Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 140184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 701(@200wpm)___ 561(@250wpm)___ 467(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 701(@200wpm)___ 561(@250wpm)___ 467(@300wpm)
He has to stop, though. Doing that to me when we’re alone having breakfast or even at home on the couch is one thing, but doing it here, in public, with so many people around? He can’t.
I reach down and gently pull his hand away.
He cocks a dark eyebrow, then casually sticks his thumb in my mouth. “Suck.”
My face burns doing it in public, but I wrap my lips around his thumb and suck off my own arousal.
Approval glints in his beautiful blue eyes and makes my tummy flutter. “Good girl,” he rumbles, leaning in to give me a soft kiss on the cheek.
Finished making trouble for the moment, apparently, he shifts his attention back to his son. “Are you gonna sit down?”
Jonathan’s gaze flickers to me. “Actually, I was hoping for a dance.”
My tummy flutters. “There’s no music.”
He smirks and jerks his thumb back in the direction of the DJ Milo’s been paying off when we needed a dance. “There will be when we head out on the floor.”
I look at Milo. “Do you mind?”
He glances at his son, then meets my gaze. I search for some sign he doesn’t want me to dance with Jonathan, but he smiles faintly and shakes his head. “Of course not,” he says rather convincingly. “Go ahead.”
“You sure?”
He nods and kisses me on the top of the head.
I turn my body so I can climb off his lap, but before I can, Jonathan startles the hell out of me by kneeling down on the floor in front of me. I’m too startled to react as he firmly grabs one leg and pushes my dress up when it starts to fall.
“Wh-what are you doing?”
He smirks, sliding his hands down my leg and sending chills up my spine, then he fingers the buckle on my pretty white sandals. “You came undone. Didn’t want you to trip.”
I feel more wobbly than when I was walking as he slips the strap back through the little silver piece and buckles my heeled sandal.
“Thank you,” I murmur, though my gratitude doesn’t sound sincere even to my own ears.
I’m sure he did that more to annoy Milo and unsettle me than to be nice, anyway. It’s Jonathan.
Once my shoe is secure, he stands and offers his hand. I take it and he pulls me off his father’s lap, then leads me out onto the dance floor.
The DJ must have been watching for us because like Jonathan said it would, the music starts when we’re ready for it. The beginning of the song sounds a bit like an erratic heartbeat. Familiar, but I don’t place it until I hear Taylor Swift’s voice.
Jonathan settles his arms around my waist. I keep my hands on his shoulders in an attempt at propriety, but I can’t bite back a smile. “Had to be a Swifty song, didn’t it?”
He smirks. “You know it. I heard this one day while I was…” He pauses, then just to aggravate me, says with exaggerated care, “spending entirely platonic time with a member of the opposite sex.”
I roll my eyes. “Sure you were.”
His eyes twinkle with mischief. “I tried to word that as carefully as possible. Didn’t want you to have another jealous meltdown.”
My jaw drops. “I did not have—”
He doesn’t let me finish my denial. “But I heard this song playing. I always think of you when I hear Taylor Swift now, and a few of the lyrics caught my attention. Reminded me of you.”
His words take me off guard. A good portion of the time he’s trying to crawl under my skin and aggravate me, but then there are the moments when he’s open and unguarded by his playful barriers.
This feels like one of those rarer moments.
It does something to my stomach. I don’t know what it is. The dynamics in this family are like an emotional rollercoaster designed just for me. I’ve all but given up on always identifying what I’m feeling—or why I’m feeling it—when I’m being messed with.
It feels like an intimate thing to tell someone a song reminds them of you.
More so as I listen to the words of the song I’ve heard dozens of times before but never really listened to.
Sometimes my relationship with Jonathan feels settled, but more often than not it feels indefinable and maybe a little broken.
Most of the time, things are good, but occasionally one of us will get scraped by a jagged edge.
I know that whatever relationship we might have had if my introduction to him would have been as his father’s girlfriend is nothing like the one we have now. There would have been boundaries in place to protect all our places and none of the crap that’s come up would have even been an issue.
But we didn’t have a normal introduction, or a traditionally established relationship. Nothing can change that, and most days I don’t feel the need to. Most days, our relationship works for us.