Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
It was a while.
Yet it still felt too soon when he pulled away.
He snuck off into the bathroom first, coming back with a pair of pajama pants slung low on his hips.
“I’m gonna go grab a drink. You want one?” he asked as I watched him, my eyes still greedy for him even after all this time.
“Yes. And snacks,” I told him.
“What kinda snacks?” he asked. “Think we got the whole fucking snack food aisle in the pantry.”
“Salty. Oh, and sweet. Maybe some chocolate.”
“So, a little bit of everything,” he concluded, smile warm.
“What can I say? It’s been a month,” I told him, getting a nod from him.
I waited until the door closed to roll off the bed, waddling into the bathroom to clean myself up.
When I was finished, I looked up into the mirror, almost surprised at what I saw looking back at me.
Not the bruises or stitches.
I’d been getting used to seeing them.
It was something in my eyes, a look I wasn’t sure I’d ever really seen there before.
Happiness.
A sort of bone-deep happiness.
Even with the shitty situation that was still unfinished, and all the danger that might be involved in that still, I was happy.
I knew better than to think it had anything to do with just having some help with my situation. If that was the case, I would feel the same sort of joy if I’d gone to the Murphys. And I knew I wouldn’t have.
This wasn’t about Czar or the Bulgarians, or whoever the hell else I found myself tangled up with.
This was about me.
And Slash.
And whatever it was that was growing between us.
Neither of us were good at this sort of thing, had much experience in making relationships work.
But maybe that was the beauty of it. Neither of us knew what we were doing. There was no burden on the “more experienced” partner to help guide the clueless one through the stages of becoming a couple.
We were both just going to stumble and fumble and fuck shit up and then try to fix it… together.
I liked that.
An even playing field.
There would be times to come, I knew, where it wasn’t going to be easy. To bite my tongue. To accept help. To share my thoughts and feelings.
It wasn’t going to be easy for Slash, either, though.
Somehow, that fact was going to help me power through in those tough moments, knowing he was going through the same.
“Alright. Well,” Slash said, coming in as I was walking out from the bathroom, stark freaking naked still, making him kick closed the door, then fall back against it, letting out a deep exhale. “Fuck. That’s something I’ll never get sick of seeing,” he said, his gaze roaming over me.
His arms were loaded down with snacks. Little single-serving bags of chips in all the colors that meant at least four different flavors. Fruit packs. Graham crackers. Peanut butter cups.
“Wait a damn minute,” I said, eyeing a specific light blue, funny-shaped plastic container. “Is that… is that a Dunkaroo? I thought they discontinued them when we were kids,” I said, walking toward him.
“They’re back. I only know this because fucking Raff never shuts up about them,” he said as I came up to him to snag the container.
“Well, these are mine. And I’m not sharing,” I told him, waving it in his face before turning and walking back toward the bed, feeling his gaze on my ass the whole way. “Are you coming, or are you just going to stand there and stare at me?” I asked, glancing over at him with a smirk.
“Can’t decide,” he admitted.
“Well, if you come over here, you can look and touch,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, can’t argue with that logic,” he said, coming to the bed, tossing the snacks in the center, then climbing on with me.
It was so simple.
Having sex.
Eating snacks.
Watching reruns.
Yet, somehow, it was the best night of my entire freaking life.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Slash
“Why didn’t you come to me?” Cillian asked, standing in the common area of the clubhouse the next day.
I hadn’t been in a rush to have him over.
See, when you had a woman like Nyx in your bed, you just weren’t in a hurry to get out of it.
Add on the fact that Nyx really needed to catch up on sleep, and it meant we hadn’t really gotten our day started until almost noon.
But Cillian had already been in the living room when we came down, having coffee while Delaney was getting the baby up from his nap.
The way his eyes darkened and his jaw tightened when he glanced at Nyx told me he absolutely always saw her as more than an employee, more like a member of his extended family.
“I almost did,” Nyx told him. “But I came this way instead,” she said, and there was no way Cillian missed how she almost looked a little pink-cheeked at that confession.