Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
That was the question, wasn’t it?
The one I’d been actively avoiding asking myself since he’d left the office the day before.
The day before, though, he’d still just been a stranger who knew all the secrets of my body. Now? Now, he was a person. With a name. And a bad family history. With interests and stories and a personality.
“I think I do,” I admitted.
“Think?” she asked.
“I don’t know. This is new for me,” I reminded her. “Before this, all that mattered was someone was good in bed and not a complete douchebag when he opened his mouth. The bar was kind of on the floor.”
“But he raised it,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but I found myself answering anyway.
“Yes.”
“So, what would be so bad about maybe exploring that more? No one is saying you need to marry him and have a dozen of his babies,” she said, shrugging. “Just… see where it goes. Enjoy it.”
“To what end?” I asked.
Josie looked stumped for a moment.
“To whatever natural end it has,” she landed on. “Whether that means you just enjoy each other for a few months, then go your separate ways. Or maybe you fall for each other and stay together. Whatever. You can’t possibly know, so what’s the point in trying to figure that out right now? Just enjoy it while you have it.”
That was actually the best advice she could give me.
I wasn’t, as a whole, someone who could look to the future and see a man in it. Because everything about the future I constructed for myself didn’t have one in it. I mean, aside from my sugar babies. But, let’s face it, that was just a pipe dream, y’know?
But I couldn’t fathom waking up to someone else in my bed. Seeing their toothbrush next to mine. Their clothes in my laundry basket. Their shows on my TV.
I was really accustomed to being on my own. And, what’s more, I liked it. So trying to imagine a different future was just going to end in a headache and me telling myself that there’s no way I want that with someone.
But if all I had to do was look toward the next time we linked up? I could do that.
It would also have the added benefit of keeping my head clear. Because I had to make some damn progress on this case. There was a shitton of money on the line. I couldn’t screw it up.
“I think I might take that advice,” I admitted, nodding.
Enjoy it while it lasted.
That sounded entirely doable.
So that was what I did.
I worked. Then, at night, I would drive over to Golden Glades and spend some time with Cato.
We exchanged numbers that first night, so sometimes I had him come out to Miami. Not to my place. That felt way too soon. But to go out to eat. To take a drive, where we would find some private spot and fuck in the car until we were both boneless and content.
We talked, too.
About the club and his brothers a lot, since I didn’t have a big circle to discuss. And the more times I went to the clubhouse, the more I saw these men, so it was nice to put stories to the faces.
There were Seeley and Levee, his old childhood friends. Seeley, in a sweet twist of fate, ended up with his childhood love. While Levee was just searching for the next woman to spend a night with.
There were the older members of the club, men married with kids and businesses.
Alaric, the former exotic dancer with sharpshooting skills and a really toxic body image problem.
There were the new guys, too.
York, a big, burly guy who seemed more suited for the backwoods swinging an ax than in balmy Florida. He was kind of quiet, didn’t go out of his way to say much when I was around.
Coast, well, Coast was the definition of a bad boy. He was the kind of guy who had ‘bad news’ tattooed across his forehead. All sex and fun and violence muddled together to form a pretty irresistible cocktail. The club girls, half naked most of the time, were all over him. Like a new puppy to fawn over.
And then there was Velle.
Who kind of unsettled me, but I couldn’t exactly say why. Every time I saw him, he seemed to be in some deep, intimate conversation with someone who seemed stripped bare and vulnerable by whatever they were talking about.
I actually kind of avoided any one-on-one conversations with Velle.
Not that it was difficult. Most of the time when I was at the clubhouse, I was in Cato’s room. And a good chunk of time, we were fucking. What can I say? We liked each other a lot that way.
But there were times when Eddie—who I told I would allow to become one of my sugar babies in the future for his culinary skills—would make a big spread, and we would go downstairs to eat, making us all need to interact.