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)
“What do you think happened?” he asks in return.
I clench my teeth. “I don’t know; you tell me.” Before he can answer, I continue, “And if you lie to me again, I’ll lose it, okay? I’ll fucking lose my shit.”
He waits a beat to answer. “I left.”
“Left.”
“For a little bit.”
“Where?”
Again, he takes a second to reply. “To find someone.”
I’m confused. I don’t really understand what he means, but then it hits me, and my body goes tight. “You… you went to find a g-girl?”
“Yeah.”
My heart clenches so hard, so viciously, that I can’t even pretend it’s not jealousy. Which is insane on a whole ’nother level that I don’t want to analyze right now. Especially when I blurt out, “On our wedding night?”
I can’t believe I said that. What is wrong with me?
“It was, wasn’t it,” he says, and I swear he feels closer, and his words sound almost tender.
“I-I shouldn’t have said that,” I stutter, stopping myself from rubbing my arms and chasing away the goose bumps at his voice.
“Didn’t think you’d want my hands on you, though.”
“I don’t.” Then, to emphasize, I add, “I absolutely do not want your filthy criminal cowboy hands on me.”
“So it’s a good thing I found someone, isn’t it?”
I clutch my dress, my wedding dress, my stomach bottoming out. “You did?”
“Uh-huh. Meaning, you’re safe from me, from my hands.”
“I’m not safe with you,” I say, flinching at his “safe,” my chest still tight. “I’m never safe with you; and how do I even know that you didn’t?”
“I didn’t what?”
“T-touch me.”
Again, I can’t believe I said that, that I went there. I don’t know what’s happening, why I’m saying all the wrong things. So I go to take it back. I also go to turn around, because this is not helping. Him so close, whispering things; and me, not looking at him, just listening to his words.
It feels like before.
Like when I’d read his letters in my room, lying in my bed, and imagine him saying the words out loud to me. So this is messing with me, with my head.
But before I can do any of that, he whispers, directly in my ear, “Maybe I did.”
And I freeze. “What?”
“Touch you.”
“You…”
“And maybe I did find someone,” he says, unbothered by my loud breaths, heaving chest. “She was willing. No, she wanted it. She knew how to dance too, knew how to writhe and grind and twist on my lap like the top-notch stripper she was. But for some reason, she wasn’t doing it for me. So I came back. I raced back to the motel and as soon as I saw you on the bed, unaware and sleeping, I realized why.”
“Why what?”
“I realized”—he moves closer, and I swear to God I feel him pouring his words down my ear—“she wasn’t the one I wanted. I wanted someone else.”
I close my eyes because I know what he’s going to say. And I need to brace for it. I need to brace for his lies.
“I wanted a girl with hair like the sun and eyes like the sky. Who smells like the buttercups that grow on my ranch.”
My eyes pop open. “B-buttercups.”
He hums. “That smell sweet like roses and tart like citrus.”
“I…” I swallow thickly, my eyes unfocused. “I smell like t-that?”
“Yeah. It’s hard to breathe around you.”
“I-It is?”
“It’s hard to ride in the car with you.”
I shake my head. “I… I didn’t—”
“It’s hard,” he whispers again.
I swallow, unable to say anything.
“Makes me wanna throw you in the trunk just so I don’t have to breathe you in.”
I flinch. “That’s—”
“So maybe when I came back, all hard up and turned on, and found you in the bed, I did touch you.” Then, “Like I always told you I would.”
I go still.
“You remember that, don’t you?” he goes on.
I do. I remember it from one of his letters. I’ve read that one so many times now that I can recite the words with my eyes closed. I know exactly where on the page that sentence is, the one where he talks about touching me.
I know.
But I shake my head again. “Don’t. Don’t talk about that.”
“How I said,” he goes on, “that if I ever saw you, I’d have to put my filthy criminal cowboy hands on you. Because I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. And I wouldn’t just touch you. I’d grab you and grope you and I’d do it so fucking hard”—I flinch at the way he says it—“that I’d brand you with my mark.”
There’s that word again. And God, something is seriously wrong with me because I have to clench my thighs at it. I have to clench my tummy just at the thought of his brand on me.
“I’d brand your skin that I always knew would be like silk. But you wanna know what the kicker is?”