Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 170878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 170878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
The rough timbre of his voice raised goose bumps along my flesh. The sensible part of me screamed to listen to him before I did something foolish.
“Did you have sex with her?” I somehow summoned the courage to ask.
So I wasn’t going to do something foolish, I was going to say something foolish.
Beau recoiled as if I’d struck him. Granted, it was an out-of-left-field question that thoroughly exceeded all the parameters of appropriate conversation to have with the man who employed you to nanny his daughter.
“That’s none of your business.” Again, his tone was harsh, aggressive, but in the soft light of the room, both of us in the shadows, it didn’t scare me.
It excited me.
Beau walked over to the console table, dropping his keys with a clatter before taking his wallet out of his back pocket.
Having been possessed by something wanton and possibly unhinged, I moved to where he had shrugged off his jacket. He didn’t realize how close I was until he turned around.
I could smell him. And her. Her perfume was cloying with its elegance and obvious expense.
I didn’t wear perfume. Couldn’t afford the indulgence. I used natural, vanilla-scented body cream. Although Beau didn’t explicitly police my personal care products, I cared about Clara being exposed to possible fragrance irritants.
“Hannah.” His voice was deeper, rougher, his eyes skirting over my tank top, my bare legs. “Go the fuck to bed.”
Beau always kept a certain control with me. Each word was measured, even if it was harsh. His glowers were calculated. Even his movements seemed almost robotic, like he thought carefully about where he’d put his body when I was around.
Yet there was no control in his voice then. I could hear it fraying, and not because he was irritated. Because he was turned on. Of that I was certain. The looks he’d given me, the intensity between us, the flicker of his eyes on my skin that flared in hunger for a split second. Where I’d previously been shy, self-deprecating, I was suddenly imbued with a confidence I hadn’t known I was capable of.
A confidence given to me by Beau.
The way he’d looked at me at the wedding gave me all the courage I needed.
“I’ll go to bed.” I gulped down my nerves. “If you tell me you didn’t have sex with her.” I stepped forward, my shaking fingers sliding down the buttons of his shirt. “If I can go to your bed.”
I felt as if I were suspended on the ceiling, watching myself say these words.
Who was this person? I didn’t hate her, but she terrified me. She was giving in to all my desires. My heartbeat was becoming painful, my body shaking with fear. With need. A need I’d been suppressing, denying, no longer able to be stifled.
Beau let out a harsh breath, his body going stock-still as my fingers ascended the buttons of his shirt, brushing where it exposed the smooth column of his muscled neck, grazing over the rough hair of his beard. I smelled the oil he used in it tonight—vanilla and spice. Deep and pleasing.
I tilted my head upward, the TV flashing at the perfect moment to catch the twitch of his iron jaw beneath his beard, his wild stormy eyes, and a vein pulsing in his neck.
“I hope you didn’t fuck her,” I whispered, the harsh word tasting strange in my mouth. I didn’t curse because, again, it made me like my mother. Also, I worked with a small child whose brain was like a sponge.
But I liked the sharpness of the word. My hand crept up to the column of his neck, brushing his Adam’s apple as he visibly swallowed. “I want you to fuck me.”
The second I got the words out of my mouth, Beau clasped my shoulders tightly, though not enough to hurt me. A man with hands that large, with that much obvious strength, could bruise someone of my stature by accident. I knew all too well how easily a man could hurt a woman. And I also knew that Beau would never hurt me.
I thought he was gripping me like that to push me away, my stomach sinking in embarrassment and biting rejection.
But then my back hit the wall, his body pressing into mine. He lay his palms flat, caging me in.
His breath came in rough pants as his eyes consumed me with a hunger that had only been hinted at in the glances I’d caught. Clearly, I hadn’t experienced the pure breadth of it. It was like viewing an iceberg underneath the surface, seeing his desire stripped away from whatever barriers he’d created. It took my breath away. Never had anyone looked at me with such naked need.
“Hannah.” The way he uttered my name was a warning, a prayer, a term of endearment, a four-letter word, a threat … all in one.