Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 126589 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 633(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 422(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126589 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 633(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 422(@300wpm)
He laughed at her words. The sound was sleep roughened but loud and filled with genuine amusement.
“Shit, I didn’t know you could be this funny, Lizzy-bit. You’re usually so fucking uptight.”
“Don’t call me that and I’m n-not uptight, I merely find your company tiresome.”
Jeez, that sounded uptight as hell. Even to her.
He laughed again, attractive crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes while his perfectly even, perfectly white teeth sparkled at her from between those sensuous lips. He had a gorgeous mouth, featuring a thin, wide, wickedly curved cupid’s bow resting atop a luscious full lower lip. His smile was the full package—flawless teeth, beautiful lips, laugh lines around the eyes, and dimples.
Frikking dimples.
No one person should be so blessed in the physical beauty department.
But there he sat, Mr. Perfect. With the gorgeous body, the stunning face, thick, wavy—too long—black hair, with just a hint of a widow’s peak, a straight, perfectly proportioned nose, all nicely tied together by the most striking pair of eyes she had ever seen.
Deep pools of gray with arresting striations of blue, it was hard to look away from them. Add to that the fact that he also had long, thick black lashes and straight dark eyebrows…and he was just too damned good to be true.
And that irritated Beth to no end.
Beth had first met Gideon at one of the lowest points of her life—yet despite that—she had still found herself so diverted by him that she’d embarrassed herself by staring at him silently like an idiot. Worse, she’d then tripped over her feet and—most alarming of all—had found herself completely unable to speak.
Her tongue had felt swollen, her throat constricted, and it had sent her into a panic. Those beautiful eyes had openly mocked her reaction before he’d dismissed her with a disdainful little smirk.
So rude.
Beth’s response to him had mortified and frightened her. She wasn’t so shallow as to be affected by someone’s physical attractiveness, and yet her unprecedented response to him had spoken for itself. She’d resented the crap out of him because of that. She still did, actually.
Anybody who had the power to turn her into the tangled tongue girl she’d worked so hard to move on from, was best avoided.
And her dislike of the man deepened whenever she was forced to spend time in his presence. Yet oddly, it was that intense dislike which had helped her eventually overcome her initial terrifying inability to speak in his presence. She was often so pissed off with him that the words she needed to say in order to verbally eviscerate him came fast and smoothly.
He was offensive, abrasive, lazy, egocentric, and deliberately, infuriatingly dismissive of her every opinion.
Oh God, she needed to get out of here.
She finally found her dress and her panties. No idea where her bra was and without her glasses, she had little chance of finding it right now. She grabbed what she could and scuttled toward the en-suite bathroom to get changed. Her excruciating awareness of his unsettling scrutiny on her every move made her clumsier than usual.
She’d just stepped into the bathroom when he finally spoke, his voice still lazy and ripe with that mocking insouciance that she hated so much. “You do know that I saw everything there was to see last night, right? And I remember it all. Vividly. I’m talented like that, I have a great eye for detail. Not sure if you’re aware of it, but you have this fascinating constellation of freckles on your left butt cheek.”
He would know, he had paid so much attention to her rear end last night. Lavishing it with squeezes and praise. She cringed a little at the memory. Even while her nipples hardened and she began to swell and throb between her legs.
Her hips and bum were bigger than she would like; with her narrow shoulders and barely-there boobs, they gave her figure a distinct pear shape.
Typical of Gideon to highlight the part of her body she disliked the most.
“Let me guess—” She injected as much scathing sarcasm as possible into her voice, hoping he wouldn’t recognize how unsettled she was by this entire foolish encounter. “If you connected them, they’d plot the way to Uranus, right?”
He blinked at her for a beat, before convulsing with laughter again.
“Jesus, Scrappy, you’re hilarious,” he wheezed between chuckles. “That’s clever. You’ve never been so entertaining before. Was it the sex? Is that what has unclenched your sphincter enough for you to crack an actual joke?”
Ugh, what an utter dickhead! She refrained from dignifying that off-color comment with a response and slammed the door in his smug damned face.
All traces of amusement fled after Lizzy huffed into the bathroom. Gideon threw himself down on the bed and covered his face with both hands.
“What the fuck were you thinking, arsehole?” he groaned beneath his breath, “Seriously, what the fuck?”