Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
“Come with you?” Riley’s jaw dropped. “Maybe you got the wrong idea, Jax, but I don’t provide those kinds of services.”
I smirked. “Cute. I’m not interested in your body,” I said and told the biggest lie ever uttered. So big, it should’ve shattered the fucking crust and mantle of the earth and plunged through to the core. “I’m interested in you staying safe. I’m old-fashioned that way.”
“I don’t need a man to keep me safe.”
“Only to open your pickle jars?”
She pressed her lips together to keep from laughing—nostrils flared and all that. “Was that a euphemism?”
“If you want it to be,” I said. “Seriously, Riley, you’re not staying here. If I could walk into this place, then anyone else can, and, shit, that’s a recipe for disaster.”
“I get the feeling you know a lot about disaster.”
I brushed my fingers through my hair. “You have no idea,” I replied, chuckling. “Let me get you a hotel room. I’ll pay for it and you can stay for as long as you like.”
“No, thank you,” she said, instantly. “I can’t accept that kind of gesture from someone I don’t know.”
“Then—shit, OK, listen, I’ve got plenty of room. I have an apartment I hardly ever sleep in, duty calls and all that, and you need to rest your head for the night, maybe condition your hair or whatever it is women do when they’re not twirling around poles or driving men insane.”
“Mutually exclusive?”
“You said it first.” I pointed at her.
She finally laughed, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. The mirth tinkled from her. It lit up fucking sparks in the space between us. Hello, what the hell’s that about?
This chick was danger packaged in spandex, and man, did I want a piece. But not tonight. Tonight, she’d sleep, have a safe place to stay, and I’d plan a meeting for tomorrow—this studio would be mine. Nothing would stand in my path to domination, not even a tight-bodied pole dancer with an attitude.
I walked to the door and halted in it, looked back over one suited shoulder. “I’m not getting any younger.” Or less turned on.
Chapter 2
Riley
What the hell was I doing?
My best friend’s voice rang in my mind, soft as if from afar. Riley, you’re together at the best of times, but you’re all over the place lately. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t, OK? Because—
“This way,” Jax said and stepped out of the elevator onto the top floor of an apartment building that was more like a skyscraper and had made my jaw drop the minute we’d pulled up outside it.
I stepped out behind him, worrying my bottom lip with my teeth. Good god, this was a terrible decision, but I was so damn desperate.
What kind of business owner slept in her own dance studio? Me, apparently. I was that kind of business owner, and it shamed me to the core. It was the reason I’d even agreed to come back to this place with this exceptionally handsome stranger.
Jax halted in front of a door directly ahead of us, the only one in the wall, and swiped a keycard against a pad beside it.
I paused, shaking my head.
This really was crazy. God, I wasn’t some twenty-year-old brimming with naivety and promise. The type of girl who’d go home with a devilishly handsome dude and end up chopped up like the Black Dahlia.
Now that was a truly morbid thought.
“Everything OK?” Jax asked, holding the brass doorknob in his massive hand. Seriously, they had to be the biggest hands I’d ever seen, and his handshake had been strong and purposeful, but not crushing.
Those hands…
“Riley?”
“Sorry, I’m just reconsidering,” I said. I’d cultivated the habit of a) always telling the truth, and b) blabbering incessantly when I was nervous. Thirty or not, I hadn’t rid myself of that habit. “I mean, how do I know you’re not like that Silence of the Lambs guy?”
“Anthony Hopkins?” Jax asked. “He’s awesome. I could only consider that a compliment.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I think you’re reaching for Ted Bundy,” he replied. “Or was it Ed Gein?”
“You’re seriously not making me feel any better about coming here,” I said. “At all. In fact, I’ll just leave. I’m fine sleeping at the studio. Ya know, at least there I know I’m totally alone. Man, I’m an airhead because, I mean, this was a mistake. Sorry to waste your time. You seem like a super nice dude, but one can never be too careful, and I’m not a kid anymore who’ll just—”
“Do you always talk like you’ve got a machine gun for a mouth?” Jax asked, that sexy smile twisting the corner of his lips again.
Damn, he was attractive. Like sinfully hot. And it shouldn’t matter.
I’d been dragged across the coals by a sinfully attractive man once before. Once bitten, twice… ready to run for the hills at the first hint of trouble. That was how the saying went now, right?