Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 129373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
“Are you saying that I should find someone who loves me?”
My question makes him flinch. It makes him draw back. It’s a slight shift but it’s plenty. It’s plenty to answer my questions.
Although he does reply as his fingers flex on my face, which is dry now; he took away all my tears while he was crushing my heart with his words.
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying. You deserve someone who believes in all that shit. Love and unicorns and things like that.”
“And you’re not that person.”
He swallows. “No. I’m not. I never will be.”
I stare at him. I study his features. His forehead is lined with a turbulent frown and his jaw is ticking as he lets me look at him.
God, he’s beautiful. Even more beautiful because of how open he looks. Cracked open. Vulnerable almost, his eyes dark and melting with feelings, with all the things he wants me to understand about himself.
He’s never looked like this before. So angsty, so broken up about the fact that he can’t be who I deserve.
But the thing is, I never even thought I deserved something to begin with. I never thought anyone would even see me, let alone love me. And that’s why it never even crossed my mind to tell him.
To tell him that I love him.
Not once did I think to tell him that I’m in love with him.
To tell him that I love him enough for the both of us, that I don’t want his love. I can survive on my love alone.
I’m hopeless and I’m a romantic. I’m a masochist. I’m addicted to less. I’m addicted to the pain. I’m addicted to him.
I can live my whole life on this little piece of him that he’s giving me right now. His care. His concern. His anguish. His frustration that I don’t understand my own worth.
His confidence that I’m going to college and I’m going to find someone there.
When all of it is a big fat lie.
I’m not going to college; I’m too afraid for it. And even if I was going, I’d never find anyone because I don’t want anyone else.
I want him. Whatever I can get from him.
“Okay.” I swallow and put my hands on his chest. “I promise. I’ll find someone. Now your turn.”
“My turn at what?”
“I gave you what you wanted. I gave you your promise. What do I get?”
I raise my eyebrows at him, waiting for his answer.
His anguished frown disappears as he senses the shift in the air. The shift that I created with these desires that I can barely keep hidden.
These desires and dreams that I’ve had since I was sixteen. The dreams that I want him to make true now that I’m eighteen.
He pushes into my chest with his large breath. “What do you want?”
His heart is beating under my palm.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
My own is going at a rhythm complementary to his. A Morse code of some sort.
“I want you to make my dreams come true.”
“And what are those dreams?”
“First, I want you to buy me all those dresses you promised,” I say with a turned-up chin.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. You can’t say it and not do it. And then, I want you to grow me all the roses that I want.”
A flicker of something amused and seductive all at the same time passes over his features. “You want roses?”
“Yup. And you have to give them to me.”
His fingers creep up and bury themselves in my hair. “Okay. So my baby wants roses. What else?”
My baby hits me in the stomach and a spasm goes through my pussy and I whisper, “And most importantly, I want you to fuck me.”
His heart thunders at this request.
It punches his chest and I feel it on my palm.
His heat intensifies and I feel it on my skin. If this is what he’ll give me, his body, I’m going to take it.
In fact, I’m going to demand that he give it to me after everything he’s put me through.
I deserve it.
That’s what I deserve.
His fingers, buried in the mass of my hair, tighten and bundle the strands together. “You want me to fuck you.”
“Yes.”
“You do know what I just said to you, right? I’m not going to give you more. I’m not going to change my ways for you.”
I narrow my eyes at him before I go to the top button of his shirt. “I don’t want you to. I’m not a child. I’m eighteen. And ten months. I understand what fucking is.”
I pop it out and go for the second one but he stops me with his hand on mine. “You do, huh?”
Biting my lip, I peek at him through my eyelashes. “Yeah. I don’t know where you think I came from, but I am from this world.”
“You don’t feel like it.”
I swallow a lump of emotion at his reverent tone and say, “I am. And I don’t want you to be noble or good. I don’t want you to do the right thing. I don’t want you to write me notes telling me to leave because you should know by now that I’m not going anywhere.”