Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
“Where’s Nolan?” she asked, peering farther behind me.
“In the restroom right next door. Saw you in here when I passed.”
What really happened was I felt you in here and you stopped me in my goddamn tracks.
Wasn’t about to admit that.
“Is he okay?” That sultry voice was a whisper and doing stupid things to me. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt a pull like this before.
Wasn’t sure I’d ever wanted to fuck and taste and take the way I wanted to do with her.
Drag her right out of those scrubs and spread her out on the breakroom table and pound this need out of my body.
Didn’t like being distracted this way. Thoughts wayward and errant.
Had too much shit in my life to keep straight without slipping up this way.
But fuck, this girl emitted some kind of gravity.
I crossed my arms over my chest as I leaned against the doorframe. “Yeah. Adult tooth is already right there, so he won’t be going hungry any time soon.”
The softest smile kissed the edge of her lips. “I thought I could see it.”
She stared across at me. Awareness stretched on a taut, keening band.
“How’s that tat?” I asked, voice rough with this unfound greed.
Redness splashed her cheeks, no doubt envisioning that night, the tension that’d strained, the suggestion I’d made right before she’d left.
She gave a slight lift of that arm. “It’s almost healed. It’s just a little flaky.”
“Wouldn’t mind taking a peek at it.”
Caution marred her brow. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
But I was already pushing from the jamb and moving across the room, slow yet sure, unable to stop the urge from towing me across the room.
“Yeah, I think it is,” I rumbled.
Because there was something about her that wouldn’t let me stay away.
TEN
CHARLEIGH
What was he doing? What was he doing?
A sliver of fear rattled my nerves and his energy lashed, the clash of the two whipping the room into disorder.
Surprise and apprehension had me shifting the rest of the way around, defenses skyrocketing while the intrigue I couldn’t shake flared. My breaths came short as I watched him cross the small breakroom, though he did it slowly, a panther that stalked its prey.
With each step he took, I pressed myself deeper against the lockers, the metal cold against my back.
Hitched there and unable to move.
He stepped up close to me.
Too close.
Close enough that I inhaled his volatility. The taste of violence and destruction on my tongue, though there was something about it that was dangerously sweet.
I wasn’t sure how one man could appear so terrifyingly beautiful. Face hewn in sharp angles, lips pink and plush.
I didn’t want to be afraid, but I couldn’t stop the flutter of unease at his proximity, old wounds urging me to shrink inside myself. But maybe I was more alarmed that the urge to sink into the heat he emitted was more prominent than any fear.
I’d thought of his parting words too many times over the last ten days.
“Think you should go before I ask you to spend the night with me.”
There’d been one flash of a moment when I’d thought I might have said yes.
His eyes darted all over my face, like he was cataloging each line and dent and scar.
Searching.
Reaching into me as if he were seeking direct access to my thoughts.
My pulse ran wild, and I panted out a shocked exhalation when he reached out and took my left hand.
A firestorm burned through me at the contact.
“What are you doing?” I choked, the words barely a wisp.
His mouth twisted in a smirk that fluttered like warmth through my belly.
“Taking a look at this tat, like I said I was going to do.” He said it simply. Like it was normal for him to have a stranger pressed up against a locker. And maybe it was for him, but I was so out of sorts, set so off kilter, I could barely stand.
He lifted my arm above my head, and he rested it on the cool metal of the locker. I could feel the material of the sleeve of my shirt skim my flesh as it slid down, exposing what had been written there.
River hesitated for a moment, attention flitting between my face and the tattoo.
“Fuckin’ perfect,” he rumbled.
I nearly crumbled when his palm slipped up my arm and he gently ran the pad of his thumb over the words, so light I wasn’t sure if he was even touching me, though it felt like he might be marking me all over again.
A shiver rocked me, head to toe, and I knew that he felt it with the deep grunt that rolled in his thick, thick throat.
A throat that was written in his own words.
No mercy.
And I knew that I was right—this guy was undefinably dangerous. To my boundaries. To my sanity. Maybe to my actual safety.