Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 124574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 623(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 623(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
That meant something. Something pivotal that I couldn’t inspect, partly because of my headache and partly because I didn’t want to inspect it too closely. Luckily, or maybe not so, he continued.
“And when I wasn’t taking care of the farm—before the army, that is—me and Ian were out riding bikes, causing trouble, usually with Gwen not too far behind.” His eyes twinkled with nostalgia and melancholy. “Though most of the time she was the one who brought trouble with her.”
I stared at him as he danced with the memories of the past, and the demons those memories brought. I knew the look. When you forgot for a moment, remembering times with someone you held dear, you smiled until you remembered that memories were all you had left.
I knew how that felt; therefore, I knew the necessity of shaking free of the talons of those memories. If they got their hooks in, you were done for.
“Well. A childhood spent ‘tailing,’ whatever that is,” I said, screwing up my nose, “is not an excuse to not know who Audrey Hepburn is. I’d only accept that if you were brought up in some undiscovered tribe in the Amazon where you spoke in clicks and shot arrows at helicopters full of noisy Westerners.”
He laughed, shaking off the demons. I knew this. Only because those demons recognized like minds, nodded cordially to each other before they disappeared back into their respective minds. Or at least buried them for the moment.
“You take movies seriously, then.”
“I take Audrey seriously, and Hitchcock, and Scorsese, and Coppola, among others,” I said, switching the movie off Pause. “Get ready to be educated on films.” I pointed at him. “If you speak, your invitation to sit in here with me will be rescinded.”
He grinned, making the motion of zipping his lips before leaning back on the sofa, laying his long and muscled arm over the back of it casually.
I stayed upright on account of the coffee and the arm. I didn’t need to be snuggling on the sofa with him.
That would send the wrong message.
Though I thought that ship might’ve already sailed.
Instead, I focused on Audrey.
Audrey made everything better.
For a hundred and thirty minutes, anyway.
“So?” I asked from my position on the edge of the sofa, as far away from the arm and the man attached to it as possible.
He glanced from the television to me, his eyes dancing with a lot of dangerous and delicious emotions.
Especially since they flickered to the sliver of my milky white legs exposed between my thigh-high black socks and black silk shorts.
Luckily, even hungover, my wardrobe didn’t allow for me to look like a slob.
He opened his mouth, but I held up my hand.
“And before you answer, be warned—if you say or even think a bad thing about Audrey, then we can’t be friends.”
His eyes went lazy, and he moved before I rightly knew what was going on and could escape. “I don’t have anything to say about Audrey. Though I’ll admit the movie didn’t suck,” he said. His hand framed my jaw. “But the thing is, I don’t wanna be your friend, Snow,” he continued.
The words were spoken with a rough sort of certainty, an omen of what was to come.
Then his mouth was on mine, slow, leisurely, tender. Yet somehow, despite the gentle movements of his tongue and lips, the kiss ripped something open in me that burned my entire body.
Something that set off vague warning bells at the back of my head. The ones that were more than easy to ignore, considering I was focused on the hot guy I’d been dreaming of. Who was now here, in the flesh, and kissing the shit out of me.
Maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t back to full brainpower after all the cells I killed with cocktails the night before.
Maybe it was Tiffany’s.
Or maybe it was just him. The hot, funny, muscled man who’d managed to get my attention, get under my skin in less time than it took for me to break in a pair of shoes.
So that’s why I made a hungry sound in the back of my throat and deepened the kiss, frantically moving myself so I straddled him, immediately pressing my cotton shorts against the hardness underneath his jeans.
“Fuck, Snow,” he hissed through his teeth as I ground myself against him.
“No talking,” I moaned, grasping the sides of his neck and yanking his mouth to mine.
There was no more slow. No more tender. No, it was a brutal clashing of tongues and mouths and teeth and desperation to get closer. To get more.
His hands tangled in my hair, finding purchase on the tie and yanking it out so my locks tumbled down my back and into his hands.
My hands moved from his neck as I continue to rub myself against him, the sparks from the friction stoking a fire that had me in danger of burning up already.