Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
“What is it about you?” she whispered, her voice humming in her chest.
“I told you I’m your fantasy and your nightmare,” I said.
She chuckled softly. “Come on, quit kidding around. I’m serious.” She rolled over and lay on my stomach.
My dick had already hardened at the contact, but sex wasn’t what she needed now, not after the panic attack today. Comfort, talking, understanding, that was what Riley craved more than anything else.
And acceptance, too, in her own way. She’d accepted her burdens, shouldered them, and expected judgment for it.
“What is it about you that has me like this?” Riley traced her finger over my chest, the smattering of hair in its center. She moved it to the blank patch of skin over my heart.
“Like what?”
“Going back on all the decisions I make,” she said. “After today, I swore I wouldn’t lose control with you again. We’re from different worlds, entirely. You’re in power, you run strip clubs and—”
“—and restaurants, for fuck’s sake.”
“And restaurants, for fuck’s sake,” she said with a small smile. “I’m just a girl from a small town far away. I came here with a dream, and I wound up screwing up everything I wanted.”
“Doesn’t seem like it to me.” I wet my finger and brushed it across her forehead. “You came to Florida to dance, and you could’ve wound up in one of the places I own, rather than your studio. It takes balls to pull that off.”
“Lady balls,” she said.
“Correct.” I brushed another line across her forehead, watching her lean into my touch, her eyelids fluttering ever so slightly. “We’re from different worlds, you say, but we’re also exactly the same.”
“Huh?”
“We’re cut from the same steel beam, Riley, and that’s why you want to spend time with me. That’s why you can’t turn away. Strength seeks strength.”
She didn’t object to the comparison, instead she kissed my chest. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ve been particularly grateful these past couple weeks. I’ve been pretty damn self-involved. Or Jax-involved. I just want you to know how grateful I am to you for giving me a place to stay this month. No matter what happens after it’s up.”
The thought came unbidden and the words followed. How could I keep them in? “Stay,” I said.
“What?”
“When it’s up, stay here with me for longer.”
“Uh, that’s real sweet, Jax, but I don’t think I can afford to pay half the rent on this place,” she said.
“So don’t,” I replied. “Stay with me. In my bedroom. Be mine as more than just a roommate or whatever this is.”
“What are you saying?” She asked.
I could define it right now. I could tell her to be my woman in more than just soul, but in name too. I could tell her she had to be my partner, my girlfriend. Such a prissy word to describe what I wanted.
“Jax?”
I couldn’t bring the words to my lips, not after what I’d witnessed growing up. Not after having my mother torn from me too early, my sister taken, blame laid on my shoulders, and a childhood that had been more of an early adulthood. Not after witnessing my uncle lay hands on my aunt.
There was so much bad out there. So much fucking wrong.
I could protect her from it. I just couldn’t get those words out.
“Jax?”
“I want you to stay, that’s what it means. I want you to stay with me, and I don’t want you to leave until you absolutely have to.” I cupped her cheek and drew her into a kiss. She broke it off first, her eyes flicking from side-to-side, searching me. “You don’t have to decide now. Think about it, Riley.”
Chapter 22
Riley
D day.
Reality had rattled toward me like a freight train over the past month living with Jax. All the little marks I’d made in my journal, the lists of things that needed to be done, all the tasks I had to fulfill to keep things on track at the studio, none of them had worked.
Veronica had been right.
Life didn’t give a fuck about my plans.
I stood in front of the studio, the doors closed to me now, the hall inside dark, clutching my cut-off sweater to my chest, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I said and looked to Veronica, who stood at my side.
She placed her arm around my shoulders. “It’s OK.”
“No,” I said. “I—you relied on this income. I let you down, Ron.”
My friend shook her head at me, golden locks, so much like her brother’s, flopping from the motion. “You didn’t.” But she didn’t encourage me as she’d done so many times in the past. She didn’t tell me what she had planned for the future or ask me what I would do now that the bank had taken back the studio.
A rift had grown between us. It was filled with her brother, and the past two weeks of my awkward silences and growing fear as I realized that, oh yeah, missing a payment meant penalty fees, and that the studio hadn’t made enough to pay them off.