Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
“I’m sorry I embarrassed you,” Fenn says, hanging his head shamefully. “It was irrational, but my brain was telling me you were in danger, that you might drown, and my first instinct was to rescue you.”
“I don’t need to be rescued.” My words come out as a whisper.
He closes the distance, pushing a few damp strands of hair behind my ear. I don’t realize until he does that I’m gripping his shirt in both fists.
“I’ll be here to save you every time,” he says softly. “Just like I was there that night.”
I hate him for saying that. For thinking he’s the center of everything wrong with me. And for being fucking right, because it’s true—I can’t go a day without chasing his name from my thoughts. I want him and can’t stand him in equal measure, and my heart doesn’t know how to reconcile that.
I blink back the moisture coating my lashes. “Why’d it have to be you?”
His answer is a kiss.
Fenn’s warm hands grasp my face as he presses his lips to mine. Gently, but insistent. Every time we kiss, it’s like a letter from a pen pal. One of those long conversations at the coffee shop when you close the place down. Staying up all night on the phone. Catching up on lost time. Picking up exactly where we left off no matter how much time and space has come between us.
I wrap my arms around his neck even as I know I’ll hate myself for it later. Hate that all my anger, his betrayal, becomes superfluous when he touches me. How easily I’m won. Not because it’s some trick or spell, but because he feels like home to me.
I let him kiss me because there’s never a time I’ve stopped wanting him to, no matter how much I wish I could purge that desire from my heart. I kiss him back because kissing him is the closest thing I know to happiness.
Neither of us speak when he grasps my hips. Like we’re both afraid to breathe too loudly and let this brief illusion evaporate and realize we’re both still us and nothing’s changed. I comb my fingers through his hair that’s gotten a little longer since the last time I did this. It’s still soft as I remember.
His hands find bare skin under my shirt. His shirt. Which feels like a blanket, and I’ll probably take it home, where I’ll throw it over a chair tomorrow and tell myself I’ll wash and return it. But it’ll just lie there for weeks while I close my eyes and remember the way he tastes on my tongue or how smooth his fingertips are when they skim my spine.
I swallow hard and bite my lip when he slides his hand under that shirt to grasp my breast. My knee falls to the side. The wall holds me up as he steps between my legs. I arch into his palm, and my tongue against his begs him to make me feel everything I’m too scared to admit I want.
Because he is everything I should run from.
“You’re beautiful.” Finally, he speaks. A reverent whisper.
Fenn pushes the shirt up my chest. He kisses the slight valley between my breasts before traveling a path to one nipple. He licks softly while I resist the shudder weakening through my limbs.
When he reaches between my thighs and his mouth meets mine again, I can only think of the times he was afraid to touch me. Afraid of moving too quickly. But we aren’t those people anymore, kissing on a picnic blanket in the forest. He’s a beautiful stranger and I’m the girl he left behind. A dream so fleeting, it practically never happened at all.
“I want to make you feel good,” he says, breathing hard against my lips. “Will you let me?”
I should say no.
“Yes.”
With a visible gulp, Fenn tentatively slips his hand inside my sweatpants. Applying pressure to the spot that banishes every small whisper warning me that when this fantasy wears off, we’ll both go back to being ourselves and nothing fundamentally broken will have been repaired.
I grip his shoulders to hold myself upright, burying my face in his neck. Every short, shallow breath fills me with his scent while he massages me toward pure sensation. No thoughts but his skin. His heartbeat against my chest. His fingers teasing my clit.
Then his fingers are gone, and I’m ashamed of the desperate moan that’s ripped from my throat.
“Don’t worry. Not stopping,” he says roughly, then walks me toward his bed. “Lie down.”
I’m shaking like a leaf in the wind as I lower myself onto the mattress. Fenn peels my sweatpants off and tosses them away. A groan escapes his lips when his gaze focuses on my bare pussy.
“Fuck,” he whispers and reaches out to rub his knuckles along my slit.