Total pages in book: 34
Estimated words: 34243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 171(@200wpm)___ 137(@250wpm)___ 114(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 171(@200wpm)___ 137(@250wpm)___ 114(@300wpm)
Because right now, my skin is doing the opposite, with how every inch of me is aware of him.
The cut of his jaw in the dim bedside light. The way his shirt is open at the collar in a way it wasn’t at dinnertime, and the way he’s standing in the middle of my bedroom like he has every right to be there—
My fingers curl at my sides.
I’ve never wanted to touch someone so badly in my life.
Which is terrifying.
“I think you should go.” I point to the door even as I can feel my skin heating in the most painfully mortifying way.
“Not until you tell me the truth.” And to demonstrate, he actually takes a step closer, and I’m forced to take a step back.
“Why do you seem to hate me?”
Because you’re beautiful.
And my dad was beautiful.
And if he could leave Mom and me without a second thought, then why should I think you wouldn’t leave me, too?
The words sit on my tongue. So close to the surface I can taste them. And they’re the truest thing I’ve thought in years, and also the thing I’ve never told a single person, not even Icelle, because saying it out loud would mean admitting I’ve been carrying it around this whole time.
“Tiara?”
Oh, if only I had it in me to tell him the truth.
But since that’s going to open another can of worms when the first one isn’t even halfway to being empty—
Just run away, Ti!
That’s exactly what I try to do. I try running away—try being the operative word—because the moment I turn, he’s also on the move, and I don’t even get to take a half-step.
He captures me in a flash, whirling me around, and when I open my mouth to cry out, it’s like he’s reading my mind, knowing my every move before I make it, and no sound comes out.
How can it?
When he’s already kissed me into silence.
No. No. No.
But it’s too late.
The moment his mouth possesses mine, it’s all over.
My whole body surrenders before my brain even gets a vote, and I’m kissing him back, my hands clutching the front of his shirt the way they did on the jet, because my hands, it turns out, are traitors.
His kiss deepens, and a whimper slips out of me that I will be dying of humiliation about later, but later is a version of me that doesn’t exist yet, and the version of me that does exist right now has her arms around his neck, and her back against the wall, and she’s tilting her head up the way his hand beneath her jaw is asking her to.
Oh.
Oh.
He takes his time.
That’s what kills me. He’s not rushing. He’s not fumbling. He’s kissing me the way a man kisses a woman when he’s already decided he’s going to get every single inch of her eventually, and tonight is just the first installment.
And somewhere in the middle of that slow, patient possession, my traitor hands remember they have more they want to do.
My fingers slide up from the front of his shirt. Past the open collar. Up along the line of his throat where I can feel his pulse, strong and steady, nothing like mine, which is currently doing something that would get a cardiologist’s attention. My hands keep going. Into his hair.
It’s as soft as it looked.
I don’t know what I expected. Something coarser, maybe, to match the rest of him. But his hair is fine and thick and when my fingers tangle in it, he makes a sound against my mouth.
A small sound. Barely a sound.
But it’s his.
And I did it.
I did it, me, with my traitor hands that apparently know what they’re doing even though the rest of me is nineteen years old and terrified.
I do it again.
I pull him closer, both hands in his hair now, and I feel the exact moment his restraint—whatever restraint had been keeping him patient, keeping him gentle, keeping him the man who took his time at the jet this afternoon—breaks.
Because the next thing I know, his kiss isn’t patient anymore.
The next thing I know, his hand is no longer at my jaw. It’s moved. Slid lower. Settled at my waist, at my hip, at the small of my back, pulling me flush against him, and I can feel all of him now, every hard line of him, and the space between us has ceased to exist.
A growl rumbles low in his throat.
"Tiara."
And then his mouth is on my neck.
Oh.
Oh no.
Oh—
It’s not a kiss, but something closer to a brand. His mouth is open and hot and he’s moving down the line of my throat with an intent that he didn’t have three seconds ago, and my head falls back against the wall because it has to. My body is no longer taking instructions from me, and somewhere low in me something unfolds that I didn’t know was a part of me, a pulling kind of ache, like a string that’s been drawn tight and humming—