Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 132649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
“I’ll bear all of that in mind.”
She swallowed and stared into those earnest eyes. And then she sighed.
“Do you have an e-reader?” She’d only ever seen him read physical books borrowed from the Hollingsworths’ extensive collection.
“I do.”
“I’ll email it to you and you can send it to your e-reader.” His lips stretched into a broad grin.
“I can’t wait to read it.”
Chapter Fifteen
Trystan lay horizontally across the bed, his head resting on Iris’s stomach while he held his e-reader aloft, reading her manuscript.
She was stroking her fingers through his hair, trying not to freak out too much at the thought of him reading her silly story. It was all well and good when she was writing it just for her own amusement, but having someone whose opinion she actually valued read it was a little terrifying.
He made a sound in the back of his throat and her hand paused.
“What?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“You grunted, why?”
“Iris, kindly shut the fuck up, will you? I’m trying to read here.”
She muttered beneath her breath and went back to sifting her fingers through his silky hair, tensing every time he made any kind of sound. He appeared wholly absorbed and soon—despite her tension—Iris got bored, and her mind drifted. Before long, she was fast asleep.
The familiar weight of his body settling over hers, and the soft press of his lips on her cheek woke her.
“Whazzappening?” she mumbled, and Trystan’s mouth moved to her neck to drop another kiss against the sensitive flesh there. He was familiar with all of her erogenous zones by now and knew exactly how to take her from quietly and pleasantly aroused, to wild and screaming in seconds. Fortunately, he appeared focused on soft and tender this time, pressing gentle open-mouthed kisses up her neck toward the spot beneath her ear that always made her moan.
“Finished reading,” he whispered, nipping her earlobe and she snapped out of the sexual haze in an instant, slamming her palms against his chest to push his heavy, uncooperative body away from hers.
“You did?” He groaned when she wriggled her way out from under him, and he rolled onto his back and covered his eyes with one brawny forearm. “Well? What did you think?”
His sensual lips curled up at the corners.
“I think that I’m in love with a genius.” He shifted his arm until it was curled around the top of his head and stared at her in awe and admiration.
“Shut up,” she laughed, shoving at his shoulder playfully. She was becoming more and more comfortable with his freely offered declarations of love and was reacting to the genius part of his statement.
“It’s true, you’re brilliant. And I’m not sure why you’re so goddamned insecure about your talent. You’ve been hiding your light under a bushel, sweetheart. Why are you editing when you should be writing?”
“It’s a big leap, putting my work out there. You’re right, I should have more of an online presence. I should belong to writing groups, and be on forums and just be trying harder, but it’s so much easier to write for my own pleasure. And after so many years of being bullied and ridiculed I worry that I have a thin skin, that I won’t be able to handle the criticism.”
“You’re the most contrary woman I know. You came all the way out here to interview a recluse and tell his sad story. How is telling one of your own any different?”
“Because mine are fiction. Telling someone else’s story, telling the truth… that feels easier. Safer. I wouldn’t be spotlighting myself. I would be directing the attention firmly onto another person. This…” She gestured toward his e-reader on the nightstand. “It’s personal. It comes from me.”
“And like you, it’s amazing.”
“It’s a frivolous, gory tale about a werewolf. It’s nothing serious.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Iris . . . It does need work. It’s rough, a little clunky in places. Your protagonist is mopey as fuck, but God, it’s compelling. And it’s different. Werewolves have been done to death across all genres but this feels fresh. Using her newfound instincts to help with her police work, keeping her secret from her partner and her family. Then there’s her pregnancy and how her lycanthropy could possibly affect her fetus. I want more.”
She smiled shyly and he hooked a hand around her head to drag her down for a hard kiss.
“And there are definitely some familiar aspects to the story. She got lost in a storm, huh? Stalked by a large animal?”
“Nowhere near as sweet as Luna.”
He dragged her onto him and she happily straddled his waist, her hands braced on his chest.
“You should be writing fiction full time, sweet. Not dallying in journalism, not editing, not waiting tables for your parents.”
“I have to pay the bills somehow,” she laughed.
“Hmm.” The hum was noncommittal as he closed his arms around her and tugged her down to lay on his chest. She rested her cheek on a well-defined pec, listening to the comforting, steady beat of his heart. The fingers of one of his hands idly played with her curls, while the other rested on her bum, kneading the flesh there almost absently.