Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
I’m more than slowly aware now, thank you very much, middle-of-the-night dick sighting.
Ugh.
I cover my eyes with my hands now, but that makes it worse. The memory of the shape of…um, Apollo’s body…is burned into my brain, so I focus on the sun instead. Maybe I can burn it off if I scald my retinas.
His dad is going to be here in a few hours. And my dad will be coming this afternoon. Today is the day if it’s any day. I know it’s basically today or bust. We get one chance, and that means working together. We haven’t done that because I’ve been avoiding him at all costs. I guess he would say I have a stick up my arse, but at least I have something. I don’t sleep in the nude or run out of a room in the nude when someone is screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night.
I suck a deep breath in through my nose and let it out through my mouth as I let my entire body sink into the big, round bed. Yes, it’s round. And no, it’s not awesome or anything. Neither is this room. Or the rest of the house.
Or Apollo’s body.
“Oh my fucking god.” I leap out of bed. Action. That’s what I need. I need to do something. I can’t just lay here anymore.
My hormones are burning red hot despite the cold shower I give myself, no matter how much it sucks, especially since I never shower in anything less than scalding hot water. Those hormones still don’t calm down while I get dressed.
They spike a new fever entirely when I get downstairs and find Apollo in the kitchen, standing at the counter and staring out the window. He’s leaning on his forearms, facing away from me. His jeans are kind of riding up his butt just a little, which makes it look perfect and hard and manly. Wedgies can be sexy on guys.
No. No, they can’t. They’re not sexy on him. What the hell is going on with me?
I clear my throat, and he spins around. His eyes are doing that liquid caramel thing that makes me suck in air, and my nipples pucker under my T-shirt. I threw it on over my tank top, but I regret picking shorts now. They’re not short, but they feel like it. It feels like his gaze is incinerating me when it lands on me.
“I have an idea,” he starts saying. “I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I thought about it while I was swimming.”
“When?”
“Last night. Early morning? I don’t know if I could ever stop swimming.”
Is it wrong that I hate swimming? That I hate the sport? That I hate how it took my best friend away from me when I needed him most? Yeah, it’s probably time to let it go. It’s kind of ironic how much I missed him, considering how I don’t even want to be here right now.
“What’s the idea?” I ask flatly. I grab a handful of wet hair and twirl it into a knot at the back of my head. It doesn’t spin itself out even though I don’t secure it with an elastic.
“I have shares in my dad’s company. He sold them to me a few years ago. He wanted to give them to me as part of my inheritance and partly because he thought it would get me involved in his company and start taking an interest. They might be controlling shares.”
My eyes go big. I feel like this is insider information. Like it’s not something I’m really supposed to even know.
“I was hoping that instead of that bailout, which I haven’t told your dad about or discussed with anyone other than you, you’d consider asking him to sell you shares in order to save the company, or at least better it to the extreme.”
Apollo must be extremely sleep deprived. Maybe he absorbed too much pool chemicals with all that swimming. No, wait. I don’t think he uses chemicals. More like salt or something. I’ve refused to use the pool, partly because I hate pools on principle and partly because there was no way I was putting on a bathing suit or enjoying any single part of this house where he could see me doing anything other than hating.
“Why would I ever do that?”
“Because then we’d both own a controlling interest in rival companies. We could force a merger.”
“What?” I nearly fall over. “You’re insane! That would kill my dad.”
“No.” His eyes sparkle, which is just another unfair low blow that I know he can’t help, but it still pisses me off. How dare he look so freaking good without sleeping? How dare he grow into this beautiful man who is so hot that it’s nearly painful to even be in the same room as him? Painful for my body. “No, it wouldn’t kill either of our dads. Because they’d be working for a corporation we designed and operated together. It would be the next generation furthering their legacy. We would make sure the company is large enough that they get to live out both their visions. That all their needs would be served and beyond. So far beyond. We would take things to a level they couldn’t even begin to imagine. Software and technology have never been more important than it is now. Home security, medical, point of sales systems, programming for pretty much every kind of machinery there is…the options are pretty much endless. The company would have specialized departments, but it would be working as part of a whole. There would be no competition.”