Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 128801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
Trembles rolled through her body, lifting like tiny spikes on her flesh.
Her mouth parted, but she didn’t answer.
What the hell I was doing, I didn’t know, but there was no stopping myself from leaning in, crossing a line as I murmured close to her ear, “Did he touch you?”
Her head barely shook, the word a breath. “No.”
“Did you want him to?”
“No,” she whispered again, the word a short gasp.
“Why not?” My nose brushed her jaw when I asked it.
The air that had been crackling flamed.
She met my gaze, and she lifted that chin.
In it was both surrender and defiance.
“Because the only person I want to touch me is you.”
TWENTY-TWO
DAKOTA
At my admission, Ryder heaved out a breath against the side of my face, and he reached out and took the wineglass from my hand.
The glass clanked against the counter as he set it aside, then he straightened to his full height.
I released a raspy, frantic breath.
The man loomed over me.
A dark, towering storm.
Chaos.
Mayhem.
Midnight.
I felt like I was standing in it. Drenched in darkness and light and this simmering greed that I didn’t understand.
“Is that what you want, Dakota? You want me to touch you?”
That time my nod was as frantic as my breath had been.
Terrified because this shouldn’t be happening.
I shouldn’t let it.
He and I were wrapped up in something that wasn’t real.
But I couldn’t find the logical response. Found no rationale. No sound judgment when I whispered, “I’ve wanted you to touch me since I understood what desire meant.”
He’d become the meaning of it.
The reason for it.
Shivers raced across my flesh when he set his beer aside and reached up with both hands and dragged his fingertips from my jaw down my neck.
Like every single one of them had been aching to do it.
To touch and explore.
Tingles followed in their wake.
“I shouldn’t be doing it though, should I?” he grumbled, the words scraping at the side of my face.
A shaky breath left me as I tipped my head back. That smoldering ball of need that had forever simmered in the pit of my stomach flared.
“I would have to disagree.” At least right then, I did. I couldn’t find one reason in the whole world for him not to be touching me.
He rumbled something that was a cross of a chuckle and pain, and he dragged all those fingers lower, over my chest and to where my heart was battering at my ribs.
I sagged against the counter.
No way to remain standing without the support.
Ryder followed, completely in sync, and his touch became light as he continued down, over the fabric of my dress, just barely brushing over my nipples that were peaked and pebbled.
A tiny mewl rolled up my throat, and Ryder leaned in and pressed his mouth to the spot from where the sound had come, his lips parted like he’d wanted to taste the reverberation.
The ground shifted, though this time, it was an earthquake below my feet, and his name was rolling off my tongue in a desperate question. “Ryder?”
Because this couldn’t be real.
I had no idea what had happened to the man who was always so protective and sweet and the one who overshadowed me now. What had happened to the man who had told me he would love me forever, but not that way, and the one who whispered against the sensitive curve of my neck, “What do you need, Cookie?”
The flames in my stomach heightened. Licking up in a slow burn of desire.
“I—” My tongue was too thick for me to answer.
“I think I know what you need. I’m the one who knows you best, remember?” It almost sounded of a warning, and he pressed his mouth back to that sensitive spot and murmured, “Might make me a fucking bastard, but I want to be the one to give it to you. I don’t want to stop.”
His confession was gravel. Stones that tumbled from his mouth.
“I don’t want you to.” It was a needy plea.
I didn’t.
I might not know what this meant. I might be setting myself up to get crushed all over again.
Even if he only touched me once.
“I don’t want you to stop,” I rasped.
He whispered his lips along the angle of my jaw, and a groan rolled from his chest and off his tongue. “Cookie. Have been dying to touch you like this for so long.”
He was suddenly on his knees in front of me, and he had me by the outside of each thigh, hot hands under the fabric of my skirt.
Gunmetal eyes raved as he looked up at me.
Sparks in the middle of the night.
Midnight at my feet.
“Cookie.” The moan was torment, and my heart clattered, every inch of me shaking as I looked down at the man, my breaths so shallow and hard that they panted out into the dense air.