Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Has he been back and just didn’t tell me?
The jagged feeling inside her spiked with every step she took, until she was nearly running. Sloan marched up the steps to his porch and kept going, only stopping when she was as in his face as she could be with their height difference. “You should have called.”
“I was occupied.”
Occupied…occupied. She pushed at his chest, hating that she couldn’t move him even when she tried. “That’s a pathetic excuse. You show up ten days—ten days—ago, telling me to watch my back and that you’d return as soon as you are able to, and then you don’t bother to say a single thing until I’m walking past, minding my own business. No. Enough. I’m done.” She started to turn, but he snagged her wrist.
“Sloan.”
Her name. Not sunshine. She yanked on his hold, but she might as well have tried to fight a tidal wave. “Let go.”
“Are you pissed I was gone so long, or that I didn’t come crawl into your bed like a whipped dog the second I hit the town limits?” Nothing on his face but a faint smirk. Nothing. Not a hint of the feeling she’d gotten from him before.
She hated how controlled he was, hated even more how out of control he made her feel. I know what to do to crack that mask. She squared her shoulders and met his dark eyes. “I kept myself plenty occupied while you were gone.” She enjoyed throwing that word back into his face.
“Is that so?” He pulled her toward him, inch by inch, closing the distance between them. “Because I think you went out of your fucking mind without my cock to keep you happy.”
“Oh please.” She rolled her eyes even as her body sparked at his words. “I lived my entire life without you and your dick. A week of sex isn’t enough to ruin me for anyone else, no matter how highly you think of yourself.”
His brows slanted down, and he looked downright murderous for the first time since they’d first met. “You know damn well that I’ve ruined you for any other man.” He stepped into the house, towing her behind him, ignoring her gasp of outrage. “I think you stroked yourself to the memory of me a couple times a day the entire time I was gone. In fact, I don’t think—I know.”
She wanted to spit and claw and say anything to bring him down a notch, but fury stole her wits. “You have a high opinion of yourself.”
“Nah, I know the truth.” He sat down on his couch, yanking her forward to sprawl on his chest. His hands hit her waist the same time his lips brushed her ear. “And, sunshine, what you were doing before wasn’t fucking living and you know it.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jude had waited all goddamn day for Sloan to finish her shift at the diner—and even then he’d only gone home after checking to make sure she was there and okay. It had driven him out of his fucking mind not to walk in there and toss her over his shoulder, marking her as his for all to see.
His.
She wasn’t. Not really. She couldn’t be.
He’d worked too hard to extract any and all weaknesses that potential enemies could use against him. After his mother passed, he had nothing to lose—nothing that could be taken to hurt him. He’d liked his life that way. There was no room for anything beyond his mission, which he’d possibly just sidelined by allowing Dmitri Romanov to leave his place alive.
The fact that there was a MacNamara alive—that he was hunting Sheridans—was knowledge without price in the game they all played. Romanov might be currently an ally, but that didn’t mean he’d stay that way.
And Jude just didn’t give a fuck right now.
Sloan was here, she was safe, and she was pissed enough at him for leaving in the first place that she was practically spitting fire. He skimmed his hands up her sides. “I like that you missed me.”
“Missed you? You must be out of your mind.” But she grabbed his hair, tilting his head back and rolling her hips as if just realizing he was as hard as a rock. “Stop talking. You’re just going to say something unforgivable and then I’ll have to leave on principle.”
“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.” He grinned when she jerked on his hair. “I like you when you’ve missed me.”
“Stop. Saying. That.” She kissed him, her fury evident in every stroke of her tongue, in the way she drew back to bite his bottom lip hard enough to hurt. He enjoyed the hell out of it.
Jude growled when she did it again, then flipped them, using his body to hold her in place. “If you’re going to be mean, you’re going to get tied down.”