Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46914 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 235(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46914 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 235(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
My smile widens, pushing away all the other feelings. You really are keen to learn who I am.
Can you blame me? he replies.
I thought we were done, I send, dodging the question, wondering if he’ll comment on it. When you didn’t text back last night….
I’m forced to ignore my cell phone when the bus pulls up, though I achingly want to check it when it vibrates in my pocket.
It’s difficult not to think about the vibration moving through my center, sitting in his lap as though I’m a completely different woman and confident, ready, and capable.
Sitting on the bus, I lean against the glass, taking out my phone and reading his text.
It was difficult not to text you, his message reads.
A flutter touches me, my heart picking up speed in my chest, thudding temptingly. Why?
I find you interesting, he replies.
How? We don’t even know each other.
I know you want to work for a charity, which makes you selfless. I know you’re going through a hard time dealing with your mom, and I know I’d like to make you feel better if I could.
Biting down, I watch the landscape roll by. Unfortunately, the buses are infrequent and terrible around here, meaning we must take a snaking course into the city.
I’ve got plenty of time to sit and think about his words.
I’ve got plenty of time to imagine how he could make me feel better.
It would be more than sex and the steaminess of our bodies getting close.
Maybe it would start with that.
He’d grab me and take me with a possessive fire inside, leaning over me as his hand slid up my thigh and pressed down on my sex.
His face would change, his expression getting fierce when he feels how ready I’ll be for him, my sex tingling and wet, pulsing with desire for his manhood.
And after, he’d hold me, the heat of our bodies pressed close, making it possible to ignore the pain, the heartache, the memories.
Or not ignore them.
Heal them.
Together.
Miss Mystery? he texts when I don’t respond.
I know I should stop. Nothing good can come of this.
But the hope he’s instilling in me is far too fierce and tempting. It’s making me think we could be something one day.
Won’t Kennedy get jealous if you keep texting me?
I send it quickly, a self-destructive act, a bomb that will blow up whatever we’re building here.
CHAPTER 7
Weston
I stare down at her message, sitting on my balcony in the same position I was in last night. The difference is the sun’s shining now, but the rays do nothing to brighten my mood, nothing to make her text any less painful.
Alice asked me if Kennedy would get jealous if I kept texting her.
My woman, only Alice, never Kennedy or anybody else, has no idea how badly this makes me want to roar.
I want to stand up and roar off the balcony like some kind of wild beast, like a monster who’d do anything for his woman.
Kennedy means nothing to me, I type. That was all a lie. It was never real. It was a PR stunt to….
I delete the message, somehow forcing myself to erase the words. I have to remember that, as far as Alice knows, she’s a stranger to me… and there’s a chance, even if I don’t want to admit it, that she’s texting me for the same social-climbing reasons Kennedy told her lie.
The same reason women do any number of things to interact with Oscar-winning actors, with millionaires.
I’ve had my fair share of women try it with me.
But I never wanted any of them, was never tempted, even for a second.
I think of my woman on her way to work, wearing that black skirt, the one that hugs her hips tightly… the one that tells me to claim her, to tear off her stockings and reveal her tempting body.
Her text sits there, and I realize I don’t know what to do.
It’s a feeling I’m not used to.
Whatever else is true about me – grumpy, reclusive – I usually know how to behave, aim at a target and go for it.
So maybe that’s what I’ll do.
No, not maybe.
That is what I’ll do.
I’ll pick a target, a clear objective…
Standing, I stretch my arms and roll my shoulders, glad to have a mission.
I’m going to see my woman.
I stand in the stairwell of Aurora’s large offices.
I’m wearing a hat and sunglasses, knowing it won’t mask my identity completely, but it may cause people’s gazes to pass over me if they bother looking over here.
But so far, nobody has.
I’ve been here for minutes, feeling like a jackass, but there’s this magnetic pull I can’t ignore.
Finally, my woman appears, walking over to her cubicle.
I look past the other employees, staring as a shaft of sunlight lights her up, as though fate is telling me to claim her.