Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 134746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
With lips, with touch, with the heat of the shower spray. With the way we slide together, the way we fit so perfectly.
The soft whispers, the lazy sighs, the groans.
The deep, languid thrusts that could stretch on until morning.
All the unspoken things build higher, hotter and hotter, until I feel like as long as August holds me, takes me, finds his way so deep inside me, I’ll be home.
With him, I’ll never be cold or lonely again.
XVI
WASH US CLEAN
(AUGUST)
I’m making a colossal mistake.
If this were a corporate contract, I would halt it immediately, figure out where things derailed, and correct course.
But Elle isn’t a damned project.
I can’t rewind time.
And I still can’t call this something that went wrong.
Rather, it’s the setup for something terrible later on, when Elle either betrays me—or I betray her warmth and trust when I can’t accept the honest sweetness she gives me.
Right now, though, my mind is somewhere else as I lick the water away from her skin and she wraps her legs around my waist and buries her face in my throat with soft cries of August, August, August.
How can a mistake feel like it’s the only truth I’ve ever known?
This feels more right than anything I’ve ever known in my life.
Like she’s the only good, true thing I’ve ever known.
When we come down from our high, we stay silent under the shower spray with my lips pressed to her brow. It’s hard as hell to pull away from her.
Hard to want to move at all, but we can’t stay like this forever.
Slow kisses and light touches become murmurs, soap, all warmth and lazy caresses with warm towels until I’m not sure if this is bathing or foreplay.
Later, when we’re clean and tired and sated, I wrap her in my robe and carry her to bed.
Not the guest room tonight.
I can’t stand more space between us.
Tonight, I need to hold on to this messy thing of ours like it’s something I want to cherish for the rest of my life.
Elle forms a small bundle against me, sleepy and soft and just right, her head pillowed against my stomach as I turn on the bedside lamp and open an old leatherbound copy of Robinson Crusoe.
I barely manage to read I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York before she’s gone.
This strange, quiet angel rests against me with her starry lashes trembling against her cheeks and her lips parted.
I turn the light off, but I don’t sleep.
I’m still a nocturnal animal, and tonight I’ve captured the sun.
I just watch Elle dream, clasping her tight until the hours run long and the morning comes to steal her away.
Unfortunately, morning does come.
And with it, an absolute brat of a morning lark that’s been cursed upon my life.
I don’t have to open my eyes to know it’s too bright, and I’m not just talking about the sun for once.
I mean the fucking madwoman who’s been poking me in the head for the last five minutes despite my dogged attempts to ignore her and keep sleeping.
“Gruffykiiins,” Elle sings for what must be the fifth time. “Wake u—EEP!”
That’s it.
I’ve had it.
I drag one eye open and snap my teeth at her finger.
This time, I catch it.
She freezes, staring at me with wide eyes, while I hold her finger prisoner between my teeth, biting down just hard enough to taste the warm salt of her skin and keep her from escaping.
“Go back to sleep,” I mutter incoherently around her finger.
Elle smirks. “You have to let go if you want me to understand what you’re saying.”
I do let go—just long enough to speak.
“No. Mine,” I say, barely giving her a second to realize she’s free before I capture her finger again and flick the tip of my tongue against it.
Her face goes crimson.
Even if her cheerfulness annoys me, she’s adorably sexy this morning, shamelessly nude and sitting cross-legged with her hair a mess of gold falling down her shoulders. The red undertones in her hair almost match the warm, well-loved pink of her nipples.
Blushing up to the tips of her ears, she’s still grinning. “Don’t stick it out if you’re not going to use it—oh God.”
That oh God is my fault.
Because the moment she chastises me to use it, I do.
Pushing myself up, I capture her mouth in a kiss.
Just a glimpse of her wide eyes before they sink closed and she sways into me, catapulting me into heaven.
She tastes like everything made to ruin a man.
Submissive and sweet and so damned needy.
Even when she melts against me, she’s never shy about demanding what she wants. Her lush little mouth begs me to slip deeper inside her, to take more, to storm her with a pleasure that could keep me here all day.
It’s too easy to ignore the entire world when I’m this addicted to the way her lips give every time I gently sink my teeth against them for slow, teasing bites that coax small moans from the back of her throat.