Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
One arm slipped around my waist to tug me against him at the same second he sent what I could only imagine was a death threat to the man behind me.
A statement made.
A claim.
Mine.
But I wasn’t. I couldn’t be.
That didn’t mean relief didn’t batter through me the moment he pulled me against the hard, rigid lines of his body.
Desire flamed and shivered through my insides. It was so obvious I was sure Theo could feel it pulse against his palm that he had splayed over the small of my back.
My senses were consumed by him.
Mossy woods and worn leather and the faint trace of sweet whiskey on his breath.
A sound akin to a growl rolled through his chest and up his throat as he spun me away from the stranger and wound his free hand into my hair.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing to me? Making me feel like I’m going to come out of my skin at the thought of another man touchin’ you?” Theo’s voice was a raw rasp, and he began to move with the music, guiding me deeper into the roiling mass.
“I think it’s you who’s destroying me.”
Blinding me.
Hypnotizing me.
The man a dark spell that had been cast.
He moved faster than I could process, and he shifted around so he was behind me.
Air heaved from my lungs at the sudden change in position, his hot, dangerous body plastered against my back.
He looped an arm around the front of my waist and the other was still wound in my hair. He tilted my head to the side and exposed my neck.
He pressed his lips against the sensitive flesh as he ground himself against my ass.
His cock was huge and hard.
Need skittered beneath my skin, and all the oxygen scattered from my lungs.
It was nothing like I’d felt when the stranger had done it.
Out of control, I rolled against him.
Wondering what it would be like to give into this.
This want that throbbed and pulsed and begged to be acknowledged.
“No, Piper, it’s you who’s got me,” he murmured up and down my neck. “You who’s driving me out of my fuckin’ mind. The way I can’t stop thinking about you. Way I can’t stop dreaming about you. What it would be like to disappear into the sanctuary of this body.”
He spun me again and pinned me to his front. He clutched tight to my hip, and his fierce jaw was clenched as if he were searching for restraint.
He angled in closer. His aura all around. “All while I want to pick apart your beautiful mind to discover everything that you are. And I can’t fuckin’ go there.”
His confession dumped a bucket of ice over my head, and I froze in his grasp.
Because we couldn’t. We absolutely couldn’t.
Stumbling back, I broke the connection. My breaths were raspy and my head was spinning. People still writhed and thrashed around us while I just stared up at this man who’d gained the power to demolish me.
“I think it’s time I went home,” I finally wheezed.
Theo hesitated, a battle waged in the depths of his eyes, before he gave a slight nod. “How’d you get here?”
“Uber.”
He dipped his head, and he started to turn as he said, “I’ll give you a ride.”
“I don’t—”
He whirled back around, snatched me by the wrist, and hauled me against him. My heart hammered and my stupid body sang.
I wanted him so badly I couldn’t think straight.
“Don’t argue with me about this, Pipes.” He inflected my grandmother’s nickname, dragging it out. Half taunt and half praise. “Not going to have you riding with some random stranger in the middle of the night.”
A random stranger would likely be a whole lot safer than him, but I sucked down the bedlam he incited and fought for a way to throw up a wall.
“Tell me you didn’t ride your motorcycle here in the zero-degree weather because I’m sure as hell not getting on the back of it if you did.”
I watched as Theo tried to keep the easiness in his expression, though there was no missing the way sadness slipped into it. “Already told you, the only person riding on the back of my bike belongs to me. Don’t worry yourself, sweetheart. My truck is sitting right outside.”
Somehow, I was sure the cruelty in his voice was directed at himself.
Tension clamored up and down my throat, and I forced out, “Fine.”
“That seems to be your favorite word when it comes to me.” His mouth was suddenly back to my ear. “And I can promise if I had you, it wouldn’t just be fine.”
I was held in it for a moment. In the million flashes of what that might be like, before I shook myself out of it.
One-Star. One-Star. One-Star.
I silently chanted it, trying to convince myself it would be a horrible, terrible experience.