s a bitter reminder that what I have here with him isn’t real. That I’m here to find out what he knows about me, and even if he denies it, he’s probably here to close his case.
“Give it to me,” he says like it will come so easily. That it’s his right to have.
“I can’t give you anything. I don’t trust you. I can’t trust you to wear a fucking condom.”
Instantly I’m on my back with him hovering over me, his intense gray eyes staring into mine. “Cut that shit, Mackenzie. I told you this isn’t a game. I want you. Fuck the case.” He leans into me so we’re nose to nose, “As for the condoms, you better get used to the lack thereof, because that won’t be changing. Stop trying to wiggle away from me. Having you without a condom, my cum filling your hot little cunt, reminds you there’s no getting distance from me. You’re mine.”
My whole body goes on alert at his words, making my heart rate pound like I’m on a mission. It would be exciting if it didn’t scare the shit out of me. Vincent could leave behind a whole different type of scar. The kind that could shatter me from the inside out. It’s hard to believe what he’s saying,
Pres gave me the rundown on him before I left the club. He is a decorated FBI agent who quickly moved up the ranks. Driven, will stop at nothing to get what he wants. The question was did he want me or the case more?
The idea that I could come before anything else with him tastes so sweet that I push the idea away. I’ve never come first for anyone in my life before. Even with my brothers, the club comes first, but Vincent makes it seem like I would come before everything.
It’s like I’m two totally different people. One wants to surrender to Vincent and believe his words. He looks at me like I’m his everything, that he will do anything for me, and it’s intoxicating. I’ve never had anyone look at me like that before.
The other part of me knows this is too good to be true. That a decorated FBI agent won’t turn a blind eye to the things I’ve done. The things I would do. Will he try and change me? It wasn't twelve hours ago I offered to kill a dozen men. Vincent or not, that offer still stands.
Closing my eyes doesn't help the barrage of feelings that assault me, because I can still smell him. The faint scent of his body mixed with our sex is heady. It’s a smell that will forever be imprinted on my brain.
“Baby, look at me. Talk to me, please.” Opening my eyes, I try to read his. He’s always so intense, but I’m sure he can read me clearly. There’s no hiding the battle raging inside me.
“I wish I could tell you that I’m sorry about what brought us together, but I’m not. Not any of it. Your file hit my desk and I was a goner. I’ll never hurt you, Mackenzie. You can tell me anything. Let me in and I’ll prove it to you.”
Maybe if I give him a taste, he’ll see how I can never work with him—the man who lives his whole life by the letter of the law, and me making up my own rules as I go.
“I went into the Air Force because I wanted to fly. I know it sounds silly, but I did,” I say, remembering lying on my parents’ back porch, staring up into the sky as the birds flew by. Wishing that I could do the same.
“I didn’t come from a family like yours, Vincent. My childhood wasn’t filled with Sunday dinners and trips to the zoo. Mine was filled with a miserable father who wanted to make everyone else miserable with him, including my mother and me. He hated that I wasn't a boy, and told me that when he beat me. He was so hard on me, and said it was to toughen me up, which was bullshit. Charlie just liked having us at his mercy. Then I lost her, my mother. The doctor said she fell down the stairs and snapped her neck. I was too much of a coward to tell them what really happened.”
“You were fourteen when your mom died, Mackenzie.”
Looks like he didn’t just read my file, but memorized it.
“Doesn’t matter. I didn’t protect her, which is ironic, because it's what I did in the Air Force. I just learned too late. I went in to learn to fly, but I’m too small. I was good at shooting, in fact I was the best. So that’s what I did. I sat on the walls protecting our bases. Then I got called out for a few emergency missions for the Marines, and after that, they seemed to call on me time and time again. I was in the Air Force, but Lucias—Pres —was a marine and he was my squad leader. I ended up working with them more than I did with the Air Force. For once in my life I felt like I belonged, like I had a family. One that I protected, and I won’t fail again. But, you see, my lines started to blur along the way. I don’t see things as black and white as you do, Shield.”