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)
Coming here to the shop hadn’t changed it.
Instead, I was swamped with the memories. With the possibilities.
But how the hell did I consider any one of those with what I still had sitting on my shoulders? How could I even think about taking more of what I never should have taken in the first place? How could I drag her into what I was?
A deviant with a dark, ugly secret while she’d looked at me from her doorway like she’d believed in me. Accepted me as a whole.
But she couldn’t. Not when she didn’t have a clue.
I never should have touched her until I’d gotten free. Until I was sure.
But I hadn’t known how to stop myself when she’d come through the door looking like that last night.
A fucking goddess dressed in pink.
Not when I had been so twisted up thinking about her out with that douchebag, losing my goddamned mind as I’d imagined every way Brad might be taking what was supposed to have been mine.
I scoffed at myself as I focused on trying to draw the line to make the cut on a piece of metal.
I’d spent so many years ignoring what I felt for her. Pretending it didn’t exist. Had planned on doing it forever, but something inside me had snapped on Monday night when she’d walked in on me, and I’d spiraled into a deviancy that knew no bounds.
The barriers I’d erected had been demolished the second she’d stumbled into my room like an apparition of every warped, greedy fantasy I’d ever had.
Girl panting, eyes wide, standing there salivating over my dick.
So, I’d given into the depravity because I was exactly that.
A selfish bastard.
I had pushed into the space I shouldn’t have gone.
She was good and right and fucking deserved the world laid at her feet, and she had no fucking clue who I really was or what I really did.
And until I fixed that shit? I had no right.
Putting on my facemask, I turned on the cutter. The motor whirred to life, sparks flying as I guided the sheet through the machine. The high-pitched screech of the diamond blade grinding against metal was deafening, and I struggled to focus on the task at hand rather than all the thoughts that kept charging through my brain.
I made the cut and turned off the blade, tossing off my mask so I could inspect the result. Satisfied, I set it aside, then stilled when I heard the rumble of a truck riding up to the side of the shop.
That was all it took to send agitation blistering through my blood.
I’d known he was coming, had gotten the text right after I’d arrived here.
I tossed my gloves to the worktable and weaved through the organized mess to the far bay. I pushed the button to raise the garage door.
Welcoming the wickedness.
The chains clanked as the door rolled up and Dare immediately started to back the trailer into the spot.
Hostility spiked, and I was still having the hardest time deciphering if it was directed at him or at myself. If this hate emerged from the days when I’d been so empty and lost that I’d wandered off course. So far out of line that I’d tumbled over the side.
Fallen straight to the bottom of the deep end.
Squandered away any goodness.
But how could I regret the last? The choice I’d made for her?
It was the consequences of it that left this bitterness writhing so deep that I could barely stand there and watch the fucker slip out of his truck.
Dare sauntered out, tossing out his burly intimidation while the rage steadily built inside.
“Look at you, being here when I expect you to.” He sneered it like he was talking to an unruly teenager.
I wanted to pop him in the mouth. I shrugged like he didn’t bother me. “It’s noon on a Thursday. I have work to do, so where else would I be?”
Dismissal huffed from his nose, and he came forward and angled in close.
So close that I was itching to get my hands around his neck and squeeze until he could no longer breathe. “Nothing else going on under this roof matters. Think you know that by now.”
Nash Metalwork Designs was a front.
Inconsequential.
But it fucking meant something to me.
“Whatever you say, Dare.” I drew it out, way too placating like.
Fury burned in his eyes. Asshole hated me as much as I hated him.
“Don’t fuck with me, Ryder. Warning you.”
Rounding around me, he went to the trailer and quickly unlocked it. He dipped inside and started up the car, carefully rolling it back into its spot.
When he climbed out, he tossed the keys at me. “I’ll be in touch about the date for the drop-off.”
“And what if I’m busy?” I said it like a taunt.
He was in my face in a flash, voice curling with a threat. “You want to play games, Ryder? I own you, and I’m getting worried you might have forgotten it.”