Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94678 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94678 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Rolling over, Emerson pops her chin onto my naked pec before peering up at me. I smile like a pig in a muddy hole when she jerks up her chin.
“I couldn’t give them all the details, much to Aunt Marcelle’s disgrace, but they got the gist of it.” She hits me with a frisky wink that shouldn’t make me hard but does. Her aunt Marcelle is the type of woman who will put a glass to a bedroom wall to make sure she doesn’t miss a single moan. She is why Emerson and I spent so much of our time at the pub.
The fact she didn’t drill Emerson is shocking. Marcelle lives precariously through her niece.
I learn the cause of her sudden change of demeanor when Emerson whispers, “Andrik isn’t a man you can have a womanly conversation around.” She huffs, blowing my hair away from my eye. “Zoya may get away with it, but the rest of us are a little wary.”
Words leave my mouth before I can stop them, and they’re shocking. “He’s more bark than bite of late. Almost a pussycat.” Curious, I ask, “Did you ask him to drive you to Ember’s, or did he volunteer?”
“Um…” Her focus is shifty, and it places me on the back foot. Emerson can’t lie even if it would save her life, so I’m a little put off by her sudden wish to be shady.
“It isn’t a hard question, Em. He either offered or you asked.”
“He offered,” she answers, her tone low.
I rub her arm, assuring her I have no intention of fighting with her for at least a decade unless it is in foreplay, before asking, “Why was he near Zelenolsk?”
I assume to kick my ass for calling his wife sweetheart, but learn otherwise when Emerson answers, “Zoya had an appointment with her OBGYN.” She’s telling the truth. It’s just what she’s not saying I pay the most attention to.
“And?”
It takes a beat for her to reply. “And then they came over.” Her eyes flicker as if she is recalling a memory instead of trying to make up one. “We talked, and during that conversation, I realized how much he cares for you. How much they both care about you. So, naturally, they were the first people I sought help from when I needed to find you. Andrik immediately offered to take me anywhere I needed to go…”—her eyes gloss with tears—“as long as I was going to you.”
Andrik’s empathetic side is still foreign, and it leaves me speechless.
As do the words Emerson speaks next. “He will never forget how you helped him when you were a child, Mikhail. And how you placed your life on the line for his wife and unborn child.” She circles the bullet wounds in my stomach, accessories I never had when we dated, before her focus shifts to an area rapidly gaining its own pulse. “And neither will I. You make me burn, Coal. You are the reason I exist.” I can’t think of anything but her mouth on me, anywhere, when she circles her hand around my shaft and jerks it a handful of times. “So can we please stop focusing on everyone else and for once focus on us?”
“Christ,” I bite out when her tongue treks across the slit in the crown of my cock a second after I dip my chin.
Chapter 35
Emerson
My smile bounces off my phone screen when my aunt Marcelle fans her cheeks. Her cheeks are the color of beets, and her eyes are dilated. Anyone would swear I shared in explicit detail how amazing the past few days have been. I only gave her a basic bullet-point rundown.
Alas, I guess a person without a sex life would be intrigued by the most mundane story.
Fortunately for Aunt Marcelle, my sex life isn’t close to boring—anymore.
Excluding the slight hiccup during our first night at Mikhail’s penthouse, the past few days have been magical. The reimagination of our relationship is a masterpiece, and I can’t wait to share it with a broader audience.
Though I’ll never get the chance if I don’t get a wiggle on. I’m meant to be hunting down the dress Mikhail spent a fortune on, not steaming up my aunt’s reading glasses like her raunchy romance novels usually do.
“If I don’t hear from you before next Sunday, I will see you some time that afternoon.” Mikhail wants to be in attendance when the electrostatic precipitator is installed at my mother’s pub, and I want to be there too. It is exciting wondering how fiery the flames will become when we return to the place that sparked them. Ember’s is a replica of my family’s pub, but nothing ever compares to the real thing.
I startle when a voice from behind asks, “Any luck yet?”
Twisting to face Loretta, I shake my head. Kolya, understandably, assumed my walk out days ago was the end of my relationship with Mikhail and Mikhail’s bid for his inheritance. He had the staff pack my belongings and store them in the attic. The sixteen-thousand-dollar gala dress I’m planning to refund was packed with my one lousy backpack.