Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Tremors rocked me head to toe. “Don’t make me admit that.”
“You don’t have to.” His voice was close to cruel. Temptation. A tool. “I already smell you. I already feel you. I already know you.”
“Let me hate you.” I begged it.
“No,” he grunted back.
I gulped, and a fresh rash of chills lifted across my skin when he leaned down and ran his breath along the length of my jaw, his lips fluttering the barest fraction away.
A tease.
Torment.
“Close your eyes, Aster. Go back to where you were. Just for a minute. Let me watch you.”
I was afraid if I went there, I’d take him with me, or that maybe I’d never make it back.
But the lust was too thick.
His presence too full.
And my hand was splaying across my stomach, slipping beneath the lace, my fingers sweeping across my clit, rubbing as I closed my eyes and tried to pretend we were in a faraway place. That we’d made it out. That our promises had been kept.
That he hadn’t done what he’d done, and it hadn’t cost what it had.
I knew he went there with me. That he saw the same thing. Our hearts and minds and hopes alike, even though they’d been scattered like toxic waste between us.
I knew it from the harsh pants that roughed from his throat.
I knew it with the hard thunder of his heart.
I knew it with the whisper of his tongue.
“Beautiful. So fucking beautiful. I’m going to lose my mind.”
A whimper wheezed from my lungs as I kept stroking myself. As I felt his aura surround.
Every inch of him hard.
Those eyes flashed before he eased back a fraction so he could get a better view.
I got caught in the flames. Lost to an inferno of greed that whipped through the air.
It melted my inhibitions and scorched my sanity.
The air sizzled.
Crackled.
Seethed.
He took me by the knees and spread me farther.
A groan rumbled in his chest and climbed his throat as I rubbed myself faster.
Building.
Building.
His hands curled in tighter before he let go with his right hand and reached down and pulled the crotch of my panties to the side.
His tongue licked his plush, decadent lips. “Look at your cunt. I wanted to forget how perfect you are. Not for one day, Aster, not for one day.”
“Please.” My hips bucked.
“What do you need?”
“I need to feel you.”
Without hesitation, he drove two big fingers inside me.
That was all it took to tear me apart.
An orgasm gathered from the inner parts of me, where I’d hidden him away, where I’d kept him like a dirty secret when he’d been the most beautiful part of my life.
And I split.
Rapture took hold. A perfect eruption that burst in my body.
And I was heading in that one singular direction where I knew I shouldn’t go.
Soaring.
Shooting.
My North Star.
“Fuck. I feel it, Aster baby, I feel what I do to you.”
I gasped and shook and arched from the bed.
“Tell me again.” It was the rough scrape of a demand from his mouth.
I didn’t need him to clarify. “You. You.”
It has always been you.
A truth that would get him killed if anyone knew.
My eyes pinched closed as I was rushed with regret, overcome by the reality of my stupidity.
My recklessness.
Agony fisted with the bliss.
His hand was suddenly on my chin, squeezing tight, the word harsh and hard when he said, “Don’t.”
My eyes peeled open, and I blinked at the raw beauty that hovered over me. “I never should have come here.”
He cracked an arrogant grin. “Oh, you’re gonna come, Aster. Again and again.”
A blush rushed to my cheeks, sweet, sweet heat, that swoony, goofy boy I’d once known cracking through the surface of who he’d become.
“Logan.” My voice turned tender, and I reached up and traced the cut on his mouth. Anger burned from my soul—because I knew.
I knew.
Logan took me by the wrist and drew those fingers into his mouth. He hummed as he sucked.
That barely sated fire leapt.
He kissed the tips when he let them go.
“I’ll kill him, Aster. I’ll kill them all.”
Without saying anything else, he crawled off the end of the bed and walked out, shutting the door behind him. He left me lying there, floating adrift, terrified the current would always lead me back to him.
THIRTEEN
ASTER
Little girl dreams…
Really, I should have known better than to have believed in them. Known better than to wish upon the stars when I could never rise high enough to touch them.
I’d been shaped and molded since the days I’d sat in front of my dressing mirror as a tiny child. Before she’d passed, my mother would brush my long, brown locks and tell me the order of my life as if it might be a fairytale rather than a horror story.
It hadn’t taken me all that long to see it for what it was. To recognize something in our lives was amiss.