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)
My head dipped, and I at least found the self-preservation to make one request. “Please, don’t call me that.”
Leaning forward over the table, he brushed the hair back from my face and set his palm on my cheek. “I wish I could stop.”
SEVENTEEN
LOGAN
I handed off my credit card to the server to pay the ridiculously expensive bill for the dinner Aster had barely eaten. The girl hadn’t cast me a glance while she’d picked at her food, while I’d sat there like my guts were getting chewed up and Aster was the one who was going to spit them out.
Thirty days.
Thirty fucking days.
And she had every intention of leaving me.
I wasn’t sure what had come over me. I didn’t plan this dinner with the intention of pulling the stunt that I had.
I’d just wanted the show.
To send a clear message to Jarek that we were not deterred. That we were not afraid.
Then I’d pushed it to a place I shouldn’t have let it go.
The possession that had wound through my being. The urge to hold her that had twitched through my fingers.
I blamed it on that dress.
The all-consuming need I’d had to touch her in front of him. To prove to him that he could never have her again.
Or maybe I’d just been trying to prove it to her.
Maybe prove it to myself.
No doubt, I was playing with fire. I knew it. Risking everything. But I’d known it the moment I’d made that wager.
All in.
So yeah, it’d pissed me off when Aster had reminded me that she wasn’t.
Standing, I moved to her side. “Let’s go.”
Aster stood, and I helped her into her coat. I did my damned best not to lean in and inhale the flesh behind her ear. Not to press my nose into the curls that I was dying to take in my fist.
This girl was going to wreck me.
She’d done it before so I wasn’t quite sure why I’d convinced myself she wouldn’t do it again.
Still, I allowed myself to pull her hair free of the coat, being the gentleman that I was, my nose just brushing into the fall.
Hyacinth and magnolia leaves.
I pressed my hand to the sweet spot low on her back and guided her out into the frigid cold night where I stood there with her like she was mine as the valet pulled my car into the rounded drive.
He hopped out, and I tipped him then helped Aster into the passenger seat. The car was low, and she had to slide in, and the slit of her dress opened to reveal the delicious expanse of her upper thigh.
My mouth watered.
She looked up at me like she’d physically felt the smack of lust.
I touched her exposed knee. “Aren’t you the perfect tease.”
I couldn’t hold it back.
The anger that bottled in my stomach and spread out to infect my chest where it became a lash from my tongue.
She was leaving me.
She was leaving me.
Pain made a thousand stab wounds in her expression.
In the barest flash of time, she stared at me with a torment so deep I wondered if she could meet me at mine.
My spirit screamed.
Then she ripped her attention away, taking the oxygen from the air when she did.
The atmosphere darkened, clouded and dimmed, and her breaths turned short and uneven.
Fuck.
I was such a prick, but I felt myself unraveling.
Losing control.
Aster Rose was driving me to the point of insanity.
The whole goddamn problem was I didn’t know how to stop myself when it came to her.
She didn’t budge when I shut the door, didn’t move when I rounded the front of my car to the door that remained open. I went to slide in, only I got snagged on a rush of scalding hatred that blistered through the frozen air.
I looked up to catch the figure staring out from behind a drape in a window four stories up.
I cracked him the biggest grin.
Jarek looked like he wanted to bust through the glass to get to me.
Fucker.
I hoped he did.
I slipped onto the heated seat, shifted into gear, and gunned the accelerator. My Maserati skidded out of the drive and onto the main road.
Aster stared out the passenger window, so still it would be easy to miss the way every cell in her body oozed with hurt.
I didn’t.
I could feel it.
Sense it.
The way I’d always been able to do.
The knot in her throat. The way her shoulders hitched. The emotion that wept even though she tried to hold it like a secret.
Regret tightened my chest.
I was pretty sure my faulty plan had been too much for her.
I was thinking right then it’d been too much for me, too.
It took all of a minute to get back to my building. I punched the button to the gate and whipped my car into my reserved parking spot. I hadn’t even gotten it into park when Aster tossed open the door and fumbled out, slamming the door shut behind her.