Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
They breathed together, this feeling of wonder replacing the pleasure that had just spread through her limbs. Okay, so that was sex. She let out a small laugh, and he lifted his head, and when he saw the expression on her face, he smiled too. “Yeah,” he said, and that was all. His smile grew and so did hers.
Afterward, once they’d taken a shower together and soaped each other’s skin, she lay in his arms, reveling in the afterglow that still hadn’t faded. “I meant what I said earlier,” she told him, tilting her head. “I should have seen you back then. If I had—”
He put his finger to her lips. “Don’t do that, Cami. Things work out the way they’re supposed to.”
She nodded. She believed that, too, she supposed. Because here he was. And Cyrus too . . . both felt like miracles. Things that she’d given up had been brought back to her, and she meant to cherish them. She used a finger to circle the small disc of his nipple and watched it pucker.
“So, the hitchhiker thing you mentioned,” he said.
“What?” She’d talked about a hitchhiker?
“A little earlier, you told me, even if I was a random hitchhiker on the road, you’d find me sexy.” When she looked up at him, she saw the corner of his mouth tremble.
She couldn’t help the answering smile. “Oh, that.” It wasn’t exactly how she’d said it, at least from what was now a hazy memory of her confession by the front door, her heart in her throat. But she could see he was teasing her, and she liked seeing him this way—confident and flirtatious. She raised her brows. “What about it?”
“Is that like a fantasy?”
“How’d you know?”
“I think you told me.”
She laughed. “How far are you headed, mister?”
He flipped her over suddenly, making her screech out a small laugh. “Far, far away. It’s gonna take a while to get there.”
She laughed against his mouth as his lips claimed hers, and then they did it all again. It was even better the second time.
They slept, and they woke. Deep in the night, she told him about the crime she’d endured, not just the overview, but the details. She described her desperate fear as she used the small mirror to flash a light at Mrs. Willoughby, and about the drugs that had been forced on her, and finally, the assault. He held her as it all came out, and though it was agonizing to recall, she also found strength in the retelling. Neither the words nor the memories destroyed her, and it was another victory she owned.
In the morning when she woke, Cami felt changed. Brand new. Somewhere in the night, she’d claimed complete triumph over her past.
And wonderful, patient, and strong Rex Lowe had helped that happen.
Chapter Forty-Six
Posey watched spring burst forth, ripe with life and possibility outside, even if inside, her father continued to wither.
She walked the familiar halls of her same family estate, but she felt different—changed inside. She’d begun to realize that not all questions could be answered, and even more shockingly, she’d started to believe that that was as it should be.
“A software upgrade,” her father said with a weak laugh from the hospital bed that had been brought into his primary suite and where he now spent the majority of his time. Then he gave her cheek a soft pinch the way he’d done when she was only a child. Posey leaned into his hand. He was jokingly referring to Posey’s oft-expressed observation that others saw her as a computer, but Posey felt less and less like a machine by the day. It wasn’t only Tatum’s effect on her rationality; it was the lump that seemed to lodge in her throat each time she came to her father’s room and saw his diminished capacity. She knew of no machine that moved between wonder and pain in quite such a way.
In late March, her father called both her and Anton to his bedside, where he lay propped on a stack of pillows. His hands, bony and frail, were splayed atop a folder on his lap.
Posey took the chair on one side of his bed, and Anton sat on the opposite side, and they each took one of his hands in theirs. Her father’s lips tilted slowly in an expression that was simultaneously a smile and a grimace. Their father had never been one to mince words, and that remained true at the hour of his death. “I’ve left the family business to Josephine. The estate and all assets are to be split between you both.”
“You what?” Anton hissed, dropping their father’s hand and rising from his chair to loom over the man who’d raised him.
“She’s the appropriate choice to run the Kiss enterprise,” their father said. “It is my wish, and it’s already done. My will and testament is signed and filed with my lawyers.”