Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
The belief is pulled out from beneath me when I carefully pry open the door so I don’t wake JR. Wind gusts into the cabin so fast, the door and I are sent flying backward. I sail through the air like a leaf on a hot summer’s day, my breezy ride only ending when I crash into a solid surface. It’s hard, hairy, and solely responsible for the budding of my nipples.
Even when my body should be focusing on anything but my libido, it can intuit the difference between the fur of a dead animal and a wild beast of a man in the buff—even more so when JR’s body responds to my almost nakedness in the same manner.
He’s hard, but regretfully, so are his facial features, which forces me to blurt out, “I swear on my nanna’s grave that I wasn’t trying to escape. I was gathering kindling for the fire.”
JR’s heart booms wildly against my chest when he drops his eyes to mine. I’m wide-eyed and open-mouthed, but not even the sharp cut of my jaw from my angled head to peer back at him can hide my puckered nipples from his rapacious gaze. “If I weren’t, would I really try to flee in only a shirt? It’s cold in here, let alone out there.” I nudge my head to the snowy grounds outside, hopeful he’ll buy my act that my puckered nipples are from the below-freezing temperatures. “That’s why I was fetching firewood.”
It feels like minutes pass before his grunt adds to the tension bristling between us, but it isn’t even seconds. When he scoops me into his arms and marches me back to bed, I’m terrified he doesn’t believe me.
My worries are unfounded when he sets me down nowhere close to the restraints that circled my wrist my first twenty-four hours here. After tossing a shirt over his bare chest and tugging on a pair of sweatpants, he heads out the open doorway that makes it seem as if the cabin is a refrigerator.
I grin like a love-sick idiot when his return sees numerous wedges of dry wood being placed onto the dwindling fire. When his eyes stray my way like he’s seeking my approval, I briefly nod while praising, “That’s great. Thank you.”
With it still dark and the icy conditions begging for more coverage for my bare legs, I slip beneath three layers of deer skin before hunkering down low. JR kicked the door closed after a quick intermission outside, but it will take more than chunks of lumber to combat the winds whipping up through the cracks in the floorboards.
“Are you warm down there?” I ask JR through clattering teeth several minutes later, confident the rug he’s resting on isn’t protecting his body from the bitter temperatures. The white breaths parting his lips assure me of this, not to mention the goosebumps prickling almost every inch of his torso. Just like Cedric, JR sleeps shirtless. “Because if you’re not, you can share the bed with me.”
The fact he already isn’t shocks me. I assumed we had shared the bed every night the past five nights. Cedric didn’t care how upset I was. He’d never sleep on the floor. When his mother insulted my Korean heritage last Fourth of July, I made Cedric take me to a hotel.
With his parents living in a popular area of the country, the hotel only had a room with one bed. Since Cedric didn’t stand up for me, I told him he either drives back to his parents’ house or sleeps on the floor. When I came out of the bathroom after taking a long shower with the hope it would calm me down, he was in my bed, snuggled under the blankets, and he wasn’t budging no matter what I said.
With him being far too big and wide for me to move, I ended up sleeping on the couch. I was certain that was the beginning of the end for us, but when he filled my office with dozens of roses, I let another red flag slip by me.
It was stupid of me to do, but what girl doesn’t want to believe they’re someone’s number one? He made his mother apologize, and we moved on with our lives until he stuffed up again without any concern that I told him his last mistake would be his last.
My fiancé didn’t respect me enough to sleep on a plush carpeted floor so my opinions were valued, yet a man I barely know combatted a blizzard to explain himself in a way I could understand.
As I said before, JR’s ideas of protectiveness are warped, but I’ll never admit they’re unwanted. It feels nice to be wanted, so much so, I extend my olive branch so perversely, he’ll have no choice but to accept it. “Please come up. You must be freezing.”