Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 154728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
That felt important, somehow.
Before I could process it, I was gone, lost to a dreamless slumber.
Seventeen
When I woke in the morning, it was to my sheets, my bed, the room that had been mine for the past five months.
For a second, I was sure I’d dreamed it, all of it. Even though some of it was a nightmare. The past five months had been a nightmare. And then Kane turning up in the rain, during a storm, dripping wet with anger and blame emanating from him… That had been both a dream and a nightmare.
But the sheets smelled of him. My body ached in a delicious way from what he’d done to me last night. I heard signs of life downstairs, the opening and closing of the back door, dog nails on the hardwood floor.
I slumped down onto my bed.
Kane was here.
Though our bodies had joined last night, a closeness that I’d never had with anyone else, there was still distance between us. Kane had left the bed before I woke. I slept like the dead these days and hadn’t even stirred. In our life before, he never left the bedroom without waking me. Yet another glaring and painful reminder of how things were different.
Steeling myself, I held on to the headboard in order to get out of bed. Now that I was larger, my center of balance was way off.
He’d claimed me back last night. Without question, he’d made me his all over again. Even without kissing me. That was purposeful, I thought, not giving me that.
Yet in the harsh light of day, things were different. I was his, but somehow, I wasn’t.
I felt self-conscious. Awkward. I sorely regretted throwing on the tee he’d been wearing yesterday. I hadn’t been able to help myself. It was soft and it smelled like him. It strained over my stomach, showing all of my leg and the boyshorts underwear I’d pulled on.
I’d forgone a robe because I was suddenly not icy-cold anymore, and I’d been anxious to run down to the kitchen. I was desperate to ensure that this wasn’t a dream.
It hadn’t been.
Kane was here. In my kitchen. The picture of masculine perfection.
He was dressed in running clothes and covered in sweat. He’d obviously brought in a bag of clothes at some point. My eyes traveled over the ridges in his abs, visible as his tee clung to his torso. I licked my lips at the memory of the feel of him, his sculpted abs, his weight, his warmth, the fullness of my body with him inside me.
But he wasn’t here. Not entirely.
My step stuttered as his eyes fell on me. They did a slow sweep of my body, again lingering for a long time on my stomach.
Suddenly putting on his tee felt like a mistake. It was too presumptuous.
Yes, I was carrying his child, and yes, we’d had sex last night. But that didn’t mean we were together.
He’d been in prison for five months. He said he came straight here. He hadn’t been with a woman in almost half a year. It must’ve just been a physical thing; he’d needed a release. Nothing was fixed between us. It wasn’t that simple.
“I, um, should probably get dressed.” I started retreating from the kitchen.
“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” he growled.
I froze at his tone.
But inside of my body I didn’t.
My insides responded. Viscerally.
The air between us was charged, Kane pinning me in place with his possessive stare.
I was barely breathing.
“You hungry?” he asked.
I licked my lips. “Starving.”
Kane’s body jolted. And although there was a lot of unfamiliarity between us right then, I knew that response. I knew he was feeling the same desire I was. It was the fire in his eyes, the way his shoulders tightened, his jaw clenched.
But in a split second, all of that was gone.
“There’s nothing in the fridge.” He nodded to the sub-zero appliance.
I rubbed my forehead, trying to focus. “Yeah, I um, haven’t gone grocery shopping. I eat out a lot. There’s a bakery that makes croissants that will change your life. They hide three behind the counter for me; they’re popular, and they’re kind of my thing for breakfast these days.”
Fiona—one of the owners of the bakery—had begun doing that when I started to show, and it became clear the croissants were important to me the one morning I arrived and they were sold out, and I almost burst into tears. Those croissants were my one little slice of joy in my lonely, scary new life.
Pathetic but true.
The women at the bakery—Nora, Fiona and Tina—had all been welcoming, had even offered multiple times to have me over for dinner as I was new in town and was obviously alone.
I’d politely refused every time, although part of me wanted to be part of the friendship—the family—they seemed to have. But a few things stopped me, those things being the two hulking, handsome husbands of the women who adored them. Adored them with a ferocity that was too hard to look at.