Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Elden’s scent enveloped me. I breathed him in. There was one thing that didn’t make me feel sick, it seemed.
I didn’t have much time to protest as Elden gathered me into his arms—carefully, more carefully than he’d ever touched me—and walked us out of the common room and down the hall.
It was pure luck that no one saw us. We’d had a lot of that, what with all of the times we’d tempted fate by showing what we were to each other for anyone to see. Maybe fate was on our side.
I liked to think that.
He didn’t speak as he walked us down the hall in long, purposeful strides. It should’ve felt ridiculous to be carried like this. It didn’t. Elden’s arms were around me, strong, firm, safe. I didn’t speak either. Simply gazed up at him hungrily, taking in every detail. His beard was streaked with slivers of silver, groomed and smelled like the Tom Ford oil I’d bought him over the Christmas break. I liked it because I smelled him on me for hours after we left each other.
His face was tanned, weathered, every groove in it serving to make him more distinguished and rugged at the same time. His icy eyes were inscrutable, intense, capturing mine every second step.
My heart was slamming against my rib cage as the door to his room closed behind us. Again, I breathed in the scent of the cleaning products he used, mingling with his own smell. My body settled into it… This was my home. He was. I didn’t know when the change had happened. Maybe it was when the second line showed up. Maybe it was long before that. But it clicked right then, there in that moment.
He sat me on the bed, kneeling between my knees. Large hands settled on the silk of my skirt.
“I’m pregnant,” I uttered, pointing out the obvious.
His hand cradled my chin, his eyes sparkling with something that wasn’t rage or disappointment. “I know.”
I blinked at him, coming out of my brain fog, getting over the shock of seeing him again, of feeling him again. “You don’t sound mad.”
“Why in the fuck would I be mad?”
I stared at him, realizing that he was genuinely confused. He was something else too. It looked like … happiness, but I must’ve been hallucinating. Outlaw bikers didn’t tend to be happy in the face of unplanned pregnancies. Or at least that’s what I’d thought.
“Um, because of all the things that made you not want to touch me in the first place,” I splayed my palms, my voice shaky. I felt unstable under the weight of a gaze I’d never seen from Elden before. “The age difference, my stepfather, all your thoughts about being too good for me, about me deserving a life bigger than this … different.” I listed them off on my fingers. My hand was still shaking.
“Baby, I knew what I was doin’ the second I fucked you raw,” he told me, eyes never leaving mine, his hand taking my shaking one and lifting it to his lips.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I was there the night you had to deal with the consequences of a man bein’ selfish with his pleasure, not caring about the consequences.” His fury seeped into the air. “I would never let you go through that shit again,” he vowed. “I would never have taken you raw unless I was ready for this moment right here.”
I digested what he was saying. “So you … expected me to get pregnant?” I deduced, blindsided.
“Well, up until recently, we’d been fuckin’ every chance we got,” he shrugged. “Figured it would happen sometime.”
“Okay, I must’ve ventured into a parallel universe.” I ripped my hand out of his grasp. “Because the Elden I knew wanted to keep us a secret under the pain of death because of all of the blood and violence that would erupt if someone, namely Swiss, found out we were fucking.”
He cracked his neck. “It was never just fucking with us, and you know that.”
“I know that,” I thrust my hands through my hair. “But there’s a big difference between you admitting that and putting a baby in me. For so long, you’ve been convinced that you need to do the good thing, push me away, let me live life without you or whatever the fuck. How did everything change so quickly, without me knowing?”
“You knew,” he replied evenly. “You’re smart, Violet. Don’t pretend you’re not. Don’t pretend you didn’t know exactly what you were doing the second you asked me to take you raw.”
He was forcing me to face the thing I’d been hiding from. Because he was right. I was the one who’d told him not to use a condom. I was the one who wasn’t on birth control. I was the one who had ‘forgotten’ to track my cycle.