Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Tonight, it is lumpy and cold.
Leather wasn’t designed for comfort. It is purely for aesthetics, like silicone boobs and collagen-filled lips.
I’m conducting my umpteenth roll for the night when the pokey leather stud giving Yev’s sofa an artistic flare is replaced with something smooth but as equally grabby.
When I’m lifted from the couch, my first thought should be panic. The room I’m walked into isn’t pitch black, but since my eyes haven’t adjusted to the conditions, it may as well be, but fear isn’t surging through my veins. Lust is.
I recognize the scent of the man carrying me—even more so since it isn’t being suffocated by fresh gulps of alcohol. He smells fresh and clean. As scrumptious as the cut line of his recently shaved jaw.
“Yev…”
He remains quiet, his focus elsewhere.
My brows scrunch when he places me in the middle of his bed before he slips in next to me.
The bed is made.
It is no longer sheetless.
What the?
An ill-timed smile tugs on my lips when Yev’s expression mimics mine. He isn’t surprised by a bed magically being made in the middle of the night. He’s grimacing about the wet patch his shirt is soaking up.
It is from the bottle I removed, but before I can announce that, my vision adjusts enough I can see him in the dark room. His eyes are as tormented as ever, but sparks of the Yev I remember are hidden behind his grief, dying to be freed.
That’s what I seek when returning his stare.
As we lay across from each other, our closeness tethering us, the heat that forever swallowed me whole returns stronger than ever. It cracks and hisses until the tension becomes so potent I have to do something before I combust.
The grief he’ll never fully let go of sees me reaching for the empathy I wanted to issue him months ago. “I’m so sorry for everyth—”
Yev forces my words into the back of my throat by pressing his lips to mine. It is a sudden, fumbling embrace that causes our teeth to clash together, but it makes the world fade before it takes me back to that night six months ago when nothing but my needs were on my mind.
He kisses me with a tenderness I didn’t know I needed but very much crave. It is savage and demanding but also nurturing and sweet. It is everything you’d ever want in a kiss, and it has me wishing for so much more.
As he weaves his fingers through my hair, I slide my hand under the shirt he wasn’t wearing when I stomped out of his room earlier, tickling the muscles flexing in his lower back.
With his big, hard body pressed against mine and my thigh curled around his hip, we kiss until my pulse throbs and his touch sets my skin on fire.
It is a blinding, mind-hazing embrace, yet Yev can still maintain some sense of normality. He breaks away from my mouth with a groan, his body hot and still pushed up against mine.
Several prolonged minutes later, I glance up at him, panting and out of breath. His eyes are closed, his lips wet and parted, but the pained expression I’m sure his face hasn’t stopped wearing the past six months is nonexistent.
This will sound pretentious, but so be it. I truly believe our kiss settled some of his grief. That it made him forget the pain and suffering he’s endured the past six months. It reminded him that he still has a lot of life left to live; he just needs to push through the barriers suffocating him first.
I can help him do that.
My touch isn’t magic, but to Yev, it could be.
When I circle my hand around the obvious bulge in his pants, he groans. A current runs through me when I slide my hand up and down his twitching shaft through his pants, but before it becomes electrifying, Yev snatches up my wrist, halting my movements.
“Don’t.”
I never knew rejection could hurt so much until now. It isn’t something I’ve ever really faced, and I won’t lie. It stings.
“This isn’t… that’s not why… fuck!” He slips out of bed faster than he entered it, then heads for the door like he is desperate to place distance between us. “I just wanted to make sure you slept, and I know you couldn’t do it on that fucking couch.” After whacking on the light, he thrusts his hand to the couch in question. It shakes when his eyes follow the direction of his hand’s shunt. “What the fuck?”
When he enters his spotlessly clean living room, his eyes bulging and filling with shock, I slip out of the bed and pad toward the door.
I’m expecting a heap of gratitude to be tossed my way.
I am way off the mark.
“What the fuck did you do?” Yev’s voice is a vicious roar, and it shudders my heart out of my chest.