Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
He nodded because he knew truth when he heard it. That was the funny part. He could be honest when he wanted to. It just wasn’t normal to him. He’d opened up to Taylor and then he’d regretted it because he hadn’t trusted her.
Hadn’t trusted his own emotions, his instincts.
“So I should tell her how I feel.”
“Do you know how you feel?” Tag asked the question with a tone that let Drake know he didn’t think the answer should be yes.
He knew what he felt. Didn’t he? Normally he sat on decisions for long periods of time, but that hadn’t worked with Taylor. His indecision had cost her. “I feel like I care about her more than I care about anyone else. I feel like she’s the one, and she should let me take care of her. I feel like I should handle this and she and I should explore this relationship when the op is through.”
“Okay. We’re going to do a little improv, and I’m going to tell you how I think that conversation is going to go.” Tag settled his big chin on his right fist and gave Drake big eyes. “Drake, I feel like shoving my designer shoe straight up your ass and giving it a hard wiggle while you cry.”
Of course the willingness to help him talk through a situation also came with sarcasm. “She’s not going to say that.”
Taggart sat back. “She is absolutely going to say it if you give her the whole, oh, baby, I love you so much I’m going to take away a job you deserve and keep it for myself because you’re too sweet and pretty to be in danger, and also you have boobs so you can’t possibly do a man’s job.”
“I definitely didn’t fucking say that.” Maybe there was a good reason he didn’t talk through his feelings.
“That is what she will hear, and deep down in your dick brain, it’s there.”
Oh, he shouldn’t pursue this but he couldn’t help himself. “Dick brain?”
“Yeah, it’s like a lizard brain,” Tag began. “You know everyone has a lizard brain that thinks only of base instincts. Men also have dick brain. Sometimes it’s good to listen to dick brain. Sometimes dick brain can save us. This is not one of those times. Dick brain is ignoring a couple thousand years of evolution and an entire movement that freed women from the whole ‘my dick likes you so I own you’ thing. It’s why I invented BDSM. So I could feed my dick brain so my wife kills neither my actual dick nor my actual brain.”
He was such an ass, and also stupidly charming when he wanted to be. Drake couldn’t help but smile. “You invented BDSM?”
Taggart’s lips curled up, but his expression went thoughtful. “Don’t we reinvent the things we do every day? I can tell you the D/s I practice with my Charlie isn’t the one I thought I would practice. I was hard core in my younger days. I viewed a submissive as someone I was supposed to take care of and who filled my needs in return. Charlie changed that. I love her so I have to view her as more than a sub. She’s half of my soul and so complex I’ll never figure her out completely. She’s a glorious puzzle who amuses and challenges and frustrates me in the best possible way. So I couldn’t put her in the same pretty cage I’d put other subs in. She couldn’t be a pet I protected and fed, who made me feel like a man. She had to be my partner, and while you protect your partner you have to be careful not to squash her soul. To never make her feel like she’s less than she is. Do you honestly know Taylor isn’t up to this job or is your dick brain telling you—girl pretty, dick must protect?”
He sighed because deep down Tag was probably right. “The work she’s done on this so far is superlative, but she’s never been tested in the field.”
“Hasn’t she? She supported her father for years. Would you have put yourself in the field when you were eighteen?”
He’d been in the field for years by that time. He’d been spying on his classmates and their families the whole time he was in school. Because school hadn’t mattered. All that had mattered was pleasing his father. “I was in the… It’s not the same.”
“It is. Your father taught you,” Tag said with surety. “He taught you way too young. He taught you how to spy before he taught you why you were spying. He taught a child who thought it was a game and who learned he needed to win in order to be worthy.”
“That’s not true.” But wasn’t it? He didn’t think his father meant to twist his childhood the way he had.