Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 21789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 109(@200wpm)___ 87(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 109(@200wpm)___ 87(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
Nope. Hell no.
Mine.
That girl is mine.
I don’t even remember moving. One second, I’m on the outskirts of the dance floor, the next, I have my hand wrapped around some fucker’s neck, lifting him off the ground.
“It’s not happening,” I rasp through clenched teeth. “She’s taken.”
He’s waving his arms, but no words are coming out of his mouth. Possibly because my fist is cutting off oxygen to his windpipe.
“Desmond!” Quinn cries, her cool hand slipping under my shirt and racing up my chest. There is murder pumping in my blood, but her touch cuts a path through my rage and surrounding sounds drift back to my ears, along with Quinn’s pretty voice. “Please, don’t. I was coming to you. I need you.” She fists my shirt right above my heart and tugs. “Let him go, please?”
With a grunt, I toss him down, watching him scrabble away and vanish into the gaping crowd. “I don’t want you here, Quinn,” I bellow. “I want you home in my bed.”
She comes to stand directly in front of me, cupping the sides of my face. “That’s where I would be if I wasn’t such a dufus.”
“You…what?” Lines form between his eyes, the rage slowly fading there. “You could never be a dufus, sweetheart.”
“This time I could.” Tears form in my eyes. “I didn’t mean it, when I implied I wanted a lesson from you so I could ask out other men. I was lying. It was always about you. I just didn’t know how tell you that…I felt safe and warm with you, Desmond. And I didn’t want our time together to end so fast. Yes, I wanted to be more confident, but it was only you who made me feel that way from the beginning and—”
Desmond’s mouth stamps down over mine, winding our tongues in a long, possessive kiss. His hands trace over the slopes of my shoulders, down my ribcage and settling on my hips, all this while his mouth devours mine with a low moan. I reach up and cross my wrists behind his head, gasping when he yanks me up onto my toes. “Quinn?” he says hoarsely, his harsh breaths pelting my mouth.
“Yes?”
“I’ve wanted to marry you since this morning.”
I laugh tearfully, my chest squeezing. “You have?”
“Yes.” He pulls me tight to his body, his chest rising and falling with unsteady shudders. “Quinn?”
“Yes?”
“I’m in love with you. I’m so fucking in love with you.”
“I’m in love with you, too,” I whisper into his neck, meaning it with my whole heart.
“Oh thank Christ,” he says on an exhale. A beat passes before he continues. “I’ve never been like this. Felt like this. I don’t know how to handle what you do to me, sweetheart. I’m going to be protective and possessive…and fuck it, I might stalk you. I don’t know how I’m going to let you out the door for work every morning. I’m already stressed about it.”
“It’s okay, we’ll work on it together.”
“Yes. Together.” He presses our foreheads together and nods. “My Quinn. How was I living without you all this time?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” I let him sway us a moment, then I slowly drag my tongue along the inside of his collar. “Take me home, Desmond.”
His voice is little more than a scrape of raw sound when he speaks in my ear, his hand on the small of my back, pressing me into his erection. “I can’t make it home, Quinn.”
Tingles start in the center of my tummy and spread outward, like ripples in a pond. My nipples tighten like bolts and his beard on my neck is an assault on my senses. A delicious one. “Then take me somewhere. Anywhere.”
Desmond levers me off the ground and carries me away from the dance floor. Over his shoulder, I see Steph and Melissa giving me encouraging waves and I return them, but my sole focus is on this man. What he’s going to do to me. How we’re going to make love in a public club. Surely that must be illegal, but I can’t summon the will to care. Nothing outweighs my hunger to have this man inside me, where he’s meant to have been all along.
He doesn’t stop walking until we reach the darkest corner of the club. There are a ton of people dancing, the floor packed tightly with bodies, and these clubbers are noticeably drunker than the ones in front. A burgundy booth lines the wall and only flashes of it can be seen when the lights hit it just right. That’s where Desmond takes me.
He takes a seat in the farthest, most hidden corner of the banquette, yanking my legs open in a straddle and settling me on his lap. “Fuck,” he breathes against my lips. “I’m so hot for it, Quinn. Hump my cock a little and see what I’m talking about.”