Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 133975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 670(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 670(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
She knew she was frowning. He wasn’t making any sense. She’d had the brain injury, and she knew she had lost a little time here and there, but that didn’t mean the things she knew about Keys weren’t true.
“Honey,” she said, rubbing her finger along his jaw. “You were hit over the head with a baseball bat. You haven’t told me how bad that injury was.”
That smile of his lit his eyes briefly. “You think I’m talking to you like this because I have a brain injury? I’ve always talked to you like this. You just couldn’t hear me.”
“I can assure you, Keys, had you talked to me like this, I would have run for the hills. I know you. You’re not a one-woman man. I’m not made for one-night stands.”
“And I told you, I don’t need hundreds of women to satisfy me. I didn’t want a relationship or to claim a woman of my own until I met you. I made up my mind, and you came home with me, so now you’re here, and you’re going to stay. Having said that I don’t need hundreds of women when one will do, I like sex. I like it my way. You’re going to learn to give it to me the way I want it.”
“Selfish much?”
He burst out laughing. “You won’t think that when you’re begging me for more. If there’s one thing I won’t fuck up with you, it’s sex. Everywhere else, you’re going to have to have patience with me. If you’re not happy, you lay it out for me. We’ll fix it. I’ll do the same.”
Her insides began to quiver. Roll. This was Keys being 100 percent serious.
“You’re shaking your head.”
“It won’t work. You know it won’t. You’ll move on the way you do, Keys, but I won’t recover. It’s just a bad idea.” She didn’t want to hurt him. She just needed him to understand. Her fingers stroked a soothing caress along his jaw. “You have to listen to me when I tell you I’m not like other people. I am very good at blending in. Fitting in. That’s what I do, and I hardly ever make mistakes. But what people see isn’t real.”
“I’m aware, Lyric,” he said softly.
“I feel too much. I pretend I don’t, but I feel too much. It’s part of my…condition. You don’t. That’s not a dig at you, it’s just how you’re wired. There are so many reasons why we’re not compatible…”
“Yeah, I heard every one of them. I’m not being dismissive of your fears, Wildfire. I can see they’re very real. But we have a bottom line here, and we may as well skip all the bullshit in between to get to that. You get me?”
She was really shaking, not just inside. Keys had no idea how bad his idea was. He just couldn’t understand. “No.”
She held up her hand to stop him. Her fingers ended up too close to his face. He leaned forward and sucked her fingers into the hot cavern of his mouth. Her world stopped. Exploded. Sparks rained down. A thousand little stars burst around her head. In her head.
It was ridiculous how badly she reacted. Every nerve ending came alive and was wholly aware of Keys. Centered on him. Her lungs burned for air. She didn’t understand why, but her reaction terrified her. Along with everything else she was feeling for him, she didn’t want to be physically attracted. That was the surest way to the end of their friendship. She would have nothing. No one.
His eyes burned over her. That amber that glittered like gold. There was something she couldn’t read there, but it both terrified her and sent waves of heat crashing through her veins. In her life, she’d never felt the intense pull of sexual hunger. She had always thought she wasn’t in the least sexual, but at that moment, her world tilted, turned, and she was burning hot.
“I—I need to think, Keys,” she actually stuttered, one hand going to his chest as if that could stop the coming storm.
Around her, the edges of the room were darkening. She felt the rolling thunder in her chest, her heart pounding. She tasted him in her mouth as if the essence of him was already leaking into her body through her pores.
“I think that’s the last thing you need, Wildfire.” His voice had gone gravelly. Rough. “No thinking, just feel for me. You’ve got fire in you, baby, and it belongs to me.”
He had her hair in a tight fist at the back of her scalp, and he yanked her head back and took her mouth. Lyric had heard that a kiss could make the earth move, and she’d always scoffed at such nonsense, but it did. It actually moved.
Fire exploded through her. Hot flames poured down her throat and spread through her body to every cell. The world tilted. Spun. She had no idea how to kiss him back, matching his passion, but she did. She followed wherever he led her. And he led her to somewhere between heaven and hell.