Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Where Max stands.
Gone is the suit, but he’s still dressed to impress. Pressed gray slacks and a black shirt, rolled up to his elbows as he holds a kitchen knife and a potato, slowly twisting the two without even looking, peeling the potato in one long ribbon. I can’t help noticing his bare feet, but my gaze is pulled to his forearms. Not only because they’re gorgeous, which they are. Hard angles of muscle and thick dark hair. God. No, not just that. It’s the tattoos that really strike me, curling and snaking all the way from his right wrist to where they disappear beneath the shirt. Bright colors and symbols, letters I can’t read just yet. I’m fascinated by the art and curious about what it all means.
He smiles and nods as I approach. “Right on time. I’m just preparing dinner.”
“It smells fantastic already. Is that what you do?”
Max narrows his eyes as he steps back, allowing me entry into a polished hardwood lobby, stairs leading up and a scent of him in the air. Like whiskey and masculinity. “What I do?”
“You know, when you’re not teaching? Are you a chef?”
He laughs, a deep rumbling chuckle from his chest, not his mouth. “No, I’m not a chef.”
“Well you’re not just a teacher. There’s no way that paid for all this.”
“No?”
“Come on, don’t play with me…” I hesitate at the double-entendre. “Y—you don’t get a house in this neighborhood on a teacher’s salary.”
“Maybe I inherited it. Maybe it’s the house I grew up in.”
My turn to laugh as I shake my head. “No way. This place is ten years old at the most, and you’re…thirty?” I realize as I’m saying it that I have no idea. He’s older than me, that’s for sure. But in some lights he looks like he could be in his late twenties, in others…
“Is that how old you think I am?” he asks as he takes my coat, hanging it up and leading us through to the kitchen. It’s all chrome and marble, with a large window looking over a back yard that you could keep a horse in. “I like your dress, by the way. Surprised it isn’t vintage, or was that just a one off?”
I feel my face heat, wondering what he likes most about the dress. The fact it’s so short it almost doesn’t cover my ass, or the way it’s threatening to expose a nipple at any second?
“Vintage is my thing. This is Cyn’s.”
“Ah. Still, I’m sure it looks better on you than it ever did on her.”
“Be careful, that’s my best friend you’re talking about.”
He laughs a deep, throaty laugh as he turns his head, meeting my eyes, and my breath stalls. The potato has been chopped in his hand and tossed into a pot of water that’s just starting to simmer, and he’s picked up another one, doing the same trick with the knife. “How did that happen, anyway?”
No apology for the almost-insult to my friend. I haven’t knocked his confidence, that’s for sure. This isn’t small talk. This is a question that goes right for my jugular, even if he isn’t aware of it.
“I mean, you and her, you seem like…chalk and cheese, I think the saying goes.”
“On my first day,” I say with only a slight quiver to my voice, “she saw me sitting all alone in class. I heard what some of the others were saying about me. I’d heard it all before but it still stings, you know? Cyn could have chosen to sit anywhere. You’ve seen her, there’s no way anybody would have told her to find somewhere else. But she asked if she could sit with me. Actually asked. Like there was an option for me to say no. Like we were equals. I know she comes across as a megabitch, but she isn’t, she…”
“Has a secret side?”
I nod, a little pride closing my throat. She’s a good friend, and a good person, and I’m lucky to know her.
“And how about you, Keryn? You come across as innocent, shy, perhaps a little inexperienced. Do you have a secret side?”
He eyes me as he peels and chops, and I feel myself shrinking back. Not physically, but mentally, a little. Looking for that small safe space that is Keryn Brinson. Someone nobody ever notices. Because being noticed can be dangerous.
Except now he seems to have noticed me, and I’m not sure I entirely dislike it.
If anyone else knew the fantasies that run through my mind while I rub myself at night, I’m sure I’d be without friends or family before you can say ball gag. But him? I’m not sure. It seems like maybe, just maybe, he would understand.
“I think you do,” he continues. “I think you want things you don’t know how to ask for. Am I right?”