Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 16567 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 83(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 16567 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 83(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
Not what is to come, not what has passed, but what is here, now, with me, as she stands there in my arms. This woman I want to provide for, this woman who wants to provide for the people here, this woman who makes me feel things I swore I would never feel.
When I pull back, she drops a kiss on my cheek, a beaming smile threatening to split her face in two. But, before she can say another word, I speak first.
"Marry me, Riley."
"What?”
She stares at me, clearly no idea what to make of that statement. I press my forehead to hers once more, and breathe her in, making sure she has no choice but to understand exactly what I am saying to her.
"Marry me."
CHAPTER 10
Riley
For a moment, his words feel too big for me to wrap my head around. The promise of the retreat is one thing, but this? Marriage? To tie myself to this place, this time, this man...?
He doesn’t push for an answer, clearly aware of just how enormous a demand he has placed on me. My lips open and close as my mind reels. Can I do it? Can I accept my place here, at his side, lacking everything I knew before...
But perhaps gaining so much more in return?
"Yes," I blurt out, before I can think twice. "Yes, of course I’ll marry you!”
He laughs – a real, warm, full laugh, the kind that seems to echo up from somewhere deep in his soul to consume his entire being at once. He wraps his arms around me and scoops me off the ground, and I grip tight to his arms, trying to ground myself, trying to remind myself of what I have just agreed to and how damn good it feels.
Marriage. I have never imagined being married to anyone before, least of all a man from another time who lives out in the woods, so far from the rest of the world.
But then, I never imagined that a man like him could exist – a man so willing to put in the work for me, a man who saw my vision and would do anything in his power to bring that to life. That’s the kind of man I want to be with, a man who will help me put down roots here so I never have to feel alone or lost or useless ever again.
As he plants me back on the ground, he kisses me – a kiss that sends a pulse through my body, like a radio signal finally reaching its reciever. I lock my fingers around the back of his neck and pull him into me, kissing him deeper, backing up every syllable of my promise to him as best I can.
He moves me back against the trunk of a tree, pinning me there, as his tongue explores mine like we are trying to figure out the shape of a new language right there in each other’s arms.
He hitches me off the ground, lifting me so that I am pinned against the wood, his body as hard as the tree behind us. I grin as he lowers his lips to mine again, trailing them along my neck, sliding his fingers into my pants to ease them down.
"Someone could catch us out here," I breathe to him playfully, drawing my nails over his scalp and down the nape of his neck, and he just chuckles as he brings his mouth to mine once more.
"And what if they do?” he retorts, his tongue plunging into my mouth once more as I wrap my legs around him. I can feel the hardness of him against my hip, and something deep inside me throbs and aches to feel him enter me. Out here, in the woods, it’s like all of the human mores I’ve been hanging on to just fall away, nothing left but the completely animalistic desire that consumes me when this man lays hands on me.
He slides his hand down to his cock and pulls it free, the cool air rushing over the two of us like it’s trying to blur the boundaries between our bodies. I watch as he guides himself towards me, and when I feel the nudge of his hardness against me, I close my eyes and let my head sink back against the wood behind me.
"Look at me," he orders, his hand sliding to my hip, as he stills himself there at my entrance. It takes a moment for my brain to process his words, such is the intensity of the need inside of me, but eventually my eyelids flutter open once more and I manage to look at him.
The expression on his face, the darkness in his eyes, it should scare me. He’s utterly unbridled right now, utterly lost to how much he wants me, and I know he will do anything to sate that need. But it doesn’t. No, it just sends a shudder of desperate need through me, and, as I arch myself towards him, I can tell that he is willing to sate it.