Total pages in book: 227
Estimated words: 220940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1105(@200wpm)___ 884(@250wpm)___ 736(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 220940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1105(@200wpm)___ 884(@250wpm)___ 736(@300wpm)
“What,” I breathe, fighting to maintain my steady head. Is he joking? “So you can fuck me like one of your whores?”
“No, Pearl,” he grates, jaw rolling. Angry. “So I can fuck you like you’re mine.”
I lose my breath, taking another step back. Away from him. “But I’m not yours.”
“Oh, you’re mine.” He takes my arm, yanking me into his chest.
“Brad, stop it.” I cannot let this happen. I cannot be with a man who turns to another woman when he’s in a mindfuck.
He tips my chin up, scanning my face. “Look at me.”
“No.” I wrench my face from his hold. “I will not give myself to you.”
“You already did, Pearl,” he whispers, rolling his hips into my tummy, showing me his condition. I grit my teeth and shut off my sense of smell. “Which means you now belong to me.”
My mouth falls open, shocked, disgusted. “And in between your indecisiveness—I’m yours, I’m not, you want me, you don’t—I have to accept you’ll fuck a few whores in the presidential suite of the Four Seasons while high on cocaine and Scotch?” I’m suddenly outraged. Suddenly thinking fucking straight. I do not want this man. “Get the fuck out of the elevator,” I yell. “Get the fuck away from me! You’re no better than your father!”
He flinches, injured. “God damn you, woman,” he hisses, grabbing me.
“Get off!” I fight him, tussling in his hold, but I’m no match for him. He throws me over his shoulder. “Brad!”
“Shut the fuck up, Pearl.” He marches back to the room and kicks the door shut, carrying me through the suite into a bedroom. I drop my bag to the floor while trying to free myself, smacking at his naked back.
“Let me go!”
“Shut up.”
The sheets are strewn on the bed, and I look away, incensed. Brad kicks another door, and the loud bang of it hitting the wall behind makes me jump. He dumps me on my feet and grabs something from the sink, squeezing my cheeks, holding something up in front of me. Soap. “I swear to God,” he seethes. “I will clean your mouth out of curses.”
“Make sure there’s some left to clean your cock,” I hiss, making him draw back. Blink. “And even then, I’ll never let it near me again.”
“No?” He drops the soap and pushes his front to mine. My stupid heart pounds in my chest. I know he can feel it.
“No.”
His fingertip meets my exposed skin past the open collar or my shirt. I inhale, and Brad pauses with his dragging touch, watching me react to it. “No?”
I close my eyes and fight the desire steaming forward. “No,” I whisper.
He cups me between my thighs and my pussy throbs into his hand. His mouth moves to my ear, his teeth grazing my lobe. I whimper, grabbing his bicep and clawing my nails into his flesh. “No?”
“No,” I breathe.
“Okay.” He drops me and moves back, hands up, and I heave where I stand, gulping down oxygen. “Now who’s the one pretending?”
I pass him, making sure I give him a wide berth—no touching—and snatch my bag up from the floor, making my escape before I do something stupid. Like give myself to him again. I’m not his. I’m not anyone’s.
Never again.
“I didn’t fuck anyone,” he calls to my back, his words rushed and urgent.
I stop running, my bag clenched to my chest, and stare forward.
“I’ve not touched another woman, Pearl.”
My eyes drop like rocks to the carpet, darting. “The woman I saw leave,” I say quietly.
“I sent her away.”
His bare feet appear in my downcast vision, and I allow my eyes to creep up his naked legs and chest. He looks so . . . contrite. “I called a few women,” he says, his voice thick. “But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want them.”
“But—” I want to believe him. Desperately. “Her hands were full of money.”
“Her pimp would have something to say if I didn’t compensate her for wasting her time.” He reaches for me, but I retreat, and he holds his hands up in surrender. “I made the arrangements. I sent the first woman away. I didn’t cancel the others.”
Why? In case he changed his mind?
He holds his hands out. “These hands. I don’t want them to touch any other woman ever again.”
My head’s a mess. It was nothing. That’s what he called us. Nothing. “You said we were nothing.”
“You will never be nothing.” He reaches for me again, but I lean back. “Please believe me. I only want you, Pearl. Forever, only you.”
Forever?
“Forever is a really long time.”
He nods, stepping closer, and this time I don’t stop him. He gently takes my bag from my chest and dips, placing it on the floor. I look up at him, holding my breath as he scans every tiny bit of my face, watching his fingers as they brush my hair back. And then his gaze falls onto my mouth, and he slowly brings his lips down to meet mine. The moment they touch, I jolt, as if life has just been injected back into me, my heart kick-starting. I open up to him and accept his soft tongue. His kiss is reverent. Slow. Tender.