Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
When he shifts, making the erection growing in his sweats more noticeable, I find my eyes locked on him as well. I feel desperate to taste him, aching inside at the waste of the precum I see soaking into the fabric and causing a dark circle right where the outline of his head is.
“What kind of thoughts are you having?”
“Lots,” he says, gravel filling his voice.
My breathing has increased, my intake of air harsh and noisy. It would be embarrassing if his chest wasn’t rising and falling at the same staccato tempo as well.
“I want to own you. I want to protect you. I want to show Ryder how a real man is supposed to treat children.”
My head is shaking before I can manage words. What the fuck does someone even say to something like that?
“That’s too complicated,” I whisper, my heart hurting a little, but I know I can’t make the wrong choice right now.
Ryder has to be my only focus. I won’t give him any less than a hundred percent of me.
“I don’t have any time to give to anyone else,” I explain. “I have court dates, work, meetings with family services. I’ll have to fight Travis in court because he won’t care about Ryder’s best interest. The man doesn’t like to lose.”
“Cerberus is at your back,” he says, as if the organization will do everything. As if they have more than the twenty-four hours in a day than us mere mortals have. “The courts will do what they say. They have a lot of pull in the community. How do you think Ryder is in that back room right now instead of getting ready to wake up in someone else’s home?”
My eyes narrow at his words, anger starting to bubble up inside of me.
“Is it an ultimatum? You walked away the other night when I asked if you needed me to give in to you so you could keep lying for me. I thought you were honorable, but it’s clear you were just biding your time.”
“What?” He shakes his head, and my mouth snaps closed. “I’d ask who fucking hurt you so bad, but it’s obvious it was Travis.”
I clench my back teeth together as I stand. Knowing Ryder is just down the hall, I do my best to whisper. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need the help of the club.”
“You’d be ignorant not to accept both,” he says.
“Name calling? Geez, Brent. I had you all wrong.”
His eyes rove over my entire body as if he has every right to look at me that way after what he said.
“The sex was good, but not that fucking good,” I growl, wondering if he’ll call me out on the lie.
I turn away from him, walking down the hallway. Before I can get far, his hands are on me, and he’s dragging me into his bedroom and pressing my body into the door with his own.
Chapter 34
Bishop
She’s driving me fucking insane.
I press my nose into her throat, needing just a damn minute to calm down. If I thought compliant Sunshine was fuckable, it has nothing on her when she shows her backbone and has insults on her tongue.
Jesus, I have it fucking bad for her.
“You make me crazy,” I confess in her ear.
“Ditto,” she snaps, her hands digging into my biceps. She isn’t exactly pushing me away, but she isn’t holding me against her either.
“You’re seriously fucking confused about where I stand, so let me clear the fucking air between us.”
She darts her eyes away when I pull back a few inches to look at her. I won’t go so far as clamping her face between my fingers and forcing her to listen to me, but she also isn’t leaving this room until she hears me out. This miscommunication shit ends now.
“You’re going to accept my help and the help of the club because it’s what you deserve. It’s what Ryder deserves. You’ve been handed some serious piles of shit, and we want to help you clear it all away. Maybe ignorant wasn’t the right word to use earlier, and I’m sorry if it didn’t translate well.”
“I can’t do this,” she whispers.
The heartache is clear in her tone.
“You don’t have to choose between Ryder and anything else. I’m not asking that of you. No one has the right to do that, baby. I’d never put you in that position. But you’re not going to be able to get rid of me, either. You can’t blow me off and walk away because I’m not going anywhere. I have no fucking clue what this pull is I have to you. Before you point fingers at the sex, let me tell you, it was fucking life altering. It was that good, better than anything I’ve ever experienced, but this isn’t about sex. It’s about this connection.” I press my hand to her heaving chest. “I know you feel it too. If you could just silence all those other voices in your head, telling you that you don’t deserve happiness, that you deserve to be punished for the shit shoveled your way, you’d know it too.”