Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 125982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
There was a red silky knee-length robe at the end of the bed. She quickly wrapped it around herself, finding it odd. She had one just like it at home. Exactly like it.
Tristan glanced over his shoulder at her but kept talking on the phone. She had to walk toward the bedroom door to get to the bathroom. They made eye contact. His eyes narrowed as she passed the bedroom door and suddenly there was a thud. Was that the door lock? Was someone coming in or just locking it? She grimaced at the door and then glanced back at him. His expression softened, probably because it was obvious she was heading to the bathroom.
She remembered him climbing into the bed last night sometime after he’d tucked her in. She remembered him trailing kisses up and down her bare back and shoulders as well as her cheek and stroking her hair for a long time but he hadn’t bit her or pushed things further. She’d just stayed still, confused by the feelings it was stirring in her. He’d eventually spooned against her and she fell back to sleep, feeling like she was wrapped in sweet-smelling warmth. Like the scent of syrup over blueberry pancakes. How could she have slept so soundly in bed beside her captor, a blood-sucking vampire? It was weird to her that she felt well-rested after sleeping beside him and that in the midst of all this that she was actually sleeping so much.
This bathroom was much the same as the bathroom in the other room, only grander, which she wouldn’t have thought possible until stepping foot into it. On the vanity were his personal things. Combs, shaving gear, toiletries. She ran her tongue across her teeth. They felt fuzzy and gross. She picked up his toothbrush and poured mouthwash over it to disinfect it and then loaded it up with quadruple the usual amount of toothpaste and brushed her teeth with it, resulting in an extraordinary amount of lather. That was better.
A vampire’s toothbrush. Bizarre.
She ran her tongue over her own eye teeth and inspected at them in the mirror, imagining herself with long vampire fangs.
She rinsed her mouth about a dozen times with water as hot as she could stand it and then mouthwash. Like that would make a difference. He’d already had his mouth all over her. She flushed bright scarlet, envisioning him with his mouth down between her legs.
She scrubbed her face with soap and tried to run a brush through her hair but it was long, almost to her navel, fairly knotted and would likely need half a bottle of conditioner to get it presentable so she did a quick brushing of the roots and then twisted the length into a bun, tucking the end through it to try to keep it in place, wishing she’d had a rubber band. She got up on her toes to get closer to the mirror and looked at the sore on her neck. It was significantly better-looking. She wished she had a turtleneck sweater so he wouldn’t be tempted by seeing her bare throat. Then again, he’d also bit her between the legs and on the hip already so evidently, a throat wasn’t necessary for this vampire. She pushed away the stirring that the memory of his teeth on her and his mouth on her was doing to her.
After she was done with bathroom business she walked back out into the bedroom and he motioned for her to come out onto the balcony. She slowly walked out, seeing that it was more than a balcony, more of a large terrace with iron railings that were very similar to the bed. It overlooked the big courtyard and extended the length of that side of the house and then wrapped around to the opposite side where there were other doors that led onto it from various points on the second level.
Movement caught her eye and she looked down by a kidney-shaped pool below and saw a dark-haired man dressed in black jeans and a black t-shirt with a goatee and sunglasses on. He had tattooed arms and a great body. He looked familiar. She thought back to her shift at the bar the other night and remembered one of the waitresses whispering, “Look at Johnny Depp over there!” He’d been at the bar, stirring his drink with a stir stick and smiling devilishly at the waitress and he did look a bit like Johnny Depp, only younger, taller, and more built.
Now he was skimming the pool while smoking a cigarette. He glanced up in her direction but didn’t smile. He put the skimmer down, stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray on the table, and opened a sliding door on the main level and went inside. It dawned on her then that Joe had been beside him in the bar and that they’d been whispering about her. When she’d served them drinks, one of them, she thought it must’ve been the dark-haired one, had tried flirting with her. It’d been busy and she’d just laughed it off, thinking he was hunky in a dirty-pretty kind of Johnny Depp way but she had no time for coming up with ways to shoot down cheesy pickup lines when it was so busy. She’d heard all manner of pickup lines in her time at that bar so waved them all off as cheesy. So that was the other guy who’d helped to kidnap her. Lovely.