Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
“This is what we’re going to do,” I announce before I go silent. It’s better for dramatic effect. However, the only drama I get in return is Ignacia’s hands flying to her hips. She’s still sitting down, so it looks quite hilarious. I manage not to smile since none of this is funny. “You’re going to hire me, and I’m going to work for free. I see it taking no more than ten to fourteen days to resolve if I have my team working on it. And I will have my team working on it. As for sleeping arrangements, you have an extra bedroom here. It might be small and filled with sewing things, but I’ll sleep there, and we will resume our hot bedding appointments on the correct nights to stay true to the contract.”
“I’m between jobs right now, and I can assign myself wherever I wish. Perks of being the boss and all. You won’t go anywhere without me, even if it’s out in the yard. I’m your constant shadow now. My team will get this figured out for you. You’ll get your old life back, and I do guarantee Aiden will face jail time, and if not that, then serious legal repercussions. He’s gone too far, and we’ll find a way to prove it. He might think he’s a great hacker and good at finding people, but he has no idea what a true professional looks like. We’ll build an ironclad case against him. We will also get you a restraining order against him under both your identities. If he comes anywhere near you, he’ll go to jail. All of this will happen quickly. I have people who can just about perform miracles.”
“Are they saints?” she asks.
My eyes nearly go flying out of my head. “Are they who?”
Her lips flutter and twitch. They’re so lovely—full and kissable. I’d like to lean across the table and taste them. Kiss them until they’re swollen and hurting. Maybe punish them a little, but not in a creepy, asshole way. Just in a way she would like, with little bits of teeth and tongue.
It’s official. My pants have become a tent.
Thank goodness for old oak tables.
She pushes the heels of her hands into her eyes and groans, but it turns into a sigh, which just turns into her sounding and looking so damn tired. All the levity, all the fight, all the attempts at picking herself up are gone, and it’s just her. She looks like she needs a good night’s sleep. This is our night, and I’m not going back on it. I’ll feel better that I’m sleeping beside her, even if the second she goes down—after all this, she will crash, and it will come sooner than she thinks—I’ll be on my phone and laptop, firing off instructions left and right to the other members of my team.
They might not be Jesus, but they’ll get the job done. Not real miracles. Just a lot of hard work. I ignore the fact that I want to take Ignacia in my arms, comfort her, reassure her, kiss her gently, then deeply, then into oblivion, and into forgetting. I want to carry her up to bed, tuck her in, and be a gentleman. And then, if she asked me to fuck her into tomorrow and oblivion and forgetting and all the stuff she desperately needs right now, I’d be a gentleman and oblige. Nicely. It’s possible to have hard, energetic, maybe even borderline rough sex and still do it nicely. If she doesn’t want that, if she asks me to fuck her into oblivion the vanilla way, then I’ll darn well make it happen too. Even if vanilla is just as gross a flavor as her chai tea.
In my humble opinion, of course. The rest of the world clearly doesn’t agree.
“Just say yes,” I urge her. “I can have a contract drawn up for this in ten minutes while you put on your pajamas and brush your teeth or if you want to soak in the bath to relieve some of the stress. Let me handle this. You don’t have to do it on your own. You won’t be able to do it on your own.”
“But why?” Her voice breaks, and it cuts right through me.
Why indeed? What possible answer could I give her? Nothing that I can say out loud. Nothing that I can even explain to myself. I shouldn’t. And that’s the truth.
“Because you need someone, and that someone is right here. This needs to be done. Knowing what an injustice was done to you, I can’t just walk away when I have the money and the team behind me to fix it. Sometimes, even rich assholes want to do a good turn for the world.”
There. I think that should satisfy her question and the thousand things banging around in my skull.