Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 143842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 719(@200wpm)___ 575(@250wpm)___ 479(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 143842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 719(@200wpm)___ 575(@250wpm)___ 479(@300wpm)
Did he remember?
Did he know?
“You feel that, Hailey? Just my fingers and you’re lighting up like the morning. A little fire that’s been begging to burn.”
“Cody.”
He drove his fingers faster, that golden gaze locked on my face, refusing to look away.
Bliss gathered, a rising tide in the cab. A tornado erupting from the bottom of the sea. A whorl of energy. An unfurling of need.
My fingers sank into his shoulders as I levitated beneath the power of his touch, sure I was going to drift away, lost to the flood. “Cody.”
“Do you feel it, Hailey? Do you get it yet? How I see you? How gorgeous you are, inside and out? Do you know how bad I’ve been dyin’ to touch everything that you are? All this beauty that’s been tapped? Let go, darlin’, the way you’ve been needing to.”
His praise swarmed me, the gruff of his voice spurring me farther, as if he truly knew how badly I needed to hear it. The way I’d been living without it for so long. In a darkness where I’d remained hidden. He pushed up higher, hovering right over me as he pumped deeper, his thumb working magic, but I thought it might have been the expression on his face that threw me over. His words tipping me right over the edge.
“That’s right, Shortcake. Let me feel you come all over my fingers. Let me hold your pleasure…just this once.”
Ecstasy splintered me apart.
A shockwave that barreled through my body.
I writhed and jerked as sensation raced, every nerve ending firing and alive.
Wave after crashing wave.
Cody stroked his fingers in time, leading me through, and I thought the orgasm might go on forever as he eked out every drop of pleasure that he could coax from me.
Ridge after rising ridge.
Trembles rocked me, and I shivered as the intensity flickered then ebbed.
Cody’s jaw was clenched the whole time, his body rigid, though his eyes went soft while I sat there panting and trying to catch my breath.
“I was right…it was the exact same expression when you come. Don’t think I’ve seen anything so beautiful as that.”
“I already told you that you’re the beautiful one.”
My fingers quivered with the need to trace every rugged, handsome line of his face.
Commit him to memory.
So I gave in and let my fingertips trail the contours and lines of restraint that hardened his stony features, before my hand glided down his neck and over his chest until I was cupping him through his jeans.
The man so big.
Heavy and hard.
“Shortcake,” he warned, his stomach jolting as I stroked him over the fabric.
“You got to touch me…it’s only fair.”
A growl got free of him, and harsh rasps panted from his mouth as I jacked him over his jeans. He burrowed his face in my neck, groaning before he forced himself back, his hand hot as he curled it around my wrist to stop me.
Only he lifted it between us, hesitation brimming from him before he brought the inside of my wrist to his lips.
A buzz burned at the connection.
So damned sweet that I thought my chest would cave.
And God, I had the urge to beg him to kiss me again. To push this farther. For him to take me right there.
But I think we both somehow knew where that would lead. This already felt far more significant than it was supposed to. Like merging spirits and twining hearts.
He affirmed it when he said, “You touch me like that, and I promise, we aren’t going to be friends tomorrow.”
That was all it took for the guilt I’d tried to suppress to spring up from the recesses of my mind, from the dark corners where grief lived. For a beat, I squeezed my eyes closed like I could protect myself from it, and I silently whispered, Oh, God, please forgive me, to that ghost that lingered in my head.
It was wrong, doing this. Letting him touch me this way. Leave it to Karma that it would feel so damned good.
Punishment.
A tease.
Everything that I couldn’t have.
Sitting back on his knees, Cody readjusted my dress and pulled it down to cover my thighs.
I still felt wholly exposed.
He canted me one of those easygoing grins like he might be immune to the energy that crackled in the cab. “Let’s get you inside, Shortcake. It’s late, and I’m betting that sweet little Button is going to have you up at the crack of dawn.”
Then he pushed away, popping open his door and sliding out. He strode all kinds of casual around the front of the truck, while I was barely able to get my body to cooperate enough to sit upright by the time he swung open my door.
Confounded.
Body weak and sluggish while my mind started to spin.
He held out the same hand that he’d just touched me with, and the man had the audacity to wink.