Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
He tips his own drink back, emptying the contents of the glass before he sets it on the wide steel ledge separating the window. He takes mine and does the same. The buzz in my head is officially here and I laugh without humor. “That was not a good idea. I’m already feeling whatever it was I just drank. Damion, I—”
He catches me to him, and the feel of him next to me is everything. His touch warms me all over. His smell permeates my senses and stirs emotions and wild flutters in my belly. He maneuvers me backward and leans me against the steel beam that flows from floor to ceiling, one hand warm on my hip, the other on the beam above my head, torment in the depth of his stare.
“I did what I did because I felt the push between us. I knew you were going to say yes, and I want you to say yes.”
“Then talk to me,” I say. “Don’t—”
He catches my hand with the ring and holds it between us. “I know this is about this ring. Isn’t it?”
I blanch with the directness of his words, a deer in headlights. What do I even say to him right now? I don’t know what to say. You hurt me. You won’t marry me. Why would anyone want a man to marry them if they didn’t want to marry them? I don’t. Not even Damion. Especially not Damion.
So I’m back to what I always do with him—living in the moment and with the heat of the booze and the heat of his body burning through me, it’s not a hard thing to do. Exactly why I say, “Can you just kiss me already?”
Chapter eight
“Alana,” he murmurs softly, and my name on his lips is more dangerous than whiskey to my good sense. I’m drunk on his very existence.
“Damion,” I whisper in reply, and while my name on his lips had been all about heat and fire, his name on mine is every question I have but don’t dare speak.
As if he reads that in me, his hand closes around the ring and my hand. “This isn’t nothing.”
“It’s fake,” I reply, when in my mind I’ve told myself to just let it go, but apparently, I just don’t have that in me.
“It’s not fake. God, woman. I bought it for you.”
Only to basically tell me it was a stupid mistake, I think, but this isn’t a conversation I want to have right now. My emotional bandwidth has expired times a thousand. I try to push around him. He cages my legs with his powerful thighs. “Alana.” This time my name is stubborn plea. He’s not ready to drop this, and I am.
“Let me go.”
“I did that several times now,” he replies “It never works out for me.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Letting you get away was a mistake I won’t make again.”
The words are sweet, like sugar and happiness, but they don’t compute with everything else he’s said and done. “You confuse me.”
“Says the woman who told me we could only be friends when we both wanted more.”
“Okay,” I admit. “That’s fair, but we were kids. We’re not kids anymore.”
“We’re not just friends either.” He releases my hand and grips my waist, and I swear his hand on my body is already burning through my brain cells. His forehead presses to mine, and he murmurs, “I did things, Alana.” His voice radiates with a mix of guilt and torment. And while no, this is not the first time he’s said something like this to me, there’s a gut-wrenching quality to his confession that tears down the wall the whole ring thing has slammed between us.
My hand presses to his cheek, and I meet his stare, my hope that he sees the truth in my eyes. “Whatever you did, it’s in the past. I don’t care.”
“I do,” he insists. “I care. I don’t want you to know those things, and my worst fear is that I might not be able to hide them from you.”
“I don’t need you to hide anything from me, Damion. That feeling—like you need to do that—it’s not us. That’s not who I want to believe we are together. And that’s not how we make this work.”
“It might be the only way we make this work.”
“You want to live with someone you have to keep secrets from? Really? That’s your idea of happy? The person you live your life with should be able to deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s not like my family doesn’t have its ugly.”
“It’s not the same, Alana.”
“It’s the same to me.”
“No.” His expression tightens. “It wouldn’t be if you knew the details, which you will not.”
“That doesn’t work for me, Damion.”
“Try harder to make it work,” he demands.