Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
My jaw tightened.
She was looking for me.
I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
She knew I was here.
The realization sent a strange, unwelcomed heat through my chest, curling under my ribs. It wasn’t pride or ego. No, it was something far more unsettling… the feeling of being truly seen by someone who shouldn’t have been able to see me at all.
Her gaze swept across the parking lot, paused briefly on my position, then moved on.
She couldn’t see me, of course. I’d made sure of that. I was a ghost, a figment, a phantom lingering just beyond the edge of her perception. Invisible until I chose otherwise.
She pressed her palm against the window. Even from this distance, I could see the set of her jaw, the uncertainty in her gaze, the tension in her shoulders. She was waiting. Testing. Trying to draw me out.
I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
After a long minute, her expression shifted. It wasn’t disappointment like I had expected—I would have recognized disappointment, would have cataloged it, and would have filed it away with all the other expressions I’d memorized from her face since we had gotten married.
This was something else.
The slight tilt of her chin and the way her lower lip caught briefly between her teeth before she released it… she was being thoughtful, in a very deceptive manner.
Her hand dropped from the window, and her fingers found the hem of her shirt. Serafina slowly played with the hem, almost teasingly before she pulled it over her head in one fluid motion.
Blood roared between my ears, pulse thundering at the base of my throat.
For a moment, every single thought evaded me.
I couldn’t fucking think.
The white cotton fell to the floor behind her, and my mouth went dry. She stood there in nothing but her bra and shorts, pale skin glowing in the dim light.
Something primal and unwelcome stirred in my gut.
My hand tightened against the tree trunk. The bark bit into my palm, and I welcomed it—the small, sharp pain that kept me anchored to this moment, to the reality of what was happening.
What the hell was she doing?
Serafina reached behind her back, unhooking her bra with practiced ease. The straps slipped from her shoulders, and my breath caught in my throat as she let it drop, joining the shirt on the floor.
Goddamn it.
Her perky breasts were perfectly shaped, her nipples tightening in small buds as the cool air brushed against her bare skin.
My arms dropped, but my hands clenched into fists at my sides.
This was deliberate. Calculated.
She knew I was watching—she had to know—and she was putting on a show designed to unravel me.
Her hands moved to the waistband of her pink shorts next, pushing them down over her hips with agonizing slowness. She stepped out of them, then hooked her thumbs into the elastic of her underwear.
I watched, like a goddamn pervert, utterly transfixed, as she slid those down too, until she stood completely naked in front of the window.
Every inch of Serafina was exposed to me.
The gentle curve of her waist, the soft flare of her hips, and the dark triangle between her legs.
My body responded to her display with embarrassing predictability, blood rushing south as my dick hardened against my thigh.
My wife was beautiful in a way that made my chest ache, in a way that had nothing to do with the scar tissue still healing beneath my shirt.
She turned slightly, and my dick twitched again. I saw the curve of her hip, the dip of her waist, and the way her spine curved in the warm light.
Every inch of her was flawless.
Flawless and mine.
Her hand came up and her fingers trailed along her own skin. Slowly and deliberately, tracing the line of her collarbone, then lower, following the slope of her breast without touching her hardened nipples, and moving across her flat stomach.
Every touch on her delicate skin was… purposefully intimate.
A performance.
A provocation.
Serafina was a woman who had deviously calculated exactly what she was doing and how it needed to be done.
And God help me, it was working.
The sound that left my throat was almost animalistic.
My cock was hard. Painfully, stupidly hard, pressing against the front of my black pants with an insistence that bordered on humiliation.
My wife was a mad woman; everything about her was maddening, and she drove me fucking mad.
I pressed the heel of my palm against my hardness through my pants—rough, punishing, the way a man disciplines something that has gotten out of control. A low groan escaped my throat before I could stop it. The pressure sent a bolt of sensation through me that was equal parts relief and agony, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper.
Her hand drifted lower, dipping below her navel. The dim light caught the pale skin of her inner thighs and left the center of her in deliberate shadow.