Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 45063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
With all the closeness we’re sharing, my need is expanding, flooding my balls with fresh seed… like I could get hard with the snap of my woman’s fingers, with one suggestive breath from her.
“He punched me in the face,” I say.
Harper gasps. “Seriously?”
I nod. “What else was he supposed to do? He didn’t know how to process it. I hardly did. I barely understood it myself. I still don’t, except I know it’s the purest and most real thing I’ve ever felt. The truest thing. Being on the West Coast, away from you, I thought I could get control, but I can’t Harper, not ever.”
“That’s when he asked you to move away?” she murmurs.
“I couldn’t pursue you without his blessing,” I say, “but when I returned… I couldn’t resist. It was like all this… this fire inside of me was burning. It had gotten even stronger the year I was away, not weaker.”
“Oh, Bryson,” she whispers, releasing my hand to wipe a single tear from her cheek, then clinging onto me again. “This is everything I ever dreamed of.”
“That’s what worries me,” I say, forcing the words out.
I have to say the next bit. I don’t want to, but it would be a mistake to leave it unspoken, to cower from the responsibility.
“Worries you?” she asks.
I’m about to tell her, but then they bring the food out. I sit back, summoning my manners when all I want is to flip the table and drag my woman into my lap.
Once the waiter leaves, Harper looks at me with concern.
“What worries you?” she asks.
Looking directly into her beautiful, captivating eyes, I say, “You.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Harper
Despite the darkness in his tone when he tells me I worry him, I can’t get rid of this light feeling, this fluttering of joy bubbling up within me.
He wants it all. The family, the future, presumably the marriage, the happiness.
Adam stares from my mind, a specter who could tear it all to pieces.
Nevertheless, Bryson wants it, wants me, us.
Even as I ask him what worries him, my tone is light. My heart hammers warmly when he intensely says you, despite knowing it shouldn’t, but his expression mirrors my heart. He’s smiling, his eyes brighter than I’ve seen them, and then it’s like he tries to correct his expression, frown, and pushes away the lightness.
“It’s what you told me yesterday,” he goes on, picking up his knife. “About your obsession. That’s the best word for it. I’m obsessed with you. The second I saw you after your eighteenth birthday, I became obsessed like you were a new woman. I knew… I know I had to have you.”
Fireworks erupt over my skin, sparkling and sizzling throughout me.
“But I was thirty-six when I came to this realization. I wasn’t a child.”
“So what?” I say, voice sharp, feelings sharper.
“So…,” he looks at me steadily. “There’s a difference. I could judge the situation clearly. Well, not clearly… you cloud my vision all the time, but I’m a grown-up.”
“So am I,” I say fiercely.
“You weren’t when your obsession started,” he sighs, my man with the firelight dancing in his silver-streaked hair, his clean-shaven jaw catching the sun from above, his shirt hugging his bulging chest. “You were a child. You’ve had this obsession since then. It’s never stopped. I’d hate myself if I ever took advantage of you… if you woke up one day, years in the future, and thought, He should’ve known better. He should’ve waited.”
“I can’t predict the future,” I say, “but I can predict this. That will never happen.”
“How can you be sure?” he says. “Think how it looks to others.”
“I don’t care how it would look to anybody else,” I cut in. “So what if you’re older than me? So what if small-minded people judge us? They can’t understand what we’re feeling. They can’t understand our connection.”
I’m almost crying again. I lean back, gripping the table, fighting off the emotion, but it’s a losing battle since there’s so much inside of me. There is an accumulation of what we’re talking about now, and everything we’ve shared so far.
“You’re right,” he says after a pause. “I don’t give a damn what people think. Just one person.”
He doesn’t have to say he’s talking about Adam.
“You,” he says. “I’d go insane if another man even thought about touching you. When I busted into that hellhole and saw you on that mattress… I was ready to kill them, every single one. To execute them. But your happiness matters to me more. Are you sure, Harper? Are you sure this isn’t just a childish crush?”
My instinct is to yell. The thought of these feelings—the certain flurrying of them—being reduced to a crush is unthinkable, but I keep my voice steady.
“It started that way,” I tell him, “but now that I know you feel the same, I’m thinking about how it would work. A family, a future, me working on my podcast and at the restaurant while you’re…”