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)
I did not want to jeopardize her happiness in any way. And though it hurt me, I accepted Beau’s decision not to sleep with me. I was grateful for it. He was trying to do right by his daughter.
I gathered my courage, pulling in a deep breath.
“Good morning, Beau,” I said, still standing awkwardly at the edge of the kitchen.
“Good morning, Hannah.” He didn’t turn, replying with his back to me. His voice was rough, deep. It caressed my skin.
I took another long breath before making a beeline for the coffee machine.
If I were going to deal with this, I needed copious amounts of caffeine.
But Beau, apparently, had the same idea, and we met at the machine, our fingers brushing as our hands outstretched at the same time.
His skin on mine was electric. Having his large body so close awoke my nerve endings with a current I hadn’t felt since last night. It was as if he’d unlocked a whole new level of sensation I didn’t know existed between us, within me.
This was not a man who hated me, whom I needed to hide from; this was a man who wanted me so viscerally that he had to create distance, both emotional and physical, because he didn’t trust himself.
He. Wanted. Me.
I repeated it over and over like a hymn.
I’d spent a lot of time in my head when I was growing up, a lot of time imagining I was like Matilda and could move things with my mind. Or that I was a forgotten witch who would come into her powers then be taken away to a world where I would have the ability to change things.
When I grew up, I put aside those childish dreams, though not wholly. I still dabbled with the modern magics of manifestation, crystals, and anything else that could help me believe I had some agency over my life.
But I’d long abandoned such practices since it hadn’t helped me any. Until now. Standing there at the coffee machine, it felt like I’d used some kind of power. That I had magicked this into my life. Beau Shaw wanting me.
Beau cleared his throat loudly. He hadn’t stepped back like I was contagious, like he had in the past. His body hadn’t even stiffened.
He remained where he was, hand outstretched, grazing mine, my arm seemingly suspended in space and time.
I reveled in the contact, at the shift in our relationship that was so jarring, so wondrous, that I couldn’t trust it. But I didn’t want to back away from it either, whatever promises I made to myself mere seconds ago.
“Banana, what are we doing today?” Clara’s loud voice fractured the moment.
“Let me,” Beau murmured quietly, nodding to the machine.
I nodded back, stepping away from him in a gesture that felt foreign, painful. Swallowing bile, I turned to the smiling face of the most precious girl in the world.
The little girl whom we were protecting by denying our baser urges. And looking at her clear, innocent, happy face, I couldn’t bring myself to regret that decision, not even a little bit.
So I did what I needed to do. I told her about our day. I accepted coffee from Beau then prepared myself for another miserable chapter in my life.
Not Beau hating me or me hating him.
But both of us wanting each other and pretending we didn’t.
I hadn’t thought I could recover from the life-changing night with Beau. The life-changing night where nothing actually happened.
He had told me all the things I’d wanted to hear, and he brought me as close to an orgasm as was humanly possible without physical touch. He made me feel like a woman. Worthy.
And then he decided not to act on his needs. His incredibly detailed and visceral needs.
So that was … it? I was supposed to go back to how things were twenty-four hours earlier, behaving like nothing had changed? Like he hadn’t permanently cracked the foundation beneath my feet? It didn’t seem tenable to live under the same roof as the man who wanted to fuck me until I screamed, let alone maintain professional distance, without some sort of implosion.
Yet we did. As usual, Clara worked as a buffer. Her presence made it impossible to act on my urges to run over to Beau and kiss him. Rip his clothes off with my bare hands, wrap my legs around his hips. I had many fantasies.
On the rare occasions when we were alone, Beau kept his distance. Sometimes.
Other times, he tortured me.
Like when I was getting a snack for Clara, who was in the living room building a magnet tile tower, and Beau had been in his home office doing … whatever Beau did.
I had opened the fridge and leaned forward when I felt it. Heat. Completely juxtaposing the chill from the fridge. I was grasping a yogurt when I turned, Beau’s body so close to mine that our clothes brushed. I tipped my head upward to glimpse his tight jaw underneath his sexy beard, my breath catching at the intensity in his gaze. His hands were twitching at his sides, as if he were having actual trouble keeping them there.