Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 85453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
When I force him to do precisely that, I push down on his hand a little too firmly, sending it skidding close to an area of my body thudding as brutally as my heart.
The tips of his fingers are a mere inch from my pussy.
And he isn’t pulling his hand away.
What the?
As my eyes slowly lift to Cash’s face, my heart thudding as strenuously as my throat struggles to swallow, I drink in his almost still chest and overworked veins in his neck. He looks as on edge as me, but his backside isn’t balancing on a marble counter. It is swaying dangerously close to the minute gap of air wedged between us, hogging the last smidge of space.
When our eyes eventually lock, the tension shifts to catastrophic. He’s still looking at me in the same manner he does when I show him a complex puzzle isn’t so complex when you stop fearing it, they’re just numbers, but there’s something different about his eyes. They’re more hooded than usual, almost glossy.
The breath he releases when I lean into his embrace sends a fluttering of butterflies scattering across the lower half of my stomach. I assume he’s swooping into caress my face. I had no clue he’s attempting to remove a twig from my hair, otherwise I wouldn’t have stupidly tilted his way.
I showed my hand first, and the poker tournament doesn’t start for another nine days.
“I need to go.”
Cash’s groin only just misses the wrath of my knee when I jump down from the kitchen counter and make a beeline for the door.
I’m so eager to leave, I forget we’re meant to be sneaking out the back entrance. I naively veer for the front door.
My trek through the bustling living room is quick, but not quite fast enough. Kamil spots me first. His wave alerts the other twelve or so men surrounding him to my arrival. They stare at me in silence, quickening my pulse even further.
Mercifully, Cash swoops in and saves me from myself for the second time. “Hey, Einstein. I thought we agreed to meet at your place tonight?”
Someone whispers, “She only just got here? Then who was the sock for?” Kamil shuts him up with a whack in the stomach, his punch stern enough to stop anyone else from backing up his claim.
When Cash arches a brow, wordlessly demanding I support his ruse that I’ve just arrived, I stammer out, “U-um. Yeah. I came to tell you I can’t hang out tonight. I have to…” If I had been raised anywhere but on a massive ranch in the middle of nowhere, I might have had an idea of what normal people do on a Tuesday night. Since I don’t, I blurt out the first excuse that pops into my head. “… wash my hair.”
Several of Cash’s frat brothers hiss and catcall about his supposed ‘burn,’ but Cash keeps his focus on me. “I can do that for you.”
Okay, perhaps his focus wasn’t on me. It was solely fixed on his reputation.
Pity for him I don’t have any qualms about a girl having dating rules. “You could… but then you’d have to break the ten-date clause you instigated the day you begged me to go out with you.”
His roommates holler and scream. Even a handful of them jump to their feet like my confession rendered them incapable of staying seated.
As a range of comments about Cash being pussy-whipped filter around the room, Cash mouths, “You’re killing me.”
Serves him right for how high he made my temperature soar when he was barely touching me. The tension has been hissing and cracking between us nonstop the past two weeks, but tonight, it felt almost palpable.
Although I could leave him hanging on a limb, I soften his fall by extending an olive branch. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll let you cross off today since I canceled on you.” After pivoting around and heading for the door, I murmur, “Now you only have nine dates until you can prove that the little ‘incident’ tonight was a one-off.”
Chapter 11
Cash
When McKayla exits my frat house, closing the door behind her, I get ribbed from all sides. I’m called a pussy-whipped idiot, a love-sick fool, and even someone tosses in advice on how I can ‘up my game’ before we reach date ten, yet all I can do is smirk like a smug prick.
I let McKayla scale the trellis because I didn’t want her getting ragged on about being easy, yet she served me my ass on a platter before leaving with her dignity intact.
Mine is in the toilet.
I’d care a little more if I weren’t loving her sass. Her many hidden attributes are why I call her Einstein. He never conformed to the norm either, and it is what made him a brilliant man.