Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 103530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Oh god.
Oh no.
I didn’t like him. I liked him. It wasn’t a friends with benefits thing. I was legitimately into Matt. And that was going to cause all kinds of problems.
****
I tried to be myself on the ride back to the house, but I couldn’t quite remember how “myself” acted. All I could think of was that my crush on Matt had turned into a full-blown hope for something he’d never offered, and which I’d never had the right to hope for in the first place.
Though I doubted I could sleep, I laid down for a nap in Matt’s big bed, all by myself, and to my surprise, my racing brain and jumbled emotions slowed down enough that I could get some restorative rest. When I woke, the sunlight through the slats of the wooden blinds had turned orange.
I got up and went to my suitcase, only to find it was empty. Tentatively, I opened one of the drawers on the wardrobe. All of my clothes lay neatly folded inside, except for my dresses. I assumed those were hanging in the closet. I’d fallen asleep in my bikini—which had never even made it to the beach—and it seemed like I should at least have actual clothes on now that it was almost dinnertime.
I opened the closet and sure enough, there were the three dresses I’d brought with me. I pulled the black satin slip dress out, the one that I’d never been brave enough to wear at functions back home. I’d never even taken it to the club; it was too short and flimsy to guarantee I wouldn’t expose myself. But this seemed like the perfect venue.
After I brushed my teeth—midday dental hygiene never hurt anybody—and pulled my hair up into a high ponytail, I sent off to find Matt.
“Are you fucking kidd—on your six, on your six!”
I followed the sound of Matt’s nonsensical, one-sided chatter through the living room and down another hall.
“Too bad, I don’t like you camping the spawn point.” A brief pause. “Yes, you were. Dan The Man, back me up.”
I entered a den that held a wet bar, leather furniture, and a huge TV that currently displayed a video game with little soldiers running around shooting at each other. Matt sat on the sofa, holding a controller in his hands and wearing a microphone headset.
“Don’t whine at me,” he told whoever he was talking to. “Those are the server rules, not mine. Oh shit, they’re coming from behind those railcars. Who’s covering the rail yard?”
I leaned against the door frame and cleared my throat loudly. “This is how you choose to spend your time at a sex resort?”
Matt slapped the headset off and tossed the controller aside, scrambling to his feet. He turned to me with the guilty expression of someone who’d been caught in the act. Unfortunately for Matt, that act was supremely uncool.
“Hey,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “So. You’re up.”
“I am.” I glanced up at the screen, which pulsed red around the edges. “I think your guy is dying.”
“Yeah, well. War is hell,” he said sheepishly, grabbing the remote to turn the TV off. “Have a good nap?”
“I did. How long did I sleep?” I was somewhat nap-disoriented.
“Four hours.” He winced. “I’m sorry, should I have woken you?”
I shook my head. “No. I must have needed it.”
What I’d needed was space away from Matt, where I couldn’t see his ridiculously beautiful face or absurdly jacked body. All of my feelings for him, I’d decided, were entirely predicated upon his physical perfection. I was being drawn in like a fly on a beautiful carnivorous plant. At the end of our time together, I would go back to the real world and never even think about him.
You were thinking about him constantly before you came here, my brain reminded me.
“You look…” Matt blew out a long, low whistle as he looked me up and down. “And I look…”
“Like you’ve been sitting on a couch playing video games all day?” I caught the end of my ponytail and toyed with it over my shoulder.
“I should change for dinner,” he said grimly, plucking at the front of his T-shirt. “If you’re up to going out?”
“I am hungry.” As if summoned, my stomach rumbled, and I pressed my hand to it as if I could conceal the sound.
“Let me take a quick, quick shower and get changed?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.” Why did my voice sound so tight? I cleared it again. “I’ll snoop all over your house while you do.”
He scoffed. “Obviously. What’s the point of going to other people’s houses if you’re not going to snoop?”
When he left, he used his cane, giving me a weirdly apologetic look as he picked it up. I wasn’t sure what that was about. When we’d been doing the long-distance sex and chats thing, he’d made lots of jokes about his injury and his reliance on mobility aids. I supposed all those jokes could have been a shield to protect his ego.