Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 33658 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 135(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33658 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 135(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
“Letting their imaginations run wild,” he whispers. “And I can hear you thinking, Layla. No, I didn’t kiss you just for a cover. I’ve wanted to kiss you since the day I met you in that library fourteen years ago. And now that I have…” His fingers trail my bottom lip. “I want more.” He slides his hand up my back, sensual and strong, soothing me and exciting me, adding to the heat of his words. “I want that date we never had, and I want to convince you I deserve to make love to you.”
I pant out yet another shocked breath, and my hand presses to his chest, his heartbeat racing beneath my palm.
“But not here,” he murmurs, “not in this hellhole of a place where you don’t belong.” His lips brush mine, silk against my skin that I feel in every part of me.
“Jensen,” I whisper, my fingers curling around the cotton of his T-shirt, shocked how much I want him under such dire circumstances.
“You should know…it drives me so wild when you say my name.”
I laugh at that confession for no good reason—nerves maybe. I want him so badly I might combust. I want him more than I will ever want ICE. “They’re going to put you to work, baby,” he says, serving me a dose of reality, not seduction. “You need to stockpile ICE from the lab every day. And the minute we have enough, and you either have an antidote or you believe you have what you need to make one, you tell me, and I’ll get us out of here.”
A sliver of hope slides inside me that we might escape, that we might save the city, maybe the world, from an ICE addiction. Yes. I want that. I want to make up for walking away in the past and allowing all of this to happen.
But hope is a drug almost as dangerous as ICE. I know that, as I held onto it during my treatments and saw it tease and taunt me, only to let me down. “Why do you think you can get us out of here?”
“I will get us out of here,” he vows, and his mouth closes over mine, the taste of him somehow calming my nerves even as it ignites a fire inside me. I can taste his passion, his lust, his absolute hunger for me, and it’s all my delicate control needs to break me.
Something ignites inside me—a wild, urgent burn for this man like nothing I’ve ever felt. I’m touching him all over, my palms absorbing the heat, clinging to him, and pressing my hands under his T-shirt—taut skin and rippling muscle beneath my palms—and I can’t get enough of him.
“Jensen,” I pant out, and somehow my legs are spread wide and his hips are between my thighs, the thick pulse of his arousal in the intimate V of my body.
He growls at his name on my lips. His hands slide under me, curving around my backside and molding me to him. “You’re killing me, woman. I said, not here, not now.”
“We don’t even know if we’ll have a tomorrow.”
His forehead rests against mine. “I only have so much willpower.”
“I don’t want you to have any.”
His fingers lace into my hair, tilting my gaze to his. “This isn’t how I wanted this to happen.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to go from being the walking dead to the living. I don’t know how long that lasts for me, Jensen. I might be the only one with cancer who’s taken that drug, and cancer is a more brutal, powerful beast than most understand. So, kiss me already, and stop trying to protect my virtue. I might not have tomorrow because I might be de—”
“Do not even say that. That’s not going to happen, but I’m not taking you like this, not when—”
“I won’t forgive you if you don’t,” I vow, and my hand slides between us, fingers tracing the hard line of his erection.
He groans and covers my hand with his, holds it there a moment, and leans in and kisses me until my toes curl. “We’ll compromise,” he whispers in my ear, nibbling the lobe.
“What does that mean?” I ask, sounding as breathless as I feel, his fingers brushing aside my shirt, his teeth scraping the delicate skin of my shoulder.
“Actions speak louder than words. I’ll show you what it means.” He shifts his body, and oh God, he’s on his knees on the floor, pushing my skirt along my thighs as he kisses a path upward, so intimately close to the place I want him most.
“Jensen,” I whisper, and it’s a plea and a demand, a wish and a want.
He kisses the silk of my panties. “Do you like the way I compromise?”
I swallow hard, warmth sliding through me, threatening to become fire. “Yes,” I manage. I think. I’m not sure I say it out loud.