Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 114284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Finally, something I could laugh at.
“Yeah, I’m gonna have to go to the bathroom,” she giggled. “Talk soon.”
“Be safe, offspring. Love ya.”
“You too, old man.”
The call disconnected, and I killed the engine after idling for a few seconds in my spot. Silence and darkness took over, and I leaned forward and rested my forehead against the wheel.
How the fuck could I even begin to process all this?
Talking to my kid tended to make me feel better, so I was still waiting for the rug to be pulled from underneath. But there I had it. The truth was out. Lane wasn’t just Marina’s former schoolmate; he’d dated her. They’d been together a couple weeks—approximately the standard length of any high-school romance, right?—and then he’d broken up with her because he was gay.
Fast-forward several years, a twenty-five-year-old Lane Sawyer knocked on my door in Florida as part of a merry band of kinksters, and…then what? Had he recognized me immediately, or had he remembered later? Our initial greeting hadn’t been weird. We’d shaken hands. Macklin had covered the introduction part, and then we’d gone out to the patio.
To be honest, I’d mostly acknowledged there would be two bottoms who were semi-available. In terms of who I might play with. Both Macklin and Lane had ticked plenty of boxes, but yeah, Lane had been difficult to look away from.
Maybe he’d been a little guarded in the beginning, now that I thought about it. Because he’d come to life to such a degree once the topic shifted to reptiles that he’d almost become someone else.
That was the passion I’d grown addicted to so quickly.
I groaned and banged my head against the wheel a few times.
I could see the headlines already.
“Florida Man Seduces Daughter’s Ex-Boyfriend.”
I was a Florida Man now. A walking stereotype.
The problem with listening to Marina’s nostalgia was that she’d cushioned the blow with all the bits and pieces I fucking adored about Lane. He wasn’t some poser, some tourist, who put a few bucks in a donation box where proceeds went to protecting the fragile ecosystems we had down south. He was as passionate as I was, not to mention incredibly well-read and informed. Just talking to him had been like…like…driving out of a lifetime spent in a polluted city and filling your lungs with the cleanest air for the first time.
Then the sex…
His fearlessness, his hunger for the untamed, his tight little body, the way he’d fucking worshipped me with attention, his wolfish grins—a contrast to everything about him that was sugary-sweet and kind.
The reality of our situation had turned out to be much worse than I’d feared, and I was still here.
But thank fuck I had learned the truth through Marina and not Lane. I wasn’t sure I’d react well to hearing the facts directly from him. He probably wouldn’t have given me as many details either, and I needed those. I’d needed to know that their romance hadn’t gone very far. They’d been kids, more or less. It hadn’t lasted long.
I leaned back in my seat and released a long breath.
The cold from outside was slowly seeping into the car.
Perhaps the shock had run its course. Maybe this didn’t have to be so catastrophic. A long time had passed. Both Marina and Lane had grown up; they were different people, in a way. By the sound of things, Marina wasn’t harboring any ill feelings toward Lane.
I scrubbed my hands over my face.
When push came to shove, what bothered me most was probably Lane sticking with the bullshit. He should’ve come clean when the dust had settled. Because I actually understood the quick fix he’d opted for. Panic was a traitorous bitch, and we didn’t make the best decisions in fight-or-flight mode. But after that…? I mean, I’d kept pushing. I’d kept bringing it up. I know you from somewhere. I’d told him over and fucking over, and he’d insisted he didn’t remember me.
Yeah, that bugged me.
And he must’ve known from early on, right?
Thinking back, I recalled how quickly we’d moved. His first night there, I’d fucked his brains out. A lot happened on that very first day. I’d seen him in action twice, first with the random anaconda retrieval, then with the Nile monitor. And I’d mentioned I recognized him from somewhere more than once before we hooked up too. So… Which he’d shut down pretty fast, hadn’t he?
I frowned to myself and tried to jog the memories.
If someone told me they were trying to place me from somewhere, if they thought we’d met before, my first reaction wouldn’t be to shut that down. I’d try to remember, of course. But not Lane. No, he’d been so sure.
Rookie mistake. Instant denial to something so innocent was a dead giveaway.
Which begged the question, why did Lane care to lie?
After all, he’d crawled into bed with me—in that case, fully aware of who I was.