Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
I’d had to shove down the awe myself.
Then I’d had to sit through that torturous meal with her.
Had to sit and watch her hold that baby. Had to watch her soft smiles and listen to her sweet coos.
Things had gotten insurmountably worse with her groaning and moaning over Meems’s delicious dinner.
Woman humming around her fork every time she placed it into her pouty, sex-pot mouth.
It was a very unfortunate side effect that my cock had pulsed to the point of agony with each little mewl.
It was so bad I had to hide my raging erection under the table for an entire goddamn hour.
But when I found her taking care of my sister in my room? I guess that was when I cracked.
When something had fractured. Watching Brinley lift that fiery chin like she was protecting Elena from me. Protecting her secrets and her needs and whatever confessions Elena had given her.
Brinley fully invested in it in a beat. Barely knowing my sister and still so clearly willing to put up a fight for her.
I should have been pissed by the insubordination. People didn’t talk to me that way and get away with it.
But was I mad?
Nah.
I was fucking floored.
Maybe even inspired.
All while I was wholly terrified of letting that control go. Terrified that I might miss something again, which was why I basically kept my sister under lock and key.
Admittedly, snatching that new vibrator from the stash of condoms and toys that were kept in a storage cabinet in the club might have been a bad idea.
But after that dinner?
I thought she might have been hurting as badly as me.
See.
I wasn’t a total sadist.
Only a masochist, apparently.
Because I looked back at the house as I fumbled out into the night.
Gaze climbing for the second floor and landing on my bedroom window.
The curtains were drawn, so I couldn’t see anything but the glow from a dim light coming from within.
But it was the silhouette of the lush, gorgeous woman that appeared in the smaller bathroom window that captured me like I’d stepped directly into a grizzly trap.
Teeth clamping and breaking skin.
It was just a faint outline. Nothing that I could make out other than knowing she was there.
It shouldn’t matter. Shouldn’t count for anything. But there was something about seeing her that way that made me feel like I might be standing on something profound.
If I were looking for logic, I’d accept she was likely in there ranting and raving about what a jerk I was, which honestly was fully warranted since I’d acted like a total prick on my way out.
Trying to toss up more walls because I couldn’t allow her the power to get to me.
Couldn’t allow her to continue creeping under my skin and winding her way into the places I never allowed anyone to go.
It had been my only option. I had to force some barriers back between us before we collided in a catastrophic way.
I needed to make her hate me.
Fear me.
Realize I was nothing but a dead end because I was pretty sure she and I had been a couple of haphazard seconds from rushing full steam ahead.
But since this woman seemed to steal all logic, I was standing there under the cover of trees wondering if it’d gone the opposite.
Imagining she was making full use of my gift.
Imagining she was making the same desirous sounds she’d been making at the dinner table.
Would it be my name slipping out of that smart mouth as she came?
Fuck me. This wasn’t helping, and I had business to attend to.
You know, just the insignificant task of keeping her and Elena alive.
This whole family alive.
Both my blood and the men who were under my charge.
I scrubbed my palms over my face, hoping it would eradicate the visions from my mind, and I sucked a clearing breath into my lungs before I turned on my heel and forced myself to move.
Night gathered thick, and stars glinted through the breaks in the trees as I trudged across the property in the direction of the clubhouse.
In the distance, I could hear the hoots and hollers of my crew. The dull thud of heavy music echoed through the forest. The drumbeat chanting its depravity that they were undoubtedly losing themselves in.
With each step that I took, the volume increased. It might as well have been the driving force for the way my heart took to hammering at my ribcage.
Every cell in my body hardened as I prepared to take on the severity I wore as Crimson Crows’s president.
No, it wasn’t a façade, per se.
I guess it was just allowing who I really was to rise to the surface.
The second I broke out of the cover of the trees, the clubhouse came into view. My boots thudded on the ground as I crossed over the gravel road that cut through to the back part of the land and led to the houses I’d just left behind.