Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
“Put me down!” I screeched.
“Only if you admit that you’re totally a chicken, and you don’t want to tell your brother the way you really feel.”
“What? That he’s gross and he should have taken his activities elsewhere?”
Otto chuckled. “You could probably also tell him that.” Then he slowed as his arms tightened around me, his words soft encouragement as he murmured them at my ear. “But you have to be honest with him, too. Tell him what you want. Otherwise, it’s gonna be a fight. And you deserve everything in this world that might bring you happiness.”
I stopped my fighting, too, and I just let him hold me there. I wanted to sink into it. Fall into the strength of who he was. Turn around in his arms and press myself against him. Confess to him what it was that I really wanted.
But I’d never do that. Would never lay myself bare. The one time I’d tried, it’d left me devastated, and I wasn’t ready for another round of that.
“I’m not afraid of my brother, Otto,” I murmured into the dense air. “I just understand the sacrifice he’s made for me. Understand the things he’s done to protect me, and I know how difficult it will be for him to shift the dynamics of our relationship. Especially after so many years of him thinking he’s had to take care of me.”
Heavy emotion rolled from him. “It’s goin’ to be good, Raven. Good for the both of you.”
“I hope so.”
He pulled me even closer, and his lips brushed the shell of my ear. “I know so.”
“You have a lot of faith in me.”
“I have all the faith in you.”
Energy bound. So intense. Deep and profound. Pulling around us in a force so severe it felt impossible to resist.
But apparently that force only applied to me since I could feel the easy grin that he pressed to the side of my neck, and his words rumbled through me when he said, “All right, then, Moonflower, you win. You talk to your brother when you’re ready, and I’ll be here to support you through it. Thick and thin.”
Moonflower.
My heart panged.
“You’ve always been there to support me.”
“You keep forgetting that you’re my favorite person in the world.”
I wanted to be more than his favorite. I wanted to be his everything. But I didn’t say anything when he gave me a tight squeeze then settled me onto the floor. “All right, let’s get my girl something to eat.”
My girl.
He really was trying to wreck me tonight. I sucked it down and turned with what I hoped looked like an effortless smile on my face, snagging off the single heel that remained and landing myself on bare feet.
“What are we having?”
“I didn’t see the point in diverging from a solid plan…so spaghetti it is.”
I grinned. “Well, then, feed me, you big brute.”
He grinned his cocky grin. “It’d be my pleasure.”
FIFTEEN
OTTO
Listening to Raven moan around the forkful of spaghetti she put into her mouth was some kind of special torture. The sound wasn’t close to ladylike, and my dick was straining so painfully in my jeans I thought I might black out.
She slurped up the last bite and pushed her empty plate away with a satisfied sigh. She was sitting across from me at the square table under the windows that overlooked the lake in the distance.
Twilight weaved through the heavens, and the last rays of the sun slanted in over the soaring pines and through the panes of glass. They cast her in this glittering glow that made her appear ethereal.
Impossible.
Too beautiful to be real.
She’d undone those locks of lush black hair and had let them cascade around her shoulders. The ends dipped down to mingle with the black polka dots of the dress that threatened to knock me senseless.
She’d fully ditched those sky-high heels, which would have been a travesty if it weren’t for the fact those dainty bare feet kept brushing my leg from under the table.
Raven could have hailed from the 40s. A perfect pinup with the sole purpose of enticing the lesser sex. This girl so high above she might as well have been propped on a pedestal where she could never be reached.
Except I had a hunch that was not the way she wanted it. She wanted to be reached. She wanted to be touched. She wanted to be adored.
Exactly the way she deserved to be.
Too bad I was the sorry fucker who would never be good enough for the likes of her.
What made it worse was she kept looking at me like I might be worthy. Like I was some fucking hero with a cape when I was bred of nothing but corruption and calamity.
“Okay, I’m never making spaghetti again. Tonight proved I’m nothing but a hack,” she said as she sat back and patted her belly.