Total pages in book: 31
Estimated words: 29451 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 147(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29451 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 147(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
The door snicks shut.
Silence descends.
I set my purse down just inside the entrance. “There’s no need to talk abo—” Deke’s grasps me around the waist and swings me up onto a round marble table that sits in the center of the entryway. My denim clad butt lands with a whap, and I stare up at the country music legend in disbelief. In reproof. “How dare you manhandle me like that.”
“You want to slap me again? Go ahead. Get it out of your system.”
“God, you are such a jerk.”
“That is long established.” He plants his hands on either side of my hips, leaning in and examining my face, the way someone looks at an ice cream cone, deciding where to lick first. “When did you start that scrapbook?”
I squeeze my eyes closed. “Please don’t make me talk about this.”
“When, June Bug?”
I’m starting to think I’m so humiliated that it can’t get any worse. If so, then I don’t really have anything to lose, do I? I blow out a breath. “I was maybe…ten?”
“Jesus.”
“You asked!” I wet my lips, distracted briefly when he makes a rough sound, his gaze tracking the movement of my tongue. “I, um…finished it around my nineteenth birthday.”
His exhale is rocky. “You’ve been a fan all that time?”
“‘Fan’ might not be the right word,” I say, against my better judgment.
I am not going down this road, am I? This very revealing road. A road I wouldn’t even go down with a therapist, let alone the subject of my long-held and very unique infatuation.
“What do you mean?” Deke prompts me.
There’s something about the darkness of the penthouse, the lights glittering in the distance. His size and presence, those soulful eyes holding mine. Something insulated and dreamy. I find myself wanting to relinquish my secrets. “It’s kind of complicated, but…” I swallow, allowing my mind to drift back to the past. “My father left when I was little. I didn’t have a dad growing up and…when I saw you on television, so big and charismatic and male, you sort of became…a father figure to me.”
Deke raises a single eyebrow. Oh, he wasn’t expecting that.
Might as well keep going. You’ve already come this far. Plus, he’s seen the scrapbook. He knows my shame. “But when I got older and my body started to change around the beginning of high school…” I drop my voice to a whisper. “I started to find you attractive, too. You were my father figure, but I dreamed about you…touching me, too. It was confusing. That fact that your nickname is Daddy really didn’t help.”
“Sure didn’t.” He laughs without humor, his attention straying to my breasts, lines of strain appearing around the edges of his mouth. “Now, here you are. Twenty. And I’ve ruined any positive notion you ever had of me.”
“Afraid so,” I lie.
Because I might think he’s a terrible ogre now, but my body still thrills to his nearness. His powerful hips are wedged between my knees right now and his body has been slowly curving over mine during my confession, forcing me to lean back. It’s a struggle not to open my thighs wider, so I can feel the unholy press of his arousal against the seam of my jeans. “I don’t usually give a fuck what anyone thinks about me, June Bug,” Deke rasps, dropping his mouth close to mine, his breath moistening my lips. “For some reason, that ain’t the case with you.”
My lowest tummy muscles curl into knots. “You care what I think about you?”
His brows draw together. “Believe me, I’m not thrilled about that.”
I subdue a smile in the wake of his growl. “What’s your plan to change my perception of you?”
His right hand lifts from the table and delves into my hair, fisting the strands and tilting my head back with just enough force to make me gasp. “Oh, I’ve got a plan, all right,” he mutters, dragging his open mouth up the slope of my throat. “A terrible one.”
The friction of Deke’s lips on my skin causes my nipples to pebble painfully, my hips to shift anxiously on the smooth marble table. “W-what is it?”
He draws back with an intense expression, like he wants to stop himself from going any further but can’t, his barrel chest puffing up and down, fingers flexing in my hair. “I’m going to give you the first time you dreamed about with me.” He lifts me off the table and carries me through the glitzy penthouse, my thighs cinched around his waist. “I’m giving it to you the way you deserve it.”
SIX
Deke
Christ, what am I doing?
I should not be laying this young girl down in my bed and stripping off my shirt. Kicking off my boots. Getting ready to fuck her.
No. Not fuck.
Make love. An area in which I have zero expertise.
I’ve never made love in my goddamn life.