Free Crushed (Crystal Brook Billionaires) by Jessica Blake

was the secret.
    The floor creaked. I snapped my head towards the doorway. Peter stood there, not a hair on his head changed from two minutes ago. It was all the same. Same unruly brown hair. Same strong jaw. Same crooked smile. I hoped he stayed that way forever.
    “You can look at those,” he said.
    I felt my cheeks color. “I didn’t know if it would be intruding.”
    He shook his head. “No.”
    Slowly, he stepped across his living room and towards me, each one of his footsteps matching ten of my heart beats. When he settled onto the cool leather couch, we were less than an inch away. The heat from his thighs teased my skin even through the fabric of my jeans.
    Feeling slightly self-conscious though we’d been this close a number of times, I ran my palms against my knees and searched for something to say. “I finished your book.”
    He smiled. “Really? Already?”
    I shrugged sheepishly. “What? Was that too fast?”
    He laughed. “I don’t think there’s a standard.”
    “Hm. It probably was too fast though. Poetry is meant to be savored. Right?”
    “You’re asking me?”
    “You’re the poet.”
    “Ah, but you’re the reader, the one who gets to enjoy the poems.” His hand found mine, and he lifted my fingers off my thigh so they could twist around his. “But if you’re worried about it, read it again.”
    “I will,” I promised him. “I haven’t read much poetry, but God… there was that one that just took my breath away. The one about seven generations. It was amazing.”
    His thumb ran a little circle over the top of my hand, distracting me. There was something else I had meant to say, but when Peter touched me like that, words had a way of floating right out of my head.
    “I’m glad you liked it,” he murmured. “I’m still adding poems to the next one. I’ve been sending them to my publisher.” He grinned. “She’s trying to convince me to cut back. She thinks no one wants to read a two hundred and fifty page book of poems.”
    “I do,” I quickly said. “If they’ve been written by you.”
    I was vaguely aware that I sounded like a blabbering fan girl, but I also couldn’t be bothered to care. Both of Peter’s hands were caressing mine now, and his lips swooped down to press against mine.
    Somehow it was even better than our first kiss, or the one after that. In fact, like everything else with Peter, kissing just got better and better. The heat from our mouths fell down into my torso and fired me up. I untangled one of my hands from his and placed it on his cheek. His skin burned just as hot as mine, matching my desire.
    Without warning, Peter broke off the kiss. Our faces hovered inches away, just far enough that we could see into each other’s eyes. His gaze softened as he looked at me, and simultaneously, the elated sensation in my chest grew.
    Did he feel what I felt?
    Was this the thing I’d read and heard about so many times, but never once experienced myself?
    Were we falling in love?
    Peter’s lips fell against mine once more, and there, in our touch, I found all the answers to my questions.

C HAPTER S EVEN
    Claire
    R adha stared at me from across my coffee table. Positioned right in the middle of the couch, her long black hair in a sleek ponytail, she looked more like a human sized doll than a real living being.
    “Well?” I asked. “Did you hear me?”
    The corner of her mouth twitched. “Yeah. I heard you. Is he legit?”
    I crossed my arms and leaned back in my favorite chair, the only chair since the living room in my one-bedroom apartment was so small that the single plush chair barely fit across from the couch, even wedged in the corner as it was. The place was minuscule, for sure. The kitchen literally existed in a corner of the living room. There were four squares of linoleum and the tiniest oven I’d ever seen.
    Since getting my raise at the company the year before, I had more than enough income to move. I loved Hell’s Kitchen though. It was