Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 68390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
I make myself move toward the kitchen. I should retreat, but this place is small. It’s easy to do something because Beans has a container of food on the counter, one of those plastic ones I bought and filled with dog food. It’s easy to pour some food into his bowl. It’s a good distraction. Except when I stand up, Sterling’s deep brown eyes run smack dab into mine, and my heart goes racing at a thousand miles an hour.
Something that isn’t panic shoots through my brain, chest, and who-ha, in that order. My brain shuts off, my chest clamps down, and the rest of me… That’s the part I keep feeling. That burn. That burn of awareness. Of being in close proximity to a man who smells like forest, open skies, wild mountains, and all the beasts contained within. Well, maybe not the beasts, as per how beasts go, but he smells and looks rugged, and all that ruggedness is doing something to me even though I’ve never been a thrill seeker.
I’m probably standing here looking constipated. Idea constipated. Like I need to say something, but I can’t get it out.
I shove the food container back onto the counter. Beans walks over and starts hoovering up those crunchies. He’s a messy eater, and bits and pieces fall all over the floor.
One minute, Sterling is just standing there in my kitchen. And the next, he’s moving. He’s coming closer to me, and I should back up, but I don’t. The only thought going through my brain is straight up: He just ate my cookies, but I’d really like him to eat my cookie. He closes the distance between us way too fast. After a couple of mouthfuls, Beans loses interest in the food and saunters off toward the couch. Sterling is now way too close.
I press up against the counter until it pokes into my back. I want this. I want it to happen. My belly is cramping, my chest is about to explode from me holding my breath, and my lady bits are clenching in on themselves because, yeah, four years of celibacy, and alright, at least a year before that, do things to a person.
Apparently, all it takes is a look now to get my mojo mojoing.
Maybe it’s just been so long, or maybe it’s because Sterling is so drop-dead gorgeous, or maybe it’s that our body chemicals work well together, but I don’t feel the least bit threatened or regretful about what is going to happen. He’s going to enter my personal space. He’s going to touch me gently on the shoulder, on the waist. I’m going to lean into him and tilt my face up, and he’s going to kiss me. I’m going to kiss him back, and it’s going to kick off the best sex marathon of my life. Even if it’s over in five minutes, it would still be the best sex I’ve ever had. It would be me riding his face. His tongue would be inside me, and then his fingers, and then his—
“I—I’m super tired, actually. I should probably go to bed.” The words wheeze out of me like I’ve just used my tongue to clean up all the dust bunnies under the couch, and believe me, that old beast collects a ton of debris.
He blinks. I blink back. He steps back, and I lean further into the counter. I expect him to get mad at me for leading him on, to ask me what’s wrong with me, and to tell me that I’m a tad pathetic and strange and then storm out of here.
Instead, he nods. “You’re right. It’s late. I’ll call for a cab and get it to take me back to the club for my car.”
“Yeah.” Yeah, he could do that. But deep down, it’s yeah, as in, please don’t. Yeah, as in, change my mind. Yeah, as in, there’s this stupid contract I absolutely can’t break hanging over my head. “Or you could just uh…sleep on the couch. I could make it up for you.”
We both glance over at it. It’s not really a couch. It’s more of a loveseat. A big old plaid one that I scored because the person who lived here before me left it when they moved out. It’s not comfortable, but I didn’t want to pay someone to come and take it away, and I didn’t have the heart to throw it out because, structurally, it’s still quite sound.
“Sure.”
I think we’re both shocked. Suddenly, he looks tired. He rubs the back of his neck like he caught a red-eye flight from somewhere this morning and has been worried and on his feet ever since. Maybe it’s the white button-down shirt and jacket he’s wearing that puts the image in my head. Suits always scream office, which screams businessman. I realize I don’t know a darn thing about this guy. Yet I was going to…to what? Right now, I don’t remember what I was going to do, but I was going there in my mind. I don’t know where he comes from, what he does, or what his last name even is.