Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 68987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
“It’s turning you on?” I asked feebly.
He quirked an eyebrow. “Well, when you say stuff like that, yes,” he said. “What do you expect?”
I was getting so hard that I had to shift in my seat to make sure it wouldn’t be visible. There was no reason this should have been so unmanageable—I’d been getting inconvenient hard-ons for years, and I’d learned to mostly ignore them. But I knew this one felt different because it was for him.
I raked my fingers through my hair, pulling in a breath and collecting some semblance of a thought. “It just pisses me off that people think this is a publicity stunt. Calling me straight when they don’t even know me, you know?”
Charlie waved a hand through the air. “We can just ignore it. They’ll shut up about it soon enough.”
Heat flared through me. “Or we can make them shut up about it,” I said.
His eyes were on me, so intensely that something sparked in my chest. I liked when he looked at me like that. When I knew I was getting his total, undivided attention.
I wanted more of that.
“Make them shut up about it? Explain,” he said, curious.
I bit my lower lip, looking around us. The cameras were still there, and still rolling. One of the crew members was occasionally taking videos on a phone for social media posts. Other people in the brewery were taking selfies all over the place, and I was sure Charlie and I were in the background of a lot of those pictures.
I watched as he took another sip of ginger ale. Sometimes, when I looked at him, all I could see was some sort of beautiful fallen angel—his cheekbones, his soft, dark hair, and his sultry eyes.
“Can I kiss you again?” I offered.
Damn it. So much for laying off him.
He looked down at the bar top, hesitating for a moment. “You don’t have to do that just for me.”
“It’s really not just for you,” I said. I let out a long breath. “But okay. I won’t ask for another kiss. Let’s just figure out what dates we should go on next—”
I stopped short when Charlie shifted on his seat. He leaned in toward me a moment later, crossing the short distance between us again.
He pressed his lips to mine, and in an instant the rest of the world disappeared.
The kiss started slow, like our last one had, but I opened to him with no hesitation, letting my tongue slide out against his. I reached out and put a hand on the small of his waist, feeling the heat of his body through his shirt. Suddenly I wished like hell we were in private instead of in the bar, because even though I didn’t give a damn who saw us kissing, I wanted to do so much more.
How the everloving fuck could anyone give this up? Give him up? Charlie had been through so much, and all I wanted to do was show him exactly how worthy he was. He always held back—for my sake, sure, but also because he probably didn’t trust anyone at this point.
That realization shot through me like fire.
He deserved trust. He deserved to do something as simple as kissing someone without fear, without doubting everything, after all of the shitty experiences he’d had in the past.
“Take me home with you,” I said against his mouth as I broke off from the kiss a moment later. My voice sounded desperate, but right now I didn’t care. “It’ll, uh, look good on the cameras, you know? If we leave together.”
“You want to come home with me?” His eyes were beautiful this close up, luminous golden amber flecks visible in the warm brown. “Jax, they never film us at home, though—”
I was on autopilot at this point. I leaned in again to catch his lower lip between my teeth. I bit down gently, sucking on it, and it elicited a moan from him that quickly took me from half hard to fully erect.
“Don’t care,” I said, my voice low. “Let’s get out of here.”
5
CHARLIE
Jax and I stole off into the parking lot of the brewery like we were getting away with something. The crisp fall chill in the air hit us, cold and bracing and perfect, feeling like it was almost pushing us toward the car. I watched him walk over to my truck, turning to give me a joyous glance in the glowing light of the parking lot, and the look in his eyes was pure freedom.
Goddamn, I wanted him. More than I knew what to do with.
I climbed into the front of my truck and he went to the other side. I ran my thumb along my lower lip in the spot where he had gently bit me, my whole body burning up.
That kiss had felt so fucking real, and already my mind was trying to convince me that I should do more—should pull him into another kiss right now, cover him with kisses, get him naked as fast as I possibly could.