Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
I didn’t know.
He jerks away from me, stumbling back a step.
I follow him, determined to...I don't know. Console him? Help him? Carry his pain for him? I don't know. I just know that seeing him in this kind of agony is unbearable.
“Don't,” he growls, throwing a hand up as if to ward me off.
I don't listen. I can't. His pain is my pain. It's been mine for seven fucking years. I need him to share it with me. That’s all I ever needed.
I push my way into his arms, wrapping them around him.
He stands rigid in my embrace for a long moment, his breath a harsh pant. And then he groans like he's dying. Before I can even process it, he has my back pressed to the wall, his hand around my throat. He’s shaking. So fucking hard. There’s nothing recognizable in his eyes, nothing human. It’s just pain and the flames of hell burning him alive.
I know exactly what that feels like. I’d kill to make it stop.
“Do it,” I whisper, my throat raw as I wrap my hand around his on my throat, trying to tighten his grip, to make him squeeze. “Fucking do it.” I’m not sure if I’m demanding or pleading.
"Do it!" I scream.
His grip tightens around my throat, cutting off my air supply.
I sob in ecstasy, clinging to him as spots swim in front of my eyes. For a moment—for one blissful fucking moment—everything falls silent. It doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s just quiet. Peaceful. Easy. My heart races, everything I feel narrowed to the thundering tightness in my chest.
And then Cade roars, releasing his grip.
We crash to the floor as if his legs can’t hold him up any longer.
“Goddammit, January,” he whispers, crawling on top of me. He pins my hips with his, ripping through my clothes.
I claw his back, biting him. Fighting him. Not because I want him to stop. I don’t. But because I want to feel fucking anything but grief.
His eyes blaze, staring down into mine as he smashes his lips to mine, swallowing my cries. He's feral, hitting me like a cyclone, and I'm caught in his whirlwind, willingly trapped in the eye of his storm.
His grief and anger are palpable, striking me relentlessly, yet I offer no resistance. It’s his torment that binds us together, our shared agony that makes us one.
I scream when he thrusts into me, his teeth clamped on my shoulder.
“Goddammit," he repeats through gritted teeth as he begins to move, fucking me like he can’t stop himself.
“Is this what you wanted? You want me to fucking use you like this?” he growls, pounding into me. He leans back, wrapping his hand around my throat again. “You want me to hurt you?”
He looks so fucking mad, but there’s a fragility in his eyes—a shattered vulnerability that makes him seem far more human than he ever has before.
“No,” I rasp. “I want you to make it stop.”
Anger fades from his eyes as understanding dawns. He gets it.
His fingers clamp around my throat again, not hard enough to cut off my blood supply this time, but just enough so I feel him there. Just enough to remind me that I’m alive.
I moan, my inner muscles clenching around him.
He fucks me like a machine, every stroke brutal, vicious, robbing me of breath, of thought. He gives me precisely what I asked for. Everything stops except him.
He goes on and on, fucking me until I’m sobbing beneath him, pleading for mercy. Until every thrust feels like it’s going to split me in two.
It feels so fucking good.
His touch on my skin is like wildfire, spreading heat throughout my body and setting my nerves aflame.
I don’t want it to end, but everything does eventually. Even heaven.
He rides his thumb against my clit, ruthlessly forcing me toward an orgasm as I try to fight it off. He refuses to let me, demanding that I give him what he wants.
And I do. Damn him, I do.
I come all over him, screaming his name.
“January!” he roars, following me over the edge into oblivion.
That place between life and death—the one where nothing exists except the two of us and the blood rushing in my ears—is perfect. For about two minutes, it’s perfect.
And then reality slowly begins to creep back in.
Cade plucks me up from the floor, pulling me onto his lap. I wrap myself around him, holding on tight. He clings like I’m the only thing in the world holding him together.
Maybe I am. I don't know.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
I’m not. I probably should be, but I’m not. I run my hands through his hair, sighing. “You have nothing to apologize for, Cade. We didn’t do anything I didn’t want.”
“I was rough with you. I…Christ, I had my fucking hand around your throat, January.”