Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Soren’s hands dug into my ass.
Then he was giving me exactly what I was aching for.
Fast and relentless—driving me right to that edge, then sending me ruthlessly over.
I thought I would take him with me, but as I clung to him afterward, I found him still hard inside me, his muscles shaking with the control it was taking to hold himself back.
He lowered me back onto my own feet, then turned me toward the windows, the lights of the city all around and below us.
I shivered at the exposure even as a devious little need rekindled.
Somehow, I wanted someone to see that, for just the night, Soren Vale was mine. That a man as wealthy and powerful as he was wanted little ol’ me.
Soren stepped inward, his cock gliding against my cleft before sliding slowly inside me.
He reached around me, his hand closing around my throat, pulling my back flush to his chest, so his words could whisper in my ear.
“I want anyone who is looking up to see me fucking you,” he said, hips rocking into me. “To know you’re mine.”
I wasn’t his.
I could never be his.
But for just this night, I would let myself pretend.
So right then, I did.
I pretended we were just any man and woman, that my entire world wouldn’t implode if what we were doing somehow got out.
Soren’s hands slid down to my hips, pulling me back against him as he thrust forward, making me take each thick inch of him each time.
My moans became ragged gasps as he drove me closer and closer. Until, with one choked cry, I came.
“Oh, fuck,” Soren groaned, fucking me harder until he, too, was overcome.
His arms went around me, holding me tightly to him as my body shook gently with aftershocks.
“Shit,” he murmured, exhaling hard. “I should have asked before…”
“You did,” I reminded him.
“I don’t do this,” he said, face nuzzling into my neck.
I didn’t either.
Ever.
If there was anything I was protective of, it was my future. Which meant I made sure that even though I was on birth control, I used condoms. Because no guy was going to leave me a little present that I would have to deal with. Whether that required antibiotics or an eighteen-year commitment.
Aside from that, it always seemed a little too, I don’t know, intimate.
Yet, somehow, with Soren, that felt right.
Except, of course, it couldn’t be right.
Not with him.
“And there she goes,” he said, tone defeated, as he slowly slid away from me.
Some part of me wanted to say that no, I wasn’t running. Even though I knew that was exactly what I needed to do.
Back to my own apartment. Back to the life I fought tooth and nail for.
Back to a life that could not, under any circumstances, include him.
While he went to the bathroom to clean up, I slipped into my clothes—minus my bra that I couldn’t find again—grabbed my phone and key, and fled.
It was for the best I told myself as I sat back on the seat in the subway.
But if it was for the best, why the hell did it feel like someone had cracked open my chest and carved out my heart?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Soren
I was her dirty little secret.
I was the apartment she slipped into after dark.
The hands she sought when no one else could see.
The post-climax clarity that had her stiffening in my arms, then scrambling to dress and get out of my apartment before she could allow herself to see what was already so glaringly obvious to me.
That this wasn’t some random hookup, some casual affair.
There was something between us.
And it wasn’t just our similar traumas, our similarly shaped scars from being unloved, from being hurt and hungry, and desperate to prove ourselves.
There was just a sense of comfort around her that I’d never once felt before. It was almost the feeling of home that I’d never known.
I comforted myself with her complete and utter lack of control.
The first time she’d stayed away a whole week.
The next time, just three days before she was bursting into my bathroom unannounced, eyes on me as she stripped out of her clothes, then climbed into the shower niche with me.
The time after that, it was only two nights.
And the next time?
She was home before I even got there myself. I’d walked in to find her draped over the couch with Chinese takeout spread over the coffee table, and her nose buried in a book.
“I was hungry,” she said, gesturing toward the food. “You weren’t here to cook,” she added, glancing over the book to narrow her eyes at me.
I slid onto the couch, pulling her legs over my lap, then reaching for the lo mein that still had her fork sticking out of it.
“Maybe I can make it up to you with breakfast instead.” I tried to keep my tone casual, even if there was a desperate ache in my chest for her to say yes, to be there in the morning when I woke.