Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 141556 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 708(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141556 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 708(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
I take her straight to the bed and lay her down on the flannel covered mattress.
It groans under her weight, the quilt slipping away to reveal her face. There’s a million different things I could be doing right then but I just stand there, staring down at her in the dark.
I fish my phone from my pocket, and flip the harsh beam of the flashlight across the room. The light is ugly, too sharp, catching on the rough beams and the stone hearth, throwing her features into stark relief. She looks breakable like this, pale against the bedding, lips parted on a breath I shouldn’t still hear.
I sweep the beam across the nightstand until it catches on a box of matches and a squat glass lantern. I strike one, kill the phone light, and let the lantern’s glow take over. The flame steadies, shadows stretching long across the walls. Warmer. Quieter. Too intimate for what this is supposed to be. The soft light spills across her, painting her skin in soft gold.
End this. That’s what the family code demands. Yet my hands move differently. They smooth the quilt higher, tucking it around her like I have the right. There’s a tightness in my throat, wrenching tighter with each second, choking me with my own betrayal.
This quilt isn’t going to keep her warm enough. I ease it open and spot the blood on her clothes from our altercation in the house.
“Fuck,” I curse under my breath, then step away to dig through the trunk at the foot of the bed until I find a clean shirt—one of mine, soft cotton and worn.
Stalking into the bathroom, I pump the water pump, say a prayer for it not being frozen over in the well, and soak a rag in the basin.
I wring it out, return to her side, and kneel near her face. There’s blood smeared across her mouth, and her cheek, where I pressed too hard to silence her. It looks wrong on her. Like I’ve taken an angel and dipped her in sin.
I drag the cloth gently across her skin, wiping it away until her soft creamy face is clean. She doesn’t stir, thankfully. Gently as I’m able with my calloused and scarred hands, I peel off her clothes, quickly, and efficiently, but damn do I feel every brush of her soft skin against my rough palms. She feels too good for the likes of me, but it doesn’t make me stop.
If anything, it makes me want to touch her more. To explore places I know no other man has touched or seen before. Before I act on my fantasies, I cover all that smooth skin in an old long-sleeved cotton shirt. The hem swallows her thighs, sleeves hanging loose over her delicate wrists. My scent clings to her now. She looks small in my clothes, claimed by cotton, even if she doesn’t know it yet. I push her honey-blond hair away from her face and shake my head.
How we got here?
It’s funny, up until a year ago, Saint was just another girl in Black Hollow Creek to me. I should’ve realized the kind of trouble she would become when I saved her after her fall, but I didn’t. Our circles rarely crossed. My father did business with her father at the church, and I collected payment once a month. Saint had just graduated from high school, she was young, innocent, sweet. Even the year between the time I helped her to the hospital and her birthday I’d managed to brush her out of my mind. She was nothing I was interested in. A child.
Then the night of her eighteenth birthday happened. For the first time I noticed her—not as the preacher’s daughter, not as some kid I’d seen around town—but as a woman.
I knew giving her a ride home was a bad idea but I couldn’t just leave her at The Rusty Nail. When she climbed into my lap, and pressed her soft mouth against mine, she overtook me. Her touch melted the ice inside me, it unlocked something in my chest that I wasn’t even aware had frozen over. If I think about it long enough, I can still catch a hint of her sweet vanilla scent, can still feel the weight of her body when she moved against me—innocent and desperate, grinding herself down like she didn’t even understand what she was asking for.
Hell, I don’t even think she realized she’d done it. She definitely didn’t know how much that tiny offering undid me. More than any woman at the bar who’d tried to flirt with me.
I drag my thumb across the bare skin of her thigh, remembering how her core felt pressed to my cock, her breath hot against my cheek, and her eyes… Christ.
Wide and bright, shining with trust I hadn’t earned, with temptation she didn’t even know she carried. I clamped down on her hips hard enough to leave marks, holding her still when every part of me wanted to drag her closer. I wanted to see my finger prints indented in her creamy flesh, watch her face as she experienced pleasure for the first time, and feel the tight clench of her pussy as it choked my cock.