Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 82651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
I go absolutely still, not because I have a broken back, but because as much as Van has yelled and cursed at me over the last few weeks, I’ve never heard him do so with a tinge of fear in his voice.
I watch mesmerized as every muscle in his body contracts and strains as he single-handedly pushes the refrigerator up and back into place. He immediately spins and drops back down beside me.
“Okay, do you hurt anywhere?” he asks as his eyes roam over me. I was so worried about Lucas this morning I didn’t even bother to wear something sexy. In fact, I’ve got a baggy Dartmouth T-shirt from a former boyfriend and a pair of sweatpants on.
“There’s a spray bottle under me,” I murmur. “Otherwise I’m completely fine.”
Van’s eyebrows draw inward. “A spray bottle?”
“I was trying to clean the top of the refrigerator and the wall behind it,” I explain, and because I know he’ll want the details, I continue. “I was trying to put my knee inside the freezer to haul myself up, and well…it’s a chain of events that led to me being down here on the floor.”
“Of all the fucking stupid idiotic things,” Van mutters under his breath as his arm slides under my shoulders to help me sit up.
“Your white knight skills suck,” I mutter back, not needing or appreciating the way in which he’s making me feel like shit.
“I’m not your white knight,” he says as he helps to pull me to my feet.
I wince as I straighten my back, knowing that there’s probably a bruise in the middle in the exact shape of a spray bottle.
“What’s wrong?” he says as he turns me around, and before I can even tell him, he’s pulling up the back of my T-shirt. He hisses slightly between his teeth and his fingers touch my skin ever so gently. “You’ve already got a bruise forming.”
My breath catches in my throat, not from the promise of a bruise, but just from that tiny touch of his fingertips to me. Feather light, but feeling like a wrecking ball, knocking the wind out of me.
I want more, and the part of Simone Fournier that is devious and plain trouble with a capital T says, “I think I might have cracked my ribs.”
“Where?” he asks with concern as he gently turns my body.
I have to keep the smile off my face as I pull my shirt up at the side and flat-out lie. “Here, on the side…and to the front. It hurts worse in the front.”
Van bends to peer at my ribs, his fingers tracing the skin there. I pull my shirt up higher in the front until the underside of my breast is exposed. I hold my breath as his fingers skim closer, but as I look down at him, his face is clinically worried as he looks for a broken rib or something.
He presses tentatively on my top rib just under my breast. “Does this hurt?”
Only between my legs, I think unabashedly.
I shake my head and whisper, “Maybe a little higher.”
For a brief, glorious moment, his fingers actually start to drift higher and are within an inch of feathering across the bottom of my breast, but they pull up short and his eyes lift to mine. I try to look at him as if I might be in pain, but he’s having none of it as understanding dawns clear in his eyes, which look more like the steel gray of a cloudy day right now.
“God, you’re fucking shameless,” he growls as he straightens and jerks his hand away from me.
I give him a mock guilty expression. “Sorry?”
“You are totally not sorry,” he mumbles.
“No, I am,” I say as I turn to face him and take a step closer. My hands go to his naked chest…nothing more than a light laying of my palms against his warm skin. I can feel his heartbeat thundering madly, and I wonder if it’s because of the crash that had him tearing out of bed or the fact I’d almost had him caressing my breast.
Van stands his ground, though, and doesn’t dislodge me. I press the advantage by moving in just a little closer.
“It’s just,” I say softly as I let my thumbs gently stroke the skin and crisp hair of his chest. “I can’t help it, Van. I’m so damned attracted to you. You make me crazy.”
It’s not lost on me that this is the first time I’ve been completely and utterly honest with Van, without some cheesy pickup line or come-on.
Van’s nostrils flare wide as he looks down at me. His eyes darken, every bit of the blue leeching out until they look like orbs of charcoal.
“Give into it,” I beseech him softly, sliding just one hand up and over his shoulder. I go to my tiptoes to put my mouth closer to his as he stares stonily down at me. I let the other hand drift down his abs with no particular destination in mind.