Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Her eyes got big at this admission, and she mumbled, “Um…okay.”
“Being stubborn,” he went on, “I held on to her loss longer than I should.” He gave her a squeeze and warned, “I’m not over her, Lillian. I’ll never be over her. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with her, but that isn’t what fucks me about her breaking her neck when she was twenty-eight. What fucks me about it is she was hilarious. She was up for anything. She wanted to eat pizza in Italy and sushi in Japan and curry in India, and she never went to any of those places. It fucks me not only that we had a beautiful life together we didn’t get to live, but she had a beautiful life she didn’t get to live. That’s what fucks me.”
“I can imagine,” Lillian whispered, still studying him intensely.
“She’ll always be in my heart. But, not so recently, a friend told me Winnie would be pissed as shit I stopped living when she did. He was right. It took me until meeting you to understand how right he was.”
Her body melted into his as her gaze on him warmed so much, the green in her eyes seemed to turn to liquid jade.
“But I need to be able to talk about her,” Harry gently continued. “I don’t want her to be the elephant in the room. I want her to be what she was. A woman I loved who I lost, and I hated that, but I’m still here.”
She lifted a hand, stroked his jaw and said, “Okay, honey.”
“Same with Mom,” he pushed it.
She blinked then tucked her lips between her teeth.
He gave her a slight shake. “I saw your expression when I mentioned I lost her. It was a long time ago, and, sweetheart,”—he dipped his face closer to hers and his voice lower—“you know you never get over that either.”
“No,” she whispered. “You never do.”
“You don’t have to hurt for me because I was hurt. You’ve got enough on your plate right now. But, one way or the other, no one in this world escapes what I’ve experienced. It’s just life.”
“Okay,” she repeated.
“So can we make lettuce wrapped burgers and Asian slaw?” he asked.
She scrunched her nose at the mention of lettuce wraps.
“I bought you a fresh bun at the bakery counter at the market, and I grabbed you a slice of carrot cake from Aromacobana,” he told her.
Her eyes lit up.
He grinned at her.
Then he kissed her again, this time making it quick and closed-mouthed.
He let her go, poured her a glass of wine, and they got down to making dinner in his ugly-as-fuck kitchen while his dogs meandered around hoping they’d drop food to the outdated linoleum.
There was only so much a man could take.
So, after they finished their second episode of their ongoing binge of We Are Lady Parts, and Lillian attacked him, they were now stretched on the couch, Harry’s long body pressing Lillian’s soft one into the cushions, their mouths fused.
And he had to end it, because things were getting out of hand.
They were doing this because Harry finally got his hand on Lillian’s round ass.
He’d touched her, got his fingers under her top the night before, feeling the warm silk of her skin, going so far as to brush the side of her breast, but no farther.
But the instant his hand cupped a cheek of her ass over her jeans, she arched into him, pressing her hips to his, and his cock, hard and beginning to ache, got harder and definitely ached.
He broke the kiss but not the touch of their lips and whispered, “Baby.”
Her eyes were hooded, hot, but when he said that word, her fingers that had been threaded in his hair, fisted in it, she tilted her head and again captured his mouth.
Her hunger flooded into him, and Harry ground his painfully restrained cock into her soft hips, swallowing her moan and groaning into her mouth.
Christ, he had to stop this.
He didn’t stop it when her fingers brushed agonizingly against his dick while she frantically undid her jeans.
He pulled away again. “Lilly.”
She kissed him again at the same time she captured his hand, tugging it around, up, and pressing it in, before her hand retreated.
Feeling the sleek, soaked folds between her legs, he grunted, his dick jerked, he instinctively circled her clit with more than a hint of pressure, and she tore her mouth from his, her neck arching, her back too, and she ground into his fingers as she whimpered.
Fucking fuck.
It took everything he had to cup her sex and whisper, “Baby, we need to slow this down.”
She righted her head, her eyes now lost, lost to what they were doing, lost to him, and she begged, “Please don’t.”
“This is a big step,” he reminded her.