Total pages in book: 224
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
He drags my lips to his. “The feeling is mutual.” And with those words that I don’t even understand, his mouth closes down on mine again. His tongue presses past my lips and it’s a slow caress, a savoring, a shift in the mood. The anger is gone. The push and pull between us is all pull now. I don’t even know the moment we start moving, our bodies swaying, molded close, hands all over each other. I am lost in this man, in the contrast of the man who spanked me to the man that cradles me to him even as he thrusts inside me. I can feel him everywhere, goosebumps on my skin, my body hyper-sensitive to his every touch.
We build into a sudden urgent need, our bodies moving faster, his hand on my backside lifting me into the pumps of his hips and I both want what comes next and resist it at the same time. I don’t want this to end, but he cups my breasts and squeezes and I’m over the edge. My body stiffens and then I begin to quake. He moans, a deep guttural moan, and rolls me almost to my back with a hard thrust of his cock, and he too shudders and shakes.
I don’t know how long we are lost in that place of utter release and complete escape. I come back to the present, with me on my back, and him completely on top of me. And now comes that moment after, the one we’ve shared once before. The one that ended with him telling me to put on my clothes and leave. It’s what I expected of him then. It’s what I should expect now. Reid is Reid. No matter how good we just felt, I cannot let myself get emotional. He will hurt me. It may already be too late and I don’t know how I let this happen.
Feeling as if I’m suffocating in my own stupidity, I press on his chest. “I need up.”
Chapter twenty-six
Carrie
“Ineed up, Reid,” I repeat when he doesn’t move.
“Hold on, baby,” he murmurs, the endearment rolling off his tongue in this intimate, warm way, that does crazy things to my stomach, and feels nothing like his arrogantly delivered “sweetheart” references.
He reaches over me and before I know his intent, he’s pressing tissues between my legs, and as silly as it seems, it feels more intimate than anything we’ve done so far. It drives home the absence of the condom, the undertone of asking for and giving trust between us. “Baby?”
He eases back to look at me. “Did that bother you?”
“Since when do you care what bothers me?”
“Answer, Carrie.”
“No,” I say. “It didn’t bother me. I just—we’re—just—I need a bathroom.” I roll away from him and sit up, tossing the tissue in a well-placed trashcan.
Reid is sitting next to me in a flash, snatching up my blouse as I reach for it and tossing it out of reach. “What are you doing?” I demand.
He grabs his shirt and settles it over my shoulders. “Making sure you stay.”
I glance over at him. “I don’t like an awkward morning after, and all of my things are in my apartment. I should just go now.”
“It won’t be awkward because this isn’t some drunken mistake. I was an asshole in the office.”
“Yeah, you were.”
“I was pissed at you.”
“Pissed at me?” I ask incredulously. “For what?”
“Because I was sure once I fucked you, my obsession with fucking you would end, but it didn’t.”
“So you were an ass to me,” I supply.
“Yes. I was pissed. But—I’m sorry.”
I blanch and rotate to face him. “Did you just apologize? And, with a bonus of you being naked while doing it?”
“I did, in fact, apologize while naked.” He reaches up and strokes hair behind my ear, the touch remarkably tender, his voice softer now. “We’ll get up early and I’ll walk you to your place so you can get ready.”
I catch his hand, needing to control what I can about where this is headed. “If I stay, then tomorrow morning, it’s over. We don’t do this anymore.”
“No,” he says. “I’m not going to say that. I’m not going to make you a promise I can’t keep. I already know that I’m not only going to want to touch you tomorrow. I’m going to touch you tomorrow, Carrie.”
“We’re supposed to be fucking each other out of our systems,” I remind him.
“And so we’ll keep trying.”
“You’re confusing me, Reid.”
“You and me both, baby.” He leans in and kisses me. “Stay. I want you to stay, and I want you to want to stay.”
He wants me to stay. I want to stay. I can’t seem to say the words, though. I can’t seem to get my head around what I’m doing with this man. But I’m staying. We both know that I’m staying. “Are you going to feed me if I stay?”