Total pages in book: 206
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
I stared at the wedding photo of the young and pretty dark-haired woman in the white dress and veil standing beside the happy-looking youthful Thomas Ferrano, Sr. I wondered if he was a criminal back then or if something changed him to become that way. I wondered what might’ve happened to Tommy to make him swing back and forth like a pendulum between good guy and bad guy. If he made it back could I find a way to keep it swinging in one direction versus the other or would that be totally out of my control?
Sarah couldn’t talk me into more than a few bites of food for dinner. I just wasn’t hungry. I knew I hadn’t eaten much the past few days but, how could I? I went to bed early, zoning out in front of the television and feeling myself drift before it was even completely dark outside.
The next day dragged, too. Dario was miserable. I heard him snapping at Sarah and at one of the guards. I hid out in the bedroom almost all day, trying to watch TV, read a book Sarah loaned me. I helped Sarah cook dinner. I tried to keep busy, but I didn’t know what to think.
If Tommy was gone, what’d happen to me? If he was gone, how would I feel? I didn’t know how I felt about him. I felt numb about him, confused about him. I cried myself to sleep that night because I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t cope with the worry, the stress, the fear of the unknown, the flashes in my mind of him being sweet to me.
“What’s this?” I heard in the dark. “Unauthorized sleepwear?”
I jackknifed straight up to sitting. Tommy was on his knees on the bed leaning over me, partly illuminated by the fact that the bathroom light was on.
“You’re here,” I breathed and his lips were on my jaw and then my lips. He took my face in his hands and kissed me long and deep. I put my arms around his neck and he kissed me again and then backed up and then off the bed,
“I need a shower badly, baby. I’ll be back in five. Get naked.”
He backed up and threw his t-shirt over his head onto the floor and was undoing his pants as he headed to the bathroom and closed the door.
I sat there in the dark, heart thumping loudly, and a moment later, without putting any thought into it, I padded to the bathroom, which was already filled with steam.
I took off my pajamas and opened the shower door, stepping in behind him. I guess I had an inkling of how I was feeling after all.
She was here, in the shower with me, voluntarily, happy to see me, her arms around me. I flinched at first as she’d come in so quietly it startled me when I felt her reach around and put both of her arms around my waist. She put her cheek on my back and squeezed.
Seeing her sleeping in my bed when I got home gave me the oddest, most possessive, but yet happy feeling, like the first time I’d come in and found her sleeping in my shirt, but multiple-fold after all that had happened.
Now she’d come to me in the shower. She gave my back a soft kiss. I put my hands on the wall to brace myself because I was a little overwhelmed at that. Then I felt her soaping up my back. I closed my eyes and absorbed it, all of it.
I was never so tired in my life, but I just had to be inside of her, so I turned her around, got her front up against the wet shower wall and drove inside of her so fast and so hard that I saw a flash of shock in her eyes as I spun her and heard her gasp in surprise as I entered her. The sharp intake of breath was just enough to give me a little tiny bit of that rush I wanted, that I needed.
I wanted to take care of him the way he’d taken care of me the other night, because I could see he was exhausted and filthy and I didn’t know if he was traumatized, too.
But now he was trying to consume me; it really felt like that. He was driving into me hard and kissing the back of my neck, holding my hair off to the side. The harder he pushed and grunted, the tighter he pulled at my hair and it wasn’t easy to stay upright in the wet shower. I almost lost my footing and then he caught me and gently took me down to kneeling on the floor of the shower and he got back inside of me from behind and held onto a breast with one hand as he drove in over and over and then reached around and rubbed his middle two fingers around and around my clit.