Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 27597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 138(@200wpm)___ 110(@250wpm)___ 92(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 138(@200wpm)___ 110(@250wpm)___ 92(@300wpm)
So much more.
We’re clinging to each other in the relief of finding this. Us.
Two bonded people who are vowing with our bodies to never be apart.
No matter what the world is about to throw at us.
CHAPTER 12
Ashley
I sleep in his arms that night.
I don’t think I’ve shared a bed with someone since childhood and my best friend slept over. This is different. Very different.
After we make love, he finally takes off his clothes while I sit watching him from the pillows, wrapped in a soft sheet. He undresses the way he does everything else—with the utmost care. Tie. Belt. Watch. He removes them, sets them down, side-by-side. Eyes zeroed in on me, he draws his white dress shirt from his waistband and releases the buttons, one by one, until he can strip off the garment.
My pulse clamors at the sight of his ruthlessly tight muscles, the power of his half-naked body. His past is evident here, in tattoos and faint scars. I want to run my hands and mouth over every inch of that body and make it mine. Erase the past with my tongue and touch until he only thinks of me.
Apparently, I’m obsessed with him, the same way he’s obsessed with me.
My tummy hollows and I whimper softly when his fingers move to the fly of his slacks. I can still feel him moving on top of me. Can still feel the determined entry of his long, thick shaft into my body, the way he ground himself deep, cursing, grunting, rasping his disbelief over how well I was able to fit him. This man is a marvel of control, but I turned him into an animal. I’m addicted to that transformation already.
His pants are pushed down to the floor and he steps out, wearing nothing but a black pair of boxer briefs while he hangs his clothes on the back of a chair, his muscles moving and shifting in delicious patterns. I’m verging on screaming for him to join me in the bed when he finally does. He lies on his side, handsome head propped on a fist, the position putting his bicep on mouthwatering display.
For long minutes, he does nothing but stare at me in the dim silence of the room, a vein ticking in his temple. Until he breaks the silence. “I was rough with you. At the beginning. And the end.”
I’m sandblasted by heat, my pulse rate tripling. “I know,” I respond, smiling.
His brows draw together. “You seem happy about that.”
“Am I not supposed to be?”
“I don’t tell you what to be happy about.”
“I know,” I say, my smile even bigger. “If you’re worried you hurt me, you didn’t. I never felt anything but…”
“What?”
“Love,” I whisper.
“There’s a reason for that,” he says, his voice thick. Uneven. “God help me, I’m in love with you, Ashley. I’m sitting here trying to convince myself that you’re real.”
“I am,” I manage around the constriction of my throat. He loves me. He loves me. “I’m real and I love you back, Caleb. It’s crazy and it’s happening so fast, but it’s true.” The image of him begins to blur, thanks to the moisture crowding my vision. “I’ve never experienced anything that felt more honest. More real.”
His chest heaves once, twice. “Come here.”
I’m not ashamed to say I scramble like a little kid, tangling my naked self further in the bedding, before getting free and throwing myself up against him lengthways. Instantly, I’m soothed and made drowsy by his heat. Held in thrall by his sculpted and stubbled jaw. The size of him, the sinew of his arm as it wraps around my lower back and yanks me in as close as possible, our legs overlapping below as if we’ve done it a thousand times.
“You’re married, Ashley.”
“I know.”
“We need to get you un-married,” he growls.
“I…I want to do that…”
“No,” he grits out, framing my jaw in a determined hand. “We will.”
“But my family…”
“We’ll make sure we end things with Waylon without hurting them,” he says, planting kisses along my hairline, my face. “But my patience doesn’t extend to this. My angel belonging to another man will not stand. Not even if it’s just on paper.”
“I belong to you in all the ways that count. My heart, my body, my mind,” I breathe, running soothing palms along his shoulders, down his chest, my touch stirring his sex into a standing position, the length of him beating up against my stomach. My fingers go to those inches, as if magnetized, holding that hard, throbbing flesh in a grip and looking up at him through my eyelashes while I deliver a slow stroke. “All of me is a Daddy’s girl.”
He lets out an abbreviated grunt, a glop of wetness rolling down my knuckles a few seconds later. “Oh lord, yes you are,” he says, choppily. “A Daddy’s girl who just learned how to come and wants a lot of practice now, doesn’t she?”