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)
That made me fuckin’ ragey, too. Seemed there wasn’t one thing about her that didn’t send me into a tailspin.
“Anyone at the shop set you on edge? A customer or a supplier? Someone who might have gotten obsessed?”
She gulped, and she was barely able to shake her head with how tight I was holding onto her. “I don’t think so. No one has given me the gut sense that something was off.”
“Anyone in your past?” I grasped for anything.
Straws.
A needle in a giant fucking haystack.
I mean, how many goddamned people had she come into contact with over the years?
I felt the slightest flinch beneath my palms, the tiniest indication that maybe her brain had gone to a moment in time that might have meant something, before she blinked it away. “No. There’s no one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I pushed closer, and my nose brushed hers as the urgent words fell from my mouth. “If you think of anything…absolutely anything…I need you to tell me, Raven. Trust me with it. Because I can’t stand the thought of something happening to you. Of letting some asshole get to you. I need to stop this.”
“And I hate that something in my life has brought this on you,” she rasped. “I hate that you were hurt because of me.”
She stared at me through the dense air that swirled around us in a disorienting cloud.
A haze that distorted everything I should cling to.
The reality that I couldn’t have this girl.
But I couldn’t find that footing right then.
“You think I wouldn’t stand in front of every bullet for you? Take every blow for you? Suffer any consequence?”
“It’s not your place.” Even coming from her mouth, it sounded like a lie.
Both my thumbs brushed under the dark hollows beneath her eyes. “Isn’t it? Isn’t standing for you what I’m supposed to do? Isn’t it what I’ve always been meant to do?”
It’d been me she’d come to when she was afraid. Me who’d held her. Me who’d chased away the nightmares.
But when everything had gone to shit, I’d known I had to put a barrier between us. Erect and fortify it.
See to it that neither of us could break through.
No question, what had gone down between us last night had put more than a dent in the surface.
It’d created a crack right through the foundation.
And I was afraid I’d already done it—crossed a line of no return. Because I couldn’t step back. Couldn’t peel myself away from this woman who held me like a magnet.
Gravity.
Luring me forward as I gazed down into the fathomless depths of those dark, entrancing eyes.
“Maybe you are meant for me. In every way.” She answered my demand in that throaty lilt. Pushing even farther into the perilous territory I’d been toeing.
Pure fuckin’ temptation.
My gaze dipped to her lips, and a pained groan rolled out of me when they parted at the attention.
A silent plea.
Coaxing me into disaster.
“Raven.” Her name was a warning.
Praise and a riot of lust.
Her hand fisted in my shirt, and my thumb brushed across her plump bottom lip. My gaze jumped between the action and her eyes.
Hoping to God that she might be the one to stop this madness because it’d become clear that was not going to be me.
Apparently, I lost all power when it came to her.
“Tell me to stop. Tell me not to touch you. Tell me you don’t want this,” I demanded.
She laughed a brittle, disbelieving sound. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted is for you to touch me. Haven’t you heard my body begging for it?”
Had tried to ignore it. Pretend as if I hadn’t felt the desire radiating from her flesh. The way that gaze had always tracked me, and her heart raced an extra beat whenever I got into her vicinity.
All of it was the exact same thing mine had done.
Her body a match to mine.
“Touch me again,” she rushed, her voice so low, her breath skating my face and infiltrating my senses. “I don’t want it once. I want to feel it again and again.”
I could scent her arousal. Way her entire being trembled with desire. With this desperation that had built for so long, and now that it’d been released, it’d become a life of its own. Grown into a volatile, charged entity.
“You want me to touch you again, Moonflower?”
“Yes. So bad. I need it. I need to feel you. Whole and safe. I was so scared—”
Before she could get the confession I was terrified of her saying free, I crushed my mouth against hers.
A promise that she was going to make it through this. A promise that I’d take the brunt of whatever was meant for her. Stand in the way of any motherfucker who would dare to do her harm.
A promise that I was going to take care of her…in every fuckin’ way.