Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 109299 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109299 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
With a deep grunt, he tenses, then groans, coming too, helpless to the pleasure, helpless to me, when he murmurs, “Yes, fuck yes.”
A few seconds later, he’s saying my name, faint but full of need. “Ripley.”
For a minute or ten, who even knows, we gasp and pant together—his body on mine, me under him, my legs wrapped around his waist, my arms wrapped loosely around his neck.
At last, he pushes up on his palms and looks down at me with passion in his eyes. “Thank you.”
He eases out, ties off the condom, then pads to the bathroom. He’s back seconds later, lying next to me. He takes my palm and kisses my wrist. “You’re good with your hands too.”
I laugh.
He meets my gaze, shooting me a deadpan look. “Laugh at me when I’m being sweet. Thanks, Ripley.”
“Like you’d expect anything less,” I tease.
“Yup. That’s how I know you’re not an imposter. But also for that, I think you need this…”
He brings my wrist to his mouth, giving me the swooniest wrist kiss in the world. It’s so tender, it makes me gasp softly. That seems to spur him on since he travels up my arm, across my birds, to my neck. I’m murmuring the whole time. Until the fucker chases kisses with a loud, boisterous suck on my neck.
“What the…?”
He pulls back, grinning slyly. “You deserve a hickey.”
I swat his chest. “That’s so high school.”
He narrows his eyes. “Did I fuck you like we’re in high school?”
I huff, then grumble, “No.” I’m not really mad at him though. Because, once I grab my phone to inspect the mark on my neck using the selfie mode of the camera, I find I like it. I sigh, then say, “Fine. I like the love bite.”
He presses a soft kiss to my forehead. “Thought you might.”
We’re quiet for a few moments, the levity fading, till we’re left with reality. The two of us working together. “We were just getting that out of our systems, right?”
“Of course.”
“Tomorrow, we go back to…?”
“Yes. We do.”
But tonight, he curls around me in bed after he kisses my wrist one more time.
29
FORGETTING ALL ABOUT IT
RIPLEY
No one’s in the cottage when I wake on Monday morning. Not even my dog.
Where is Hudson? I fling off the covers and pad to the windows overlooking the deck, peering out.
In the distance, I spot Banks walking Hudson around the farm.
When I look down, the dog’s food bowl is empty. Last night I had measured out his kibble for the morning and set it on the counter. Banks already fed my dog and is walking him now. I didn’t even have to ask him to.
A stupid smile tugs at my lips as I get in the shower and savor the hot stream. When I dry off and exit the bathroom, there’s a vase of fresh-cut Melissa on the table across from the couch. Sometimes lavender’s a sex toy with Banks, sometimes a gift.
My smile is even stupider as I get dressed. It’s summer, but sometimes a girl just has to wear a turtleneck. Well, a short-sleeve mock turtleneck, but it’s the only summery top I own that’ll cover up the very obvious hickey on my neck. And I am not going to parade around town and reveal a love bite from my bodyguard to the world, or my sister.
A few minutes later, Grandma lifts a curious brow when I sail into the kitchen in the farmhouse in my cover-up clothes. “It’s going to be hot out today,” she says, giving me a once-over.
I pluck at the blue shirt, trying to make this odd fashion choice seem like no big deal. “It’s laundry day.”
And that’s believable enough, even though it’s a bald-faced lie. I do laundry often enough that I rarely have laundry-day problems.
Her brow knits, but she shrugs, buying my excuse. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you when you’re sweating.”
“I won’t curse you when I melt on the streets of Darling Springs today,” I say, but then I gesture to my shorts. “I’ll be fine. Plus, I have a lot of flowers to deliver, so this way my arms won’t get as scratched up.”
Her brows arch higher.
Oops.
The more you say, the more obvious it is you’re hiding something. Like a short-sleeve shirt will save me from scratches. “Let me help you with coffee and stuff for the crew,” I say, trying to steer the conversation anywhere else. But seriously, the hard time she’ll give me for a hickey. I still remember when Haven was seventeen and came home with a purple splotch on her neck, then tried to finesse her way out of it with a tale about a new moisturizer she’d picked up from The Slippery Dipper, and how eager she’d been to try it out as part of this amazing new skin care routine, but oh my god can you believe it left this purple mark?