Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 105815 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105815 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“Stop me,” he says, his voice like gravel. “Fucking stop me.”
“No.”
He bends his head and licks me, his hands clenching and unclenching on my thighs. I grip his scalp as he lashes at me like a man starved. His lips and fingers and tongue and breath become my master. He devours me, a ferocious lover.
One finger, then two are inside me as he flicks my clit with his tongue. He fingers me and grinds his hips into the seat and murmurs filthy things against my skin: how wet I am, how hot I am, how he wants to fuck me hard, how he wants his cock inside me so bad, how he’s never going to let me get away from him.
That ringing sound comes again.
It’s a phone. His.
It’s on the ground next to my sweater.
I grab his shoulders, kneading them, encouraging him. He says my name with reverence, with such longing, and I can’t breathe, tensing, as tingles build at my spine, my hips moving with him. When we fuck, it’s going to be insane, over the top, and then he does something with his fingers, fast and hard on my clit, I shout, and I’m coming, coming, my core clenching around him, spasming as my legs tighten around his head.
“River, River…” I pull him up and kiss him. My hands go to his ass, palming him, then his waist as I shove his jeans to his hips. I took things slow with Donovan, but this—this is something else entirely. This is us. “Now, please.”
He lets out a shuddering breath, his head in my neck as he gasps. “Anastasia. Help me. I lov—” His phone rings, and he looks away from me to the ground, his eyes shutting. “Fuck me.”
I know the name on the screen.
He pulls back, chest heaving as he sits on his haunches. He scrubs his face as storm clouds color his eyes. “Anastasia,” he says in a tortured voice. “That’s him.”
“I know.”
“This can’t… We have to stop…”—he sucks in air—“…this insanity. Jesus. I’m sorry.” He grimaces as he stands and sweeps his shirt over his head then zips his jeans.
I sit up, watching as he paces the rooftop. I snap up my sweater and slip it on. My hands shake. A bad feeling grows in my gut as I stand.
He doesn’t look at me, his feet eating up the ground. “Fuck. Fuck. Yes, okay, okay, I told Donovan what to say in the note that night. I did, I did, and I’m sorry I can’t go back and fix it. I dropped my pen to get a feel for you, to find an angle, and then, you, God, I don’t know, you were so perfect for me, but—”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re the author of my note, and I won’t burn it like I planned. We’ll start fresh—”
“No.” He shakes his head. “We shouldn’t have come up here. Don’t you see? Donovan is calling me right now.” He snatches up the phone and scrolls through the messages, his lips compressing in a hard line.
“Maybe he just wants you to pick up some beer on the way to the house.” My words are sharp.
River shakes his head, still not looking at me. “He wants to talk about you. He’s been asking me if he made a mistake—shit, he wants me to talk to you for him…” He pulls at his hair. “You’re what he really wants, and I can’t believe he broke up with you, and how it happened haunts me—”
“We were over this past summer—”
It’s like he doesn’t hear me. “You love him!”
“Then why am I here? With you?”
His eyes widen.
“And his parents? The bracelet? Harper? The pin? You think I can accept that kind of treatment from someone? I have pride, River.”
He groans. “If you love people, you work it out! I’m the bad guy who’s messing around with you! I’m the friend moving in on his girl!” He heaves out a breath then scrubs his face. “Ana. God. Ana, I have to tell you something.”
He called me Ana! Again.
“What?” I snap.
He covers his face for a moment, drops his hands. “I told him to end it with you on Friday before the party. When he came downstairs and started spewing all this shit about your past, something came over me, and… I told him to let you go. I told him to break it off, said Harper was meant to be his and he just needed space to try. I told him…” He takes a breath. “…that you’d never make him happy.”
Shock washes over me. I blink rapidly.
Silence builds as he stares at me, willing me to reply. My mouth opens. I don’t know what to say. River influenced Donovan.
I shake my head, trying to wrap my head around it.
“I’m sorry he… I didn’t think he’d do it the way he did. I didn’t even know if he would. I never dreamed it would go down like that. I’m sorry.”