Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Even so, words leave my mouth before I can pull them back. “Is that why… you drifted off just now? Because of m-my scent.”
A pulse beats in his cheek. “Yeah.”
This is insane. This is… I don’t even want to think about what this is. So I pivot and bring up something else important. “Do you think…”
His stomach hollows out with his next breath, alerting me that maybe we should be doing something about his injury and soon. “Do I think what?”
“That”—I swallow, my throat tight—“maybe you have, uh, PTSD?”
His body stiffens over me and his eyes flash. “What?”
“I-I mean, you spent eight years in prison so—”
“Why don’t you save your psychobabble for all those women you’re gonna help,” he says, cutting me off. “And focus more on what I’m gonna do to you.”
My breath snags in my chest. “I’m… I’m sorry?”
Instead of answering me, he lets his eyes wander.
He lets them go from the top of my head to the bottom of my chin, taking detours on the way to stop at the crests of my cheeks, the tip of my nose, the curve of my lips. Everywhere he pauses, I feel that spot tingling. I feel it getting heated.
He moves on to my throat, then my chest, slowly setting me on fire as he goes along. His blood on my chest has dried now, making my skin itchy and restless. But no more restless than when I realize how we’re arranged. I knew that he was on top of me, of course, but I was too scared to notice details before.
Not anymore, though.
I notice how my chest grazes against his every time we take a breath and how I feel the ridges of his abs on my own belly. How I can feel the ladder of his sculpted muscles pressing into my soft, pliant flesh. If I stopped to focus, I’m sure I’d be able to count how many rungs that tight ladder in his abs has.
Probably eight.
But right now, my focus is taken up by how he’s settled into the juncture between my thighs. My body is wrapped around him, my calves all tangled up with his and my thighs hugging the outside of his meaty thighs.
This is too intimate.
More intimate than riding on the horse together. And instead of being utterly terrified, I feel what I felt back then. This quickening in my belly. This restless current in my veins. This urge to move. I try to push him away then, my fingers still all sticky, streaked with his blood. “Get off me.”
He doesn’t.
In fact, he goes ahead and stares at my heaving chest a little bit more before his eyes make their way up, all lazily, almost defiantly. Then, when they reach my eyes, he replies, “No.”
My heart beats like I’m a scared little bird, scared but excited. “You know I had to do that. You know I had to make a run for it. I can’t…”
“You can’t what?”
“I can’t let you use me.”
His eyes look molten as he says, “I know.” Then, “You probably wouldn’t be you without all the sass.”
Something squeezes in my chest at his tone, and I have trouble breathing for a second. He sounds exactly like Bo in this moment. Like my Bo. Like those two people could be the same.
“I was right though,” he keeps going.
“R-right about what?”
His lips pull up slightly. It’s too little to call a smile but still too blatantly there to ignore it. Then, “Your cheeks flush when you talk back. You go all red.”
“Don’t,” I blurt out, swallowing. “Don’t talk about the letters.”
Especially not now. Not when this moment feels so precarious. When it feels like I know him after all.
“Yeah? Well, I’m the injured one now,” he says hoarsely. “Think that gets me a few concessions.”
I swallow again. “Just let me go, please.”
“Can’t.”
I push at him again. “You can. You—”
“Maybe I’ll keep you.”
My heart thuds. “W-what?”
“Forever.”
“No. That’s… You said you’d let me go after your revenge. You—”
“Maybe I changed my mind. Maybe you’re growin’ on me. You did sign on the dotted line, didn’t you?” Before I can say anything else, he murmurs, “Till death do us part.”
“Absolutely not. You—”
“You know what I did before I got put away?” He asks the question on a rasp, his eyes going back on their journey down my body.
I’m so thrown by his off-topic question and his perusal that all I can do is whisper, “W-what?”
“I broke horses,” he replies, his eyes on the base of my throat, studying my fluttering pulse.
“Horses?”
He licks his lips, staring at the spot. “Stallions, colts mostly. A filly or two sometimes.”
I jerk at a peek of his tongue. “Okay. But—”
“Been workin’ on the ranch since I was fifteen,” he says, cutting me off, his eyes moving from my throat and going back up to my trembling lips. “I would’ve started sooner but we had Ax. Someone had to take care of him. So I started late but I saved up everything I could. Just so one day I could buy my own land, probably away from Rawhide. So I could start my own business, breakin’ horses for money.”