Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
It only amplified when I finally got his socks off, then slowly climbed to my feet.
The air ripped from my lungs, stolen at the sight of him, at the way he watched me as I stepped forward so I could remove his shirt.
His strong jaw clenched tight, his eyes creased at the corners as if he were frozen in restraint.
My fingers curled around the fabric, and I slowly, carefully began to pull it up.
A grunt left his mouth, and I whimpered when I saw the magnitude of his injuries.
His abdomen was covered in blackened patches where bruises blossomed.
His skin scraped and abraded.
His side was seeping with a deep cut.
What had my chest clutching was the recognition that not all the injuries were new.
Milo was littered in scars.
I guessed I hadn’t been close enough to see him those times when he was outside working without a shirt.
They were unmistakable now.
Some jagged and knotted and gnarled.
Others deep, long slashes where it looked like he’d been carved.
“Oh, Milo,” I mumbled as my spirit wept.
“I’ve had worse, Little Dove.”
How, and to still be standing?
He took over for me when I’d made it up to his armpits, and he groaned as he lifted his arms to pull it the rest of the way over his head.
Maybe I shouldn’t have let them, but my eyes raced, devouring every exposed inch of him.
His shoulders massive and muscled, his arms solid, his chest so freaking wide.
Most of his flesh was covered in ink.
Designs that whispered of beauty against the darkness that reigned underneath.
The scars were woven into the images as if the sum of them had made up his life.
Along his side was one word.
Written on him like a brand.
Gore.
Gulping, I struggled for clarity.
Sanity.
Control.
Something other than this dangerous path I was taking.
Milo had already proven he didn’t want to go there with me, but there was no stopping it.
That train had already left the station.
Barreling ahead as my attention raked down to the flat, chiseled planes of his cut abdomen. This area was barren of tattoos and completely ripped.
And holy jeez, that V-cut that dipped below the waist of his jeans was even more defined.
I tried to swallow.
The man was hotter than Hades.
Rugged and hard.
Beautiful Beast.
He never looked away when his fingers went to the buttons of his jeans. He ticked through his fly, then carefully pushed the jeans down, bending just enough that he could shrug them all the way down and off his feet.
Milo straightened.
I nearly fainted.
What was even happening?
Was I dreaming?
Coma by orgasm?
Because the man stood there in nothing but these tight black briefs that came down to the top of his thick, muscled thighs, and he was staring at me like he was daring me to look.
He was hard.
So hard and giant he was nearly bursting out of his underwear, the shape of him forever immortalized in the thin fabric and emblazoned in my mind.
It turned out my fantasies had erred on the side of pathetic when it came to Milo Hendricks.
An offense to all that he was.
No justice at all.
“Not supposed to want you, Tessa.” Agony twisted out with the rough words.
Oh, no.
This poor, wonderful man.
But I got the sense he was begging me to run and pleading with me to stay.
Something flared in his gaze.
“Want you to suck me, Tessa.”
I was pretty sure my eyes bugged out of my skull.
So blunt.
“You’re hurt.”
And you don’t want me but you kind of do, and I think all of this is a really terrible idea that I want to try out, anyway.
“And I think you might be the only thing in this world that could make me feel good.”
“Is that what you want? For me to touch you?” I managed some shaky version of what he’d asked me earlier tonight, when the man had undone me in the span of two minutes, then left me questioning every convoluted emotion I felt.
Half the night I’d spent toiling in bed until I’d finally heard his truck return at close to four this morning.
Now, dawn threatened around us. The quieted, slowed hour that dripped into a new day.
Pregnant with possibility.
Or maybe it was only ripe with reckless ideas.
“I’ve wanted that sweet mouth wrapped around my cock since the second I saw you. How many times I’ve imagined you on your knees for me, Little Dove.”
I dropped to them like I had no strength left.
Compelled.
Arousal burned across his flesh.
The way his pained breaths had turned jagged with want.
Stepping forward, he brushed the pad of his thumb along my jaw, inciting a frenzy in me so intense it quivered all the way to my bones. Then he was running his thumb over my lips, back and forth, and my nerves were firing all over the place.
“Are you going to let me fuck that mouth?”
“You can have any part of me that you want.”