Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
“I see you took that wrong,” he muttered.
“Can we be done with this?” I requested.
“We can, if you promise you’ll call me if you ever come back here, so me, or one of the guys, can come with you.”
“I’ve been doing this a while and…”—I held my arms up at my sides, the sharps container dangling from one hand—“here I am, perfectly fine.”
Suddenly, the container clattered to the ground and my front was pressed to the side of my car, my legs were kicked wide apart, my arm was twisted behind me, I had a wall of muscle pressed tight to my back, and Eric’s mouth was at my ear.
“I make my point about how shit can shift in an instant?” he whispered there.
Even though I was pissed—no, insanely pissed—his smooth voice in my ear traveled down the skin of my neck, and I had to fight a shiver.
“Get off me,” I whispered.
He didn’t get off me, nor did he let me go.
His other arm snaked around my belly and he pulled me tighter to his body.
God, every inch of him felt hard, totally unyielding, and he was very warm.
Lord.
“I make my point?” This time his voice was rougher, almost thick, and I was still insanely pissed, but it did a number on me.
“Please, let me go.”
He did, and he didn’t.
He let me go enough to whirl me around, then he pressed me back into the car, front to front. He had one arm tight around my waist and the other hand he rested on the soft top beside me.
But, oh crap.
This was worse.
By a lot.
“You think I want to be out at two in the morning having a frustrating as fuck conversation with a stubborn woman who knows I’m right?” he asked.
“Fine. Great. I won’t ever come here again,” I lied.
“You’re lying,” he called me on it.
I could take no more.
Honestly, could you blame me?
“Can I just go home?” I demanded.
His onyx eyes roamed my face for what seemed like an eternity (and as per the Official Crushing on a Guy Handbook, which I’d recently spent a good deal of time memorizing, in the section where it dealt with unrequited crushes, it was considered an actual eternity) before he let me go and stepped away.
“You have friends,” he pointed out, going softly now, because his tone was just that.
Yeah.
I did.
Good ones.
And we’d just gone through a shitstorm with Raye.
I loved them, and I knew they’d take my back.
But this was…personal.
Private.
Family.
“It’s a family thing,” I told Eric.
Those onyx eyes moved over my face again before he sighed. Heavily.
“Just be smart,” he said.
As if I intended to be dumb.
I glared at him.
Something shifted in the way he was looking at me as I did.
Something big and important and consuming.
So much of all of that, it made me stop glaring and start staring, at the same time trying to get a handle on just what that shift was.
He then muttered, like he was talking to himself, “Shit, I’m fucked.”
And he had to be talking to himself, because I sure didn’t know what he was on about.
He then bent, nabbed the sharps container and sauntered to his truck.
And one could say the man could saunter.
Whoa.
I shook my head to get myself together because I’d just learned, no matter how good he could saunter, Eric was a dick (yes, I was ignoring the fact he was out there to talk sense into me, because what I was doing, especially at that hour, truly wasn’t all that safe).
It was time to head home.
It was, because, in a few hours I had to get up, alone, and figure out how to roast a turkey breast, make some mashed potatoes and dump a can of soup into some green beans, then pick a movie I could watch that wouldn’t make me feel like a total loser because I was all by myself on Thanksgiving.
I pulled into my parking spot at the Oasis, my apartment complex, and it was only then the SUV, which had Eric’s glorious ass in it that followed me all the way home, motored out of the parking lot of my apartment complex and turned right on Seventh.
“Overachiever,” I mumbled as I hauled my ass out of my car.
I went through the security gate, and even the courtyard of the Oasis, which was usually lit up with attractive string lights and the pool illuminated—always a cozy welcome home—due to the hour (and the fact the pool was being resurfaced) was dark and forbidding.
Like my mood.
I jogged up the steps, passed Raye and Cap’s place, then let myself into mine.
I switched on the light on the table by the door and then let out a small scream.
A very pretty Black woman about my age, wearing a pair of sandy-white satin parachute pants and a stark-white cashmere turtleneck, was sitting on my couch.