Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 145231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 726(@200wpm)___ 581(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 726(@200wpm)___ 581(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Her face blanks.
Yes, I’m spilling my spaghetti in messy piles now.
Baring my heart and the unspoken truths I haven’t admitted even to myself. Because I don’t regret the hottest time I’ve ever spent with a woman, just like I don’t regret being here now on this disaster of a winter night with the dim lights that makes her eyes look dark and her lips delectable.
I want to be a stupid man tonight.
I want to kiss her into oblivion.
I want to own her.
I want her ruined until she’s mine again.
And hell, kissing won’t scratch this itch that’s gone soul deep.
Not when I want to taste every part of her and press her into this worn sofa.
Not when I want her teeth in my hand, biting down as one ruthless thrust after the next rips an orgasm out of her.
Not when I could make her scream my name this time, when she never knew it before.
“Things were simpler back then, I’ll give you that,” she whispers, setting her glass down. I notice she’s finished already. I didn’t even notice her drinking much and I wonder if she just threw it back in a single gulp. “I miss it sometimes. Not that I’d trade Arlo for the past.”
“Same,” I confess. “Even six years ago, things were different for me. Less complicated.”
“But you were always rich. You were successful, or close enough, right?” Her shoulders tense as she shifts to face me, tucking her legs under her. “Do you know how many times I dreamed about having your kind of success? Everything you’ve achieved, it’s amazing.”
“It came with a lot of sacrifice. There hasn’t been much of a life outside work, but it’s the life we chose, me and my brothers. My old man could’ve done something like this if he’d wanted, but he chose family instead. There are times when I wonder who was smarter.”
Oddly, his death gave us the kick in the ass we needed to get serious about living and carving out our piece of the Kansas City pie that has the Rory name on it. Not just a piece of a long ancestral shadow we think we’re entitled to by events almost a century ago.
“You talk like it’s too late for you. You can throttle back on work, can’t you?”
Salem’s brows pull together as she searches my face.
I shrug, finishing my wine.
“Don’t you want a family of your own someday?”
What a loaded fucking question.
“Someday,” I repeat. I don’t think it’s a lie. “Up until recently, it was hard to imagine. Seeing Dexter and his wife so happy, and Archer with my nephew growing up—yeah, I wouldn’t mind that, I think.” Although the future feels murky as hell right now. I can’t see what it might hold for me, or even if I want it to hold anything at all. “This can’t be my life forever. For now, it’s everything.”
“You’re smart for pacing yourself. That’s where I go wrong.” She unhooks a lock of hair from behind her ear and runs her fingers through it.
Yes, it’s still my undoing.
Before any reasonable part of my brain tells me no, I’m moving, reaching out and tilting her face to mine.
I don’t ask. Not with words. Not when her eyes widen, shining into mine.
Not even when she gasps.
I kiss her like a drowning man who needs to taste her just to keep breathing.
And she kisses me back, pushing a startled moan into my mouth that I drink greedily.
After a hot second, when my kiss is still a question, her answer sends fire through my blood.
Here, there’s only Salem Hopper, with her honey-sweet mouth and her nimble little hands that slide through my hair, the curve of her hips and long legs made for sin.
Salem, with her tongue that meets mine with shared madness, fluttering with need.
Salem, who pulls me closer until our bodies tangle up in a memory and a moment that breaks time.
It’s been years, but it’s the same reckless wildfire.
She stokes the flames so good with every gasp, every touch from her wandering hands.
I grab her, haul her on my lap, and she settles there with a giggle.
Her lips curve under mine as she strokes my neck. Her fingers push under my sweater to find skin.
Fuck me, she feels divine.
I shift my hips and she wiggles across me, stealing a groan from my throat.
If there weren’t so many layers between us, I’d already have her stripped bare.
I’d have my tongue on her clit.
I’d make her come for me like she did that night before we—
“Mommy?”
Fuck!
The panic is almost comical.
Salem leaps off me with an impressive agility and throws herself back on the sofa with a thump.
“Um, yes, big guy?” she asks, desperately finger combing her hair. The hair tie she used before is nowhere to be seen. Maybe I pulled it off and didn’t notice.