Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Her lips twitch in a hint of a grin. “Well, you spent two songs with me on the piano too. Don’t forget that.”
I groan, annoyed and turned on all at once.
This is what I’m talking about. She’s a delicious flirt as well as the most responsive woman I’ve touched. It’s impossible not to want her. “That’s the problem. I want more,” I say, but inside, I’m torn apart by loyalty and lust. They’re both terribly powerful.
She lifts her chin. Strong. Defiant. “I wanted that too,” she says, fearless but seeming resigned to our new reality.
Still, her boldness is kerosene to my desire. I should not be so close to her. I should not stand this near to her.
I spin around and pace across the ornate carpet in the library, dragging my hands through my hair like I can rewind this awful twist of fate. “You’re the first woman I’ve touched since my divorce. And you’re—” I stop, choking on the words.
When I turn back, Jules is looking down at the floor like she’s done something wrong. That won’t do. I stalk back over to her, aching to hold her, fighting to resist her. “It’s not you. I just can’t believe this,” I say softly, metering my frustration. I can’t let her think she’s the reason I’m mad.
She raises her face again. Her eyes are tinged with regret and disappointment. Everything I couldn’t see earlier when she played, I see plainly now.
She was never avoiding me.
Carefully, I ask, “Tonight. When you wouldn’t look at me…were you protecting me?”
A sad nod. “I didn’t want you to know. I thought it would be safer if you never knew who I was.”
“Safer for me?”
“Yes. I didn’t want you to carry that with you.”
“Carry what?”
“Guilt. I didn’t want to ruin your friendship with my…”
Yeah, I can’t say your father either. I should. But with her this close, with her so alluring, I can’t let myself think of my best friend.
The man who raised her.
“You hardly know me and you wanted to protect me. And him,” I say, kind of amazed.
“I know what it’s like to lose a friendship,” she says, her voice strong but forged from pain—that’s clear.
This woman. What she must have been through. I met Tate after he endured the hell of his youngest daughter’s death, something this resilient woman faced too—she lost a sister.
And here she is, trying to save me from hurt, from guilt, from loss.
I should walk away. I should take the gift she’s giving me.
Really, I should.
But I don’t. I close the distance, drawn to her.
She’s next to the ladder against the shelves, that shiny dress showing off her bare calves and her lovely throat and teasing me with the skin I want to kiss.
I should not want my best friend’s twenty-five-year-old daughter. “I should go,” I mutter, without making a move to do so.
“You should,” she says, not pushing me to go either.
I inhale her. That flowery perfume is driving me wild. It makes it hard for me to think straight. “It’s so goddamn frustrating that I’ve been thinking nonstop about having you, and now I can’t,” I say.
“I wanted it to be you,” she says, seeming equally annoyed, equally pissed at fate.
But then I replay what she just said. I wanted it to be you.
And I have to know. “You wanted what to be me, Jules?”
Her eyes blaze with truth and desire. “I wanted you to be my first.”
I close my eyes for a heady, hazy second. Holy. Shit.
That’s what I’d thought. I just needed to be sure.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
I open my eyes. I’m not at all okay. I’m wound tight, strung like a high-wire electrical line as I weigh the terrible and beautiful choices.
On the one hand is loyalty.
On the other hand is…her.
What if she picks someone else for her first time and he treats her poorly? What if he doesn’t worship her body? What if he doesn’t take care of her?
Worst of all—what if he isn’t...me?
I growl from deep inside my soul. Something primal rips through me, declaring she’s mine. I huff out a harsh breath and hold her face tight in my hands. “I can’t stand the thought of another man being your first,” I say.
“You’re possessive,” she says, then nibbles on the corner of her lips. “Mr. Adams.”
Ohhh yes.
She’s playing again. Saying it like I’m her boss, perhaps.
I swallow roughly. “I am, Miss Marley. I want what I want.”
“And you want…your secretary.” It’s not a question. It’s a glove thrown down.
“It’s so wrong, but I do. I really fucking do.” I have never been more turned on in my life. My lips crash down on hers and yes, fucking yes.
I can taste my goddess again.
She tastes like midnight and gardens. Like flowers and heat. Like a woman who needs this man.
There is no one, not a man on earth, who can give her a first time like I can.