Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I’d rather have a tooth pulled, but I’ve avoided her questions long enough, so I take her hand in mine, and nod. “You go first. Ask away.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Eloise
I place the business card Gaines gave me on the nightstand. I want to clutch it in my hand forever because it feels like the greatest gift I’ve ever been given. I want this to mean he’s falling as hard for me as I am for him, but I don’t know if that’s what this is.
“You go first,” he repeats. “Toss a question at me, lamb.”
I have a million of them, but I blurt out the one that feels pressing now. “The night I fell, you were you on your way to club, weren’t you?”
He nods. “Yes.”
“Can I ask a follow up question before you ask one?”
He smiles. “You just did. It’s my turn.”
“Dammit.” I purse my lips. “Fair is fair. Ask away.”
“Were you planning on fucking someone at the club the night you came face to face with the devil?”
“The night I fell?” I reframe it. “I’m honestly not sure. Curiosity took me back there.”
He accepts that answer with a nod, so it’s my turn. “Same question. Were you planning on fucking someone at the club that night.”
“No,” he answers without hesitation before he amends his answer, “Wait. That might be a yes.”
I raise my hand. “Permission to break the rules please.”
He takes my hand to kiss my palm. “Permission granted. You’re going to ask what I mean by that.”
I nod. “Yes.”
He adjusts his ass on the bed. “I saw Penny and Dax at Atlas 22 that night.”
“The night I fell?”
He taps his palm. “I’m keeping track of how many times you break the rules.”
“Good.” I laugh. “That will lead us into angry fuck territory.”
His blue eyes glint in the dim light of the room. “You want that again.”
“I loved that.”
He chuckles before he continues his explanation, “I saw Penny and Dax and she mentioned the mask and you going back to the place where you wore it before, so…”
“So, you came to find me?” I interrupt. “Is that why you were going there?”
“Yes,” he admits. “I can’t tell you what I would have done if I saw you in there with another guy but it’s highly likely he would have ended up in the ED and I’d be facing a prison sentence.”
The thought of him using his hands to cause harm to anyone is so foreign that I can’t wrap my mind around it.
“That’s the true story of why I was going to the club.” He traces the curve of my jaw with his finger.
“When did you realize I was your lamb?” I don’t care whose turn it is, that question has been gnawing at me for weeks.
He closes his eyes briefly before he levels them on my face. He moves in for a chaste kiss, stopping to cup my cheek in his hand. “It was shortly after Berk met Astrid.”
I’m so stunned that I’m sure my mouth falls open. “What?”
He sucks in a deep breath. “It was on a Friday. Astrid was playing a set at a bar near Berk’s brownstone. It was raining. You were there. I saw you at the bar alone. I just knew. My body knew.”
“You knew it was me?”
“Without question,” he whispers. “I saw you. Apparently I was staring at you because Berk asked if I wanted an introduction.”
“You said no,” I state the obvious.
He shakes his head. “I kept my life and what I did at Club Skyn very far apart.”
“What you do there?” I correct him.
“Did there,” he counters. “My life hasn’t been the same since we had that moment in the private room, Eloise. I searched for you. Hell, I’d stare at every brunette I passed on the street. I took a second glance if I saw a woman who had your curves, but no one in this goddamn city even comes close to resembling you.”
My bottom lip trembles. It’s an outward sign of all of the conflicting emotions ricocheting inside of me. “So, at the wedding?”
“Their wedding.” He chuckles. “I saw you again wearing that little blue dress. Your tits looked amazing. Your smile almost brought me to me knees. I couldn’t take being in the same room with you so I bolted.”
“You went to the hospital,” I correct him. “There was an emergency. Berk told all of us.”
“The emergency was I needed to jerk off while I was thinking of you.”
I want to laugh, but he gave up time with his cousin on one of the biggest days of his life because of his need for me.
“You saved my phone number,” I whisper trying to fit that piece into the bigger puzzle.
“I just needed it,” he says in a low tone. “I just wanted it. I’d pull it up and stare at it. I didn’t intend to use it. It felt like gold to me. I can’t explain it.”