Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
But now that I am thinking about my husband and our best friend in a side-by-side comparison, I almost chuckle at how perfectly fitting my earlier thought was. Dr. Banner, oh hell yes… as he stands next to Thor. Except—while Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner is my favorite and he’s super-handsome in his own right—Roman is much closer in looks to the devastatingly sexy Eric Bana. Especially now that he has touches of gray coming out in his facial hair and at his temples.
Mmm, fuck. And when Roman’s hair grows a little too long on top and gets that slight natural curl he has to tame into submission—
I nearly jump out of my skin when my phone dings loudly with a text message, and I realize I spaced out, my tongue actually dry and sticking to the roof of my mouth from mouth-breathing while I visualized all my thoughts of the past twenty minutes.
I blink a few times to bring my eyes back into focus, seeing the cursor still blinking in the Google search bar. I hadn’t typed anything into it yet, too distracted by being able to allow my mind to wander over the last year without the ache in my heart that usually accompanied those thoughts. On top of that, it dawns on me where I am. I’m sitting in our home office, at the desk and in front of the computer screen, and—I glance up at the time in the top right corner of the screen—
At 9:23 a.m.
I can’t even remember the last time I got out of bed before 4:00 p.m. for anything other than doctor’s appointments or errands the guys asked me to run for them.
If there was anything else that required my participation, it was done on my cell from inside my cocoon.
My cell phone!
I look around me, not seeing the floral-print-cased iPhone anywhere, so I start to pat in every direction. Finally, I feel the hard rectangle of glass, metal, and rubbery plastic way down near my ankle, in the deep pocket of my duster I threw on after I first got up and stumbled to the bathroom. Roman had somehow gotten me out of my clothes and into one of his T-shirts without waking me up when he put me to bed last night. I was chilly coming out from under my heavy, furry blanket, so I grabbed the buttonless knee-length gray cardigan off the hook on the back of the closet door on my way out.
Face Recognition unlocks my phone, and I swipe the screen to open the message from Roman.
Husband: (link)
Husband: ^ Click that. Log In: RomeandSavvy. Password is the same as the one for our bank account.
Husband: And don’t freak out. It was in the email Dr. Walker sent. I just took the liberty of setting up our account and the legwork so you wouldn’t have to and could just jump in. So look around, read some profiles, see if anything catches your attention. Doesn’t even have to be about my fantasy. If literally *anything* piques your interest, I want to know. I love you.
A smile I haven’t felt in quite some time tugs at my lips, and I respond to him before I do anything else.
Me: I love you too.
I lock my screen out of habit and set my phone aside, closing my browser and opening my messages on the computer instead. I use the mouse to click the link Roman texted, and the entire screen fills with what looks suspiciously similar to the black leather high-back booths at Club Alias, or more accurately a close-up of the tufted material with black buttons.
I type in our username and password, choose the three out of nine photos containing stoplights when prompted, and click the Yes button when it asks if I want to save the log-in information to my computer’s Keychain. And when it finally lets me through after receiving a code sent to the email linked to our account and I copy and paste it in—grumbling that it didn’t come as a text so I could just click the one button that would auto-fill it for me; best invention ever—my mouth drops open, and I slowly sink back into the computer chair.
It turns out the good doctor sent us a link to the private online community for Club Alias members. There’s a line of tabs across the top, red script on a black background, several of them with a little triangle indicating each of those have a drop-down menu. There are also icons that are easily identifiable: an envelope for messages, a silhouette of a head and torso for people you connect with, and a flame, which I discover indicates someone liked or commented on either a post, photo, or comment we’ve made.
There are all sorts of things to be found in the tabs and drop-down menus, from instructional videos on different toys to a marketplace of sorts, selling everything from gorgeous custom masks for submissives to handcuffs and leather goods with engraving and pyrography services. My brow lifts when I spot a super sexy green crystal mask, and doing as Rome ordered, I copy the Share Listing link, paste it into our text message thread, and hit Send before returning to the website.