Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 163089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 815(@200wpm)___ 652(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 815(@200wpm)___ 652(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
I, Preston Armstrong, who devours people for breakfast, am on the brink of being devoured?
Someone call Dr. Duret stat. I’m psychologically dying.
I lift my chin and speak in the condescending tone I reserve for peasants. “You already have touched me.”
“No.” His low voice carries like a vibration. “I haven’t even started. Had to remove the gloves to feel you properly.”
We fall into this ridiculous dance—me skating backward, him stalking forward with staggering determination.
“You’ll feel my foot in your ass if you don’t watch it.”
He chuckles. Chuckles. I didn’t know he was physically capable of producing that sound, but there he is—laughing. Not lightly, though. Darkly.
“Your adorable defense mechanism is growing on me.”
“Don’t get attached. I bite.”
“Mmm. How hard?”
The asshole drags his tongue over his lower lip before catching the corner between his teeth.
And now, his mouth is glistening red, and I need to look the hell away because, what the actual fuck is going on right now?
“I’d bite your head off.” I grin in my usual provocative way, but he only smiles, seeming too pleased with whatever the fuck this is.
“Violent. I knew you were special.”
Something moves behind my rib cage, not sure what, probably an illness Dr. Fenwick hasn’t found yet, but fortunately, I don’t have to think about it.
Unfortunately, however, my back slams into the plexiglass—no, it’s the unlatched penalty box door. It swings open from the impact, and I skid on the slick ice, losing balance as my stick clatters somewhere on the ice.
Big hands grab my waist, flattening across my back. Enveloping me? Trying to keep me upright?
Whatever the fuck the intention is, it fails spectacularly because we crash through the doorway and tumble inside in a mess of skates, scraping sounds, and unholy banging.
The fall is only half controlled. Marcus’s weight pins me briefly, absorbing part of the impact with his grip. Still, my upper back smacks the edge of the bench.
I end up half sitting, my shoulder blades glued to the cold composite surface as a large, stupidly muscled body presses me down.
I blink at the rink lights spilling through the open door, ice gleaming in the corner of my vision, my shoulders throbbing.
And…something else is throbbing.
Fucking hell.
This needs to be clinically studied, because I just fell on my ass, got steamrolled by a linebacker disguised as a hockey player, and now, my dick is…excited?
This would be peak comedy if I weren’t personally starring in a psychological horror film.
Marcus lifts his head and—fuck me sideways—he’s close.
So close, his face might as well be fused to my helmet. Instead of air, I’m inhaling him—cedar, leather, something painfully masculine.
And my dick is aching.
Wow. This is crossing into new territory of insanity, and I’m already operating at a clinical baseline of unstable, as Grandma likes to remind me.
Because none of this adds up. Like, seriously. I love women. Hypersexual disaster here—courtesy of the fucked-up past, or so Dr. Fenwick says. The point is—I love sex.
I love fucking, binding, going all night until I can’t move.
So yes, it’s logical that my dick is a whore. That’s his default setting. But it is not logical that the whorish tendencies are activating in front of Marcus.
He’s nowhere near a girl. Nowhere near soft. All sharp lines, carved jaw, predatory eyes, and muscles that are currently crushing the air out of me.
Everything about him smells and feels unmistakably male—deep, rough, and unapologetically masculine.
Not my usual dish. Not even on the menu.
“Get off me,” I say, then press my lips together because it comes out low, almost soft, so unlike the bite I meant to deliver.
Marcus reaches toward me, and every muscle in my body tenses as he removes my helmet. The clatter it makes against the panels sounds absurdly loud in the stillness.
Everything does.
My breaths.
His.
They’re deep, audible, fogging the plexiglass like we’re trapped inside our own private nightmare.
“Hi,” he drawls, running his index and middle fingers down my cheek, slow and obscene, stopping at the healing cut on my mouth. “I did a number on you the other day, didn’t I?”
I grit my teeth. “You have a death wish?”
“Not particularly.” A low vibration threads through his voice, his eyes darkening to match it. “I love my mark on you.”
“You’ll love my fist in your face, too.”
“I already do.”
His full concentration narrows onto the fingers tracing over my features—cheek, nose, the corner of my mouth. His gaze drops there, and discomfort rips through me in a sharp, familiar blur.
Like when he touched me before.
It starts as a prickle of unease, then slices through my chest like hidden blades, deeper than anything Lenin has ever done to me with his iron fist.
“What I don’t love,” Marcus murmurs, tilting his head, “is how your beautiful face is bruised.”
He brushes his thumb over my jaw. “I won’t hurt your face again. No matter how hard you push for it.”