Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
“I haven’t seen them in a year, you know,” she said. “It never feels that long until I start counting the months. We talk about them visiting me here or me going up there, but then plans fall through and we put it off.”
“Bet Farrah isn’t happy about that.”
“No,” she replied. “My mom hates it. I think she was glad at first when I moved so far away, but she wants me home now.”
“Didn’t your dad get in a pretty bad car accident a while back?”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “That scared the shit out of me. I swear, I didn’t breathe until I saw him with my own eyes.”
“Makes sense they’d want you home. You got the distance you needed, but maybe it’s time for you to head back.”
“You know how it was for me up there,” she said softly. “I have no interest in going back to that.”
“Maybe it’d be different,” I replied as I yanked the seat from side to side. It barely budged an inch. Good.
“I’m different,” she said as she pulled the baby up to her shoulder and started patting her back. It sounded like she was thumping her pretty hard and I winced.
“You sure that’s how you’re supposed to do it?” I asked, shutting the back door.
“It’s how the nurses showed me,” she said with a huff. “It sounds bad, right? Like a drum.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I’m different,” she repeated, pulling the conversation back around as she met my eyes. “But I might not be different up there.”
“You think you act like someone else down here?” I asked curiously.
“I know I do.”
“Huh.” I turned away and stuffed all the plastic back into the box and closed it before tossing it in the back of my truck.
“Huh, what?” Cecilia asked as she climbed out of her seat.
“You seem the same to me,” I said seriously.
“Gee, thanks,” she muttered.
I wasn’t sure how to explain that I hadn’t meant it as an insult.
* * *
Later, after we’d figured out how to buckle the baby into her seat, drove home while she cried because she didn’t want to be in it, dragged all of Cecilia’s supplies in the quiet house, and settled in for the night, I laid in bed wondering how in the fuck I was going to sleep.
My bedroom door was open in case Cecilia needed something, but there was no noise coming from the guestroom. She must’ve gotten the baby to sleep. I hoped that Cecilia was sleeping, too. She looked worn the fuck out by the time we got all of her stuff unpacked from the truck.
Without conscious thought, my mind drifted to the usual memories that helped calm my mind enough to sleep.
Groaning, I reached up and fisted my hand in the pale blonde hair at the base of her neck, pulling her mouth down to mine. Her hips rolled as her mouth opened for my tongue. God, she was incredible. She hadn’t been my first, far from it, but she was by far the best. There was something about the way she smelled, the feel of her skin under my fingertips, the way she moved, that outpaced every other partner by a mile. Or maybe, it was because I loved her—the knowledge of that making my skin prickle. Yeah, I loved her, I was more certain of that than I was of anything else in my life. I hadn’t imagined love would feel like that, a mixture of possession and protectiveness and tenderness all wrapped up into this weird package that made my tongue too big for my mouth and my chest feel like it was caving in. If I could’ve stopped it, I would’ve. I would’ve never fallen in love with anyone if I’d had the choice. I couldn’t help it, though, not with her. She was a force that hit with the strength of a freight train, but instead of running into me, it was like she flowed through me, the particles that made her mixing with the particles that made me. Inevitable. Necessary.
Her nails bit into the skin of my chest as she moaned against my mouth and I hissed, rolling sideways until she was under me.
“Like that?” I whispered into her ear as she gasped. “You want my cock?”
She answered me with a whimper. I hadn’t expected anything else. She rarely said anything when we fucked, just random murmurs of my name and the whispered conviction that I was hers. But, while I normally chose my words carefully before I spoke, whenever we were like this, naked and fitted together like puzzle pieces, I couldn’t stop the words from flowing out of my mouth. Filthy words that made her tremble and arch.
“Mine,” I said into her ear, jerking my hips forward. Blindly, I reached for her legs, pulling them up around my back. “All mine.”