Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 89815 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89815 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Lgl2secure: Accounts are wiped clean. Any particular charity??
Meridian thought for a second wondering where he should send the Stewart brother’s dirty drug money where it could do some actual good. He thought of why they were there in the first place. He thought of Evan and what had been important in his life before it was taken.
ExMeridian: Yeah. Send it to the Boys and Girls Club of Atlanta
Meridian would report that to Ex and Slade at their next briefing this afternoon. Now that they had potentially secured more witnesses for Godfrey and Day, they needed to concentrate on the star witness, the kid. Jason and Marcus may only give enough information to get themselves a good deal. Meridian wanted those fucking district attorneys. If they got rid of them then the police would have a fighting chance of cleaning up the city.
Rubbing his chest, he tried to force himself to stop thinking about their wayward op and get some sleep. The blackout curtains made it easy for him to forget that it was the start of a new day and not bedtime. Just when he felt the tug to close his eyes he heard a faint creak of the floorboards just outside his door.
Ex. He’d come.
Meridian’s mouth started to slowly curve at the edges before he quickly caught himself and stopped it. He could see Ex’s shadow through the crack of the door. He waited, wondering if maybe he was going to the kitchen and not to him. But the quiet steps stopped then turned in the opposite direction. Then turned again, and again. The shadow crossed for a sixth time and on the seventh, Meridian got out of bed. He stood against the wall beside the door, waiting on Ex’s next pass through. Only this time when he tried to walk by, Meridian snapped his arm out of the door, caught Ex around his wrist and pulled him inside in the time it took Ex to blink.
Ex’s breath whooshed out of his mouth when Meridian pushed him against the wall and slammed the door. He crowded into his partner, glaring down at him. Meridian wasn’t breathing hard, but Ex’s lithe, bare chest was heaving as if that’d just taken a lot out of him.
“How long were you going to pace outside of my door?” He whispered against Ex’s cheek.
“Until you pulled me inside,” Ex confessed, need gleaming in his sharp gray eyes. And Meridian knew he was done.
Finally, Meridian took the decision from him and tugged him inside, because Ex didn’t know if he could burst into his partner’s room and present his ass to him like he wanted to. He swallowed as his back was pressed into the hard wall and Meridian’s firm chest pushed against his own.
“Why did you need me to do that, huh?” Meridian asked, his voice sounding deeper than usual, as if he’d just woken up. “You can’t come to me on your own?”
Ex didn’t like the way Meridian worded that. As if he was afraid. He wasn’t fucking scared, he was... he was just... uncertain. Ex wasn’t used to not only breaking a rule, but taking the entire damn regulations book and giving it the middle finger. “I didn’t say that,” Ex snarled.
“Mmhmm,” Meridian hummed next to his temple. He didn’t even have to speak and Ex’s body reacted. Before now, his dick would twitch or pulse in response to Meridian, but he’d always been able to breathe through it before he got a full hard-on. But now—now it felt as if he was sensitive enough to lose his load if Meridian simply stood there long enough.
Gun-roughened hands slid up his bare pecs, grazing his hard nipples, and stopping around his throat. He jerked from the rush of blood to his cock, and bit on his bottom lip to stifle his moan. All he could hear was the crackling of wood in the fireplace and his erratic breaths in his ears. Ex trembled even though the temperature in the room was sweltering.
“Why’s your skin always so cold, Xavier?” Meridian whispered, sounding as if he was talking to himself. He cupped his face in both big hands forcing him to tilt his head up. The warmth of those heavy palms seeped into him slowly and Ex started to feel alive again. They stared at each other for a long moment as Ex remembered a time when he wasn’t freezing.
“You know why I’m cold... don’t you,” Ex murmured, turning his lips towards Meridian’s palm. He breathed against the thick pad before pressing his lips into it. “Whatever they did to me after I was buried in that snow, after you got me down that mountain, I guess it fucked with me.”
“The one time I almost lost you,” Meridian said solemnly. “When I dug you out of that snow it felt like I’d been shot in my chest instead of my leg.”