Every Last Breath - Armentrout Jennifer L. (читаем книги онлайн без регистрации .TXT) 📗
Overhead lights twinkled and my ears were hypersensitive to the conversation around me, but I did it.
My feet made it to the back row and my fingers were numb, knuckles white, as I dropped my bag on the floor beside my desk and slid into my seat. Busying myself with pulling out my notebook, I then gripped the edge of my desk.
I was in speech class. I was here.
I’d done it.
Knuckles starting to ache, I loosened my death grip as I glanced at the door, sliding my damp hands across the top of the desk. The first thing I saw was the broad chest draped in black, then the well-formed biceps. And there was that tired notebook that looked seconds from falling apart, tapping against a worn denim-clad thigh.
It was the boy from this morning, from the hallway.
More than curious to see what he looked like from the front, I raised my lashes, but he had turned toward the door. A girl was coming in behind him; the expression on her face said he gave great full frontal, but he seemed to be looking at someone out in the hall, and he laughed. The girl got all googly-eyed.
Tiny hairs rose all over my body. That laugh... It was deep, rich and somehow familiar. A shiver crept over my shoulders. That laugh...
He was walking backward, and I was rather amazed that he didn’t trip over anything, actually somewhat envious of that fact. And then I realized he was heading toward the back, and holy crappers, there were two seats open, one on either side of me.
He turned at the end of the desks, stepping behind the occupied chair, and my gaze tracked up narrow hips, over the stomach, up and up, and then I saw his face.
I stopped breathing.
My brain couldn’t perceive what I was seeing. It did not compute. I stared up at him, really saw him, saw a face that was familiar yet unknown to me, more mature than I remembered but still achingly beautiful. I knew him. Oh my God, I would know him anywhere, even if it had been four years and the last time I’d seen him, that last night that had been so horrible, had changed my life forever.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t get enough air into my lungs and couldn’t believe this. My hands slipped off the desk, falling limply into my lap as he dipped into the seat next to me, his gaze on the open door, and his profile, the strong jaw that had only been hinted at the last time I’d seen him, tilting as his eyes moved over the front of the class. He looked like he did back then, but bigger and everything more...more defined. From the darker brows and thick lashes to the broad cheekbones and the slight scruff covering the curve of his jaw.
Goodness, he’d grown up in the way I’d thought he would when I was twelve and started to really look at him, to see him as a boy.
My heart was trying to claw itself out of my chest as lips—lips fuller than I remembered—tilted up, and a knot formed in my belly as the dimple formed in his right cheek. The only dimple he had. No matching set. Just one.
Leaning back in the chair that seemed too small for him, he slowly turned his head toward me. Eyes that were brown with tiny flecks of gold met mine.
Eyes I’d never forgotten, never really stopped thinking or dreaming about, and never stopped worrying about.
The easy, almost lazy smile I’d seen a million times in person and in my head slipped off his face.
His lips parted and a paleness seeped under the naturally tanned skin. Those eyes widened, the gold flecks seeming to expand. He recognized me; I had changed a lot since then, but still, recognition dawned in his features. He was moving again, leaning forward in his seat toward me.
Don’t make a sound.
“Mouse?” he breathed.
Copyright © 2016 by Jennifer L. Armentrout
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ISBN: 9780857994516
TITLE: EVERY LAST BREATH
First Australian Publication 2015
Copyright © 2015 Jennifer L. Armentrout
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher: Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Pty Ltd
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Document Outline
Back Cover Text Praise Title Page Dedication Contents Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Excerpt from The Problem with Forever by Jennifer L. Armentrout Copyright
