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)
“Yes. Because I’m here. I’m right fucking here.” It was the only answer I could give.
She gulped. “Who was that?”
“Not sure, but we’ll find out.” Brutality curled out with the words.
“He…he wanted to take me. He knew Dereck.” It tumbled out of her mouth.
I kept running my thumbs over the tears that slipped down her cheeks. “I know.”
“I don’t understand any of this, Silas. I didn’t ask to be a part of it. I don’t want to be a part of it.”
“I don’t want you to be, either, and I’m going to make sure to get you out of it. I promise you.”
I wouldn’t stop until I made it fact.
“That’s why you’re here,” I grated. “You’re here so I can protect you from it.”
Even though we were obviously doing a terrible job.
How the fuck that bastard got in here unnoticed, I didn’t know.
Pearce’s ass was mine, but that was going to have to wait.
Because I was rooted.
Fucking stuck.
Stuck on this woman who was making me want things I had no right to want.
Nothing but a selfish bastard who had nothing to give but pain and grief.
And there I stood, wanting to devour the temptation in front of me.
My grandmother had always urged me to go after the good things in life. To take it when it was presented because we never knew when we would no longer have the chance.
Problem was, the only thing I would do was taint it.
Ruin and spoil and desolate.
“I’m scared, Silas.” Brinley hiccupped as the admission slid between her plush, pouty lips.
Her simple words gripped me in a chokehold.
Energy lashed.
Since the moment I met her, she had always been harsh. Fierce and volatile. A hurricane rushing in to make landfall.
And now she was laying herself bare, allowing vulnerability to come spilling out.
Like she trusted me to hold her insecurities. Hold the things that had shaped her into this little fighter who refused to let anyone get to her.
“I’ll ruin you, baby.”
It was a warning for both of us.
Because I could feel the distinct break that had been made. Something inside of Brinley had shattered apart when that monster had come through the door, same way as it’d done me.
“Why don’t I care? Why do I want you to?” she whispered through the torment.
“Because maybe you’re as reckless as me.”
Wild curls framed her gorgeous, stunning face, tight body clad in another one of those tiny dresses that had been slowly driving me out of my mind.
Cream colored fabric hugging her curves, her trembling legs swinging off the edge of the desk.
A glutton, I slowly wedged myself between them.
There was so much confliction in her gaze, I couldn’t quite make sense of it.
A whirring of convoluted air that spun her into mayhem.
Need and desperation and something that looked far too close to trepidation.
Those wild eyes devouring.
Both eager and afraid.
My chest tightened in a fist, tighter than it ever had, fully aware that she was exposing something that she hadn’t before.
I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
A good man would tear himself away. Get the fuck out of there before he crossed a line he couldn’t undo.
But I wasn’t close to one of those, and with her, I’d been crossing them all along.
A captive to the gravity that she emitted.
“I shouldn’t be here like this with you, Brinley. Shouldn’t be touching you at all. But I don’t know how to stop when it comes to you. The way you make me feel…”
Electricity crackled in the air. A connection that burned where I held her on either side of the face.
Her sweet breaths panted into my face.
Apples and almonds and cream.
So delectably sweet that I knew I was touching on some kind of innocence that I hadn’t recognized in her before.
Her lips parted on a rush of desire.
“I’ll ruin you,” I gritted again.
Those eyes were so wide as she begged, “I want to know what that feels like.”
Fuck it.
Fuck the questions and the consequences.
I dove in. Our mouths and souls colliding.
It was a clash of desperation and the pent-up desire that had been working between us since the moment she descended like a storm onto my property.
Full scale combustion.
Tongues and lips and teeth.
All while these wayward specks inside me ached to become something different.
Wishing that I was different than the man I’d become.
A man who’d do anything to be good enough to stand at her side. Good enough to call her mine.
It’s your heart. It’s your heart.
That thought alone should send me running out the door.
Instead, I drove my fingers into her hair, gripping onto the erratic curls, driving the madness higher. Brinley’s lips were so fucking soft, so fucking delicious, that I knew they had to be coated in poison.
Had to be with the way I’d gone delirious.
Caught on a rush of dizziness that took me whole as I pushed the kiss farther, the surging of something massive and overpowering that ballooned in my chest.