Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
“Woulda had this to ya earlier, but been plowin’ for the county myself.”
“Thank you for bringing it all.” Although the four bags were going to wait until spring. And someone else. “I can get you the money now—”
“I’ll bill ya,” Mr. Yates said gruffly. “You stay warm in there. Going to be below zero for the next couple of days. You got my number if you need anything.”
“Thank you again. So much.”
She got another grunt, and then the man was back in his truck, cranking the diesel engine over and driving off. He did offer her a wave through his window, though, even as he didn’t glance at her.
When the red brake lights rounded a corner and disappeared into the trees, she looked up to the garage’s roofline. Hemmy seemed to be focused on the lane from his perch. Was he watching the truck? Or . . . wondering how much she wasn’t telling him?
God, she felt awful.
“Would you like to eat something?” she called up to him. “I could make you . . . a plate full of Triscuits?”
Hemmy glanced at her. Then he got to his feet and strolled down the roof pitch until gravity got ahold of him. As he lurched forward, she shouted and put out her hands—like that was going to do anything—
Just before he fell, he dematerialized.
And then he was standing calmly in front of her. “Aren’t you leaving?”
She pictured her father showing up here—and what the male would do to Hemmy if she were gone and the two clashed. Nothing good could come of all this misplaced chivalry. She had to get Hemmy to leave everything well enough alone.
“Not yet.”
Back at Willow Hills, Callum was staring into Apex’s eyes, and feeling like he was airborne. But not in a soaring way, in a falling-down way. He couldn’t break that stare, though, and as the words that had been spoken to him registered, he tried not to believe them.
Not it. You. You were with me.
If what the vampire said was true, if it was real . . . the idea that Apex had been eaten alive, too, was unsustainable—
Without thinking, he grabbed the male’s shoulder. “Listen to me. It was not your fault. Don’t take this shit on, okay? What happened to me thirty years ago isn’t worth ruining your own life over.”
Apex shook his head. “Doesn’t work like that.”
“It should.”
“Do you say those things to yourself? And believe them?”
Fuck. No, he didn’t. But he couldn’t live with the idea that both of them had been ruined. That just couldn’t . . . be where they ended up.
“I’m not worth the pain,” Callum said as his voice cracked. “Let yourself be free.”
The vampire looked down the hallway. And then focused on the door of the private quarters like he was seeing through it to the other side.
“Looks like we’re both still in prison, doesn’t it. Life sentences, side-by-side cells. No chance of parole—”
Before Callum knew what he was doing, he grabbed the lapels of that leather jacket and dragged their faces together.
“I don’t want you on my conscience.”
“I can’t help you with that.” Those eyes dropped to Callum’s mouth. “Just like you can’t order me to forget about . . . you.”
Desperation was a such strange thing, Callum would think later, when he was feeling more rational. It could pivot from one angle to another in the blink of an eye, pulling sexual need out of a hat that only had choking sorrow in it a split second before: The sensation of heat that ran through his body was an echo from an earlier era, and the need that went along with it was the same. He was like a rusty engine, though, clunky and slow to respond, his lips trembling before they parted.
“Are you sure you want this,” Apex whispered.
“I don’t know.”
And yet he was the one who closed the distance between their mouths, pressing his own to the male who was holding back. The contact was firm, the lips were soft, and his breath got tight fast.
Although the tightness in his lungs could have been caused by a lot of things.
It was all just so confusing. He was instantly hard, his cock straining in a way it hadn’t for decades. But his brain was scrambled, the past and present contorting so that he wasn’t sure where he was in the timeline, whose body was against his, where he was. And then Apex tilted his head, and there was a lick. And another. And—
Callum stepped back sharply. Banged into the wall. Shied like a spooked horse from that contact. Careened around until he knew he either stopped moving or got vertigo so badly he fell over.
As he panted into the silence, Apex put his hands up and looked down at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Callum choked out. “I’m . . . sorry.”