Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
“Where is she?” I demand.
“Who?”
“You know who.”
A flash of white and I know she’s smiling. I glance above me and then back to Liv, knowing her slut is waiting either in the service room, or up at the lantern. I wouldn’t have missed them if they’d come back down.
She sticks the foil back into her pocket and steps farther into the room. “About that dress, Clay,” she says. “You’re losing weight. I need to measure you again.”
The dress? She’s making it after all?
I don’t give a shit about the dress.
She closes the door behind her, and the music fades a little more, my hands shaking the closer she gets. I hear my breathing now.
“Hold out your arms,” she says in barely a whisper.
But I don’t. “How do you know I’m losing weight?”
She approaches, taking out her phone and opening an app. Her eyes meet mine, and while she doesn’t reply out loud, I read it in her eyes. She knows my body.
A thrill courses through me, and I dip my head a little, wanting her mouth only a few inches away. But I hold back.
I hadn’t been trying to lose weight. I’d just…forgotten to eat. I’d spent more time at the gym the past week. I was waking earlier and staying up later, my head preoccupied.
She forces my arms wide, ready to use her phone and some kind of measuring app, I guess, but I push her hand away. “Who is she?”
“A friend.”
“Someone you’ve been with before?”
“Yes.”
My chest caves, and my stomach knots. Tears burn my eyes. Fuck. I don’t know what’s worse—Martelle or someone she has a history with.
Definitely someone she has a history with. It’s a reminder that she had a life before me. That there are other people who can make her happy.
What the hell’s happening? I see Callum talking to girls. Girls looking at him. I don’t give a shit. In fact, it relieves me a little to see him preoccupied, his attention off of me.
With Liv, I could stab someone, because there’s nothing I can do to stop the past. That girl above us has kissed Liv. Touched her. Liv was alone with her, doing things and tasting and biting and not thinking about me at all. Ugh…
I grab her waist and yank her in. She shoves me off, growling, but I grab her again. “I’m sorry I drove past you last weekend,” I whisper over her lips.
I’m sorry, okay?
She stills, her hands paused, about to push me off, but she doesn’t.
“You didn’t deserve that,” I tell her. “I wanted you there more than anything.”
“Would you have done anything differently?” she asks.
I stare into her eyes, her nose an inch from mine. The lie sits on the tip of my tongue. Yes. I would’ve told them I’m tired, and I’m going home and to find their own rides. Then, I’d swing around the corner, risk being seen, and pick you up. How easy would that have been?
But I know I’d be scared. They were right there, watching me.
She takes my face in her hands, not blinking once. “You know what I want?” She hardens her voice. “For you to stop lying to me.”
She backs me into the table, and I reach back, gripping it with my hands to steady myself.
“I don’t need you to be soft,” she says. “And I don’t need to be seduced. You wanna fuck, because it feels good, right?”
No, I…
But she shakes me. “Right?”
“Yes,” I gasp. “Yes, it felt good.”
“Because I get you off.”
“N—”
“Right?” she grits out.
I nod. “Yes.”
She leans into me, pushing me onto the tabletop. The pulse in my clit thrums like a jackhammer as she positions herself between my thighs and sets her palms on the table at my sides, looking down at me.
“Liv…”
“Because I’m safe, right?” Her tone is an icy bite. “The dirty Catholic girl cliché you’ll tell your husband about someday?”
I can’t swallow. I touch her neck, holding it in both hands and caressing her jaw and throat with my thumbs.
“Right?” she asks.
Tears sting my eyes, and I hate this. I hate that I did this to her.
“Right,” I whisper, but the sob in my throat says the opposite, and I know she hears it. “Like I would ever love you.”
“You would never.”
I shake my head.
“I’m convenient and quiet,” she tells me, “because you’re not a slut or a whore if you’re doing it with a girl one night during a naughty sleepover, right?”
I want to tell her she means so much more to me, but she and I both know whatever happens between us won’t last.
So I play along. “No one will ever know I’ve been touched,” I tell her.
My future husband will never know what really turns me on.
But for now, I’m hers. “Open your camera,” I say.
She stares at me.
I take her phone out of her hand, still unlocked, and open her camera app. Turning it to selfie mode, I switch it to video and put it out to the side, fitting us both in the frame. She looks into the camera and I meet her eyes before hitting record. Slowly, I dip my head into her neck.