Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 44725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
You’re living in a dreamland if you think being a virgin makes me want you less.
Way to keep me hanging, I type, then delete it. I don’t want to seem needy. It’s hilarious because need is the emotion dominating me.
Are you serious? I reply. It means I won’t be able to give you what you want.
Not right away, but I saw how excited your body was yesterday. I saw how badly you wanted it, or else you put on the best show I’ve ever seen.
It wasn’t a show. My body responds to his words, lust warming me up even if I should know better. You drove me completely crazy.
That makes it even hotter that you are just naturally like that. I’ve relived it a thousand times.
I thought you were giving me the silent treatment again.
Hell, Zoey. I’ve TRIED to pretend this doesn’t exist.
What doesn’t exist?
This connection, he sends. You must feel it, too.
My smile is just as much of a traitor as my lust. My face aches from the smiling, but I have to be cautious. Just because he feels a connection, too, doesn’t mean he’s talking about the connection: the kids, the marriage, the impossible future.
I feel it, I reply, but I still don’t understand how my being a virgin could make you want me more.
Maybe I’m that bad in bed. You don’t have any frame of reference.
LOL. Somehow, I doubt that’s the reason.
Sure, we only shared a preview of the lust we could share, but when he laid his hands on me, and I drank in the obsessed heat of his entire being, I knew he would take me on the steamiest journey a woman could wish for.
Maybe I’m a jealous man. Maybe the thought of you being with somebody else, even in the past, pisses me off.
That should freak me out. I remember when Natasha’s ex said something similar, constantly questioning her over her past relationships, but it doesn’t annoy me. I’m grinning again. I never dreamed my crush could get jealous about me.
What if I’m the same? What if I get jealous of your exes?
There’s not much to get jealous about, he replies. I haven’t dated in years.
You don’t have to lie to me.
I’m telling the truth.
I imagine him saying this in his gruff voice, staring at me firmly. I keep thinking about the way he looked at me when we were in the craziness of our desire. It was like he never wanted it to end, and he never wanted us to end.
During your travels for research, at book signings, at movie premiers… You’re telling me you ignore the women who throw themselves at you?
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. They don’t interest me. No woman has interested me until you.
I smooth my hands over my belly, partly to soothe the nerves and partly because I imagine what it will feel like when our baby grows inside me.
It’s difficult to believe I’m that special.
Is that me fishing for compliments? Sue me.
I act on instinct, Zoey. It was how I operated when I was in the service, and it’s how I operate with my books. When I saw you, my instincts weren’t shy about letting me know. I want you and don’t want anybody else to have you. The answer’s yes. You ARE that special.
I squeeze my legs together. My heartbeat sends warm shivers throughout my body. Waves of physical want and emotional yearning crash over me.
I want that too, I reply, but we both know it’s impossible.
Yeah, I get that. I was reminded of it earlier, in fact.
What do you mean?
I told Peter about us.
WHAT? WHY?
I’m on my feet right away, pacing my bedroom. Any second, my restless thoughts tell me Mom’s going to barge in here with the most vicious expression on her face and the word hate on her tongue.
I don’t know. I wish I could say I had to, but the secrecy was eating me up.
How did he take it?
He refused to speak about it, but I could tell he looked at me differently.
What if he tells Mom?
Jax doesn’t respond immediately, giving me plenty of time to pace and worry. As if I needed another sign that this has to end, another sign that we went too far the first time we exchanged a text.
Jax is doing his type-delete-type thing, the three dots appearing and then vanishing as I dread his response, dread the reality in which Mom knows about us.
CHAPTER 12
Jaxson
I’m on my balcony, breathing in the bracing air. It’s late afternoon, the sun still shining, but it’s cooler up here, my vantage point where I can look across the city toward Zoey’s neighborhood.
My manhood doesn’t care about her latest text where she asks if Peter will tell Mallory about us. All my body cares about is the word virgin. I became solid the second I read it. It was a white-knuckle feat not to tell her why the revelation makes me want her more. She’s a virgin, which means no other man has ever touched her the way I will. No other man ever will touch her, either. As soon as I saw her, I knew she belonged to me, only me, and this solidifies it.