Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 135382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
Did she have to stop the rest of her damn life forever because she’d made a mistake? Could she not have one night of respite? One night where she got the guy?
Deep down she knew she wasn’t thinking about just one night. Deep down she knew she was crazy about Brody Carter and this was her play.
“Steph, why the hell are you dressed like that?” The question came out of his mouth on a breathless huff, as though he’d just figured out she was half naked in his bedroom. “You shouldn’t be here.”
But the words were said softly, not with any force of will and not with the abject horror she’d been worried about. He hadn’t moved away. He’d walked into the room, his big body taking up so much space she could practically feel the heat rolling off him. He’d closed the door and now it was just the two of them.
“I want to be here.” There was no place on earth she would rather be. She’d dreamed about being right here since the moment Liam O’Donnell had introduced her to him. He’d brought Brody with him and they’d sat in a café in Freetown, discussing the mission ahead. She’d known it would be dangerous, but all she’d been able to think about was how amazing the man across the table was.
Over the months he’d become her friend, her protector, her pretend lover, but every single time she thought he would make their ruse into reality, he would turn away.
She couldn’t let him turn away tonight. It was her last chance. She could let it slip away or she could reach out for it and have at least one sweet memory.
A shuddering sigh left his chest and she saw the way his hand fisted at his side, as though he didn’t trust himself not to reach out and touch her. His jaw tightened and she watched him win the war. “No. I’m not good enough for you, luv. I’ve known it for a long time. Why do you think I haven’t tried to climb into your bed?”
“Because you don’t want me.” She didn’t think so, but she needed to hear it from him. If he told her he didn’t, she would be able to walk away. She would be humiliated, but she would have tried.
He was worth trying for. Somewhere along the way he’d decided he was a grunt soldier, pure cannon fodder, but she’d seen another side of the man.
The side she’d fallen in love with. The side that might make all the pain she’d been through worth it. The side that might bring her back to life.
“It ain’t that, and you know it.” He couldn’t seem to look at her. His eyes went to the floor. “I’m not the man for you. You need someone better. Someone more on your level.”
She wasn’t sure what level he was talking about. She ran a rough-and-tumble clinic in a place that mostly made the news for its outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever. If she had more than a hundred dollars in her bank account, she counted it as a win. “Shouldn’t I be the one to make that decision?”
“Not if you’re not smart enough to make the right decision,” he replied. “Someone’s got to look out for you. You won’t listen to your nurses and your head of security is a washed-up drunk. I’m going to hire someone else before I leave.”
She couldn’t argue with anything he’d said. “If you’re leaving then it doesn’t matter if we spend the night together.”
“It does because you’re not doing this for sex. You’re doing it because you think it might change my mind about staying here or about taking you with me when I leave, but I won’t. I won’t do that to you. Stephanie, you’re brilliant. You need to be back in the States, learning new techniques and charging a fortune for your expertise. You’re going to die out here.”
She might, but it would be okay. She’d always known that. Now that her mother was gone, she didn’t have any reason to go back to the States. It was better that she stay here where she was needed, where she could do the good work she’d promised to do.
Where she could eternally punish herself.
He took a step back and she thought he would leave. He would pick up his pack and she wouldn’t see him again.
One last desperate plea. That was all she had left. She happened to know that he spoke another language, a private one that eased him and softened his soul.
Stephanie dropped to her knees, hoping that weeks of practice had perfected her form. Knees wide, spine straight, head down, and palms up on her thighs. The offering of a submissive to her chosen Dom.
Or at least that was how the books of Serena Dean-Miles explained it. Avery had sent them to her along with a few books by Serena’s friends. She’d looked at the salacious covers and rolled her eyes. She’d wanted fiction, not porn.