Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 21386 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 107(@200wpm)___ 86(@250wpm)___ 71(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21386 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 107(@200wpm)___ 86(@250wpm)___ 71(@300wpm)
Channing’s red and black Charger was parked in the driveway, the motor still ticking like some slumbering beast. I mean, God, of course a man as insanely panty-meltingly hot as Channing drove a car that was basically sex on wheels. And he was at the house.
Channing lived a few miles away closer to downtown, in one of those new high-rise condos. His building had been re-doing the gym for the last month or so though, so Channing had taken to coming to our house to use the home gym my dad had here. I shivered, biting my lip as I turned back to open the door to the house and slipped inside.
“Channing?”
Moments alone with him were rare. I mean, it’s not like he lived at our house, and most of the time when he was over, my dad or his mom were there too. But there’d been a few times — some good, some bad.
The good had been not long after the wedding. It was midnight, or two in the morning or something, and I couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was the horror movie I’d tried to watch by myself like a total idiot, or maybe there was just a lot on my mind with my dad now being remarried. Whatever it was though, I’d been heading downstairs for some water from the kitchen when I’d heard it.
At first, I’d been scared. The sounds were primal, and rough — growls, and grunts, almost like someone was in a fight. I’d grabbed one of my dad’s golf clubs that’d been leaning against the wall of the mudroom and headed down to the lower level, where the gym was. And that’s when I’d seen him.
Channing had been shirtless, beautiful, and fierce. He had boxing gloves on, and as he ducked and weaved and shadow-boxed with the heavy-bag hanging on a chain from the ceiling, my breath had caught. His muscles rippled, his jaw clenched tight, and he growled like a wild beast as he’d hit the thing again and again, sweat pouring down his perfect body.
He hadn’t seen me that time, and thank God. He hadn’t seen my flushed face, and parted lips, and wild, heated eyes. He hadn’t seen the way my nipples had hardened to points under my thin t-shirt, or the way my legs had squeezed together as the slick heat between them probably left a stain on my pajama pants.
The second time we’d been alone wasn’t quite as nice. Not by a fucking mile. He’d seen me that time, alright. I just wished he hadn’t. Or at least, I think I wished he hadn’t.
I’d never been a drinker or a much of partier in school, but for whatever reason, when Amy threw a graduation party on a weekend where her parents were out of town, I’d gone wild. I don’t even remember what I drank for my first drink, or the second, or the I’m guessing one-hundred after that, because it’s all fuzzy. I had a brief memory of some guy I’d never talked to offering to drive me home, and I have another horrible flash of trying to tell him that I did not want to kiss him when he tried in my driveway.
But the memory after that is pretty clear.
Channing had almost torn the guy’s car door off its hinges as he’d flung it open. I remembered gasping as strong, powerful arms and hands had slid under me, scooping me up and pulling me away from the creep. He’d sat me down, picked up a baseball bat, and whirled back to the guy in the car.
“You. Out. Right the fuck now.”
…For being a fucking creep, the guy at least had the smarts to jam the car into drive and peel out as fast as possible. Channing still took out one of his windows and a tail light though.
“Channing, I—”
“Are you alright?”
His rough, deep, velvety voice had purred through me, setting my freaking skin on fire even before he’d wrapped his arms around me. And when he did that? Yeah, forget butterflies. My stomach had rocket ships.
“Thank you,” I’d mumbled, looking up into his eyes in the dark of the driveway and just melting under his gaze. I’d gotten lost in those eyes, and the insane, totally wrong, totally inappropriate thoughts I’d been having about him had all come rushing to the surface. I’m pretty sure I’d leaned forward with every insane intention of kissing him, when suddenly, everything I’d drank that night decide to come back and say hello.
I’d wanted to die. First, he’d been my knight in shining armor, and after that, he was holding my hair in the hedges next to my dad’s house while I puked all over the place.
“There we go, kiddo,” he’d murmured, stroking my back as I emptied my stomach into the hydrangeas. “Just let it all out. What the hell were you drinking?”