Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 63608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
For a second, I’m just a man who gets to have her.
“Ledger…” she breathes against my lips, my name a whisper that sounds like a prayer I have no business hearing.
Yeah. That right there? That’s the problem.
When she calls me Riot, I feel it straight to my cock. When she says Ledger, that pulls at an unfamiliar place deep inside me.
I drag my mouth along her jaw, down her throat, feeling her pulse kick under my tongue. My hands slide up from her hips, memorizing curves I already know by heart. I shouldn’t know her this well. Shouldn’t crave her like this.
She’s not mine.
She’s never been mine.
We agreed.
We are adults who have open communication. She’s the only woman who has ever been fully up front and stood by it. No fuss, no games, she’s here for the orgasms and neither of us are to get caught up in anything more than release.
Still, I find myself holding her like she belongs in my arms.
“Don’t fall in love with me,” she whispers, the words so quiet I almost miss them.
But I don’t.
They land like a punch to the ribs. Once again the words come like she says most times we fuck and each utterance cuts me a little deeper. I freeze for half a second, my forehead resting against hers, my breath rough. Her eyes search mine, big and bright and braced like she expects me to argue.
Maybe she wants me to argue. There is something unspoken in her gaze.
She’s scared.
Not of me.
No her fear is of us.
I understand it. Don’t fall in love that is the rule. Easy, this should be easy.
My chest tightens.
Too late, sunshine. I’m in deep even when I know better.
I swallow it down, shove the feeling where I keep all the other shit I don’t deal with. I smooth my thumb over her ass before I cup her cheeks like it’s no big thing, like my heart didn’t just buck against my ribs.
“No feelings to be had,” I remind her, my voice low, steady. Safer than the truth. “I remember.”
Her chin tips up. “Just,” she hesitates with a heavy inhale, “fun.”
There it is. The line in the sand she thinks will keep her safe.
Fun.
Right.
I roll the word around in my head, then nod once. “Fun,” I echo, even though it doesn’t sit right.
Never has.
I pick her up without warning, her legs wrapping around my waist like they’re meant to be there. She laughs, breathless and surprised, the sound lighting something warm in my chest I don’t deserve.
Her lips brush my jaw as I carry her toward the bedroom. Her hands around my neck, her body soft against mine. Every step I take feels like I’m walking right off a cliff I swore I’d never get near.
“Always clear,” I mutter with a groan, because I have to. Because if I don’t remind us both what this is, I might start pretending it’s more. “This is exactly as it has been.”
She gives me a smile I don’t buy. It’s too bright at the edges, too thin in the middle.
“Good,” she whispers. “We’re on the same page.”
No, we’re not.
Same book, same chapter, maybe.
Different page.
I lay her back on the bed, standing and removing my clothes before bracing myself over her. I had her clothes off back in the living room right after I walked in her place. This is us.
She is naked under me and I feel alive for the first time since I left her in this bed last night. Each day the same torment of putting her to bed with the sated bliss of a good fuck to go back to my life existing until the evening comes and I make my way here yet again.
The way she looks at me—wide open and trusting and a little nervous—makes something inside me go quiet. Makes the noise of the world fall away.
I shouldn’t look at her like this.
Shouldn’t touch her like this.
Shouldn’t come back, over and over, when I know damn well I can’t give her anything real.
But when her hands slide up my chest and her body arches into mine like I’m a habit she can’t break?
Yeah. I’m gone.
I kiss her again, slow and deep, dragging it out. If all I get are these moments, I’m going to embrace every last second out of them. Her fingers curl at the back of my neck, her sigh spilling into my mouth, and I swear I feel it all the way down my spine.
She makes a soft, needy sound, and I answer it without thinking, my hands moving over her, relearning what I already know. What makes her gasp, what makes her cling, what makes the world narrow down to just us.
She says don’t fall in love with me.
What she doesn’t understand is that it isn’t a choice.
Somewhere between her smart mouth in Ally’s bakery and her anxious hands twisting in mine when she couldn’t catch her breath, I started falling.