Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43653 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43653 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
I nod a little now. It’s starting to make more sense.
“So if someone had caught onto us, you wanted me to tell the truth – that you’d left me high and dry?” I clarify slowly.
“Exactly,” he confirms, his blue eyes boring into mine. “I wanted you to tell the truth, even though it was painful, because we were swimming in dangerous waters, baby. Think about what we were doing. We’d gone from fucking in a classroom to full-on dating, me cooking you dinner, making love to you, and worshipping your beautiful body. This was no fling; this was no passing infatuation. Honey, we were doing couple things, acting like a couple, and if people had found out, everything would have been ruined.”
“Does it make more sense now?” he continues on gently. “It was better to cut off all contact so that if we were discovered, you could say honestly that you had no idea what happened. It was tough, but simpler this way.”
I shake my head, somewhat confused still. I can’t accept it because there are so many what-ifs and maybes. It’s like all of the different branches on a decision tree, gnarled and loopy. So I shake my head and bite my lip, saving it for later. My brain cells are so fried at the moment that I just want to keep going, to figure out more.
“So what’s different now then?” I ask slowly. “Why are you back?”
Stone smiles at me then, gentle and caring, his blue eyes filled with emotion.
“Why do you think?” he rumbles low in his throat, a finger trailing down my cheek.
I pause for a moment, trying to ignore the shivers running down my spine.
“Well, I’m clearly not a high school student anymore, and you’re not my teacher,” I mutter slowly. “But you’re still way older than me.”
“Eight years,” he interrupts.
“Eight years,” I repeat, nodding slowly. “Let me guess – it’s different because I’m in college now?”
Stone shoots me a wry grin.
“It’s more than that. Everything’s different, baby,” he says pointedly. “You don’t live at home anymore, you’re not a little girl under the watchful eyes of your parents, and you’re not a dependent anymore. You’re a single woman making your own way in the world and paying for your own life. And yeah, you’re eighteen, a college student, so it’s not so freaky to be dating someone older. Especially since I’m not your teacher anymore.”
“Right, you’re not my biology teacher anymore,” I comment slowly. “So, what are you?”
Stone is silent for a moment. “What do you want me to be?” he asks softly and seriously. His eyes are eating me up, swallowing me whole.
“I-I don’t know,” I answer honestly, resisting the pull. “This has been a lot to process in a short amount of time. You were gone, and now you’re back, and I’m just not sure,” I shrug, suddenly feeling hopeless.
“That’s true,” the big man rumbles, his eyes understanding as he trails a finger across my jaw. The contact is electric. “But what does your body tell you?”
I shiver visibly then, my pupils dilating and my breath coming fast at his closeness. I feel as though I’m drowning in the blue depths of him.
“My body says,” I pant a little, leaning in toward him, “that it wants you.”
“Then why don’t you focus on that for right now?” he murmurs against my lips. “There have been a lot of changes recently, I’ll give you that. But why don’t you relax a little and let go with a man who loves you?”
It’s those words that turn the tide. I still don’t know what to think about Stone’s abrupt departure, the lack of notice, and the fact he’d left me high and dry. But now, my alpha male is back, and he’s telling me that he loves me, that he’d done it all for me, no less. And there is truth in his words. I’m a bad liar, and it made sense to cut things off cleanly until we got into safer waters. So I am tempted by his words, definitely, but there is one last question that remains.
“Why do you keep saying this was all for me?” I ask, curious, my eyes quizzical. “You had just as much on the table as well. I mean, you were going to lose your job. You lost your job,” I correct myself.
But Stone just laughs at that and sits back a little before pulling me onto his lap and pressing my curves against his big form.
“Honey, the last person I was worried about was me,” he admits, nipping at my ear gently as his hands run up and down my thighs. Oh god, it feels so good. His touch is warm and his fingers are gentle as they stroke along my sensitive flesh. Without meaning to, I whine and twist in his lap, my mouth instinctively turning toward him, begging for a kiss.