Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
In any case, I usually help Haven around the kitchen and the house. I work with her in her little vegetable garden and help out with the chicken coop and stuff like that. And I actually kinda like it. Even though I grew up at the Turner ranch, I never did things like that. Maybe because I was busy hiding and cowering and nursing my mother back to health, sometimes myself. But here at Rawhide, everything feels… so bright and positive. So safe that I can finally enjoy things. Live my life.
How ironic that I’m able to do that while being their captive.
“Anyway, it’s in the ATV. So I’m just going to leave it for you guys and go,” I finish, breaking my thoughts and taking a step back.
But that’s the only step I get to take because he grabs my wrist and pulls me toward him. And he does it so hard that I go crashing against his chest, my curves molding themselves around his hard, bare torso so easily, without much resistance.
I push away from him, though. “Let me go.”
He brings his arm around my waist at that, keeping me pinned to him. “No.”
“Arsen, I—”
“You hurtin’?” he rasps, looking into my eyes.
My heart skips a beat, and I drop my eyes down to the triangle of his throat. “No.”
He dips his face down, his hat casting a shadow on both of us, trying to snag back my gaze. “You sure?”
I shift on my feet, blushing. “Y-yes. Can you stop… looking at me when you talk about it?”
“Another one,” he responds, letting my wrist go and using that hand to pull my head back and making me look into his eyes. “You don’t need to look at anything else but me when I’m around.”
“That’s absurd.”
“That’s the rule.”
I frown and bring us back to the topic. “It’s almost over now anyway.”
“Tomorrow, yeah?”
“I can’t believe you remember.”
“When you get off the rag.” He completes the sentence that I wasn’t trying to. “Yeah, I remember.”
God, my cheeks are burning now, and I can’t help but grumble, “Don’t call it that. And it’s not as if that kept you… away from me.”
I know it sounds like I’m complaining, but I’m not. After my initial reluctance about having sex while on my period, I totally got on board with it. Probably because it involved having sex in the bathtub, which he specifically put in that barn for me. I actually saw him haul that thing up the stairs with the help of a couple of ranch hands the first day my period started and then, for the past four days, I’ve been watching him fill that tub with hot water that, again, he hauls up himself in a bucket.
All because I woke up with cramps one morning and told him my periods are brutal.
The only way I can operate is if I’m pumped full of drugs and I have a hot water bottle at all times. He got me both. While also becoming my personal heater that hugged me when we slept while massaging my lower tummy, telling me all the stories about how he grew up on the ranch, about the time when he broke his arm trying to ride a bronc, which was when his dad took him aside and told him he either needed to stay away from an unbroken horse or learn how to break one. He decided to learn.
Heaven.
His voice, his arms, his back and tummy massages. Even his orgasms because they help get the cramps out. Oh, and let’s not forget all the junk food he stocked up on, candies and M&Ms and cupcakes. So again, I’m not complaining. It’s just that does he really have to talk about it when everyone’s so close and I’m already so turned on?
“Told you a little blood won’t keep me off your pussy,” he says, breaking into my thoughts.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Can I go now?”
“Not until you tell me how to fix it.”
“Fix what?”
“Got you mad, didn’t I? Tell me how to fix it.”
I hold on to my ire, even if it’s hard when he’s looking at me like that, all molten eyes, lopsided smiles. “One of these days, you need to ditch this husband thing and come up with your own ideas on how to fix things.”
“Yeah, one day. But until then, how about my wife teaches me. She’s the straight-A student between the two of us.”
I shake my head at him, my lips twitching. “First, compliment my dress and say it’s pretty. You’re the one who bought it.”
I still can’t believe that he did that. That he actually went shopping for me. In a mall. Where there were other people.
I honestly didn’t breathe for several seconds when he dumped all his purchases on our bed in the barn the following day. And told me he was going to burn all the clothes Haven got for me because I was allowed to wear only these dresses. I couldn’t stop thinking about how excruciating it must have been for him. To be around so many people when he can’t bear to attend a bonfire on his own ranch.