Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 127201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 636(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 424(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 636(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 424(@300wpm)
Any man would be lucky to have a little spitfire like Tilly fall for him—I’d be so fucking lucky. She’d give any man a run for his money, give him the best kind of hell and still have him begging for more. But sexual attraction is as far as it can go for me.
I’m not a good man.
I have a dark past which saw me spend a good portion of a decade behind bars and if Tilly was smart, she’d run for the fucking hills before she becomes attached. I’ve had to work my ass off for the life I have now, but before this, my world looked very different.
I had an unfaithful wife with a newborn baby, and I lacked control. I was in my mid-twenties, too fucking cocky and possessive when that control slipped and darkness consumed me. I could have pulled back, could have dealt with the jealousy of having another man inside my wife. I would have walked away and forgotten she existed, but when that man walked into my home and tried to take my newborn son as his own, the rage was unlike anything I’d ever felt.
They had plotted to start a new life together, to take my son away from me, and the moment they realized I wasn’t about to take their bullshit, it got messy. Most of it is a blur. It was well over twenty years ago now, but that doesn’t keep the flashbacks from coming to torment me.
He fought me as my wife attempted to snatch my child, and the feeling of helplessness is something I’ll never forget, and something I will take great lengths to ensure never happens again.
That moment has defined my life.
I will never forget the sheer panic of watching her scoop up my sleeping child as her new boyfriend held me back, or how frantic I felt in that moment. It’s as though I became another man, and that new version of me wiped away anything good in a split second. I’d become a beast in my own home, and as I saw my baby boy slipping away, my fight-or-flight instincts kicked in.
I wasn’t about to let that asshole kidnap my son, and as the very last of my control slipped away, I snapped his fucking neck.
That loss of control cost me everything, and I spent the next ten years behind bars. It changed the very makeup of who I was. My wife naturally received full custody of my son, despite how she had plotted to run away with him. I didn’t see him once, didn’t get to hold him, didn’t get to teach him how to ride a bike, didn’t get to wish him a happy birthday.
That right there is the kind of shit that took a broken man and turned him into a beast.
The darkness ruled me for ten fucking years, and I became cold. I did unspeakable things, and it wasn’t until I was freed from prison and fought like hell for just a fraction of custody that I was able to start rebuilding my life and put the past behind me.
I’ve come a long way, but I still feel that darkness bubbling below the surface. Every day, that blind rage threatens to consume me again, but I’ve worked too hard for everything I have to let it slip through my fingers again.
My ex died from a heroin overdose four years ago, right as Zephyr was finishing high school, and while I was more than happy to see her finally out of our lives for good, I hated watching my son have to go through that. His mother really did a number on him, and I swore that I would never invite that kind of bullshit into our lives again.
Tilly Bardot though . . . fuck.
It can only be sex. Nothing more, nothing less, because when I become attached, people die. I’m too possessive, too unpredictable. I need to be in control, and when that control is challenged, there’s no telling how I’ll react.
I’ve worked hard to tame the wild beast inside me, but when it comes down to it, I can’t be trusted. Yet, the only way I’m taking a step back from this is if Zeph were to decide he wanted more with her. If their relationship changed from being two strangers who like to fuck into something more, I would respectfully bow out, and he would never have to know that I knew how it felt to be inside the woman he loved. I don’t intend to stand in Zephyr’s way when it comes to matters of the heart, but I hope like fuck it doesn’t come to that, because stepping away from a woman like Tilly Bardot would surely destroy me.
Fuck. Just the thought of her has my cock twitching in my pants, and by the time I stride past my three receptionists in the lobby and to the elevators, I’m rock fucking hard.