Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 52190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 261(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 261(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
I’m torn between wanting to tell him to fuck off and caving, confessing my sins and my dreams and letting him pick up the pieces and weave me back into the girl I thought I would be, not what I’ve become.
“You sound like my stepfather.” I harden, remembering how Hoover always said how I dressed made me look like a slutty clown.
“Hoover?” Our eyes clash in the heat from the fireplace that wavers between us, sweat prickling under my boobs and down my back. “I assure you, I am not your stepfather.”
Something crosses over his features, but it’s unreadable. “Yeah, but he’s the one that sent me here. You must have talked to him.”
“Yes, early this morning.”
“I guess you know each other.” I narrow my gaze as he flicks his eyes to the fire.
“Enough only to have him trust me with your care. He and I have spent time together in the past. He knew you would be safe here with me and that possibly I could help you.”
Safe. Help.
Hoover’s never cared about me being safe or helped. Just quiet. Or gone.
“Trust takes time,” I mumble, wanting to believe him as my heart launches into hopeful flight.
“I’ll work my hardest to make that time as short as possible.”
God, why does he have to talk like that? Why does he have to look like that?
I mean, I’ve kissed three boys in my life. Well, two boys and a man. And none of them were memorable in any positive way. The first one barely counts. It was third grade and Jimmy Feilmeister who was in fifth grade asked me to dance at the Harvest Festival. I was a kid, for heck sake, I didn’t know the moment he got me out in the middle of the dancefloor he’d turn into the tongue monster. I went crying into the girls room where I hid in the last stall until my father came looking for me when I wasn’t outside waiting for him at the end of the night.
Then, there’s Hank.
I didn’t like him, really. But he poured on the attention and when I finally leaned in for that beer-soaked first kiss… Well, it was a cavern of open lips, extended tongue and more saliva than should ever be involved.
The third kiss, that was the cherry on top of last night and until right this second, I don’t think I allowed myself to honestly put together the pieces of the horror show that could have been.
It wasn’t the kind of kiss you swoon over in your diary or with your girlfriends. More the kind you should write in a police report. I didn’t tell anyone I was with what happened.
Not even Hank. For all his moral ambiguity, he never tried to force anything on me. But, he wasn’t overly protective either.
I remember falling into the cinderblock wall, spilling margarita number seven all over my boots, slurring I needed to find the bathroom.
I hear Hoover’s voice in my head. Dress like you’re offering a free meal and don’t be surprised when someone shows up to eat.
I shake away the fuzzy memory of the filthy bathroom in the basement of the afterhours club on the wrong side of the wrong side of town. Somehow, that wasn’t the worst thing that happened to me yesterday. The worst thing was coming home to find that my new stepfather took my cat away and I have no idea where she’s gone. Or if she’s safe. Or if there’s any way I’ll ever get her back or even see her again.
For a moment, a thick wave of guilt settles on my shoulders remembering the phone by my hip that’s recording everything.
Father Martin lightly scratches at his lower lips with his thumb, his gaze flickering from my face to my chest, lower, lower, then licks its way back up leaving a trail of quivering tension in its wake.
“What do you want to talk about, Kitty?”
I lift a shoulder to my ear, rearranging myself, uncrossing my legs, recrossing them, giving him a view of my other butt cheek as I sniff and debate which way to take the rest of our ‘session’.
“You’re the boss. You tell me.”
He answers with a slow blink, hands unmoving, gaze pinned on me as I start to break into a flop sweat.
He’s...unflappable.
And infuriating.
I count to ten, panic prickling over my skin as he waits.
And I crack.
“Sex,” I blurt out, expecting him to wobble in his seat, gasp or set his jaw in anger.
He does none of those. Just…holds my eyes with his and I’m melting into the velvet seat, crossing and uncrossing my arms and my ankles until I think my skin is about to flay from my body.
Kill me now. I have no game.
Whatever this plan is, it’s got holes in it bigger than the Grand Canyon.