Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
“Oh, while you’re still in your right mind, do you consent to sex while on the mushrooms?”
His eyes finally brighten and his arms hook around my waist. “Now that’s some therapy I can get behind.”
I chortle and jump on him, trying to tackle him back onto the bed. I might as well be moving a mountain.
But it’s fun to try. Like our primal night, I just keep launching myself at him, using all my weight and strength to move him. I’ve gained a little weight since then. Maybe since I’m not such a frail little wallflower, I’ll be able to move him.
Cute. Apparently, that’s a very cute thought.
He chuckles low as he easily holds me off with his forearm.
I reach below to his stomach and try pinching at what would be love handles on any other man. I’ve discovered during our time together that this is his ticklish spot.
Indeed, he flinches, his somber face cracking, and I try to use it to my advantage to wrangle him down to the bed.
“Oh, now I’m really gonna get you, witch.” He’s got me spun over and pinned to the bed before I even realize what’s happening.
I’m breathing hard from all my attempts to move him, and he’s just grinning, perfectly at ease as he holds himself up with one hand on the mattress above my head, my wrists caught in his other.
“I bet you think you’re soooo slick,” I murmur. Then I shove my feet down on the bed, arching upward.
Isaak thinks I’m doing this to grind against him and grins, loosening his body.
Ha! I twist my hips, then escape out the side and off the bed, bouncing on the tips of my toes and grinning at him.
“Guess you don’t have me after all, big boy.” I glance down at his boxers to see the evidence of my nickname pointing straight up at me. Again? How is he hard again already? I thought guys needed recovery time. We went at it all night long in between drowsing.
He rolls smoothly off the bed, arms out. “Don’t I?”
I try to lunge past him, but he anticipates my movement. And when I try to juke in the other direction, he’s somehow there, too.
Before I know it, he’s got me hooked around the waist, and I’m flying through the air, landing on my back in the center of the bed, giggling my ass off.
He scrambles back on top of me and pins both my wrists by my head, one knee at my groin. “Got ya.”
I shift and try to grapple free of his hold.
With anyone else in this position, I would be panicking. But with Isaak, I feel safe. I flex all my muscles just to feel them. To feel alive. And to check for any weaknesses in his hold.
There are none this time. I strain all my muscles against him, and again, I still feel safe.
This is the gift he’s given me.
To finally feel completely safe with a man. Which is when it hits me. Wow, I didn’t feel safe before. Because of what happened with Drew. If a guy I trusted so much could hurt me that badly…
I just turned it on myself, as if I couldn’t trust myself to understand what the world was really like. It was like everyone else already understood that sex was just brutal, painful shoving, and I’d been a foolish child with my dreams of sweet, pleasurable caresses. I thought I was the one in the wrong.
But it was Drew. Drew was wrong that night.
I always told myself that it was because he was just a kid. I made so many excuses for him. But Isaak was right. I was just a fucking kid, too. For real, though. I was younger than Drew by a year, only seventeen to his eighteen, because I was graduating early. I was seventeen and didn’t know any better. He did, and I don’t even care if he didn’t. Any compassionate human should have known that was wrong to do to another person. I was sobbing.
But Drew’s not compassionate. He doesn’t have a compassionate bone in his body.
“Your face,” Isaak suddenly whispers, falling to the side, one arm still loosely around my stomach.
He lifts a finger to caress my cheek, his eyebrows high in wonder.
I know that look. The ’shrooms are hitting.
“What about my face?” I reach over to grab my phone so I can push play on the Johns Hopkins psychedelic playlist, and some chill French horn music starts playing. It’s a three-hour playlist with music from all over the world.
“There are glowing tattoos all over your face,” he whispers.
“Are they pretty?”
“They’re beautiful.”
“What do they look like?”
“Like glowing neon stars. And geometric shapes. They keep morphing and changing as you move.”
His big finger traces shapes on my face, so gently I can barely feel the touch. Immediately goosebumps rise all over my body.