Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
There was a bit of Caesar dressing at the corner of his lips. Before I could talk myself out of it, my arm was lifting, and I swiped at it with the pad of my thumb.
Then, with even more, you know, not thinking, I slipped my thumb into my mouth.
Brooks’s gaze followed the motion, his lids getting heavy. Like his mind was going in all the steamy, sweaty directions mine was.
“Cali…” his voice was a warning, a rumbling sound that had no right to pulse through me like it did, to settle in such a way that I was pressing my thighs together to ease the ache between.
“Why not?” I asked, shifting closer, knowing what I was flirting with here. Rejection. But, just this one last time, I was willing to take that risk.
I got a head shake, like he couldn’t find the words to lie to me. Because we both knew he wanted this as much as I did.
“I wasn’t alone in that bed this morning, Brooks,” I reminded him. “You wanted it too.”
That muscle was ticking in his jaw again, and his gaze was staying stubbornly away. Like he knew his eyes would betray him. Would tell me everything I already knew.
“Or was that someone else?” I asked, fighting back a wave of insecurity at being so bold. “Someone else under me… and on top of me?” I asked, watching his hand ball up on his thigh, almost as if he had to do so to keep from reaching out for me.
That only made me bolder.
“Was it someone else with their face between my thighs…with their fingers inside of me?” I asked as I ran my hand up his arm, then over his shoulder, but pausing at his neck. “Or maybe you just didn’t enjoy it,” I said, letting out the vulnerability I’d been feeling ever since he’d walked away from me in that room.
“Don’t,” he said, gaze finally cutting to me, light brown eyes fierce.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t make it about you. It’s not about you. You’re…” he drifted off, shaking his head.
“I’m what?” I asked, not willing to let it go. But he was every bit as stubborn as I was. “If you don’t want me, Brooks, just say it.”
He sucked in a breath so deep it expanded his whole chest.
“Of course I want you,” he said, making my heart flip-flop. “You’re fucking… perfect, Cal. It’s not about you.”
It was about Clay.
And Brooks’s misguided idea that Clay’s final wishes to look after me meant that he couldn’t be with me if we both wanted that.
“Don’t you think that he’d want us to be happy?” I asked.
“It’s… different,” Brooks insisted.
“Is it?” I asked, finally moving up onto my knees, then sliding over to straddle him.
His hands went instantly to my hips, his gaze slipping up to mine, as needy as my entire body felt right then.
“Tell me to stop, and I will,” I said as my lips pressed into the column of his neck.
I waited.
But the words never came.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cali
I teased my lips up his neck, teeth grazing the lobe of his ear, then moving down his jaw toward his lips.
My pulse was fluttering everywhere.
My chest, my neck, my wrist, between my thighs.
Beneath me, Brooks’s breath was coming out fast and shallow as his fingers flexed on my hips, the tips dangerously close to actually grabbing my ass.
My lips teased the corners of his as I finally sank down on his lap. His cock was already straining against the fly of his jeans, and I couldn’t seem to hold myself back from writhing against him, his head rubbing deliciously against my swollen, sensitive clit.
A ragged moan escaped me and it dragged another of those rumbles that I loved so much out of Brooks as his hands finally shifted, sinking fully into my ass, and using it to grind me against him again.
My lips sealed over his then.
Hard and hungry.
Too many years of unmet need were coursing through me right then, making it impossible to take things slow, to savor the moment I’d been dreaming of for so long.
Brooks’s lips let mine lead for a moment. Until my hips ground down on him again, making that rumbling sound become more of a growl. One of his hands shot up, grabbing the back of my neck hard, holding me still as he took over, his lips crushing mine, bruising into me.
And all I wanted was more.
He was always so carefully contained, so in control of himself. I loved the idea that I was able to strip that from him, that he was losing himself in me.
Impatient for more, his teeth bit down into my lower lip, the ferocity of it dragging a moan out of me. He used the opportunity for his tongue to slip inside and find mine, teasing and taunting, and filling my mind with memories of how well he knew how to use it.