Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
She almost turned her head but realized at the last minute that was what he wanted. She clamped her lips together and pressed into the pillow, trying not to laugh. It took a minute to get herself under firm control. “You can’t call bullshit on everything. We need rules if I’m going to be working in your home every day.”
“Fine. You want rules, the number-one rule is when you get your gorgeous ass to work, you come find me and kiss me.” He bit the spot between her neck and shoulder. Hard.
She yelped and turned slightly so he could see her glare. “Stop that. And that can’t be a rule.”
His tongue touched the spot. “It’s the only rule.” His kissed the sting and then began a slow journey up her throat. Tiny kisses that drove her crazy.
Laughter bubbled up, laughter and desire all wrapped in one. “I do like your kisses,” she conceded. “Some days you get it right.”
He caught her jaw and turned her face to him. His blue-green eyes smoldered with sex. Every line in his face was sensual, the devil tempting her to sin. The smile faded as his lips came down on hers. She expected wild. Rough. It was stamped there in every line of his face. She got sweet. Tender. One hand spanned her throat, holding her in place while he explored her mouth, coaxing her tongue to follow his. He deepened the kiss, but was so gentle it brought tears to her eyes. He was saying more than she wanted to hear, but she loved what she was hearing.
She kissed him back, giving herself to him in the way she did. She never held back when she was in his arms. When he lifted his mouth from hers and rested his forehead on hers, she realized he might have been teasing her, even playing around, but there was something else in him, something upsetting him.
“Honey, talk to me,” she said softly. She rarely invited him to share his world with her, and he lifted his head to look into her eyes. She ran her fingers through his thick, shaggy hair. He needed a good haircut, but on him, the longish hair looked good. “I can tell something is bothering you. Is it me? Something to do with me?”
Joshua shrugged and rolled off her. “I’ve got an important meeting tomorrow and I’ve got to have everything worked out. I’ve been getting threats and need to increase security around here, and I’ll have to do that before my meeting.”
“Kai and Gray can help you,” she said, meaning it. “If you want them to follow me around all day after you don’t need them anymore, I’ll put up with it for a little while just to make you feel better, but you can use them. It isn’t like you have a huge resource pool around here.”
He rolled over and stared at the ceiling fan, his fingers linked behind his head, his legs over the side. “I put them on you because you mean more to me than anything else, and they’re that good. I’m not pulling them off. I don’t like you being upset over it, though.”
She rolled to her side and propped up her head with one hand. The other slid over his chest, her fingers idly writing her name. “I won’t be upset, although I prefer them guarding you, if you’re getting threats. The threat to me is over. I’m dead, remember? I know they think that. I’m far away and nothing I do will ever impact them.”
He kept looking at the ceiling fan. “Them? You often use that instead of ‘him.’ Do you mean his family?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t going to lie to him. “His father was the one who told him he had to kill me and he agreed. Very casually, I might add. No argument. So yes, I say ‘they’ because I think his father would want me dead even now.”
“Why, Sonia? I turn that over and over in my mind, trying to put the threat to you into a logical conclusion, but there is none. Were they in some shady business and you overheard something you shouldn’t?”
It helped that he kept his eyes on the fan and not her. “I didn’t, though. I think it had something to do with my father.” She touched the faint scar on her forearm. It was long and thin, white against the olive of her skin. Still, it was so faint, no one had ever noticed it, not even Sasha, whom she’d lived with for nearly two years.
“Your father,” he prompted when she fell silent.
She pulled his white, button-down shirt from his jeans. He did that a lot – paired a dress shirt or a shirt and jacket with jeans. She thought of it as his signature look, one she appreciated. He looked good in jackets and collared shirts. His skin beneath the shirt was very warm. She drew circles over his hard muscles. “He was murdered. I was there. He was a good carpenter, and I loved wood. Really loved it. The smell, the different textures and looks. He taught me so much, but I suspected he was doing something else, something not legal. Men came and did things to him. Horrible things. They made me watch. I get nightmares sometimes. I fought them, and one had a knife. It sliced my arm open. The laceration was fairly shallow but it hurt like hell and needed stitches to close.”