Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 46132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“Yes,” I whimper, pussy tingling, womb crying at me to take him right now.
But what if I can’t take him?
I saw how big he was, huge, so massive it was like he was laying a muscular forearm against my ass cheeks as he pleasured himself against my flesh.
“Do you think I could take a shower?” I murmur. “I feel so stinky after everything that’s happened.”
“I like you all stinky,” he teases. “It makes me feel wild, like an animal. But yes, my little Popstar, you can take a shower.”
“Popstar,” I laugh, shaking my head. “Hardly.”
“I’ve heard you sing,” he growls. “Don’t try and be modest now.”
I roll my eyes. “You heard a few lines through a closed door.”
“Okay then,” he smirks, reaching down and scooping Sparky up, who curls into a ball and lies restfully in his lap. “Then give us a show, Popstar.”
“That better not be my new nickname,” I giggle, unable to hide how much I adore it.
“You bet your fine juicy ass it is … Popstar.”
“I’m not going to give you a show,” I laugh. “I never sing in front of other people.”
“But I’m not just any other person,” he snarls. “I’m own you. And I order you to sing for me. See, Dakota? You don’t have a fucking choice now.”
I stare into those intense eyes of his. He stares back with passion flickering across his expression, a light smirk playing around his lips … but it’s not a mocking smirk.
It’s a you-can-do-it smirk.
God, decoding this man’s smirks could become a hobby all on its own.
“So you’re actually serious,” I laugh.
“Deadly,” he chuckles huskily.
“I don’t know if I can,” I whisper, my cheeks flaming red, the blush creeping all over my body. “I’ve literally never sung in front of anybody before. Except for you … and that was an accident.”
“You can do it,” he says firmly. “I know you can. Just a short song. Just a few lines. Anything.”
“Why do you want to hear it so badly?” I sass, trying to make this a bantering back-and-forth and not what it’s becoming, an awakening, a challenge.
“Because you have a beautiful voice,” he says matter of fact.
I take a deep breath. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“Are you going to sing a funny song?”
“I’m serious,” I say.
“I promise, Popstar. Not that I’d have any reason to.”
I take another deep breath – getting my voice ready and trying to steady my nerves at the same time – and then grab the edge of the table and push my chair back.
I stand up, feeling his eyes sizzling into me, the same way they did when I was bottomless and he was staring captivated by my ass, by my sex.
It’s like he’s as attracted to my talent as he is to my body.
“What shall I sing?” I ask.
“Popstar’s choice,” he smirks.
I swallow, searching around in my mind, and then settle on a song I wrote when I was fifteen years old. I’ve sung it many times and I’m confident – semi-confident – kind-of confident I can sing it now without tripping up.
“A girl in a rainy window—”
I bite down, my voice wavering, my nerves causing the pitch to leap and disobey me.
“It’s okay,” Damian whispers. “You’re safe. Nobody’s laughing. I’m here.”
I draw strength from his words, a disjointed part of me noting that of everything that’s happened lately, it’s kind of crazy that this is the most intimidating.
I’ve spent my whole life steadily avoiding any kind of an audience, and now here he is, utterly attentive, eyes fixated on me as though I’m the only thing that exists.
“Okay,” I say, clearing my thoughts.
“A girl in a rainy window, a life spent wondering why. A girl in an autumn window, the wind hides the tears she cries. And now she cries, oh, she cries … she cries and sees the robber, his gun as bitter as acid steel, and then go Mother and Father, in their own wretched blood they kneel. And now the girl cries, oh, she cries, and the parents they die, oh, they die …”
I trail off, shaking my head, realizing I haven’t looked at Damian once since the singing started. My gaze has been fixated on the ice-encased window and the forest beyond, as though by looking away I don’t have to see the disappointment in his face.
“Jesus, Popstar,” Damian says. “That was incredible. It was … haunting. Did you write that?”
“Yeah,” I murmur, my lips twitching into a wide smile despite myself.
I turn to find Damian beaming at me.
Or, at least, doing his version of beaming.
“That song would become an instant classic the second it was played on the radio,” he says. “Goddamn, if I wasn’t such a cold bastard, I might’ve cried. I guess it was about your parents?”
I nod, my hands fidgeting with each other.
But he liked it, he really freaking liked it.