Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“I’ve not been up front with you about a lot. I don’t share things with women. I keep my life closed off. It was always sex for me, but I didn’t give them anything else. I never brought them here. This was my sanctuary. I didn’t plan on keeping someone long enough to tell them about Angel or show them my life.”
He stopped, and I lifted my gaze from our hands to meet his eyes.
“But you brought me here,” I said.
He nodded. “Yeah, I fucking did. I couldn’t get you in my bed fast enough. From the moment I gave in to this pull you have on me, fucking you was all I could think about.” He smirked. “But I fucked you here. In my sanctuary. I had known before I did it that you were mine.”
I bit my bottom lip to keep from smiling. It felt wrong after all he had shared with me. “I was referring to it as your cave in my head,” I admitted.
He cupped the side of my face and ran his thumb over my lips. “As long as you’re in it, you can call it whatever you want.”
Tonight, he’d told me a lot. The heaviness of it still sat on my chest. I had more questions, but the raw truth I’d just heard was enough for now. I wasn’t sure the other answers mattered so much. Yes, he had power and money. His group of friends treated him like he was their king. It was strange, but none of that changed how he made me feel.
Safe, wanted, needed, cared for, and like I had a place where I belonged.
“Why me?” I asked him, swearing to myself that was the last question for now.
“I knew long before you did that you’d be mine. I fought it. I hated it. I didn’t want it,” he said, and then he rested his forehead against mine. “Until I saw someone else touching you. Looking at you like he wanted you to be his. That undid me. Flipped a switch that wasn’t ever going back.”
I started to point out that we hadn’t known each other that long, but I let it go. What he had said was sweet, and if he wanted to make it pretty with flowery words, I’d listen. I liked fairy tales anyway. Fiction was always better than reality.
Twenty-Seven
Blaise woke me up with a kiss the next morning and told me he had some business to go handle, then said it was early for me and to go back to sleep. I immediately fell back asleep, and when I did finally get up, I checked my phone to see what time it was.
Just after seven. It felt like I’d been sleeping a long time, but maybe I had just slept deeply. I took a shower and got dressed before going upstairs. I wondered who had stayed last night and if there was going to be a crowd in the kitchen for breakfast. I doubted it, considering Angel and Gina lived here. Did the rodeo squad live here too?
More questions I had no answers to.
After last night, I wasn’t ready to ask anything more just yet. I’d let my emotions be controlled by my insecurities. That wasn’t me—or at least, it never had been. I didn’t like that side of myself. I hoped it never reared its ugly head again.
Gina was at the kitchen table with a bright red mug that said Queen Bitch on it in white letters. She looked up from her phone she’d been studying when I walked in the room.
“Morning,” she said and held up her cup. “Coffee is made, but that’s about it. Guys aren’t back yet, so I haven’t made breakfast.”
I went over to the coffeepot and filled a mug up. “They all had to go?” I asked, thinking it was odd that they had business this early that required all of them.
Gina was looking down at her phone again and didn’t look up this time as she nodded her head.
Right. She didn’t like the questions. No matter how close I felt to Blaise in the cave, when I returned to the real world up here, things still seemed odd.
“There is good creamer in the fridge. I like the caramel-flavored one, but there is also vanilla and chocolate mocha. That powdered shit is Levi’s,” she said.
I put the powdered creamer down, thankful I wasn’t going to have to use it, and went to get the vanilla from the fridge. The bowls of fresh fruit surprised me, as did the number of eggs inside. There had to be at least eight dozen eggs.
“If you want any of the fruit, help yourself. I buy it so Angel and I have something healthy to eat. The guys rarely touch it,” Gina informed me.