Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
But we weren’t going where I thought we were going.
I knew that when he said, “This is a dangerous game you’re playin’.”
“I’m not playing a game,” I lied.
I so was.
The long game.
And I was in it to win it.
“I’m warnin’ you, there’s gonna be a time when I’m gonna have to set you aside. For your own good. For Liam’s. And when I do, there won’t be any going back.”
“We’ll see,” I murmured.
“Yeah, we will,” he murmured back, but his fingers belied his words because they went to my zipper. “Trust Toni to put you in sexy bridesmaids’ dresses to make sure you all get laid.”
“Am I getting laid?” I asked.
My zipper came down.
I smiled at him.
His eyes fixed on my mouth as his lips whispered, “Minx.”
“You bet your bottom.”
Those beautiful browns came up to mine. “Bottom?”
“I can’t curse. Liam told his teacher he wasn’t picking up the damned crayons other kids didn’t put away, and I had to go to the school for a chat.”
I worried, since his mood was mercurial anytime I brought up our son, how he’d react to that.
But he chuckled.
So I relaxed.
He also bunched the fabric of my dress at the hips, then up, and boom, it was gone.
He slid his hands up my ribs, watching their progress as they made their way to my lacy, black strapless bra.
I bit my lip, feeling it.
“I don’t wanna fuck you up,” he told my midriff.
“I know what I’m doing.”
I cried out as he jerked me forward while falling back then rolled us so he was on top.
“No you don’t,” he said fiercely. “But I’m goddamned weak, and you’re beautiful, and the only good thing in my life, and I can’t seem to let you go.”
Score one for me.
I made a noise that sounded like a purr.
His pupils immediately dilated.
Okay, now we were getting somewhere.
I slid a hand over his hip and in, cupping his hardness.
He growled.
Definitely getting somewhere.
“Am I getting laid, or what?”
Darius let it go and his grin was so wolfish, I felt in my vajayjay.
Then I got laid.
Chapter Six
Blinders
Rock Chick Rewind
Still some time ago, but now even less…
Toni threw herself in the lawn chair beside me, doing this without sloshing even a drop out of her mojito.
The girl was good.
“I am not feeling this,” she declared, gaze aimed across my parents’ backyard to Lena and her new fiancé, Kenneth.
“Hmm…” I replied.
She turned her head to me, lifting her drink to her mouth, but before taking a sip, said under her breath, “Darius get the skinny on him yet?”
“He’s not a fan,” I said under mine.
“Is that an understatement?” she asked.
I gave her big eyes.
“Shit,” she said, turning back to Lena draped on Kenneth. “He got anything like those photos he got on Michael?”
“He’s working on it.”
“You know, Tony is a construction foreman,” she told me something I did, indeed, know.
I confirmed I knew it and drew it out. “Yeeessss.”
“He’s not a master sleuth. He can’t keep coming up with the dirty on Lena’s boys. She’s gonna start thinking it’s weird.”
“It only happened that once.”
“We pinned nasty pictures on him knowing someone who knew someone who could look into things, which wasn’t a total lie, since he knows you, and you know Darius. And you know, Denver’s a big city, but it’s also a small town. To her, Darius was your past, but everyone knows Eddie Chavez is a cop, now he’s made detective, and it wouldn’t be hard to put those two together to get what you need to keep your sister from making shit decisions about the men she lets in her bed.”
Uh-oh.
She’d been keeping my secret for a long time now.
Years.
And I had a feeling she was getting fed up with it.
“I won’t pin this one on Tony.”
“You need to tell Lena what’s going on with Darius.”
“Are you high?” I screeched.
Everyone looked at me.
I hid behind my mojito.
Toni let it die down before she said low, “I think more, you need to figure out what’s going on with you and Darius.”
I hated to admit it.
But she wasn’t wrong.
I knew it’d take patience, but this was crazy.
And nothing I was doing was working.
Sure, we had great sex that never got old because it could be a month, even two, between times we could get together.
And no, it wasn’t just sex. We talked. He ate up everything I could tell him about Liam like my words were mana from heaven. He asked about my new job at the law firm now that I’d finished my degree and landed a position as a paralegal. He asked about Mom, Dad, Lena, Toni.
He did not talk about himself.
He was a master at avoiding it.
Half the time, I was kissing him goodbye before I realized I’d had him again and gotten nowhere.
Liam was now nine. Toni and Tony had gotten pregnant and had a baby girl. Lena had been through five new guys before she latched onto this one.