Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92777 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92777 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
He stood straight, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “You’re right. I am an ass. You should know that. It’s a good thing to know about me.”
I started to agree with him, my mouth opening and then closing, my chest still rising and falling with the emotion I’d exerted as I’d searched this monstrosity of a house looking for him and then subsequently railed and socked him on his immovable arm made of rock.
He was watching me, his own quickened breath mingling with my own, despite that, from what I assumed, he’d been standing nearly motionless on this patio for at least a little while. He looked so damned wounded when I was the one who’d been tricked into talking ridiculously about tick-eating possums with a man I’d wanted to impress. Which…did sound…well, ridiculous. My lip trembled and then I laughed, a sudden hiccup-sounding guffaw.
Travis regarded me warily, offering a tense, concerned smile.
I clapped my hand over my mouth, laughing again. Oh my God, it was all so ridiculous. Being at this house. The way Travis Hale was looking at me as though simultaneously hopeful my anger had faded and he was off the hook, and also like he was considering making a call to have me committed. This road trip I was on was ridiculous. This dress that I couldn’t afford yet had bought anyway to impress some man who’d likely only ever see me as ridiculous, and rightly so, was totally ridiculous.
Hell, my whole life had been one ridiculous link in a ridiculous chain of events. I was laughing so hard that tears pricked my eyes.
And there was a billiards room upstairs. A billiards room! The apartment we’d lived in the longest had had a homeless prostitute named “Two-Toothed Trina” who had slept in our building’s doorway. I’d made her sandwiches when we had enough food to spare and sat with her as she’d gummed them.
I laughed and laughed.
And some absurd part of me missed Trina and worried that there was no one to make her sandwiches anymore, because I was here in Maine, lying about my love for possums to a man whose family home included a billiards room.
“Haven,” Travis said, and there was something in his tone, something so incredibly gentle, as if, though I didn’t understand what was happening to me and perhaps he didn’t either, he recognized the feelings behind it.
How could that be true? It couldn’t. Not from Chief Hale, who’d grown up in a virtual Mayberry by the lake with love and family and history and freaking blueberries, ripe for the picking, all around him.
“Haven,” he said again in that same gentle way, stepping even closer, taking my hands from my mouth and holding them down by my sides.
My laughter dwindled, my shoulders dropped.
“I’m an ass,” he said.
“I know,” I answered breathlessly.
He nodded, something like sadness in his eyes. “Everyone knows,” he said. “There’s a consensus about it.”
My heart squeezed. My laughter became air. In. Out. In. Out. He was an ass. But he also wasn’t.
“Polls have been conducted,” he went on. “Graphs have been charted. There are debates about the magnitude of—”
“Shut up,” I said, pressing my mouth to his.
For a moment, we both froze, our eyes open as we stared at one another in shock, as if we’d suddenly and joltingly found ourselves standing on a different planet. And then, like lightning, he groaned, pulling me close and fitting his mouth perfectly over mine. I met his groan with one of my own, a feeling I could only call relief spiraling through me. The kiss deepened. Every part of the strange, alarming anger and sadness and confusion from moments before vanished as his heat enveloped me, his scent adding to the intoxication of the moment. Our tongues met, testing, and then tangled together as though our bodies already knew one another and were celebrating this long-awaited reunion.
He feathered his fingers down my back, tracing the laces of my dress, causing me to shiver, sensation flowing over every part of my body. Pull them, I wanted to say. Bare my body. Then cover it with yours.
What was happening to me?
He stroked my tongue with his, fire leaping through my veins, every cell alive. This is what drugs feel like, I thought. This is why people go back and back and back, doing whatever they must—whatever they shouldn’t—to make this feeling last. I squeezed my legs together and Travis let out a growl, low in his throat. I felt the vibration of it, and it made my excitement soar higher, on some plane where gravity no longer existed.
I held on to him more tightly, so I wouldn’t float away. He was hard everywhere—his arms, his chest, his cock that had swollen and was now pressing against my hip. I leaned closer into him.