Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
“Jet, I…” she trails off, worry etched on her face.
I walk her backward to sit her on the edge of the tub and kneel at her feet. “Do you know your name means hope?”
She looks up at that, stops trying to pull her hands free.
“Your mother named you, didn’t she?”
She nods, more tears falling. While I watch, I make a silent vow to make everyone responsible for those tears pay.
“You were her hope, weren’t you?”
Her eyes search mine and I see how young she is. See how much she wants to believe me.
“You’re my hope too. Did you know that?”
She shakes her head. “I’ve only been trouble for you.”
I take her hands, kiss them, then lay them over my heart. “You’ve made this dead heart of mine feel something I never thought it was capable of feeling. I’ve fallen in love with you, Amal Blackstone. And I plan on having a long life together, you and me. And Cotton,” I add, which is a good move because she laughs through her tears. “I love you,” I say, not sure if it’s for her benefit or my own. “I love you. And I will never let anyone hurt you. I will make all these mother fuckers pay for scaring you. Do you trust me, baby?”
She nods.
“Good.” I stand up, pull her to her feet with me. I hold out the gun. “Do you know how to use it?”
She takes it from me and checks the magazine like a pro. That’s my girl. She nods.
I kiss her mouth, draw back to glance at her face, then kiss it again. She’s breathless when I pull back enough to undress her. Undress myself. I close my mouth over hers again and walk her into the shower, the glass stall big enough for the two of us, and there, beneath water pelting down on us, I kiss her hard, lips smashed against lips, hands tugging at hair, mine and hers. I draw back only long enough to catch my breath, my heart racing as fast as hers.
My cock is a steel rod between us, and I grip one hip to lift her. She uses that momentum to wrap both legs around my waist and, our eyes wide open, I thrust in to the hilt and hear her grunt as she pulls me to herself, thighs clamped around me, drawing me closer, closer, ever closer.
“Jet. Jet. I…” she says between kisses.
“You what?” I ask, one hand at the back of her head cushioning it from the wall. “You what, baby?”
She draws back and I stop kissing her and look at her. Our faces are inches apart when I kiss her.
“I love you, too. I have loved you for a long time. I want you to know that,” she says.
I smile so wide it hurts my face and as if it were possible, my cock grows even harder and when Amal’s eyes start to roll back and her mouth opens in that way I’m learning it does when she comes, I hold her tight to me and watch her. I watch her beautiful face lost in ecstasy. I look at those perfect lips that just said the best words anyone has ever said to me.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
29
AMAL
Ilove him. I’ve loved him for a long time. I don’t think anyone else ever had a shot.
Wrapping a towel around myself, I walk into the bedroom to get dressed. Sev stopped in to talk to Jet but I asked them to take it to the other room telling them I needed to get dressed anyway. That I’d walk down to his room in a minute.
The real reason, though, is I want to get a look at the diary, and I need to be alone to do it. Because even now, just thinking about it makes my heart race in uneasy anticipation.
The moment I’m back in the bedroom, I see it again, those roses, the vines, the thorns. That small bird.
It’s as if the vines have grown while I’ve been away, creating a prison for me. A beautiful, terrible prison.
I quickly pull on a sweater and a pair of jeans and, barefoot, I carry my purse to the bed and sit down. There, I take out my mother’s diary and open it, shivering a little as if the temperature in the room just dropped by ten degrees.
Tucking my feet under me, I open the notebook and flip through the pages. I’ve read them all a hundred times over. I can recite them by heart. But it’s not the words I’m looking at now. It’s the doodles. I sometimes forget how young my mom was when she had me. Younger than I am now. She wasn’t even nineteen and, in many ways, she was a child. I got the impression from her diary that she’d lived a very sheltered life. An only child, she’d hated her home life. She outright said that. But it was in the year she got pregnant with me that she grew afraid of it.