Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 17117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 86(@200wpm)___ 68(@250wpm)___ 57(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 17117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 86(@200wpm)___ 68(@250wpm)___ 57(@300wpm)
“They don’t speak to you,” Damian says, pulling me up against his side and draping an arm over my shoulder. And he doesn’t elaborate.
“Um, Damian? About what my mother said—”
“You don’t have to explain, Arya.”
“I feel like I should.” I turn as much as possible in his embrace. “Since we’re going to be living together.”
He tips my chin up, brushes his thumb across my lower lip. “You won’t have reasons to get upset now that we’re living together. It’s irrelevant.”
“Oh.” I watch through my periphery as the driver steers the SUV into a tunnel. “Where are we going to be living together exactly?”
“The Hamptons.” His rapt attention is glued to my mouth, his body crowding closer, and that suspicious tingle between my legs is happening again. Like it always does when I smell oranges. Or when I know he’s near. “I’ve never lived in this place. We’ll be moving in for the first time together.”
“Where do you live normally?”
He visibly debates for a moment. “Across the street from your family.”
My jaw drops. “All this time? You were right across the street?”
“Yes.”
“Damian?”
He hums his response while reaching up to press an overhead button, raising a partition between us and the driver. Along with the tinted windows, the sudden privacy makes the spacious back seat feel like its own world. And when he reaches over and steals his jacket back, leaving me in nothing but my blue bikini, the atmosphere seems to clench in anticipation. Of what? I don’t know. But with him fully clothed and me in nothing but a few strategic triangles, I’m suddenly short of breath and achy in odd places.
“What did you want to ask me, sweetheart?” he prompts, running a finger from the hollow of my throat down, down, not stopping until he can circle it around my belly button.
“Uhhh…” I wet my dry lips. “Ummm…oranges. You always smell like them. That’s not because I gave you one all those years ago. Is it?”
His hand spans my ribcage, squeezing, testing. “Why wouldn’t that be the reason? Arya, you changed my life that day. Made me feel like…I could be worth a damn. Why wouldn’t I eat half a dozen oranges a day to remind myself of you?”
The center of my chest feels funny, along with those secret parts of me and it’s almost too much. Too overwhelming how he…commands me, body and mind. “I only sort of liked oranges when I was a kid, but…the first time you rescued me when I was thirteen, I started craving them again.”
“I don’t think oranges are what either of us is really craving.” Slowly, his big hand wedges beneath my knee closest to the window and pulls, pulls it toward him until I have no choice but to flop back on the seat, gasping as he suddenly looms above me, settling between my thighs with a loud groan. “I should have left you wrapped in the jacket. Feel how hard you’ve made my cock in that flimsy little bikini? Christ, I could eat you alive. I fucking might.”
My cheeks flame at his use of the word cock.
I’ve never heard it used before, especially not in a hoarse, masculine growl, but with his thickness rubbing sensuously against my core, it’s easy to understand what he’s talking about. “I-is that what…do you mean your…?”
His heavy breathing catches and he stops moving, regarding me under heavy eyelids. “What do you know about sex, sweetheart?”
“Well…” What is that wet sensation between my folds? What if he notices? God, I would die. Maybe I can talk until it dries. “I was pretty young when my parents decided to home-school me. Right before high school. And I didn’t really have many friends to ask about…things. A lot of the kids I went to school with, their parents worked in trading and no one wants the DA paying too close of attention, right? So the other girls stayed away and…well, I know the general shape of a man’s part…” My cheeks flame at the word part. “And that women and men have to sleep in the same bed to make babies. They have to do more than kissing, right? I just don’t know what that something is.”
In clear disbelief, he searches my eyes. “What about books you’ve read?”
“I read mostly fantasy. They don’t go into much description, if any.”
“The internet?”
I slap a hand over my face. “I look at puppies.”
For long moments, he doesn’t move or say anything, then the breath he’s been holding shudders out and he pins my wrists overhead, diving into my neck and attacking the sensitive slope with his teeth. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.” He suctions his lips to my skin and sucks, sucks hard until I cry out, my heels coming up to dig into his ass. Yank him closer, push him away, both. “I’ve been mentally fucking you for so long, I forgot what an innocent little thing you are. My cock, Arya…” He looks down between our bodies, groaning, watching our lower bodies connect, roll together. “My cock is the part of me that’s going to fit nice and deep inside that pretty virgin pussy and pump until you’re pregnant. Do you understand?”