Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 56507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
She looks at me in a way that makes me think she might as well scream yes. The excitement in her eyes and how she bites down is like she’s getting ready for something. Yet savagely, I know she’s not prepared for how badly I want her. I know I have to be the mature one here. I have to remain in control.
That’s why it’s a bad, fucked-up thing when I grab both her hands in mine, staring down. “Do you know how old I am?”
“No.”
“Guess.”
“Um, twenty-seven?”
“I’m thirty-three, Ania. Do you understand how much a person changes between eighteen and thirty-three?”
“What are you even talking about?” She gets all breathy, almost offended that I’m asking this question, her touch tightening on mine. “We’re just holding hands.”
I lean down toward her, knowing this is my last chance, but fuck. Dammit, what am I supposed to be, some superman with unrealistic discipline?
“We’re going to do more than hold hands.”
“I thought you hated me,” she whispers.
“Same goes for you.”
I lean in closer, waiting for her to tell me to stop. If she screams at me to back off and makes it clear that she doesn’t want this to happen, I’ll use all the discipline I have left to turn away and run fast. But she bites down again. She makes a hot-as-hell noise.
When our lips touch, everything makes sense: all the jittering and all the wasted time on relationships that were never going anywhere to begin with. I gently touch her slender hips, pulling her against me, my manhood flooding with hunger as I savor the taste of her lips. She wraps her arms around me slowly, clutching onto my shoulders.
“Oh, oh,” she moans in the small gaps between the kissing. “Aiden …”
My stepsister slides her hands down my arms. There’s so much passion in the way she clutches on.
I glide my hands down to her ass, lifting her up. She wraps her legs around me with a ballerina grace. Carrying her across the room, I lay her on the counter.
“Uh, wait a sec,” she says, leaning back.
“What’s wrong?” I ask as my heart hammers, my groin flooded with need, and my dick so hard I can barely take it.
“No, it’s nothing. It’s just that …”
Suddenly, she turns and hops off the other side of the counter, her hand over her mouth. “It’s not you. It’s—”
She runs to the trashcan, just about opening the lid in time for a stream of vomit to erupt from her mouth. She keels over, gasping. “It’s … not … you.”
“Ania,” I say, walking around the counter and touching her shoulder. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” She glares up at me, her lips glistening either from the kiss or the vomit. “None of this is okay.”
“I shouldn’t have pushed you,” I tell her, even as some crazy part of me bellows that I should take her now anyway.
“Let me brush my teeth,” she murmurs, but I can tell she’s saying it for my benefit, not hers. She thinks this is what she has to do.
“You need sleep,” I say. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“I’m fine.”
I have to turn away. If I don’t, I’ll listen to the hunger that won’t quit. I’ll let it take me over like troops storming a battlefield. Then it’ll be war, mayhem, and lust like I’ve never felt. Even now, I want to tear off her clothes and slide into her, hard, deep, as she bounces and moans.
“Go on then. Run away,” she snaps. “Like I want to lose my virginity to a hot-and-cold prick like you!”
At the door, I pause. A virgin? A virgin. I suspected she might be, but hearing it come from her adds extra pressure to it somehow. I think how sweet it’d be to be the only man ever to claim Ania.
For what? Forever?
“Are you going to be okay?” I ask, still not facing her. I can’t.
“I don’t need you,” she says, a sob threatening in her voice.
I know—or maybe I hope—that we’re both holding back for our own reasons. She doesn’t hate me. She does need me, but why would that be a good thing? Tomorrow, or today technically, this ends. Whatever it is, it’s over.
CHAPTER 18
ANIA
“Aren’t you hungry?” Mom asks as we sit on the terraced balcony. The air is cool, and the city is laid out beneath us like a bundle of children’s toys carelessly scattered. There I go with the book stuff again.
Last night clings to me. The kiss. The heat. The closeness. I don’t know where the puking came from. He didn’t disgust me. It was more intense than anything I had ever felt before. It made me want to do things I’ve never even thought about.
“I’m …” I almost say it, the B-word.
Mom frowns at me. “You don’t eat much, do you, Anna?”
I softly shake my head.