Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 60931 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60931 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
The words pour onto the pages so quickly that my fingers barely keep up with the story. Like my other stories, this isn’t for an agent or a publisher. This isn’t a self-publishing labor of love. This is for me. I need to tell our story. My soul needs it.
I wake early to write for two hours before work and spend every single evening writing until I fall asleep mid-sentence. Our story is beautiful and messy. It’s raw and painful. It’s endearing … but not enduring. And I can’t get past that. Like the essence of humanity itself, we are flawed. All of our flaws are forgivable. I feel it with every chapter, through the laughter and tears, the makeups and breakups.
It’s the one unforgivable flaw that haunts me. It makes it hard to focus at work. I wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with an achy, pounding heart. That unforgivable flaw is why I’m writing a letter of resignation. It’s why I have my only suitcase on the bed awaiting my belongings. I’m not sure why this Anna character has to learn everything the hard way. It’s a miracle that Eric’s love for her is steady—an unwavering force like gravity.
Today, Anna Black is making the most important decision of her life. Her dream job is not enough. But now she knows what is enough.
My face hurts from grinning at my internal monologue—my third-person point of view of my life.
Sometimes you must step back and look at your life like a narrator to see that proverbial forest through the trees.
As I read over my resignation letter for the last time, my door buzzes. I push the speaker button. “Yes?”
“I’ve been sitting on the bench for the past hour, watching you through your window. And I have to say, you look pretty today.”
On a shaky breath, I bite my bottom lip. Tears burn my eyes. I can’t talk, so I unlock the main door and tear open my fifth-floor apartment door. I don’t know if my heart will survive the eternity it’s taking the elevator to ascend to my floor, but it’s trying.
Ding.
The doors open.
Eric makes his way to me, wearing his most charming smile and pulling a suitcase behind him. “Groveling.” He smacks his hand against his forehead. “Women like men who grovel. So I’ve brought my groveling A-game.”
I sob when the dam breaks.
“Why the tears, baby?” His question only makes my emotions double.
Releasing his suitcase, he cradles my face in his hands. “Anna, what’s wrong?”
Through sniffles and hiccups, I shake my head and smile. “It’s e-enough. Y-you’re enough … we’re enough.”
His lips slide into a slow-growing smile, filling that empty space in my chest with so much love that I can’t feel the ground beneath us. “Yes. We are.” He kisses me.
My favorite characters do what only Anna and Eric would do now; they stumble back into the apartment and find the fastest route for discarding their clothes and the nearest surface to fall into each other.
The wall works for a bit.
It’s rare for Eric to have his pants past his thighs before he’s deep inside of me, and today is no exception.
“Anna,” he says, gripping my legs and driving into me, face buried in my neck.
“Y-yeah?” I pant.
“Why is … there a suitcase … on your bed?”
I grab his face and kiss him. Dear god, I’ve missed him.
He pauses, and I release his mouth with a grin while he waits for my response. “I was going home to let Eric Fucking Steinmann love me like no other man will ever do.”
Eric wears a look of pride better than anyone. “Oh, Anna Banana…” he carries me to the bed, “…and here I came all this way just to show you my mating dance. We nearly missed each other in passing.” He lays me on the bed next to the suitcase.
I shove it onto the floor without taking my gaze off him.
Eric chuckles, removing the rest of his clothes. “Spread your legs, baby,” he says in a husky voice.
I nearly orgasm from those four words, but I spread my legs.
“Now touch yourself,” he whispers, crawling over me, dipping his head to trap my lower lip between his teeth.
Oh god …
If I touch myself, I will lose it. Hell, if a mouse in the corner sneezes, I’ll orgasm.
“Eric, I need you … now.”
He grins, hovering over me while I’m feeling tortured in limbo. “I guess the books are right.”
I narrow my eyes. “Books?”
With a laugh, he bends his head toward my breast, teasing my nipple with his tongue. “I’ll tell you later.”
I want to know now, but not as much as I want him back inside me.
We’ve always been good at this—the physical act. But this is different. It’s just us. This is intimate.
This is love.
It’s trust.