Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 43879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
She tilts her head, studying my face.
No judgment. Just purity, honesty. A conduit right to my soul.
“We don’t doubt, remember?” she whispers.
My goddamn heart. It jumps all in. “Right,” I rasp, looking into her blue eyes and falling deeply, irrevocably, obsessively in love with Grace Foster. I’d die for her. I’d kill for her. Those facts write themselves in stone, never to be worn away. “My mother and father were dealers. They dealt right out of this apartment. Drugs, Grace.” Her eyes remain steady on mine, but I can see the shock in their depths. “One afternoon, I came home from school and there was a bunch of strangers in here. My parents were out somewhere, probably making a delivery. And when I walked in, I…someone was trying to convince Tulip to do a line of coke. She was eleven.” My head throbs at the memory. “I knew I had to do something or she’d end up dead. Or abused. I just knew. So I started fighting for cash.”
I can see her doing the math. “You told me Tulip is thirteen now. That means you started fighting when you were…sixteen?”
My nod is brief. “I didn’t want to uproot her completely. She was already going to lose her parents. So I put down a security deposit and first month’s rent for them on the other side of town.” I blow out a breath. “We’ve spent two years dodging social workers. Maybe I should let them help. But I can do it, Gracie. I can get her through high school with a sort of normal life. I won’t let her get pulled into some system.”
“Oh my God, North,” she breathes, cradling the side of my face. “You weren’t exaggerating when you said you had to grow up fast.”
“I know I can’t give her much. I can’t give you much—”
She sits up in my lap, sparks pluming in her eyes. “Look, I can tell…I could tell the second I walked in here that you’re worried about how I’ll see this apartment. You’re worried about money. But look at your selflessness. Your courage. Don’t you realize that character has so much more value than dollars and cents? Your character.”
“I know you believe that, beauty.” I slide my fingers into her hair, tugging her close so I can speak against her temple. “I know you want to believe that. But it gets old, not having options. Living hand to mouth. Character only takes a man so far.”
“Well it takes him all the way with me,” she whispers, slowly picking up one of my hands and placing it on her breast—and the surprise move makes my balls squeeze painfully. Robs me of breath. “And if you don’t think I value character over money, I’ll just have to prove it to you.”
“You don’t have to prove anything to me, Gracie.” I thumb her nipple, gritting my teeth when it quickens into a little bud. “Especially not on your back.”
“I know that,” she says shakily when I tug her top down slightly, just so I can the start of her areolas. “I’m going to get on my back for you of my own free will.”
“Keep talking like that and you’re going to lose your virginity on this couch.”
“When you touch me, it doesn’t matter where I am.”
“Fuck, baby,” I growl, overcome. Head spinning. I turn and throw her down on the cushions, coming down hard on top of her, moaning into her neck when she opens her knees, welcoming my hips into the cradle of her thighs. “You can’t wait, either. You need it.”
She tugs on the hem of my polo, pulling the garment over my head and rendering me shirtless. “This is you. Don’t wear nice shirts for me.”
My lips twitch. “Yes, Gracie.”
Before I can devour her hot fucking mouth, she stops me with a hand on my chest. “I was thinking of something on the drive over.” My need to get inside of this girl is momentarily eclipsed by the need to know everything happening in her head. Every goddamn thing. “You go to school with girls. Don’t you?”
Where is she going with this? “Yeah…it’s co-ed. Public school.”
Her blue eyes cloud over. “Well I don’t like that.”
A disbelieving breath puffs out of me. “Gracie, you’re…you can’t be jealous.”
She pouts at me.
And my dick gets so hard, I worry if I fuck her now, I won’t last two pumps.
This girl is possessive. Of me. I can’t believe it.
I love her putting a claim on me. But I don’t want her jealous. God, no. It burns me alive, her having the slightest bit of that green emotion swimming around in her beautiful head. Obviously I’m never going to stop being jealous over her. Every time a man glances in her direction, I’ll want to rip out his throat with my bare hands. But Gracie isn’t dealing with that shitty feeling on my watch. Not happening.