Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
She should look ridiculous, but the stiffening of my cock announces my body and head are of opposing opinions again. Her ‘restraints’ have me imagining her tied to a Saint Andrew’s Cross in a playroom, blindfolded and gagged, and they’re even more confronting than her screams for me to put down the scissors when I snatch them off a makeshift counter at the side of the changing room.
“This is a vintage couture dress. You can’t destroy vintage couture.”
After taking a moment to relish how her accent is more pronounced when she is being sassy, I ask, “Then how am I meant to get you out of it?”
When she peers at me from beneath a mountain load of silky ruffles, her eye roll is cuter than her flushed expression. “You need to find the zipper. I swear it’s here somewhere.”
She stops spinning in a circle when I place my hands on her hips to keep her still. She was circling so fast she was making me dizzy. “Give me a minute or two to explore.”
Octavia mumbles something under her breath. If given a bible and asked to swear on it, I’m confident enough in my assessment of the situation to place my hand on top and pledge that she muttered, ‘Oh God.’
After a handful of feather-like brushes of her skin and a heap of inappropriate gawks, I ask, “Do you remember if it was a side zipper? Or did it fasten at the back?”
“I don’t know,” she replies with a whine. “I wasn’t paying that much attention. I saw a couture dress with a fourteen-dollar price tag. You don’t willy-nilly when it comes to a fourteen-dollar couture.”
I grin about her eagerness to sniff out a bargain before continuing my hunt. I won’t lie. Just like when I was removing the blobs of mud from her silky-smooth skin, I take my time searching for the dress’s fastener. Octavia has beautiful, flawless skin that blooms with heat after only the slightest brush of my fingertips. Her provocative scent had me refusing to put her down even after we were clear from the carnage. And her face… don’t get me started on the uniqueness of her bluish-green eyes, plump bottom lip, and how her tiny nostrils flare along with the generous swells on her chest when she’s riled up, or I’ll never leave this changing room with my respect intact.
I almost threw it away when Fitz laughed in the town car. I was so overwhelmed by my swiftness of reeling Octavia in that I forgot we were with company—company who knows all my dirty secrets.
That’s why I fled. Secrets are hard to contain in general, but they’re almost impossible to keep under wraps when everything you are and have become is solely based on them.
With my mood nowhere near as playful, I find the latch under Octavia’s underarm, slide it down to her waist, then tell Octavia I’ll wait for her outside.
I’m out of the changing room faster than Octavia can breathe out my name in a breathless whisper and even faster than my lusty head can work out why a bra was dangling from the hanger I rushed by instead of on Octavia’s sweltering body.
CHAPTER 5
OCTAVIA
Jack is playful, handsome, and good company, but so damn hard for me to read. I’ve felt a little lost more than a handful of times in the past few hours. We switched out our smelly clothes at a trendy thrift store I’m dying to tell Jess about, ate at a cute little hole-in-the-wall joint half a mile from the race track that almost ruined my day, and have spent the last hour walking the backstreets of an eclectic suburb I didn’t know existed, yet I’m still none the wiser to what caused Jack to vacate the changing room like my miniskirt didn’t announce to him that I was gifted the dreaded flat-bottom genes from my mother.
His sudden departure had me worried he did more than scare away the salesman when I went to try on some outfits. I’m beginning to wonder if he researched me, and although I am confident in my family’s lawyer’s ability to keep our dirty secrets hidden, I’m just as worried Jack could have access to someone capable of digging up years of hidden shame in a matter of minutes. The generous tip he left the bubbly server at our last stop alludes to this, not to mention his super pricy watch.
Incapable of harnessing my curiosity for a second longer, I mutter, “Did I say something wrong back there?”
I nudge my head in the direction of the thrift shop, but since it is also in the direction of the Mexican restaurant, Jack sounds as lost as I feel when he replies, “I don’t speak fluent Spanish, but the waitress seemed to have no trouble understanding you.”