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)
He still looked at me like I stood there completely bare.
His gaze molten, the smirk that kissed his gorgeous mouth illicit.
“I think it’s time you stopped hiding, Aster.” He took a casual sip of his coffee.
I eased farther out, hoping my knees didn’t knock. “Is it?”
He gazed at me from over the top of his coffee cup. Severity flashed. “Are you afraid of me?”
“Am I afraid of how much it hurts to be around you? Am I afraid that this is a terrible idea? Am I afraid of what’s to come? Yes. But am I afraid of you, Logan?” My head barely shook. “No.”
Maybe I should be. Maybe I should be terrified of it all. But it was with him where I’d always felt safest.
I looked anywhere but at him as he stared me down as if he were searing holes into the places where my secrets lie.
“Coffee?” Warily, I glanced at him.
Not even that was safe.
Because my belly flipped and my stupid heart fluttered.
The man was dangerous to my sanity.
“Of course. Let me get—”
“I have it.” I made a beeline for the pot that was on the opposite side of the island, and I busied myself with pouring it into a mug that was already set out.
Two of them.
My stupid fluttering heart went and panged.
He’d set one out for me and one for Gretchen.
This hard, dangerous man with this soft side that made me melt.
I peeked back at him, wondering if he were the same. If the years hadn’t hardened him.
If there was any part of the boy left who I’d fallen in love with.
I poured in some creamer and fiddled with the spoon, procrastinating as I hovered by the island.
He pointed at the chair across from him. “Sit.”
I hesitated for one second more before I shuffled across the floor and sank onto the chair. Taking a sip of my coffee, I studied the man I was still trying to recognize.
“Do you sleep in that suit?” Okay, so it wasn’t of the utmost importance, but I had to ask, and it seemed like a pretty good distraction from what was bristling between us.
A bolt of amusement rocked from his mouth, then he sat farther back so he could track my movements, that smirk turning wicked. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Did he have to toy with me?
Clearly, he did.
Relished it.
The way his eyes traced the redness that flushed up my chest to my cheeks when that thought sent my mind tumbling right back where I kept trying to keep it from going.
“But I guess that would only be fair considering I know exactly what you wear when you’re sleeping.” A taunt and a tease.
“I think I should pass.”
He sat forward. “I think you are afraid.”
My teeth clamped down on my bottom lip, and I wrapped my hands around the steaming mug. “Yes.”
He pressed forward. “I would never hurt you.”
I looked up and met his stare head on. “You already have.”
Lines of regret cut into his hard, chiseled face. So gorgeous. Too much.
“Aster…”
I tried to look down. To look away. But he still surrounded me. If I listened closely enough, I could hear the fierce rhythm of his heart, the way it’d once woven with mine, the man a ghost that would forever beat in my blood.
And here he was, alive and real and ruining me all over again.
He inhaled a heavy breath. “I think we need to discuss some things.”
Unease squeezed my ribs. I peeked at him. “We probably should.”
He took a sip of his coffee, every edge of him intense. The question left him like the topple of stones. “You want to leave Jarek? Permanently?”
Fidgeting, I inhaled a shaky breath. “You know I do.”
“And what will your father think about this?”
There was bitterness there. My father the root of it all.
The evil.
The injustice.
Although Logan had fed right into it.
I gulped around the knot laced tightly in my throat. “Like I told you, I spoke with my father yesterday, and he’s giving me thirty days.”
I watched the way every muscle in his body flexed.
“And what do you plan to do with thirty days, Aster?” The question was icy.
“My father thinks I need time. Time to myself. Time away. A vacation.” I left out the defective promise I had made. “He agreed, and he promised Jarek would stand down and leave both of us alone until then. He thinks it will teach Jarek a lesson for being so reckless.”
Hatred burned across Logan’s flesh, and I could almost feel the throbbing of the cut on his mouth. My chin lifted farther, my attention on his wound. “But it won’t, will it?”
Logan sat back, malice in his posture. “I doubt there’s any lesson that prick could learn.”
“I’m not going back to him, Logan. I just…” I paused, looked away, tried to gather my thoughts before they came rushing out on a flood of words. “I need the time to find a way to prove to my father that Jarek has become disloyal. That he is wrong for the family. Wrong for me.”