Total pages in book: 187
Estimated words: 174623 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174623 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
I step closer, hating the way she backs up as if she expects me to act a certain way.
"It's just a plate," I assure her. "I'm going to go get a first-aid kit."
I spin and rush from the room. I'm not as familiar with the common areas of the clubhouse, but I know there's a first-aid kit under the sink in my bathroom.
I grab it and turn around, prepared to run back to the kitchen to find Juliet standing just inside my doorway with her hand still cradled to her chest.
I freeze with the small box clutched in my hands.
I don't know what to say as she looks around my room, curiosity in her eyes.
I could spend a lifetime trying to sift through the emotions coursing through me with her in my space.
I want to shut the door, enclosing us in here forever.
I want her on my bed, sitting and laughing, watching a show neither one of us is really paying attention to.
I want her under me, begging me to make her feel good.
I want her breath on my skin, her fingers curled in my hair.
I want her sighs of pleasure filling the room.
I want her fingers tracing over my muscles, and her eyes drinking in the sight of me as if she's unable to control her own obsession.
I blink away those desires, finding her looking at me with curiosity.
"Do you not want me in here? I shouldn't have followed you."
"It's fine," I tell her, my voice gruff as if I had just swallowed a mouthful of crackers and was in desperate need of a drink.
"You're sure?"
You bet your ass it is.
"Of course. It's fine."
"This is a big room," she says as she spins to take in the full area.
"The rooms in this newer addition to the clubhouse are bigger than the original rooms," I explain, although I hadn't gone into any of the other rooms until earlier today when I was carrying luggage in for the other women.
"Emmalyn said they were."
"The way you reacted earlier," I begin.
"When?" she asks, turning back to face me.
"When the plate got broken," I clarify. "Is it out of place to ask what that was about?"
She licks at her bottom lip as if she isn't sure she wants to tell me, but before I can tell her it's okay, that she doesn't have to share, she speaks.
"The very first time Graham got angry with me enough to yell and throw things, it was over a broken dish," she begins. "I was cooking and tossed a fork in the sink. I had forgotten there were a couple of tea saucers in there from earlier, and one got broken."
"And he yelled at you?"
"That, and he went to the cabinet and smashed every other piece in the set. Yelling that there was no point in having an incomplete set."
I seethe with anger. From what I've heard, the man doesn't have a single redeeming trait at all.
"The next day he came home with an even larger, more expensive set, and said he hated that other set anyway," she says with a sigh. "Even the new set seemed like an insult because the saucer I broke belonged to the set I had registered for, and we got as a wedding gift."
"He's an awful human being," I say despite the many other, more colorful words I could use to describe him.
"He never apologized, but fully expected me to say I was sorry every time he brought it up in conversation," she continues.
"Let's get your hand cleaned up," I say instead of listing all the reasons I have for killing the man.
She follows me into the bathroom. "It doesn't really hurt. It just scared me."
She only winces a few times while I'm getting her fixed up, once when the water runs over the wound and once more when I apply a wound-cleaning solution. I apply an antibiotic ointment from one of the small packets in the first-aid kit before applying a bandage.
For some reason, instead of taking a step back and putting the supplies away, I lift her hand and place a light kiss over the bandage as if it will make it heal faster.
When I look up at her, I find her staring at me as if I'm a blessing and that she's never been treated with such care and kindness before in her life.
Then her eyes dip to my mouth the same way they did before the kiss in her apartment.
"Juliet," I whisper, trying to make her name sound like a warning, but it comes out on a needy breath instead.
She dips her head as if telling me she feels exactly the same way.
She takes a step closer, pressing her uninjured hand to my chest, and I swear the warmth of her palm feels like an active defibrillator paddle through my shirt.