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)
But still, there was a chance she could get sick. There was always a chance.
That small chance had taken up almost every corner of my brain as I got ready for the wedding, cursing the fucking suit I had to wear.
I’d tried to chase away the whispers of dread and focus on the present. Especially when the present was my daughter, twirling in a dress that probably cost as much as a used car—Calliope had it custom-made in France—while rehearsing her “role” for the wedding and generally floating on cloud nine.
She adored Calliope. She already considered her an aunt, and since she didn’t know its origins in suppressing women and concreting property deals, the pageantry of the wedding was romantic to her.
I’d let her romanticize it. Until the day some unworthy fuck tried to marry her.
And then, I’d walk her down the aisle.
Because she was going to have a future, and I’d be there for every moment of it. Or at least I’d try to be, not living in imagined pasts where the disease came back and my world was reduced to cinders.
Clara stopped spinning, her eyes widening in the direction of her door.
“Hannah, you look like a princess!” Clara declared, rushing forward.
I stared at Clara’s bed for five seconds, steeling myself. Hannah would be wearing a dress. It was a wedding. It was required. Hannah would look beautiful, because Hannah was beautiful.
I lived with her. Endured every day in which I had to subdue every one of my instincts when I looked at the curve of her ass, the swell of her perfect tits, her smile, her lips.
I could handle another day of Hannah looking pretty.
On that thought, I turned.
And I was proved wrong.
The second I laid eyes on her, my breath rushed from my lungs.
Hannah did not look merely pretty. She was the most stunning fucking thing I’d ever laid my eyes on. Sin encased in a yellow silk dress that draped over her curves like a waterfall. It melted over every peak, every valley as if it had been made for her. The slope of her shoulders drew my eyes. Her porcelain skin was littered with freckles from long afternoons in the sun with my daughter. Sculpted into the perfect shape from lifting Clara, exploring with her, and planting flowers in my garden.
The angles of her collarbones were perfect. I wanted to explore them with my fingertips. My lips.
Then the dip of the dress, descending low—way too fucking low—to reveal two of the most exquisite breasts to grace this earth. Round, perky.
Her hair was piled up on her head, tendrils escaping in soft curls, framing her long lashes. When our eyes met, her cheeks pinked, her plump lips parting on an audible inhale.
My daughter was in the room. Hence why I didn’t have a physical reaction to Hannah. In. That. Fucking. Dress.
“Doesn’t she look like Belle, Daddy?” Clara asked me.
She looked like she could be the face that launched a thousand ships. The body that would lay ruin to cities, empires.
No, she did not look merely like a Disney princess. She looked like she would ruin and redeem a man all in one.
But I could not say that to my five-year-old daughter. To my five-year-old daughter, she was a princess, complete with magic.
To me, she was my daughter’s nanny. A woman barely out of an abusive marriage. A woman who had a few months left with us before she went and lived the life she deserved.
To me, she was also magic.
It occurred to me just then that I’d been staring—almost fucking drooling—at Hannah for an extended period while both of my girls just stared at me.
I cleared my throat then used all of my willpower to look away from her and focus solely on my daughter.
“She does,” I agreed flatly, only for Clara’s sake. “Now, we’ve got to get a coat on you because it is much too cold to be showing that much skin.” I was speaking to Clara, but I wanted to yell it at Hannah.
Too much flawless, tempting skin on display. There would be men at the wedding. Single men. And if any had half a brain and a set of balls, they’d set their sights on Hannah. And there was nothing I could do about it. She wasn’t mine. I had no claim to her. No ring on her finger.
I let the feeling of Clara’s small hand in mine bring me back down to earth. Back to reality.
I walked out of the room without a second glance.
I couldn’t punch someone at my brother’s wedding.
And I definitely couldn’t punch ten men. Couldn’t make every man leering at Hannah bleed. First, because doing so would mean taking out most of the men in attendance—not counting Rowan, Kane, Kip, and Finn. They were all respectable men with their eyes focused on their own women.