Page 230 of Darling Venom
“She returned an hour ago.”
“An hour?” I shot upright. “That can’t be right. How long have I been asleep?”
“It’s two in the afternoon now, so about an hour and a half.”
“Don’t you have any appointments?”
“I did. The last one ended fifteen minutes ago. My next one starts in an hour.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I’m the sourc
e of your sleepless night. It made sense to let you rest.”
Such a clinical answer.
Nights, I corrected. Plural. This is not the first time I’ve lost sleep over you, Tate Marchetti. I doubt it will be the last, too.
Voices crept beneath the door. I made out Sylvia’s, along with the nurse who helped me before my exam. Grace. They were discussing a sale at Bloomie’s. If we could hear them, I wondered if they could hear us.
“Do you work all your staff on weekends? Aren’t there labor laws?”
“I’m always on call. Walter and I have enough staff to rotate, keeping them at four to five days a week and forty hours max.” He raised a single brow. “Are you actually interested in hearing this?”
“I am. When it comes to you, I want to know everything.”
I’d resigned myself to the fact a while ago.
They say love is ten percent falling and ninety percent picking yourself back up. What they never tell you is how quick that ten percent passes and how long that ninety percent lasts.
Judging by how fast I’d fallen for Tate Marchetti, when we reached the end of our shelf life, I’d be totally, utterly fucked.
Our proximity struck me.
My face inches from his.
Our breaths tangling.
He had kneeled to cover me with the blanket, but he hadn’t gotten up. His nearness rattled me. Excited me. Consumed me. He was the type of big that didn’t bend to the confines of physical size.
Tate sucked all the oxygen out of the room, and the fact that I could even breathe around him defied biology.
He caught me staring at his lips.
I licked mine, releasing an unsteady breath.
I don’t know who moved first. One second, we were inches apart. The next, our bodies melded together, everything glued from chest up. Nothing between us but clothes I wanted to tear off.
I sank my teeth into his lower lip, sucking it into my mouth. One of his hands grabbed my ass and squeezed. The other curved around my waist and tugged me closer.
His body was smooth, hard concrete. Skillfully chiseled. His erection, long and thick. I climbed on top of him, wrapping my legs around his back.
He rolled his hips, hands palming my ass as he carried me from the couch, his lips fused to mine.
Our tongues danced. Tangled. Fought for dominance.
He won, but so did I.
