Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
He shifts behind me, catching me between his bent knees, and massages my aching shoulder muscles.
I close the laptop and push it away. It feels so good where he’s working on the knots with his thumbs that I groan and lean back against his chest. The work of his hands is like magic. Slowly, the tenseness evaporates, and my body relaxes. No one has ever touched me like this—literally and figuratively. His strength and warmth wrap around me, and as always, it’s exactly what I need.
Closing my eyes, I choose to ignore reality for a while. I sink deeper into that dark, ignorant place of safety I’ve created for myself since Saverio gatecrashed my life, a place where my logical thoughts and troubles are banished and only my senses exist.
He plants a kiss on the curve where my shoulder meets my neck. “You’re stressed.”
My skin tingles under the soft pressure of his lips. I almost moan when he scrapes his stubble along the side of my neck to suck my earlobe into his mouth.
He bites down gently before kissing the shell of my ear. “I didn’t give you this job to make you work even harder than before.” His breath is warm on my wet skin. “There’s no rush to fix the books. If it takes half a year, so be it.”
Goosebumps erupt over my arm. “In the meantime, the new work piles up, making it harder and harder to catch up.” I tilt my head, giving him better access. “The sooner I get things in order, the sooner I’ll relax.”
He presses on pressure points at the top of my shoulder blades and says with a low chuckle, “I know how to relax you, baby girl.”
He’s only partially joking. He’s getting hard, his erection growing against my spine. My belly heats with anticipation.
I don’t want to want this, but my body wants what it wants. It’s completely ignoring my brain, not that my mind is any help in the matter. It seems to have gone on strike with the pregnancy.
Abandoning his work on my back, he wraps his arms around me with one hand splayed over my stomach and the other on my breast. My nipple hardens under my clothes. He cashes in on the reaction by rolling the tip between his fingers through the layers of my bra and sweater while he dips his other hand into the elastic of my leggings and brushes a knuckle over my silk-covered clit.
“Sav,” I say, half begging and half protesting.
If everything between us is wrong, this is the only part that’s right. When I need to run away from my life, I lose myself in him. He lets me fall into his darkness, using it like a cloak to hide me from the ugly reality only to remind me when morning comes of what he intends to take from me. To torment me with the same questions. To remind me I’m yet to tell him when I’ll be free to look at rings. To insist that I choose a date. Because those are the only choices I get. That’s all he can give me, that and the need that builds in my lower body as he rubs his knuckle down my slit and back up again.
When a whimper finally slips from my lips, he pulls his hand from my underwear. I want to grab his wrist and push it back between my legs, but he runs his palms over the insides of my arms and lifts them into the air. I hold them up while he pulls the sweater over my head and drops it on the bed. Like a man with experience in women’s clothes, his fingers are deft in unfastening the clasp of my bra.
My nipples expand further when my swollen breasts are free from the restrictive underwear. He cups the curves from behind, caressing them in his calloused palms. The abrasiveness of his skin on my tender parts only heightens the need that builds between my legs.
He pulls on my nipples, stretching them until I utter a yelp of pain. The relief when he lets go converts to pleasure. He leaves a burning trail in the wake of his hands everywhere he touches me.
His breath tickles my ear. “Do you want this, tesoro?”
My voice is breathy. “Yes.”
“Say it.”
I know what he needs to hear. “I want you.”
He always gives me a choice where my body is concerned. It’s only when it comes to my life that the decision is in his hands.
He kisses a path down my neck and nips my shoulder. I’m burning for him, ready to go down in flames. When he locks his hands around my waist and lifts me so that I’m straddling his lap with my back against his chest and my thighs stretched over his, I don’t fight it. I relax my head, finding a soft pillow in the crook of his neck as he holds me in place with one hand clamped on my breast and the other between my legs. He traces my slit through the thin cotton of my leggings with the tip of a finger, circling my clit with a too light touch.