Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66200 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66200 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
He folded his arms over his chest and turned into someone most people didn’t wanna meet in a dark alley.
That side of him didn’t intimidate me. Outside of the bedroom, no one had any power over me.
“Then what do you want?” I frowned and folded up the sleeves of my shirt. Casual was always the best way to provoke when facing hostility.
“It’s easier to kick a bad habit when you don’t have to worry about it,” he stated. I was the bad habit? Of course I was. “I’ve been watching you all day—you can’t make up another lie about how little you eat these days. You barely touched your breakfast, you didn’t eat during the game—” he nodded in the direction of the lanes “—and I bet you didn’t eat at home either.”
“Did too,” I blurted out defensively. Truth be told, I was confused. I was a grown-ass man; I hadn’t had anyone watching my food intake in decades. I didn’t know how to feel about it. “I had a donut.”
He offered me a bitchy look at that. “Quit trying to give me more grief, Blake.”
“Goddammit—I’m not!” I threw out my arms, both exasperated and bewildered. Why did he fucking care? “First of all, I’m flattered you watched me all day. Second, I don’t want you to kick me like a bad habit. Third, I haven’t lost any damn weight. I eat just fine.”
He didn’t believe me, and he was evidently going to prove it, because he closed the distance between us. And before I had the chance to hope, hell, maybe I’d get laid after all, he lifted my shirt and tugged at my belt. Just to reveal that I wasn’t using the regular hole in the leather.
He made my head swim. Maybe I was too tired to focus on the topic he wanted to push for some unknown reason. I didn’t care. Perhaps I’d lost a few pounds; I wasn’t one to keep track. When work was busy—fuck, I wasn’t even gonna humor him. Sometimes life got in the way. Big fucking whoop. I felt all right. More than all right—because of the close proximity. He was my bad habit too. As soon as I got a whiff of him, my mouth watered and I wanted to crawl back under his skin.
I flicked my gaze to his face and waited for him to lift his stare too.
Look at us, darlin’. We’re a mess for each other.
He had to see it, didn’t he?
I had to give him something. Right now.
“I never tried to get Soph and Teddy to move to Georgia,” I said. “I joked about it—I missed having her close. I was jealous because I was missin’ out on Teddy’s childhood. But I swear to you, I never actively tried to get them to move home.” The urgency to spill it all rushed through me, causing me to almost stumble over my words. I just didn’t want him to stop me or seek the nearest exit. “Over the years, I managed to save up some money, so I bought the land. I get by—I only have myself. But they’ve been strugglin’, and it was one good deed I couldn’t fuck up. I bought it the first week I was in town this summer.”
He wouldn’t look up from my belt, but I knew I had his attention. I also sensed the tension rolling off him. Not in the way that he was relaxing from listening to me—no, he was getting more and more tense. But I had to keep talking. I had to make him understand.
“When I heard about Teddy’s aid gettin’ cut, I mentioned it to our mother,” I went on. “She found the program, and I pushed for it. I did. Because I didn’t think they had any other choice—and it woulda been temporary. It wasn’t some ugly move to get them to leave their home permanently, Sebastian.”
“That’s enough.” His voice came out gravelly, and the low and rich timbre shook me. Fucking hell, how I wanted him. “I don’t wanna hear another word.”
“No, we have to—”
He shook his head and looked up at long last, and the conflict burning in his eyes seared into my skull. He was fucking desperate to put distance between us, and he was failing. He cupped my jaw and kissed me before I could say something. Which was…dangerously effective. He short-circuited my brain the second he swept his tongue into my mouth.
Finally.
Every kiss was a reunion.
Finally.
A nail in the coffin. My coffin. Soon, I’d be completely lost in my surrender.
His hands dropped to my hips as mine slid along his arms, up to his jaw, and eventually to the back of his neck. The kiss grew heated, and he pressed me against the wall.
Finally.
He broke away to catch his breath and rested our foreheads together. “You have to let me forget you.”