Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 89265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
The room spun. My heart threatened to burst. “Okay. I’ll stay.”
Yep. Complete and utter emotional detachment.
That was the key.
Except … it’s hard to remain emotionally detached from someone when his body fits so perfectly inside yours. When his hands in your hair leave you breathless. When the weight of his chest and the thrust of his hips and the sound of his ragged breathing renders you mindless and panting, your hands clutching, your muscles tightening, your body begging for more, more, more.
When he looks down at you and you feel his heart beating hard against yours.
When he pulls your hair and bruises your skin and the pain feels more like pleasure.
When he reaches the edge of his own release and holds back, determined to take you with him this time.
Tell me, he whispers, slowing his movements to deep, long strokes, his thick cock gliding in and out of your body with ease. Tell me how to make you come like this.
And you pull him tighter to you, tilting your hips for the angle you need, for the friction exactly where you desire it. Like this, you say, shocked at the words coming out of your mouth, but beyond shame, beyond fear, beyond fantasy. Fuck me like this.
He understands and keeps himself buried inside you, fucking you harder and faster, the base of his cock grinding against your clit, the tip hitting the deepest reaches of your body.
Yes, you whisper, you pant, you cry out. Yes, yes, yes, because you want this so much and he’s moving just right and he’s telling you to come on his cock and you actually feel it start to happen. One second everything inside you is twisted unbearably tight and the next you’re unraveling, the tension unspooling like ribbon, your nails digging into his skin, your sigh long and loud, your body pulsing around his in sweet, blissful relief.
Fuck, he says, and you don’t want him to stop, ever, and he doesn’t, instead he gets rougher with you, pounding into your body with hot, deep thrusts that push you right to the limits of your strength.
But you love it, you love it—the ache, the heat, the brutal force in his body, the surrender of yours, the guttural sound of his moan, and the unbelievable thrill of him throbbing within you. You feel close to him in a way you’ve never felt with anyone before and doubt you will again.
So as you lie there, still wrapped in his arms, you try to distance yourself from your body. You try to stay in your head, where things make sense. You see the entire thing like a story in your mind. You remind yourself that the pleasurable afterglow of an orgasm is due to the release of oxytocin and should not be confused with genuine human emotion.
Still … it’s hard not to feel something.
How did he do it?
Twenty-One
Ryan
I woke up the next morning at six like I always did.
Immediately I looked over at Stella. I’d fallen asleep with her nestled against my side, but at some point she had rolled away from me. Now she was on her stomach, her hair spilling like sunlight across the plain white pillowcase. The sheet was at her waist, and I felt a tightening in my lower body at the sight of her bare back. There were marks on it. From me.
It made me feel good in a chest-thumping kind of way, but also bad. I hadn’t meant to hurt her.
I hadn’t meant to do a lot of things.
Like ask her to stay.
It’s not that I was sorry, exactly—I wanted to be with her. But I had to be careful to keep things under control. Things like her expectations. Her hopes. Her feelings.
Mine had an on/off switch. Hers did not.
So I decided not to reach for her like I wanted to and picked up my phone from the floor beside me instead. I had one text message, from Mack, sent at midnight last night.
Hey. Call me.
I frowned at the screen, wondering if I still had a job. If I called him now, he’d probably tell me, but I didn’t want to get fired over the phone. And I owed Mr. and Mrs. Sawyer an apology. Mack, too. I knew I’d let him down. Maybe if I owned my mistake and swore it wouldn’t happen again, they’d give me a second chance.
I set my phone down and carefully got out of bed. In the shower, I continued to berate myself for what I’d done outside the inn. Yeah, that guy had been an asshole, and drunk besides, but I’d dealt with my share of inebriated dickheads in my life without losing my shit like that. I usually had a solid handle on my temper. Between that and the way I’d confessed so much to Stella and then asked her to stay over, it was like I’d been a different person last night. Fucking weird.