Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77236 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77236 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“All this, too,” I said, coming up behind her at the counter where she thought she could check out without me paying.
I put the basket up on the counter, boxing Siana in with my body, seeing the way she tensed, then relaxed, her body almost brushing into mine. So I went ahead and moved the slightest bit closer, my whole front pressing into her back.
“Wait… that’s…” she started to object as the clerk pulled out and scanned items before slipping them into a bag.
“Yep,” I said, reaching for my wallet, and sliding out a card.
“Wait, no,” Siana objected, trying to reach for her own card.
I wrapped my free arm around her arms, holding them down.
“I got it,” I said as the clerk smirked and took my card.
“Alaric…”
“Hush,” I said, voice low, and the sound made a little shiver course through her.
And, fuck, if I didn’t like the hell out of that.
I couldn’t imagine how she would tremble and squirm and flush when I said other things. Dirtier things. Close to her ear. While on top of her. With her on top of me.
Christ.
I had to stop before my cock got ideas. Up close and personal like this.
“You’re being too generous,” she insisted after I tucked my card away, then reached for the bag.
“It’s a couple snacks and drinks, baby, not a Ferrari,” I told her, wrapping an arm across her shoulders as I led her back out of the convenience store.
By the time we made it back home, Frida had climbed up on the couch, and was watching for us out of the front window, her whole body wagging as she saw us climb out of the SUV.
“So, have you always lived in Miami?” I asked as we started to eat, realizing I’d told her more about my past than she had told me about hers.
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head like that was crazy. “I was raised in Connecticut.”
That actually seemed to suit her more than Miami, in a way. Long, colder winters for snuggling up and reading, no one really expecting you to leave home from November to March.
“Did you move down here for college?”
“No. Just… to start over,” she said, folding her pizza, then letting it fall open again, and looking at me. “Actually, I moved to get some distance between me and my mother,” she admitted.
If there was anyone who knew about strained mother-child relationships, it was me.
“Strained relationship?” I asked, taking a bite of my pizza, finding I actually liked her unexpected combination.
“We’re… very different people. She’s very driven, very extroverted. She made it very clear all my life what she expected of me as a child, then as an adult. And, well, I… have never been able to live up to those expectations. And I think I just… got tired of trying to,” she confessed. “But the only way I could… stop trying was to get further away.”
“It was just you and your mom?”
“Yeah.”
“What does your mom do for a living?” I asked.
“Business. She worked hard to get herself a plush corner office, and she wanted me to want the same.”
“What did you want?”
“Not… that,” she admitted, shaking her head. “As much as she tried to mold me into a mini version of her, I never had what it took. But, uh, because I think I was so focused on trying to be what she wanted, that I never really figured out what I wanted.”
“How’d you manage to move down here?”
“I’d been working for years. My mom insisted that, in addition to extracurriculars, that having a strong work history would look good to one of the colleges she wanted. And because of work, school, and all of those extracurriculars, I had no way to spend any of it. So I had a nice nest egg to get started.”
“The app hasn’t been around that long, though, right?” I asked as she finally started to eat.
“No. At first, I got jobs similar to what I’d been doing in Connecticut. Barista, serving, that sort of thing. But things are… crazier here than they were back home. My anxiety got out of control pretty quickly.”
“So you started working from home?” I asked.
“I found some jobs. They… they worked when I strung them together. But I was working… sixteen hours a day just to make ends meet. I was this close,” she said, pinching her fingers together, “to swallowing my pride and going home.”
“Then you heard about Sion’s website.”
“Well, I mean, before then, I’d heard a lot of stories about women making six-plus figures selling pictures of their feet. Or doing ASMR. Or even just selling their garbage and things like that. I guess I squirreled that information away. Then when I saw the first advertisement for Sion’s site, I just… decided to try it. Within a month, I was making more than I was making at all my previous jobs… and only working a few hours a week.”