Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 110694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Giving myself one more pep talk, I headed out the bedroom door and down to the kitchen. It seemed quiet. I didn’t hear anything until I was almost at the door. Stevie asked Jayda if she liked the color purple or pink better. There was no sound of masculine voices. A small twinge of relief came with that, and I peered in the door, just to be sure.
Stevie was on her knees, sitting on a stool, with a plate in front of her while Jayda leaned against the bar with a cup of coffee. No one else. Thank God. Maybe I could time it this way every day. Even better, I could dodge them altogether. Never lay eyes on them again.
Jayda looked over at me. “Morning,” she said. “Latte first?”
I nodded. “Yeah, thanks,” I replied, wondering if they’d said anything to her about last night.
I moved over to take the stool beside Stevie and put my arm around her shoulders to pull her close so I could kiss the top of her head.
“You slept late,” Stevie said.
“Yep.”
Jayda glanced back at me while she worked on my latte. “You okay?” she asked.
The flicker of concern in her eyes made me want to crawl under the table and stay there all day. Or the rest of the year. Probably the latter would be best.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied.
She didn’t call me out on it or push. I wondered how I’d feel about her if I had found her with Linc’s cock down her throat. It was hard to imagine hating her, but I wasn’t so sure. I hoped that day never came. I wanted to continue liking her. She would be in Stevie’s life, even when I wasn’t. It would help, knowing there was a woman here who I knew cared about her.
Stevie wiggled down off her stool when I let her go and ran over to where Maui lay, resting on one of the beds that had been bought and placed around the house for him. He saw her coming his way, and his head perked up as his entire body seemed to wag.
Jayda brought my drink over to me and set it down. “You didn’t have to wait up there so long,” she told me. “They weren’t here.”
Oh. They’d left. When? After Linc had apparently ripped the woman’s vagina open with his cock? The bitter thought settled over me. I needed to schedule an STD test today. I could ask someone to take me.
I didn’t respond as I took a sip from the cup.
She stood there, watching me as she chewed on her bottom lip. After a minute or so, she sighed. “Are you not going to ask where Linc went?”
I shook my head. Absolutely not.
The exasperated look on her face would be funny if I wasn’t a bitter, broken soul.
“Okay, fine. Don’t ask. I’m telling you anyway. They are both in the hospital rooms in the basement with Doc Burl.”
I set my cup down slowly. There were many questions that statement brought up.
“There are hospital rooms in the basement?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Yes. Seriously, is that your first question?”
No. “Yeah, because that’s intense.”
Jayda tilted her head. “Look, I know you know who they are. When things happen, most of the time, they don’t want to go to a hospital. It involves too many questions. Police would be called, et cetera. They even have an operating room down there. Doc Burl works for them privately.”
Well, now that she’d explained it, that made sense.
She glanced over at Stevie, who was on the floor, playing with Maui, then back at me. “They got into a fight in here last night,” she whispered. “Linc lost it and attacked Luther. The women they had with them were screaming like banshees, and I came running in here to find them beating the hell out of each other. I had to mop the floor to get the blood up before I went to bed.”
Was she joking?
“What?” I whispered, my eyes bugging out of my head.
She smirked. “I dumped the pitcher of cold water over them while on the phone, calling Bane. They’d stopped by the time he arrived with Locke and Oz, but they were still seething and glaring at each other. They each have a cracked rib, which is what probably kept them from going at it again.”
I shook my head. “What in the world happened?”
They had cracked ribs? Jesus.
She waggled her eyebrows. “You.”
Me? I frowned. “What?”
She bit back a laugh and leaned closer. “All I know or got from their angry hissing and snarling was that Luther threatened to take care of you sexually if Linc didn’t stop leading you on and using you.”
That stung—no, it was more along the lines of a knife right in the chest.
“Seems you saw Luther naked and Linc getting a blow job. It escalated from there.”