Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 130307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Somehow, Will always found the energy to slide into the pool house, pin me against the nearest wall, and drive me mad with his touch.
And I apparently never ran out of energy when it came to him.
Some nights, he was slow in his perusal of me, teasing me and offering lessons in everything from foreplay to going multiple rounds. Other nights, he was quick and needy, stripping me and taking me hard like I was the key to draining all the stress coiled in his body.
My favorite nights were the ones where he stayed.
They came more often than they should, more often than I knew he wanted them to. I thought he’d pulled away from me a bit after the barbecue, but it had lasted only a couple of days before it felt like he couldn’t resist me.
God, how I loved that feeling.
He was always watching me, always waiting for the first moment he could get me alone. After hours of exploring each other, we’d lay in my bed or stand in my shower until the water ran cold, talking and laughing like we had nowhere to be in the morning.
Laughing.
I still couldn’t get over that breakthrough.
The first time the sound had come from his chest, it was as if it had been wrenched free against its will. He was still sick then, and the laugh had rattled his chest in-between coughs.
But now, that laugh came more freely, like once the first one was released, the others couldn’t wait to follow suit.
He laughed when I attempted to be sexy and alluring in a strip tease, only to trip on my pants and fall against my bedpost, yelping at my stubbed toe and bruised knee. He laughed as he kissed those injuries and I mewled beneath him, like it was the most adorable thing. He laughed when I lathered shampoo in my hair and styled it in a mohawk, rocking out on an air guitar and singing a terrible rendition of an old Fall Out Boy song.
When I made a joke, when Ava snorted milk out of her nose, when Chef poked at him for being grumpy… all the times he never laughed before, he laughed now.
I cherished each one like it was the first.
And with every laugh, with every night that passed between us, I found it harder and harder to see the line we’d drawn in the sand.
I willed my heart not to hold onto every smile he shared with me, not to latch onto every word he said on the nights he stayed late and opened himself to me. I tried not to read into it when he asked about my life, when he broke his own rules and seemed to hate the moment he had to leave when it finally did come.
Still, we hadn’t kissed on the mouth — that was one rule we had followed strictly.
And at this point, I was pretty sure it was the only thing saving me.
I couldn’t believe a whole month had passed by like this, in a routine I never thought I’d find with a man I never imagined a place with.
March Madness — that’s what it was.
I felt like a completely new woman as I walked the sidewalk that led to my mom and grandma’s house on the evening of my mother’s birthday. Things had been so busy with school and Ava and Will that I hadn’t seen them since before I moved into the pool house.
I wondered if they’d see what I felt, if they’d take one look at me and catalog all the ways I was different.
But before I could even open the front door, it flew open, and grandma tackled me in a hug that almost sent the cake I’d baked for mom flying out of my hands.
“There’s our girl!” She hugged me tight, inhaling my scent like I’d been pronounced dead at sea and then just showed up alive. “Oh, let me get a good look at you.”
She framed my arms in her hands, pulling back and shaking her head on a smile. I waited for her to narrow her gaze and sniff out the fact that I was getting my back blown out weekly by my boss, but before she could, my mom shooed her out of the way and took me in her own embrace.
“Sweetheart, my little Chloe Bear,” she said, and as much as we had our moments, just the sound of my mom’s voice like that turned me into a little girl again. I melted into her hug, heart full as I squeezed her back. “It’s so good to see you.”
“Good to see you, too, Mom,” I said. “Made your favorite,” I added, holding up the cake saver once she released me.
“Red velvet?!”
“With the buttercream icing.”
“You’re too good to me.”
She kissed my cheek, and then Grandma took the cake from my hands and Mom looped her arm through mine, guiding me inside.