Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 109318 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109318 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
“What would you have done? If he showed up at your door and pumped you for money to keep my family’s secret?” He paused, intently searching her face. “You’d have paid it and the cycle would start all over again. All I could think about was protecting you.”
“I don’t know what I would have done. But I do know that I would have talked to you about it.” Her voice started to break. “You have no excuse for leaving me dangling for three days. All it would have taken was a phone call. A text. You could have come to see me when the cameras shut down for the day. You didn’t do any of those things.”
“He’s the worst part of my life, Mel,” he said through his teeth. “Now I was bringing it down on your head, too? I fed you to the lion. Being with me was hurting you.”
“No. Being apart is worse. You know it is.”
“You’re right. I do. God, do I fucking know.” He dropped his mouth to her neck, rubbed his open lips up the soft slope of tendons to her ear, kissing the lobe, the space beneath. His big hands lifted to grip her hips, guiding her backward toward the elevator wall. “I haven’t slept in three days. I lock myself in the bathroom and watch you on my screen like an obsessed fan. Maybe that’s what I am.”
Melody’s nerve endings were beginning to shoot sparks, her lungs laboring to draw breath. As soon as Beat’s hips pinned her to the wall, she knew. Resistance was futile. Even her frustration with him, with the whole situation, was making her more desperate for that wild and enduring connection they shared. To feel it everywhere. Bathe in it. She’d gone three days thinking she might never feel it again, starved of it, and now her body wanted to gorge.
“I hear what you’re telling me,” Beat said, grazing their lips together, his eyes zeroed in on her mouth. Tortured. “You need complete trust or nothing at all. A partnership. Full disclosure always. I’ll give that to you. I need to give you that.”
“I want to believe that.”
“Please.” He captured her mouth and her neck went limp, requiring his hand to cup the back of her head. He held her up, while his lips opened over hers, slanted, then took her with long, devastating strokes of his tongue. “Believe in me again, Mel. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I know,” she whispered, kissing him back hungrily. “I know you are.”
“I’m your boyfriend. Fiancé. Soulmate. Call me all of them. Or just one. I’ll take one.”
The ache that had burdened her for the last three days swelled up like a life raft, pushing her ribs out from the inside. All the time she’d spent doubting herself, staring at her phone and hoping it would ring, the emptiness. If he’d trusted her the way she trusted him, they would have avoided it all. “I can’t right now.”
He growled brokenly against her mouth. “Maybe I’ll make you say it.”
Her intimate muscles contracted, leaving wetness behind. They were a mile into dangerous territory now. Past the point of no return. His erection was thick and ready between their bodies and her stomach cradled it, rubbing side to side. Unconscious, desperate moves of a woman in love, even when she’d been wronged. “Maybe I . . . want you to try.”
Beat moaned above her head, his hands raking down her breasts, squeezing them roughly in his hands. “You’re not taking me back,” he rasped, dipping his head to lick her hard nipples through her thin sweater. “But you’re going to let me fuck you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you trying to hurt me back?” he demanded against her mouth.
“No. No.”
“Of course, you wouldn’t. Not my perfect Melody.” His kiss was filled with longing, his hands trailing down the front of her body, fingertips tucking beneath the hem of her skirt to raise it up, up and over her hips. “Although I would let you, wouldn’t I? I would beg for whatever you’d give me. Love, pain, forgiveness.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be able to offer those things. And this isn’t going to solve anything,” she whispered, her fingers wrestling with his belt. She unfastened the buckle, sliding free the button of his pants and dragging down the zipper over the bulging crotch of his briefs. “But I can’t help wanting to feel close to you.”
“I’m going to get so close.” His mouth was back on hers, kissing her feverishly, his fingertips diving past the waistband of her panties, parting her flesh with his middle finger, finding her clit in one stroke. “There’ll be nothing but us.”
He would get close. He would, but it would be a temporary fix.
And she was starved for that fix.
“Now,” she gasped against his mouth. “Now, now, now.”