Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 41327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 207(@200wpm)___ 165(@250wpm)___ 138(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 207(@200wpm)___ 165(@250wpm)___ 138(@300wpm)
She's shaking. Good. She should shake. She should tremble. She should feel what I'm feeling—this earth-shattering, foundation-cracking change that’s happening inside me.
I can't tell if it's fear or cold or adrenaline. Probably all three. I don't give a shit. I just want to yell at her. Grab her shoulders and shake her until she gets it. Until she understands that she's mine now. That she never should have been anywhere but under me, under my protection, under my body.
I thrive on order. One of the reasons I've retreated into the mountains where I make the rules. Where I'm the law.
Besides my brothers, I barely speak to any other humans. Now, the devil has dropped this little curvy morsel into my lap and what the fuck. I'm a sick bastard because my first thought was to fuck some sense into her. To pin her against a tree and claim her so thoroughly she'd never think of doing something this reckless again.
"What were you thinking?" I growl again, my voice coming out like gravel, like the sound of earth shifting before an avalanche. My hands span her waist, fingers nearly touching at her back. So small. So fucking perfect. "Alone. Over spring runoff? You could have been hurt. You could have been killed."
She stares at me. Dripping wet. Little black circles under her eyes from the wet makeup. Delicate and fierce all at once.
Her lips purse, arms locking over her chest. "Are you Jack Boone or not?” she demands, defiant little face looking so fucking adorable. “I told you my dad said you'd help me, but I gotta say, you're a little bit of a jerk. You don’t think I don't know what could have happened?"
Mouth on hers.
Jesus Christ. My cock jerks against my zipper, desperate to feel that mouth wrapped around it. To feel those words vibrating against my skin instead of burning into my ears.
My blood freezes, remembering what she said earlier. I want to tell her I’m sorry. I know what happened and I should have been there. Instead, all that comes out is, "Your dad..."
"Are you hard of hearing? Yes, my dad. Hart. He said you lived in Wildfire mountains, on the east side. He gave me your phone number, email, address, but…well, let's just say it's all gone and that's part of the reason I risked my life to try to find you."
My vision narrows. The air punches out of me. This is Hart's kid. Hart's baby girl.
The one he used to show me pictures of. It's her, the round face, those eyes that defy a simple color name. The one he swore he'd keep safe forever—unless something happened. The one he made me promise to protect if he couldn't.
Same guy I owe my life to, and will never be able to pay off that debt.
Five years ago, he came to visit. He told me his kid was at a girlfriend’s house for the weekend, and he had something important he needed to say. He’d never once held that life debt over me, never asked for a goddamn thing, but now as we sat with the bourbon between us like old times, he did. "Jack, if anything happens to me, you look after my girl. Look after Delaney. She's all I have. Only one I trust with her is you. This world’s gone rotten. I can’t stomach the thought of her in the world without me. I know that’s wrong. I just planned to live forever I guess." His smile was dark as he looked up at the stars.
I'd nodded, not understanding then what that promise would come to mean. Not knowing how it would feel to hold her. See his eyes in hers. As I look at her now, I still see that same little girl, all pigtails and bright eyes, grinning at some private joke in those pictures he emailed me before I went full-on recluse and cut off the outside world in every way that mattered. No phone, no visitors, just a laptop and a monthly drive into town to collect my mail.
But she's not that little girl anymore. Now she’s all curves and softness and fucking fire.
Guilt tangles around my throat. I hate the city. I didn't know he was that sick. Or, at least that's what I tell myself when I tip up a bottle of the same bourbon, sitting alone in the silence of my cabin at night, trying to fool myself into thinking I didn't fucking know what the right thing to do was.
The possession that floods me isn't about my promise to Hart. It's about her—this girl-woman with haunted eyes and a stubborn chin. Something in me recognizes her like I've been waiting. Like my cock has been hard for her since before I knew she existed.
Fuck me. My head’s in a dark place.