Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86177 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86177 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
I stepped into the tub and slid down until the water wrapped me the way I imagined Jamie’s powerful arms could. A moan escaped my lips. This time, I wasn’t trying to tempt the saint. Instead, I reveled in how gentle the lavender-and-vetiver-scented water soothed my skin—skin that had been used to enact too many fetishes for too many men. Water lapped my collarbone as I peered up at the Marine I craved with all of me.
“You could’ve just had all this.” I smirked as if it didn’t cost me everything to tease him. But I guess the smirk also offered him a way to bow out of the room. If he … wanted to.
“You’re beautiful.” Jamie laughed softly. “I’ve just never been sexually attracted to anyone. Ever.”
I blinked. “Oh?” The air between us thickened. Not uncomfortable, just honest.
Jamie didn’t look away. He waited.
I swallowed and let his truth sink into my spirit like a stone in a still pond. “Thank you for your honesty. Takes guts. Maybe I choose to believe that means you—being asexual—haven’t met someone whose mind you want to lose yourself in yet.”
Jamie tilted his head. “I don’t think that’s what it means.”
“Okay, listen,”—I offered a small smile—“maybe my track record with men doesn’t make me the best person to speak on this, but I do read a lot. Like a book junkie.”
“You stole my iPad—that I conveniently left out—five weeks ago. We weren’t talking then, so I assumed it was best not to offer. Heh. Don’t think I don’t know about the ebook purchases.” He laughed gently. “I’m listening.”
“You know about that?” Dang. My palm planted against my forehead. No wonder it was so easy. He’d used the same code for my birthday for the iPad. I’d plugged in the email address I had created when Katlego allowed me certain freedoms no one else had. I’d already gotten the emailed clean bill of health from the clinic I went to on my first day free.
“Yep, I know,” Jamie replied.
“Okay, well, thank you for funding my fiction habit. Now, so what I’m saying is, I know what the world says about love.” I pushed down a little farther into the tub until the suds tickled my jaw. “Kissing. Sex. Fire. Extended Os that could burn a house down. But I’m beginning to believe love can be quiet. Gentle. Love can be … safe.”
Jamie watched me like I was scripture, meant for him to read with reverence.
“I want to respect who you are,” I continued, while something inside of me ached for him to hold me. To choose me. “Even if we never …” please don’t let it be so “… feel that fire, I’m done walling you out.”
“Glad to hear we can be honest with each other, Jordyn. That we can be friends.” Jamie’s brow furrowed as if satisfied with this.
“Yes … friends.” I breathed out the dreaded word with a well-placed smile. Let the record show, I wasn’t satisfied with what I just agreed to. But Jamie rescued me, and he was a good guy.
“I thought I was less of a man for a long time.” Jamie shifted, leaning against the counter. “My brothers turned love into sex. And sex became locker room jokes.”
“Even though we haven’t said much to each other in over a month, even I can tell you’re more than that, Jamie.”
Although I smiled, inside, my chest pulsed with longing. I wanted him to fall. Not into lust. But into me.
I almost smirked. How could I be thinking about the tall, muscular craving in front of me when a bum nearly raped me this morning? Still, rape was an everyday occurrence in some women’s lives—my life included. And what the two of us needed was time.
Maybe I could change him. Make him love me the way no man ever had.
And maybe in time, he could change me, and I would know me by the time he fell for me too.
A light flashed in Jamie’s eyes, and he smiled. “When I met you, I knew I was too young to know what love was, but your courage in that cage. The warmth you extended to me. Your heart … I know you guard your heart more now, but deep in me, I still believe you have the same beautiful heart, JorJor. I only just now saw a hint of it when my identity didn’t get a negative reaction from you.”
I chewed my lip, squeezing the face towel in my hands so tightly that my fingers cramped. The towel dropped onto the opposite side of the tub. No, I couldn’t laugh at who the man was. He deserved my respect and understanding. But I could ache inside for me.
“That is what makes me so fascinated by you.” Jamie lifted the towel from the floor that I suddenly had no energy to grab. Instead of handing it to me, he knelt by the tub and gently dabbed the curve of my face. My eyes fluttered closed, and I melted beneath the touch. Bliss. This would be painful. Denying my feelings for him, while I became acquainted with me.