Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
“Corbin…” Rose said softly.
“This is perfect. Who better to demonstrate than the man who taught me?” Corbin beamed at Rose and gripped her cheeks. He smacked a quick kiss on her lips and stood. “I’ll let them know.”
“Wait. Corbin.” Rose stood but paused, looking back between us. “Make sure you’re both okay with this decision,” she said before following her fiancé.
Despite my firm affirmations, the look on Aspen’s face when I finally turned to her hit me like a wrecking ball. Unlike the last time I’d used a situation at the club to put distance between us, she didn’t mask her emotions.
She wore the shock in her slack jaw.
She wore the confusion in the pinch between her brows.
She wore the disbelief with each rapid rise and fall of her chest.
She wore the hurt…everywhere. It dripped from her like uncontrolled tears. It painted her eyes with a dimming shadow. It hung heavy from her shoulders, pulling them down in on herself.
It punched me through the chest and squeezed my heart in a vise. Yet, still I said, “It’s just a spanking, Aspen.” I somehow clung to my decision and hardened my words.
“Just a spanking?” she repeated slowly. As if taking the time to taste them before they left her lips would cause them to make more sense.
“Yeah.” I looked away, my mind struggling to form a response when she stared at me like that. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“How can you say that?” she asked, sadness clouding her features.
When I didn’t respond, she abruptly stood and walked out.
Fuck.
CHAPTER 17
LUCIAN
Ifollowed her and rounded the door to the hall when she whirled around, stepping into my space, pushing me back until I bumped against the wall—caging me.
“It means everything when you touch me,” she declared. “It’s not nothing. It’s trust. It’s comfort. It’s everything. It’s…us.”
She cracked, releasing a high-pitched, tinkling laugh that rode the edge of sanity. It mimicked the building sound that lingered in my head since I first decided to put space between us. Quieter than the alarms that alerted me to danger, but growing louder with each passing moment.
But I didn’t understand because I was safe. This was the right choice.
Still, her words plagued me.
Trust. Comfort.
Us.
I swallowed the lump clogging my throat and pushed on—pushed past the annoying, persistent hum. I couldn’t acknowledge every alarm, so I stuck with the ones that got me this far in life.
“It’s. Just. Spanking,” I confirmed, standing firm with my hands fisted in my pockets. “I told you this from the beginning. I warned you that this kind of relationship could lead to a false connection that feels like more than it is. I warned you not to believe it because I would never be able to give that to you.”
“I know what you said.” She paced away before turning back. “But these last few months—”
“Haven’t changed anything. I meant what I said.”
“Yeah, well, you also said you wanted a real marriage—that you would never cheat.”
“And I’m not,” I objected. I rolled my eyes—anything to avoid the pain shining in hers. Safe. Safe. Safe. I scoffed. “It’s not like I’m offering to fuck someone. It’s just spa—”
“Stop saying that,” she screeched, snapping. She raised her hands in frustration as if fighting the need to cover her ears and block out my words. “It’s not just spanking. It may have started that way between us because you wanted to help calm me down, and we both enjoyed it, but it’s so much more than that now. It’s been so much more for a while. I know you can feel it. I know you can feel…” She swallowed and looked away, raking her fingers through her hair before returning a determined gaze to mine. “Lucian, I love you.”
Her words hit me like a direct punch to the face. As if I stood at the railing of a boat, and they’d knocked me over the edge into the water. I flipped ass over end, my organs rising and falling too fast to make sense as the undertow pulled me down too deep to get back for air.
Something in me ached to reach for her—to grab onto her words and let them pull me to the surface where I could breathe. I wanted…
Wanting to skip work to stay in her arms.
Losing a contract because my focus was on her.
Falling behind.
Being threatened with having my business ruined, and my first thought being that I would give up everything for her.
Vulnerable.
Weak.
Naïve.
Giving over control.
Exposed.
Losing everything all over again.
Just like Daria.
Thought after thought slammed through my mind, sending me reeling, taking up every inch of space, leaving no room for anything else. No love. No guilt. No nothing.
I focused on my feet planted to the ground beneath me, anything to stop the spinning, and walled off the thrumming ache in my chest. “I told you, Aspen. I don’t do love.”