Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
She shut her mouth with a snap and her eyes got big.
She explained this by saying hurriedly, “This must all sound pretty stupid to someone like you.”
He didn’t get what she was saying. “Why?”
“I had a dad who gave a shit and maybe was a little too tough on me, probably because he didn’t want me to grow up spoiled and so selfish, it was more important for me to get my hooks in a rich man who would take care of me as I wished to be taken care of, than it was to retain custody of my only child. And you haven’t shared, but you must have—”
Hugger’s fingers moved, not of their volition, and they did this to dig into her flesh.
“Your mom gave up custody of you?”
“Yeah. From the beginning, Dad had full custody, and she didn’t fight it. And when she met Rick, she moved to Idaho to be with him.”
Hugger tried to digest that.
He couldn’t digest it.
He then tried to come to terms with it, because that had to have destroyed Diana when it happened.
It was impossible to come to terms with and he hoped like fuck he never met her mother.
“Harlan,” Di called.
“Against all the odds, my ma kept firm hold on me,” he told her. “We were never rolling in it, but I always had a roof over my head, and it was a decent one, food in my belly, and plenty of it, and clothes on my back, and she made a big deal out of getting me new at the beginning of each school year and tripling down on that at Christmas and my birthday. No kid in school ever knew what my mother did, and they never knew we didn’t have a lot. She made it that way, so people wouldn’t think shit and kids wouldn’t be assholes to me. She let me go only when she was dead, and she didn’t even want to do that. She died with her hand in mine, too weak to curl her fingers around, but she was still holding on. And her last words on this Earth were, ‘Best thing I ever did was you.’”
He watched bright hit her eyes, and she whispered, “Those were her last words?”
“Lookin’ me right in the eye until the light blinked out in hers.”
She pushed up so she could drop her forehead to his. “Oh, Hugger.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
That felt good.
All his life, they’d been alone…
He’d been alone when he lost her.
He wasn’t alone now.
Fuck.
“You are, you know,” she said.
His voice sounded funny, scratchy and strange, when he asked, “I am what?”
“The best.”
Fuck.
It was wrong, it wasn’t the time, but Jesus, he had to kiss her.
He was wrong. It was the time, because Di kissed him.
He’d thought a lot about it, too much, but he knew their first time he wanted to take it slow, lead them both to savoring it, making it a memory that lasted forever.
The instant his tongue touched hers, that plan flew out the window.
He rolled her to her back and he couldn’t seem to get enough of her. His hands were everywhere, his mouth devouring hers.
She met him with intensity and exceeded it, heaving to push him to his back so she was on top again, breaking the kiss, lifting up and yanking off her top.
She was wearing a little black pushup bra, no frills, but the swells of her tits over the top of her bra made his dick jerk.
He sat up and went after her neck with his lips, down her chest, as she went after the buttons on his shirt.
He was nearly to her tit, intent to take the nipple through her bra (before he took off her bra) when she pushed him to his back and bent to his chest, shoving his shirt aside, scraping her fingers through the hair, finding his nipple with her mouth.
He wasn’t sensitive there, but he felt it, it felt good, and it felt even better when she kept using her nails as she trailed her lips down, down, until she was edging the waistband of his jeans with her tongue and going for his fly with her fingers.
Oh no.
Hell no.
He got first taste.
She cried out in surprise and excitement when he lifted her clean off him and tossed her to her back, and he felt the sound she made in his dick too.
Then he got out of bed, tugged his shirt off his shoulders, heard her gasp, took hold of her ankles, dragged her to him and heard her gasp again.
With her green gaze searing into him, he went after her belt, her button, her fly, and dragged her pants and panties down her legs.
Seeing her, mostly bare for him, he almost came in his jeans.
“Harlan,” she breathed.
He dropped to his knees beside the bed, hauled her ass to the edge of it, pitched one of her thighs over his shoulder, the other one, heard her whimper, saw her pretty, slick, pink pussy right there for him.