Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 51744 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 172(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51744 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 172(@300wpm)
The man who is my life.
“Okay?” He looks down into my eyes.
I shift my hips, adjusting to being stretched. I nod and raise my knees to squeeze his hips.
“Please,” I beg.
He moves, pulls back, fills me again. “Fuck, kitten, you’re so perfect. Tight. Too good.”
He reaches between us and thumbs my clit. He’s made me come before, but this is different. More sensation. Just more.
He moves and circles me. I lift up to meet him and we find a rhythm. We’re not good at this, but it feels amazing. He clenches my hip with his large hand.
“Can you come?” His voice is rough.
I nod and wrap my legs around him, hooking my heels.
“Harder.”
He listens and is soon pounding into me. It’s too much. I cry out, clenching around him.
“Avery!” He thrusts deep and holds still.
I feel him fill me. Know I’m now his.
2
CHANCE
* * *
She stares at the stable behind her, gaze unfocused, as if she’s thinking of something. I wonder if her thoughts match mine.
Of us, together, that first—and last—time.
I clear my throat and she blinks. Stiffens.
Blushes.
Yeah, the same thoughts. I remember her beneath me, the look on her face as I filled her for the first time. Claimed her, inside and out.
Her arms go over her chest. “I’ll be around along with two other agents. We’ll be heading to where the body was found, but that’ll be a quick trip. The rest of the time we’ll be digging through phone logs, bank records. Everything of your father’s.”
I nod.
“And yours,” she adds.
“You can’t—” I begin.
I don’t want to start this entire insanity over again. Didn’t Peterson already search through all the files?
Peterson. I have to admit, knowing that fucker was one-upped feels good.
She raises a hand. “Warrants and all the legal paperwork needed to learn about everything except your last colonoscopy is with your lawyer. Shankle, I think his name is.”
Well fuck.
I nod.
She spins and turns the way she came, out the open stable door. “See you around.”
“Kitten, wait,” I call.
Fuck. I didn’t mean for her pet name to slip out. I can’t even remember why I began calling her that all those years ago.
She freezes and looks at me over her shoulder. “I’m not your kitten. I never was.”
“You can’t think that.”
Her gaze narrows and she says nothing as she leaves. Literally walks off. Again.
This time, I know she’s not going far. There’s a murder to solve and somehow, in some way, it is now hers to solve.
“Are you shitting me?” Miles rubs a hand over his face.
I didn’t go for that ride after all, but instead headed back into the house to get more coffee. Miles is in the kitchen in just a pair of jeans. I don’t know where Sadie is and I don’t ask.
I just told him about Avery. Our past.
“I didn’t even know you had a girl.”
“I don’t,” I reply. “I did. Then I didn’t.”
He tips his chin down and eyes me. For half-brothers, we don’t look much alike. He’s blond and smaller than I am, although not small at all.
“What the hell does that mean?” he asks.
I take a sip of coffee, lean against the counter. “We were hot and heavy. In love.”
He looks at me as if I told him I dated an alien. “Love? At seventeen?”
“Eighteen. And absolutely,” I say with complete certainty. “One day we’re together”—I don’t explain what together actually means—”and the next day, I find out from a neighbor in their trailer park that they up and moved to Phoenix.”
“You never heard from her again?”
I shake my head. “Not once.”
“Fuck. I didn’t have a girl I loved back then, but I remember that age. It sucked without being dumped.”
I glare. He shrugs.
“So she’s back. Start over,” he says, as if it’s simple.
“Start over?” I meet my brother’s gaze. “She left without a word, without a backward glance. Without a goodbye. Hell, without an explanation. I want that. I’ll get that out of her while she’s here. Maybe find closure.”
He reaches in the fridge for the carton of eggs. “You still have a thing for her.”
I look down at the counter. “Always have.”
“No wonder you’re such a cranky asshole all the time.”
I can’t help but smile at that. “Yeah. That’s the reason. Not that our father was a bastard or that he’s wrapped up, even in death, in illegal shit. Or that your girlfriend’s brother was murdered on our ranch. Or any of the other shit going on right now.”
“What you need is to get laid.”
As if it’s that simple. Hell, maybe for him it is. Sadie propositioned him in a bar, and now he’s wearing love goggles.
I’ve slept with other women since Avery, but just for release. That’s what he means now, but seeing Avery, knowing she’s here? On my ranch?
My heart wants her and her alone. So does my dick.