Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 85399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
The knot in my lower belly grows even tighter. Am I this deprived? He grins as if he knows what I’m thinking. Yes, yes I am.
“The closer to dusk it gets, the more bugs are going to come out,” he says, hitting me where it hurts. “I’m also so thirsty that I might hold you down and drink your spit.”
“Ew!” I say, laughing.
He laughs too. “Now hop on, or else.”
A part of me wants to see what the second option would get me because something tells me that if I push it that far, there will be more involved than being thrown over his shoulder. And despite the pain gathering in my ankle, it might be worth it.
“Let’s go,” he says, turning his back to me.
“Fine,” I say, gripping his shoulders before hopping on his back.
He gets me situated and marches off like some kind of trained special forces soldier.
I drape my arms over his shoulders so I don’t find myself pawing at his muscles. The feeling of him between my legs brings back a load of memories that I’d either forgotten or buried.
Good lord, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. The intensity of my orgasms on our honeymoon—I thought I would split in two. The night Jack went down on me and I moaned so loud that the people in the apartment next door started pounding on the walls. Because I was in heaven.
Driving around old country roads, listening to a song that made us both so horny that we had to stop. We fucked on the hood of his car next to a herd of cattle under the moonlight. And I saw stars—not just the ones in the brilliant night sky.
The week we bought our first home, I was so worried that Harvey would come over and find a bra or thong lying somewhere, because Jack and I would tear each other’s clothes off as soon as we walked in the door after work. Multiple times. Multiple positions. Multiple locations . . . every night.
Stop. Stop thinking about this. Switch gears.
“How is the shop doing?” I ask. I haven’t asked him about this either.
He presses his fingers against my thighs. “Good. I just found a machine that will let us dyno-tune cars. It should bring us a lot of new customers. I’m pretty excited about it.”
“That’s great, Jack.”
He stops and adjusts my position before starting again.
“I really hope you’ll come by one day and let me show you around,” he says. “I know it’s not your thing, but you’ve helped build it. It would mean a lot to me.”
My heart softens. This. This is what I’ve missed. Jack’s invitation into his life. “I’d love to.”
“Really?”
I don’t know why I’m smiling, but I am. I also don’t know why I agreed to go to the shop or why I said I’d love to . . . but I would.
When Jack first started the shop, I used to go by all the time. Seeing him excited and proud of his work made me excited and proud of him too. But at some point, that changed. Maybe it just changed for me.
“I mean, I’ll have no idea what I’m looking at and I won’t understand anything you’re talking about. But, yeah. I’ll come by and see your dinosaur thing,” I say.
He laughs. “Dyno-tune, not dinosaur.”
“Whatever,” I say, laughing too. “But if you want to see something that makes less sense than a dinosaur machine, come by my brand-new office that used to be the guest room and see this scrapbook I’m doing for a lady from Boston. She sent me thirteen feathers, a cigar box of pine needles from somewhere in Arizona, and a piece of what I’m hoping is a balloon—among other things.”
“What?”
“I can’t make this up. People are so weird.”
“That they are.”
We walk along the path, Jack twisting to keep sticker bushes from brushing against my legs. The forest begins to darken. The sunlight streaming through the leaves dims. A heaviness settles into my heart, and I blow out a long, deep breath.
“Hey, Jack?”
“Yeah.”
I force a swallow. “I’m sorry for not asking about the shop and how things are going there. I guess I’ve kind of checked out of your life too.”
His pace slows. “Thanks, Lo.”
I settle against him and sigh.
The cabin comes into view just beyond the top of the incline. Jack plods up the path, through the small backyard, and around the side of the house. We make our way up the stairs with ease.
“That last mile went a whole lot faster with you doing all the work,” I say.
“You always preferred me to do all the work.”
I smack his shoulder, making him chuckle.
“It wasn’t a mile,” he says, squeezing my thighs again. “Maybe a half. Or maybe it was a mile, and I was distracted with your legs wrapped around me.”