Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 88656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
But there was no bad guy here. What was I thinking? It was just me and Kage and the inevitable. My stomach was so tight it was folding in on itself. And quivering. God, was it ever quivering. I was fucked.
So incredibly fucked.
I undid my pants and took a gratuitous piss. Then I washed my hands, took a deep breath, and opened the bathroom door. Kage was still on the couch where I left him, and I skirted the living area by way of the kitchen, grabbing a beer from the fridge.
“Want a beer?” I asked, willing my voice not to squeak.
“Nope.”
When I got back to the sofa, I hesitated before sitting down, taking a swallow of beer.
“Got your bathroom break out of the way?” Kage asked.
I nodded.
“Then set that beer down on the coffee table and get your ass over here.”
I did as he asked— no, as he commanded— and set the beer on the table.
He was lying back on the arm of the sofa with his legs stretched down the length of the seat cushion. When I didn’t make a move toward him, he spread his legs and put one foot on the floor. Then he patted the seat between his legs.
Instead of stepping forward, I stepped backward. “God, Kage—” I took another step backward, shaking my head. “I want you so, so much.”
“Then where are you going?”
That’s when I took off like a spooked horse, stumbling backward. I only got about three steps away before he was on me, taking me down and pinning me on the carpet. In the shuffle, my nearly-full beer got knocked off the table, and all I could hear was the glug-glug-fizz of the stuff spurting out onto the floor.
“My beer,” I gasped.
“Fuck the beer, Jamie.” He brought his mouth down onto mine and took my lips in a hungry kiss. He wasn’t rough exactly, but he was needy, and he definitely did not kiss like a girl. He didn’t let me be the aggressor or let me lead. He pressed in and took what he wanted, leaving me breathless.
All I could do was kiss him back, let him explore and taste. I was just along for the ride, and what an amazing ride it was.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said when he pulled back and looked into my eyes.
He gave me that amused look he always seemed to save just for me. “Yeah? What do you think we should be doing?”
His lips were full, sexy, and right in front of me. I couldn’t resist lifting my head and taking a kiss for myself. The feel of his beard stubble was something new and unexpected, and I liked it. Like the way it scrubbed my lips and face, made them more sensitive.
I noticed I had a death grip on his shoulders, and I loosened my arms and let my hands wander tentatively across the expanse of his shoulders. Even the feel of the t-shirt with the hard muscle beneath was delightful. It was as if I’d never felt a t-shirt before. In fact, it was as if I’d never felt anything before. Like my nerve endings had just been woken from a lifelong state of dormancy.
“We should be doing something work related.”
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Like what? You wanna work out?”
“No.” I rolled my eyes, feeling my face go all goofy and hot just imaging what kind of workout he might have in mind. “What about that photo shoot I asked you about? The more personal one.”
He seemed to consider it for a moment, then shrugged and said, “Okay.” He hopped up off of me just like that and pulled me up with one hand.
I straightened myself up. Smoothed my clothes. Tried to brush the lust off of me.
“I’ll get the camera ready,” I told him. “You just… get however you want to be, I guess.”
He retired to the bedroom area while I readied the camera, trying to remember all of the tricks the camera guy had told me about nighttime indoor shots.
I had hoped Kage would be fully dressed when he returned, since it would have theoretically made things less complicated for me and my increasingly confusing emotions, but no such luck. His boxers were the only barrier between me and the body I didn’t want to think about.
My brain illogically suggested that maybe if I worked out really hard and got a body like that of my own, I wouldn’t be so interested in his anymore.
Yeah, right. Because that makes total sense.
“How do you want me?” he asked, running a hand through his hair. We were standing so close I could smell the shampoo.
“Well, put some damn clothes on, first of all,” I said irritably.
He laughed. “Wow. Okay. I wasn’t sure how you wanted me, so I figured I’d start from scratch and let you dictate. Do I need to put on a full-body Eskimo suit, or will shorts and a t-shirt be fine?”