Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
I waited while she warred.
She averted her gaze to the far wall before she looked back at me. “I knew you were dangerous when I met you, but now I’m in awe of what that really means.”
Relief pummeled me, and I brushed my fingers through her hair. This woman seeing me in a way I couldn’t even see myself.
“I’m falling for you, Piper.” My words were coarse and real.
My palm slipped to the side of her face. “Falling for you in a way I didn’t think I was capable of. You exposed something inside me that I didn’t think was there.”
Emotion clotted at the base of my throat, and my gaze traced her stunning face.
Memorizing every detail since it’d become the most important one I’d ever seen.
“And I don’t know what the fuck to make of it other than the truth that I don’t want to live my life without you in it,” I continued on a rasp. “Don’t want to live it without Finn in it. Without Nelly grinning at me like she knows something I don’t when I walk through your door.”
Piper laughed a choked, soggy sound.
A vestige of joy in the middle of the suffering.
“Be with me. Tell me you’re mine and that you’ll never fucking leave me.”
The smallest smile tweaked at the edge of her mouth. “I thought that was clear when I climbed on the back of your bike.”
My own smile twitched, at odds with the shame that so fiercely wanted to make its claim.
But Piper’s was so much greater.
I brushed my thumb over her cheek, guts a tangle of greed and lust and that thing I wasn’t sure I could label.
Something so powerful and fierce pressing at my ribs that I could hardly breathe.
Her pulse ran wild beneath my touch, the girl watching me with those fathomless eyes that pulled me beyond their blue horizon.
Down to where our passion lived. Where no secrets or ghosts or demons could keep us apart.
I framed her face in both my hands, fingers dipping into the silken locks of her hair as I tipped her head back.
“Piper.” I murmured her name.
It was nothing but praise.
Tender fingernails scratched through my beard, eyes darting everywhere as if she were seeing me anew. “Theo.”
Thickness filled my throat.
“You see me, Piper?”
Emotion rippled through every line on her face, cresting with the erratic nod that she offered. “Yes. I recognize you, Theo. I recognize the brutality and the grace. The hostility and the care.”
I wound the hand she had touching my face up with mine, and my thumb stroked over the back side of hers.
Felt like my chest was going to cave.
“I wasn’t supposed to feel this for you.” The words scraped up my throat. “My life was supposed to be given to the penalty that I was sentenced to. Given to every mistake and sin that I’ve made. Every second paying the price for my misdeeds.”
I brought the back of her hand to my lips, inhaling her sweet cherry blossom scent. “Then I drove up on this angel trapped in the snow. Think I knew the second I rolled up on those taillights that my life was getting ready to change. Because you, Little Liar…”
Those arctic eyes flashed. A torrent of warmth.
I shifted her hand to place her palm over the ravaging that thundered at my chest. “One look at you, and my cold, dead heart began to beat. In a way it’d never done. You lifted the fallen. Gave me air when I had no breath. Sparked a brand-new life that I wasn’t supposed to be given.”
I pressed her hand tighter over my heart. “And that life? It belongs to you, Piper. To you and that little boy.”
Shock rasped out of her, and I dipped in to suck it down, drawing everything that she was down into my soul as my mouth crushed against hers in a desperate kiss.
I picked her up off her feet, and she wrapped her legs around my waist.
Those delicate arms locked around my neck as one of mine looped around her lower back.
My other hand fisted in her hair as my mouth devoured hers while I carried her through the door and into my house.
And I knew, there was no going back.
FORTY-TWO
PIPER
There were no lies I could tell to stop this.
I didn’t even want to try.
Because I was standing at the horizon.
The chance at a new life swirling all around me.
It was no longer a tease but a fierce, unrelenting hope that I found in the safety of Theo Mallin’s arms.
Fire licked through my veins and joy pulsed in my spirit as he blindly turned the knob on the interior door of the garage and kicked open the door.
He carried me into the warmth of his cabin.
He had me hoisted up high, hovering a few inches above him, his head tilted back and his greedy kiss unending as he fisted a hand in my hair, angling me how he wanted me as he pillaged and plundered my mouth.