I’ve been screwed.
It started the day I was conceived.
When I was eleven, life crushed me into grotesque, mangled fragments. I glued the shards of myself into a mosaic fitting of a child. I learned one important thing from that experience.
Control.
Controlling your destiny keeps the vultures at bay. Control keeps my life from disintegrating. It keeps my life on the path to the woman I want to be.
Not who they say I am.
As time goes on, life hits and smashes and I take it. Every snide word, every crack in my heart, every self-righteous glance again and again.
Screw that.
I’m done.
For the next hour, we play hide-and-seek. When I was a kid, I used to play this game with my parents. These days, I do it with both Jed’s and my sister, Christy’s, kids, but I’ve never had this much fun. That’s because Becca plays the game with more excited enthusiasm than the kids. She’s a totally different woman—throwing her head back and laughing, joking teasing, tickling.
It dawns on me that she didn’t have this growing up. I don’t know her whole story, but the bit I know tells me that smiling, laughing, and tickling didn’t happen often. So, now, she’s soaking it all up and giving it right back to these kids. It’s a thing of beauty.
This doesn’t take into account that, after a while, she pulls me into her fold. She grabs my hand and laughs without abandon when I do something goofy for the kids. Christ, she doesn’t stop smiling once, and it’s nothing but genuine, even when aimed at me.
It’s not just a thing of beauty. It’s beautifully sweet.
My girl—pure sweet.
Now, it’s Nick’s turn to seek, and he’s a speed counter, so as he fires off numbers faster than he eats jelly beans, Becca and I rush around to hide the other three. I pop Ashley in the shower and tell her to be quiet as Becca hides the other two somewhere in the room the girls share.
Nick gets to eighteen when I get out of the bathroom just as Becca emerges from the bedroom. My blood is pumping, and I’m grinning from ear to ear. Becca giggles as our eyes dart around, looking for a spot to hide.
“Ready or not, here I come!”
I spot a closet door, open it, and grab Becca’s hand to drag her in with me before closing the door, shrouding us in darkness.
Seconds tick by with our breaths coming out in heavy pants, the excitement still pumping through my body, when I realize that this closet is way too small for both of us. Her body is plastered against mine. Her face is at my chest, her hot breath seeping through my shirt, and it’s killing me. It’s not because I don’t want her exactly where she is, but because I don’t think she’s ready for what it’s doing to me. I can’t see a fucking thing, so every exhale and every movement is amplified in a way that’s making my dick hard.
“Thanks for the hiding spot,” she whispers against my shirt, making me grit my teeth.
“Don’t mention it,” I whisper back.
She smells so damn good, the scent of oranges and lavender permeating the air around us. I suck in a breath when she slowly, hesitantly snakes her arms around my waist.
“It’s more comfortable than having them squished between us.” She tenses her arms, accentuating her words.
“Mmhmm,” I mumble.
After a few seconds, she says quietly, “I forgot how good you smell.”
Fucking Christ.
Maybe I was wrong about her not being ready. My heart hammers, and my semi-hard cock jerks.
Tits sliding across my chest, she lifts up and gives my collarbone a touch of her tongue.
Fuck.
The feel of her tongue is soft, hot, wet. My chubby grows harder, and it takes everything in me not to drive my hands into her soft hair and take her mouth.
“Sweets, you sure you’re ready to go there?”
“I just wanted to see if you taste as good as I remember.” She glides back down.
The disappointment moving through me does nothing to stop my dick from throbbing. “Fuck, Becca. Don’t do that again if you’re not ready for that shit. There’s only so much a man can take.”
She’s silent.
I try to ease my dick down, but it’s pressed against her hard stomach, and I know she can feel it. There’s no way she could miss it, and the idea that she’s aware of my dick is not helping me find my calm. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s been six years, but I know how good she tastes, how well she takes direction in bed, how fucking phenomenal her tight pussy sliding up and down my cock as I hold her hands looks and feels.
Without thinking, I tangle both my hands in her hair, which is longer than before but no less soft. When she sucks in air, my hips jut forward, my dick rubbing against her tight abs.
A moan catches in her throat, so I tilt her head up. I move my head downward at a snail’s pace, giving her time to push me away.
A half inch from her mouth, feeling her heavy breath against my lips, I ask, “You sure?”
As her answer, she closes the distance, and the instant her lips touch mine, fire sweeps through me, and I’m all over her. With my tongue devouring and my hands on her ass, I take everything, and she gives it. Her nails dig into my shoulders as she moans.
The door swings open, and the light is blinding, even behind closed lids.
“Found you!”
Anna lives every day the best she can while struggling against the demons that threaten to consume her and drag her back into the darkness of her very troubled past. The last thing she needs right now is a guy, especially one as sweet and sexy as Jed. When the attraction becomes too strong to resist, she gives into it. Even when she knows it’ll only end in disaster and leave her even more her scared and broken than she was before.
Jed wants to find the right woman and he’s drawn to Anna by carnal magnetism, but she also brings out an Alpha side of him that he’s never known. When his alpha rears its head, it triggers memories in Anna and her carefully crafted wall of protection begins to show cracks.
When fate and misunderstandings threaten the already delicate relationship, can they survive? When Anna’s demons threaten to be unearthed and Jed’s inner alpha only seem to make them worse, can they overcome?
Is it even worth it?
Warning: This book contains graphic violence, sex, and adult language
Nicki DeStasi was raised in a small town in Massachusetts. She attended Fitchburg State College and studied Early Childhood Education. As a child, she enjoyed reading, but only recently began doing it again. She has always had an inventive imagination and finally decided to put those ideas on paper for others to enjoy. Worth It was Nicki’s first self-published book. A few personal facts: Sloth from The Goonies is her third cousin, she acted and stared in several plays throughout high school and college, and she can play four different instruments. Nicki’s philosophy is to appreciate the good things in life. If we didn’t make mistakes and have bad things happen then we wouldn’t know how truly wonderful the good things are. No matter how difficult life is sometimes, if we look to the people that love us, then we can get through them and on to the good stuff.
