Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 173733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 869(@200wpm)___ 695(@250wpm)___ 579(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 869(@200wpm)___ 695(@250wpm)___ 579(@300wpm)
His lips curve. “Sweetheart, when it comes to you, you got it. Please. And I repeat—please to everything.” His voice lowers, turns gravelly. “I want you. Really fucking bad.”
There is something so raw, and yes, again I think, honest, about this man, and I want to believe that’s real, not a façade. I really want it to be real. “I want you, too,” I say. “Please. And now that you have your please, what next?”
“The hard part. Trust.” He shakes the ice in the glass. “Just a few sips.”
The drink is a request for that trust he’s just mentioned. I know it. I see it in his eyes. Or I’m overthinking one night. I suddenly decide that taking the edge off might be just fine right about now. I reach for the glass, and the touch of our fingers is a charge up my arm. And for the first time since I met him, I cut my gaze and tilt back the glass, letting the rich, spiced liquid touch my tongue. I manage all of two deep drinks and his hand is on mine, pulling the glass from my lips. “Enough,” he says roughly. “I want you to relax. I don’t want you numb. I don’t want you to forget.” He downs the drink and sets the glass somewhere. I don’t know where. Maybe on a ledge wrapping the window, before his hands are above me on the pillar.
His eyes are fixed on my face rather than my body, and while there is no place where we are touching, I can feel the warmth of his body radiating against mine, which promises heat where there is a mere simmer.
“One and done, right?” he asks.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“How many one night stands have you had?”
“One and done means you don’t get to ask those questions,” I counter.
“We aren’t strangers who just hooked up without knowing each other.”
“We are strangers,” I insist. “Most people always are, in fact, strangers, and you’re too good an attorney not to know that.”
“Explain.”
“Why are we talking?”
But he doesn’t allow me to dodge my meaning. “Explain,” he insists.
“People live in our worlds, but never really see beneath the surface. They never even try. It’s how passion hides lies and love hides hate. How sex is an escape and not a confession of the soul.”
He studies me, his expression unreadable while the music changes, and I know this song. A Jason Aldean duet with Kelly Clarkson, “Don’t You Wanna Stay,” which is somehow an unexpected choice for Reese, but it reminds me that I’ve started to know the man beneath the lawyer and asshole. A country boy with a family ranch, who is more than the suit he wears as armor in a courtroom. Perhaps in life. But as the words fill the air, it’s not his past that speaks to me or us. It’s the now, the here, the possibilities.
Don't you wanna stay here a little while
Don't you wanna hold each other tight
Don't you wanna fall asleep with me tonight
That last line quakes inside me, and suddenly Reese’s fingers are tangling in my hair, his mouth lingering just above mine. “Sleep is overrated,” he says, obviously referencing the song, a moment before his mouth crashes over mine, his tongue doing a wicked, smooth slide against mine, and then it is gone.
He lingers close a moment, breathing with me, and then, without warning, he turns me around, pulling my backside to his front, our bodies melded intimately together. And for just a moment, or two or ten, I think…I think he just breathes me in, and it’s quite possibly the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced. My body responds as if he’s touching me, goosebumps lifting on my skin. My nipples are tight, aching buds. My panties clingy and damp. Suddenly, and yet not sudden at all, he is dragging my jacket away, his hands caressing my bare arms along the away, his touch light, but every part of my body is now laden with a warm, needy sensation.
He tosses my jacket aside. I don’t know where and I don’t care. I try to turn to face him, but he catches my hip. “Not yet,” he says, his voice a low, sexy rasp I feel straight to my toes.
His fingers caress my hair to the side, over one of my shoulders, his lips touching the delicate skin of my nape. A tiny kiss that leaves me tingling all over as he reaches for the zipper of my dress and, with deliberate laziness, slowly tugs it downward. Inch by inch, it travels from my shoulder blades down to my lower back, the cool air of the room contrasting the combustible heat of anticipation: What comes next? What will he do? What will I do?
Questions that Reese answers when his deft fingers unhook my bra. He kisses my neck again, a whisper of a touch that shivers through me. His hands find my shoulders, and in a blink I’m naked to the waist. In another blink, he’s caressing the material over my hips and my clothing pools at my ankles. Instinct has me ready to untangle my feet, but, showing he does have manners, he doesn’t leave me a tangled mess. His powerful arm wraps around my waist, and he lifts me, his foot scooting aside my clothing.