Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
“I always told Beckett he should—”
“Okay, time for bed,” I interrupted, because I had a feeling I knew how he was going to finish that sentence. I closed the album and stood up. “Ready, Dad?”
“I guess.” He scratched his head and rose to his feet. “Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“But you know,” he said, glancing at Maddie and then back at me. “Some things never change.”
Later, when the house was dark and silent, Maddie crept across the hall into my room.
“Hey,” she whispered, slipping into bed beside me.
“Hey.” I wrapped her warm body in my arms and pulled her to my side.
“Were you sleeping?”
“Nah.”
“I wasn’t sure if I should come in here tonight.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” She played with the hair on my chest. “You seemed a little tense earlier. Not just in a muscular way.”
I was silent a moment. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Nothing to talk about, really.”
She kissed my chest. “Liar. But if you don’t want to talk, it’s okay.”
“You’re actually going to let me get out of talking?”
“Yes. I am.” She snuggled closer, wrapping her arm around my torso. “I’m growing more comfortable with your silences.”
“Good.”
She lasted exactly ten seconds. “But I am a good listener, just so you know.”
“I know.”
“Was it the old pictures?”
“I thought you were comfortable with my silences.”
“I may have overestimated my comfort level.”
Exhaling, I wondered if I could even articulate it. “I guess they made me a little sad.”
“I could tell. Because of your mom?”
“Actually, it was mostly because of my dad. I guess it just hit me hard tonight how different his life has been from what he imagined for himself as a husband and father. And seeing those photos of him—he looks so much like me—it was just sort of a strange feeling.”
“I get that.” She picked her head up and looked down at me. “You do look like him in those photos. It struck me too.”
I tucked her dark hair behind her ear, and she pressed her cheek into my palm. “I feel like I’m going to blink and be eighty-one, sitting there on the couch with white hair and arthritic hands, looking at photographs and wondering where my life went,” I confessed.
“You’ll know, Beckett. It will all be right in front of you.” She got to her knees, sitting back on her heels and spreading her arms. “You’ll have this incredible place that you built. You’ll have this ranch that you kept alive. You’ll have amazing family. You’ll have three best friends—the same three best friends you’ve had since you were a kid—who would probably take a bullet for you. And you’d take one for them.”
“I would,” I said seriously.
“And you’ll have me.” She straddled me and reached for my hands, lacing our fingers together. “You’ll always have me.”
I swallowed hard. “Maddie, I—”
“Shh,” she said, leaning over to kiss my lips. “I’m not asking for any promises. I know you can’t make them.”
“I wish I could,” I told her honestly.
“I just like being with you, Beckett.” She moved her lips across my jaw, down my neck, over my chest. “You make me feel good. And tonight, all I want is to make you feel good.”
“You already have.”
She picked up her head and looked up at me. “Are you saying you don’t want the blow job I was about to give you?”
My cock jumped. “Uh, no. I am not saying that.”
“Good. Then just relax. Let me make it all better.” She lowered her head again, but I put my hand beneath her chin.
“Wait.” I reached over and snapped on the lamp on my nightstand. “I want to watch you.”
She gave me a seductive smile that sent my blood rushing hot and hard straight to my cock before she yanked her pineapple shirt over her head. She tossed it aside and continued to kiss her way down my body, those soft, full lips like heaven on my skin. Tugging the waistband of my underwear down slightly, she ran her tongue along my abdomen, making my stomach muscles quiver and flex. After pulling them all the way off, she traced the V from my hips to the tip of my cock with her index fingers. Then she leaned down and retraced the path with her tongue, first on one side, then the other. I held my breath, waiting for the first stroke across the crown.
She laughed softly.
“Is something funny?” I asked, propping myself onto my elbows.
“I was just thinking about when we were teenagers.” She looked up at me with mischief in her eyes. “Like, what if I’d done this back then? Dropped to my knees beneath the kitchen table? Put my mouth on you like this.”
And there it was—the soft, velvety sweep of her tongue circling the tip of my cock.
I groaned as I watched her, my entire body shivering. “You don’t want to know what would have happened.”