Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 129460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
I had him until the last line. “Moved on? Ouch. Glad to know I’m so easy to get over.” The humor in his tone stops me from fretting—mostly.
“That isn’t what I meant, Caleb.” I almost sigh when he sets me onto the mattress before pulling the sheets up until they resemble a necktie. “I just wished we could have maintained some sort of friendship.”
“I tried—”
“Bullshit. You didn’t try. You became an even bigger ass than you already were.”
When he laughs, I kick off the sheets, roll onto my side, then prop my head on my cocked elbow. “I didn’t hear anything amusing in my reply. You were horrible to me.”
My mouth snaps shut when he murmurs, “As you were to me.”
“Me? I didn’t do anything.”
He snickers a curse word under his breath before vocalizing the real cause of the jealousy heating his blood since he knows Daniel isn’t his competition. “You brought a date to Valentine’s Day. The woman who only fucks on special occasions made sure she had a tagalong on the most romantic day of the year.”
“After you showed up on New Year’s Eve with a gushing blonde attached to your side.”
His roar vibrates through my chest. “That was Tash. She doesn’t count.”
I sit up so fast my head grows woozy “Oh, she doesn’t?” I don’t wait for him to answer me. I hit him where it hurts. “Then why was she whining about your dick not getting hard on July Fourth? That certainly seems like something a date would complain about.”
It is as if he slaps me across the face when he mutters, “I wouldn’t know because that was the first and last time a date has complained about such a thing.”
“So you admit it. She was your date!”
“No… yes… fuckin’ hell, Jess, what do you want me to say?”
“I want you to be honest, Caleb! To tell me the damn truth.”
His hand drops from the back of his neck. “Fine. I can do that. I’ll tell you the whole ugly truth.” He licks his lips before blurting out the most shocking confession I’ve ever heard. “I was so desperate to relieve some of the tension in my nuts I accepted Tash’s offer of a blow job only to blow my shot by murmuring your name into her fucking neck.”
I can’t speak.
I’m in shock.
Graciously, my silence keeps Caleb talking. “I can’t fucking masturbate, have never been able to, and the first chick with morals low enough not to care that I was thinking about someone else didn’t cut the mustard.” He locks his eyes with mine. They’re more angry than jealous. “Does that work for you, Jess? Does knowing the last time I blew my load was on the very sheets you’re lying on? Does that make you happy?”
I am a total bitch, but nothing will stop my reply. “Yes, it does. That makes me very happy. Because you’re not the only one in a rut! The last person I kissed was Dominic, and his breath tasted like tuna and made me want to vomit, yet for the smallest snippet of time, I wanted to pretend he was you. So yes, Caleb, it makes me very happy to know you’re as desperate as me. I’m so fucking horny, I’m beginning to wonder if I can tempt Daniel to the dark side.”
My reply angers him. It has steam almost billowing out of his ears, but instead of continuing to fight, he rolls me away from him, cups me from behind, then pinches my buzzing clit between his index and middle finger. “Tempt him? If you have to fucking tempt him, Jessie, he isn’t the man for you.”
The tension is bristling hot, and so crazily wild, it only takes feeling his surging pulse vibrating on my clit for my knees to almost pull out from beneath me.
I’m shuddering all over, but instead of letting me freefall over the edge as my body has desperately craved for over two years, he brings my float to ecstasy crashing back to earth with a quote my father often says, “And don’t you know God is a faithful man. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.”
Time freezes in a bubble of awkward tension, anger, and another emotion I can’t quite understand, and it ends in a way I never anticipated. “You shouldn’t have asked for your dad’s help that night. You should have left me to rot.”
“What?”
That’s it.
That is all I can manage.
“I didn’t deserve your help.” When I peer over my shoulder at Caleb, the hurt in his eyes cuts me raw when he says, “And I don’t deserve you.”
“Caleb,” I shout through the lump in my throat when he spins on his heels and races for the entry. “Running won’t solve anything.”
The silence that bombards my apartment over the next several minutes is excruciating, but a small sliver of hope breaks through the denseness when Caleb calls my name.