Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 41621 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41621 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
I have to be sure about these contracts and paper. I have to admit to someone I can’t read them.
I stomp toward my room, fall to my knees and jerk the wooden chest out from underneath. I huff to my feet, kicking at the latch angrily, the top splintering and flinging itself open to keep from being completely destroyed by another kick.
Stacks of green and cream-colored bills tied with pieces of multicolored yarn stare back at me.
I haven’t counted it in a long time, because it takes so long to write it all down, then add up all the numbers. There’s a piece of paper on the top of the money with the amount from the last time I counted it all.
It’s a big number. I added it all up three times. Even asked Lindsay to add my list of numbers on her big desk calculator to double-check.
$1,466,925.
She asked what I was adding up, and I told her it was a lifetime of my steps up and down the mountain. She was impressed, unsure that it was possible, but I grumbled something and took the paper back, put it in the box and never imagined I’d care about how much one million four hundred sixty-six thousand nine hundred and twenty-five dollars really is.
Or what I could do with it to make a life that someone like Tess deserves.
More than enough to buy a lifetime of kitten food. With that thought, I grab a stack and stuff it into the chest pocket on the front of my overalls. Now I can do more to help Tess.
It’s still not enough.
My thoughts drift from the taxes and leases to my woman.
A woman like Tess deserves so much more than a chest of cash. If I’m going to be keeping her—and I will be keeping her—then she needs things I’m not good enough to give. She deserves a king. Someone with an empire. Not some man with a piece of land who can’t read well enough to keep it.
But even though I know I’m not good enough, it doesn’t change anything.
My balls feel like boulders in my jeans. I’m full for her. I want to pour that inside Tess, breed her, make her mine.
I want to watch her belly and breasts grow with my child.
I should figure out the lease. I should swallow my pride, trust Lindsay and tell her to read it to me. To help me know what to do about ‘taxes’. I think she would be honest.
Instead, I’m obsessing again.
When I heard Tess say she would do a fully nude class my chest hurt. I felt like fire was swirling around my ankles, rising up, up, up until it burned me to the ground.
It’s bad enough that men look at her at all, period. It’s worse that they see her with nothing but a blanket covering her most delicious parts. The parts only for me. The idea that she’ll bare it all to God and artists soon—I can barely see through the red haze that takes over my vision.
I’m like a stag in rutting season.
Without even thinking about it, I’m storming across the retreat.
It’s nighttime and everyone’s winding down in their cabins. Some are picnicking for dinner by the lake. It’s quiet in a nice way. Sometimes I catch a few words of soft conversation, some gentle laughter, but right now all I see is red.
All I feel is anger.
I’m at her door, heaving out breaths like a huffing grizzly.
Tess answers the door before I knock. I’m bathed in the scent of nail polish, and realizing that she was just bent over doing her toes gets me even harder. My gaze wanders over her. I take my time to memorize the way she looks with her hair down, to notice she’s using the new nail polish we bought, to admire the halo of lamplight around her crown.
Fear jabs at my insides.
She’s holding that…thing. It’s gray and fuzzy. It looks at me with huge eyes. Claws stick out of its fluffy paws, sending a shudder through me. I glare at them digging into Tess’s hand, but she’s not reacting at all.
I take an instinctive step back. “Hello,” I manage, jaw clenched, eyeing the kitten.
“Hello back.” She drags her bottom lip through her teeth and I watch, mesmerized. She might as well be dragging her teeth along my skin. Every inch of it lights up like a thousand fireflies. My heart beats like hummingbird wings. I’m getting hot. Hot like the potbelly stove when I feed it too much oak. “Wanna come in?”
She steps aside, tipping her head in welcome, and I wedge myself through the door, keeping my back to the wall, eyes on the kitten as I squeeze past and into the tiny cabin.
I’ve already got her space here memorized. I’ve seen it enough through the window. I know it’s wrong. Watching her without her knowing. But I pray for foregivness while I’m doing it, hoping that’s enough, then knowing it isn’t when I lose the battle and fist myself, pumping, pumping up and down, desperate for relief. Being surrounded by her smells now makes blood speed through my body, rushing to make my cock swell thicker, thicker, until the skin feels ready to split.