Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 141676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 708(@200wpm)___ 567(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 708(@200wpm)___ 567(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
I want to take so much more than her mouth.
I want to claim her.
Fuck me to death, I want her.
And the torn noise she makes when I slide my hand to the back of her neck and tilt her head back has me harder than granite.
Calm the fuck down, you demented monkey, a voice warns.
There’s that little pipsqueak called a conscience, right on time to put the pin back in before my lust goes off like an armed grenade.
Yeah, I know.
I need to calm down before it’s impossible to reverse this mistake. Now definitely isn’t the time.
Not when it’s too easy to forget about the show we’re supposed to be putting on for her nana.
Not when we’re two warring tongues hopelessly in love with our own destruction.
Not when this is make-believe.
Snarling, I pull away, sucking air into my depleted lungs.
Junie breathes almost as heavy as I do. She looks at me through hooded eyes. Her lips are swollen, an invitation to bite her I can’t accept.
Though I can’t resist running my fool thumb along her bottom lip.
The way her breath hitches makes me want to kiss her again.
Fuck, how is this happening?
I’m a grown man with zero interest in love because I know where it leads.
I’ve seen how it shreds a heart to ribbons. Like I could ever forget the long nights with my mother, watching from the chaise next to her bed, guarding her from her own demons.
I mastered myself ages ago, and yet I’m behaving like a wild beast.
Junie blinks some of the dazzle off her face, glancing back at the house with a gasp.
“Oh. Oh, crap. Um, that was probably more than enough for Nana…” she whispers, hurling me back into bland reality.
“I’m not sure she’s swayed yet,” I growl, loving how her face flushes. “Do you want to get back inside?”
Say yes.
Fucking say it before I do something so reckless it’s irreversible.
“Y-yeah. Give me a sec. I need to catch my breath.”
That makes two of us.
I need a moment to come down from the high, too, considering my blood’s still liquid fire and I need to convince my body I’m not about to fuck Junie senseless.
It was a fake kiss.
Nothing real.
Nothing good, except for the fact that it’s left me humming with need.
I touch her cheek—stupid, I know—but I can’t help myself when my hands want to roam.
All over her. Every waking minute.
“You okay?” I grind out.
“I’ll live,” she says, brushing the back of my hand with her fingertips. “I’m just… Wow. Didn’t know you had that in you.” She laughs, and I’m reminded she’s not quite sober.
I also know I’m the jackass who’s full of surprises here.
The so-called responsible, levelheaded one who wound up being anything but.
“Wow is an understatement,” I agree.
She looks too appetizing in this light, and with the way she licks her lips—shit, it’s like she can still taste me on her and she wants me to know it—I’m about three seconds away from losing the last thread of my sanity.
“You ready or what?” I urge. “I think she’s probably finished her phone call.”
Her face screws up. “Seriously, the only calls Nana’s making tonight are to tell everyone in the family I’m dating again. I guarantee it.”
“It’s nice having a supportive family,” I tease.
She shakes her head and slips her hand through my arm as we head back into the house. “Supportive, judgmental, and gossipy as hens. Take your pick.”
I shrug. “Your Nana seems lovely, her sugar pact with Satan aside.”
She laughs again.
Another damn mistake.
At least the tension eases, though, and I know that was the right thing to say.
I’m sure there’s more going on in the Winkley family—no dad, by the sounds of it, and no mention of a mom either—but that isn’t my business.
It’s about time I started respecting boundaries, even if my dick hasn’t figured out the concept.
“You have a lovely garden. Your bluebells would make my mother jealous,” I tell Mrs. Winkley as we head back inside and she greets us in the kitchen.
“Oh, yes. It’s one of my passions now that I’ve handed the store off to Junie. Gotta keep my hands dirty somehow,” Jo says with a smile that was probably magnetic when she was young.
I can see where Junie gets it.
We stay for a few more minutes, following her into an old-fashioned sitting room where Junie leans against my side with distracting warmth, until finally Jo Winkley sends us off with a flurry of hugs and kisses and I escort Junie back to the vehicle.
She presses her head back into the seat as I pull away.
“Huh,” she says, exhaling. “That went better than expected.”
“You were very convincing.”
“I would’ve been lost without your help.” She glances across at me, her face artificially pale from the dim light of the screen, her eyes too dark. Goddamn, she’s every sort of desirable right now in that dress that shows just a hint of cleavage and shapely legs that go on forever.