Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
And then, as I could have bet on, the tears came. It wasn’t a surprise. He’d been through a lot in the last two days. He went from having a fiancé to not, to being with me, but the romantic part was untested. Then there was this threat to all of us, we hadn’t slept, I was hurt, so he had to be constantly on guard to keep me safe, and the only person he had to lean on, to look to, was me, and what if us was a giant mistake and he lost everything?
“You’re all up in your head, huh?” he asked, wiping at his eyes.
I reached for him, and he walked right into me, letting me enfold him against me as I talked into his ear and breathed into his hair. “Listen, I know your whole world is upside down right now. And even though Hayden wasn’t the one for you, he was solid and stable, but I’m that too. I can be that for you. Have faith in me, all right?”
“Idiot,” he murmured, arms around me, his face pressed against my throat. “I love you, and I have all the faith. I know you’re my rock, you always have been. I just want everything to start because I have the change, just not the new yet.”
I smiled and exhaled deeply. “All I want is you. I will not fuck this up.”
“I know, Jed,” he whispered, his hand around the back of my neck, sliding up into my hair as he lifted and bent me to him.
Our lips met, and he devoured my mouth, not at all gentle, and I opened for him. His moan was all decadence and heat. I could feel what he wanted—my submission and trust. Kissing him back, I sucked on his tongue so he could taste my desire and need. The give and take was endless, and when he knocked me back gently against the wall, parting my thighs, hands on my hips, I bit his bottom lip gently.
He broke the kiss and looked at me, and I saw the blown pupils and his swollen lips and how flushed his skin was.
“You’re so beautiful,” I barely got out.
“It’s you, Jed,” he assured me, leaning into me. “And it’s going to take me a minute to wrap my brain around this being real, so you’re going to have to deal with a lot of mauling while I convince myself you’re mine.”
“That sounds terrible,” I teased before kissing him again.
The smiling he did as I kissed him made me feel like I was glowing.
Standing in the shower ten minutes later, I had my head under the water, really trying to find my balance and not worry and not have that niggling feeling that somehow, everything could be taken away. I was never scared, but I’d never had everything I wanted before either. I wondered if everyone had those feelings now and then, that the happiness could end. Or did other people just take for granted that nothing could change? That wasn’t me. I needed to stay vigilant.
“This is a nice shower,” Bodhi said, and I lifted my head and looked at him.
He was right outside the glass door. The shower was the only change I had made to the house when I moved in. The rest of the renovations had been great, move-in ready, but the shower stall was tiny, and I didn’t need a bathtub. I had that taken out, and now I had a shower with all the jets, a marble seat, and lots of ledges to put things on and places to hang things like eucalyptus and dried chaparral bundles that made my shower smell like the desert when it rained.
“Thank you,” I rasped because he was naked and all the sculpted muscles and sleek skin were there on display.
“I missed that smell. I tried to get my own, but they were never the same,” he said, and I knew what he meant. The chaparral had to be picked fresh and dried right away or it lost most of its scent. I was lucky, I received them monthly from a wonderful woman in Arizona named Sherri whom I met on a trip. She lived in Sedona with a lot of rescue Dobermans, and we’d met while I was hiking and she was foraging. The scent of the desert soothed me, and she found a way to give that to me. I offered to pay her, but she said no. Taking care of a small part of me was good for her, she’d said. All I knew was that every shower was healing, and now Bodhi was saying he’d missed it.
“Are you coming in?”
“Is that okay?”
“Yes. Please.”
The shy grin nearly undid me, and I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but him stepping up behind me and pressing his chest to my back wasn’t it. If he’d grabbed me and pushed me up against the shower wall, that I could prepare for, but the slow, gentle way he wrapped me in his arms was too much.