Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“Baby, I don’t want to hurt you.” His eyes entreated her not to press him, not to stretch him beyond the limits he’d set.
“I’m not afraid of you. If you’re rough, I’ll like it.” She tongued his Adam’s apple and licked down his neck. “I promise you I’ll like it.”
With a growl, he pressed her back into the mattress, fanning her hair out over the pillow. He pulled her legs up over his shoulders until her bottom was flush with his hips.
“Tell me if it hurts.”
“It won’t. You won’t.” She squirmed closer, her body greedy for every inch of him. “Take it.”
And he did. He braced his hand against the wall over her, his beautiful features twisting with the agony of every thrust. He gripped her leg over his shoulder, turning his head to suck the skin above her ankle. He drilled into her for an eternity and it still wasn’t enough. He pulled her legs down and flipped her until her shoulders pressed into the bed and her butt was in the air. He spread her knees with his, taking her from behind without warning or a word. His body commanded hers with every downstroke. He sank his teeth into her shoulder and toyed with her breasts until she clenched around him. She pulled the pillow to her face to absorb the scream ripping from her throat, but he tossed it to the floor.
“Let me hear you.” He dripped sweat onto her back, his love an exertion that wrenched his body over hers. “That sound you’re making, that’s mine. I want it.”
He pounded into her, smudging the fine lines between rapture and pain until she didn’t have words for the exchange they made. The healing for the wounds, the tenderness for the hurt. A wail of lust and love rent the air between them until he swallowed that sound. Captured it in a kiss and overtook her. His body subdued hers, but in the end, as he shuddered into her, gripping her like air in his starved lungs, he was at her mercy. It was over too soon and it was endless.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cam pretended to read the Wall Street Journal on Jo’s iPad while she prepared coffee. He glanced at his phone to check the weather—for show. His eyes kept wandering to her tall, slim form moving around her kitchen in a paisley patterned silk robe. He could tell it cost the earth, but it could have been burlap for all he cared. Jo completely naked under the silk—priceless.
During the night, they’d lain like spoons in a drawer. He’d resisted her silky nakedness as long as he could before he had to lift one long leg and plunge back in from behind, making her breath hitch. She’d barely been awake before she was climaxing around him. And this morning, he’d had her again in the shower, a primitive mating against the wall, spiraling them into a wet, consuming heat. Their sounds of base pleasure bouncing off the tiles.
He’d known it would be like this. He had addict in his blood. He’d watched his mother twitch and scratch and foam at the mouth for her next high. And as disgusted as he had been by her incessant need, he’d always figured he had that capacity inside him. So he’d stayed away from drugs. Usually drank in moderation. He had never wanted to need something so badly he couldn’t set it aside if he had to.
Until now.
There was no setting Jo aside, and if he had to walk away, he’d be no better than his mother. Fiending and twitching, want and need burning through sense and good intentions. Last night, he’d taken a beautiful, dangerous step with Jo, and even if there was a way back, he didn’t want it. He’d known sex with her would be the best he’d ever had. She was too fiery, too much of a challenge to be less than his equal. He hadn’t anticipated their intimacy would swallow him whole, that he’d lose unrecoverable bits of his soul to her, not just while he pounded into her like a raging bull, but when she fell asleep naked in his arms. When he’d fallen asleep in hers.
He hadn’t escaped the nightly hell his dreams always delivered, but when he woke up, frantic and searching for the cold steel comfort under the bed, he’d found Jo instead. She’d snuggled into his side, mumbling in her sleep, thrown one leg over his hip, and sighed. There was no room for demons in her bed. Cam had lain awake for another hour, letting the steady rhythm of her breathing lull him back to sleep.
She smiled at him, setting coffee and a bagel on the table.
“It’s not a hot breakfast like you made for me,” she said, forgoing the chair across the table from him and perching herself on his knee. “But the bagels are pretty fresh. Q picked them up from the bakery yesterday.”