Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Despite realizing how big of a mistake I’m making, I simply close my eyes. The arm I’ve wedged under my head doesn’t take long to fall asleep, but, despite knowing how much it’s going to ache when I get up, I don’t say a fucking word about the discomfort.
All of this is a huge fucking mistake. The biggest part is staying here behind her after realizing exactly how much I fucking like the warmth of her body touching mine.
Chapter 29
Ayla
I let myself sink into the comfort he offers, trying to force myself to imagine this being like one of the many romance novels I read before I was taken. Having no love life to speak of, I lived vicariously through the heroines in those novels.
Forced proximity, imagining there being only one bed, being trapped in a place with a very sexy man.
But this isn’t a love story. We aren’t stuck in a snowstorm or trapped on a broken elevator. We aren’t locked in a museum overnight.
We were both abducted, held captive, tortured in the most devious ways. We were broken, left in pieces.
There’s no happily ever after for either of us, especially not one that ends with us being together.
Knowing all of that doesn’t make me climb out of the bed and put a little distance between him and me.
I simply squeeze my eyes closed a little tighter and try to escape the reality of being trapped in another country because I don’t have the proper documentation to get back to Texas. I don’t want to focus on the burn at the back of my neck from the wound there. I don’t want to face the truth of any of it.
No, this isn’t a romance novel. I’d classify it as a tragedy. Something more likely written by Shakespeare or Poe. I don’t, however, think either of those men could imagine something so devious and monstrous.
He shifts slightly, the distance he started with last night having grown much smaller, bordering on nonexistent now.
I hate myself for the reaction my body has to his touching me.
There’s nothing sexual in the drape of his arm over me. He isn’t trying to cop a feel even though two of his fingers are dangerously close to the apex of my thighs.
I hate Cortez even more in this moment. I shouldn’t be capable of arousal any longer. I shouldn’t let thoughts of anything sexual infiltrate my mind, not after what I suffered.
It makes me wonder if they managed to train my body to want the things that happened to me.
I stiffen, shoving those thoughts away the second they enter my head.
I never wanted any of the stuff that happened to me. I wasn’t trained to orgasm or any bullshit like that, but I still managed it without even thinking about it with Nash.
My breathing stutters as I’m flooded with those memories.
It feels like more of a violation now, the way he pulled that response from my body. It was bad enough that he was commanded to hurt me in that way. But to make it seem like I liked it?
I swallow down the threat of tears, because, even as I think it, I know I’m lying to myself.
I saw the hatred for what he was doing in his eyes, but I also saw the way he reasoned with himself. He rolled his thumb against me for my benefit, not because he wanted to feel a little better about what he was doing. It was selfless not selfish.
It doesn’t make us soulmates. It just means that he’s skilled in the way he touches a woman. That thought shouldn’t send a zing of awareness through my body but denying it doesn’t make it any less true.
The connection I feel with him is about shared experiences and nothing else. Despite reading romance novels and letting myself imagine one day falling head over heels in love with someone determined to sweep me off my feet, I knew it to be unrealistic.
I mean, I literally got swept off my feet in that fucking parking lot and look where it landed me for the last four months.
The twitch of his fingers against my skin makes me stiffen even further. They caress the exposed skin on my stomach, and it makes me wonder if he’s just pretending to be asleep. The erection he’s pressing against me could be simple biology or it could be because he’s awake and expecting payment for comforting me last night when I had a nightmare.
His arm tightens his hold on me when I try to pull away, but it only lasts a second before he releases me.
“Fuck,” he grunts. “Sorry.”
I feel like I’m one step away from losing my mind when he rolls away from me. A second ago, I needed to escape him. It’s a testament to how seriously fucked up about all of this I am right now.