Total pages in book: 16
Estimated words: 13969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 70(@200wpm)___ 56(@250wpm)___ 47(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 13969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 70(@200wpm)___ 56(@250wpm)___ 47(@300wpm)
But it had also been joyful and intimate, like opening a door to a secret world.
To his secret world.
Infatuated, Cat looked up at his face, but his gaze avoided hers as he zipped up his pants. She felt the full extent of her nudity but didn’t bother to hide.
“Are you all right?” she asked, and he nodded, but she had the sense that he was lying. “Brigan, look at me.”
Finally, he lifted his eyes to hers, but slowly, dragging his focus from her hips up over her stomach, her breasts, her throat, her mouth.
“I’m not going to see you again, am I?” she asked, her stomach falling in realization.
Hesitating, he shook his head.
“Why?”
His eyes shuttered, the playful light extinguishing. “Because, little lamb, it doesn’t work that way.”
Brigan bent, collecting her clothes for her and wordlessly helping her back into them. Her underwear and bra, which he fastened for her. He held her leggings as she stepped into them one foot after the other and eased them up her legs and over her hips. He angled her sweater over her head and guided each arm inside before sliding it down her body, looking as miserable as she felt. Finally, he tugged her cap over her head and tidied her hair over her shoulders.
“Am I presentable?” she asked, forcing levity into her voice and smiling up at him. The idea of not seeing him again made her unbearably sad.
“No one would look at you and have the faintest idea what we’ve been up to.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” she said. “It smells like sex in here.”
He took a long, slow inhale. “That it does, my darling.”
Brigan bent, resting his lips over hers for a long, soft beat, but when she opened her eyes, he was gone.
Chapter Four
Suddenly alone in the dim room, Cat startled, whipping her head to the left and then the right.
What just happened?
Where the hell did he go?
She pushed away from the wall, turning in a half circle, trying not to panic because, with Brigan’s departure, the room had gone cold and empty; all trace of his scent and the weight of sex in the air was gone. Her skin felt cool, her pulse no longer a thundering presence deep in her belly, between her legs. It was like he’d never been there.
Had she hallucinated everything?
Had anyone actually been in here with her?
Terrified for a beat that she’d either lost her mind or had somehow just had sex with a fucking ghost, Cat bolted from the room, ignoring Harry’s drunken shout of apology when they clipped shoulders in the hall, ignoring Jake’s voice calling to her from across the living room. She grabbed her coat from the pile on the couch near the door and yanked it on, rushing out and pulling up short as the front door slammed at her back.
She stared down the front steps where Brigan stood, in all his impossible glory, carefully arranging himself into a dark overcoat. She pulled in a deep breath of relief. He was not a ghost.
But staring down at him in the streetlight, she could easily confirm that he wasn’t simply a man either.
“How did you do that?”
Startled, Brigan turned at the sound of her voice. Humans never snuck up on him, particularly unthinkable after sex, and especially not door-slamming, foot-stomping humans that smelled like sugar and lust and him. But his mind was an absolute mess, and so here she was: Catalina, on the front stoop, bundled in her coat and sheep’s cap, cheeks still flushed, lips swollen. She was so beautiful, it made him ache.
“Do what?” he asked as evenly as he could.
“Back there. What did you do to me?”
Brigan forced himself to appear unaffected, grinning seductively at her. “Everything you asked, and then some.”
Catalina scowled. “You know what I mean.”
He did know. He knew, because he felt the same disorientation she felt—he’d never had sex like that with a human, and never left a human in a state other than sleeping peacefully, temporarily drained of energy. Not only was she awake and alert, but she’d also been sweetly ravaged and sated, smelling like him, warm with continued longing. Leaving Catalina in that room had been nearly impossible.
“I believe I asked for your consent,” he hedged, “and you obliged.”
“I’m not saying—” She cut the words off, exhaling a small cloud of air that quickly turned opaque in the cold air. “Yes, I wanted to do what we did, but . . .”
“But?”
“But I’ve never wanted to have sex with a stranger before, and with you, it was more than that. You didn’t feel like a stranger, and I just—I just—” She was flustered, and he had to fight the urge to walk up the steps to her. “I just want to understand.”
Brigan let his gaze sweep over her in the porch light: the shiny, dark curls spilling out beneath her cap, those enormous hazel eyes and full heart-shaped mouth, the strong angle of her jaw and cheekbones, the graceful line of her neck, the perfect breasts he’d had his hands and mouth all over not ten minutes ago.