Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
I swivel my head and glance over my shoulder to find Cassadina standing fifteen feet away, leaning casually against a pillar and looking at me with way too much hope and excitement. I shake my head no. It’s not going to happen. I’m not giving him my number. She nods her head yes; I shake my head no. She nods harder. I shake harder. Then, she nods more rapidly while I shake my head until it feels like it’s going to come off my shoulders.
“Can I get you that drink?” Smoke’s voice somehow cuts through all the noise of the club—past the pounding music and over the loud buzz of countless conversations. No one shoves at my back, and people aren’t getting impatient for their drinks or demanding that I shit or get off the pot.
I whip back around and lean in. This is bad. This is seriously bad because my lips are flapping, and words are flying out. Words that I can’t stop or take back. Words that sound very much like what Cass wanted me to say. “No drink,” I say so low that it’s a miracle if he hears me. But he does. I watch his lips part, and then that silken, deep voice of his wraps around me like a warm blanket straight out of the dryer.
“Then what can I get you?”
I stare right at him, and this time I’m not messing around. This isn’t just a dare anymore. It goes against all my better judgment, but the fact that he’s not afraid of me is doing something to me that I can’t even begin to comprehend. Doing things to me in the panties, I should clarify. Also, it might be scrambling my brain a little.
“You.” Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit, fuccccckkkkkk.
His steady gaze bores through me. “Hmm.” Yes. That’s really his response. A casual, nonchalant hmm. At least he follows that up with, “I see. Where?”
“I…here.”
“That would be rather complicated.”
“I’m going to leave shortly.” Not I’m going to get my ass bounced out of here right away because my dad is super overprotective. “You get off around three?”
“That’s right.”
“Give me your address.”
“My address?”
“The physical location for the place you live.” What am I saying? Why am I still talking? This is becoming way more than just a dare. The dare was for his number. The dare was stupid. And the dare wasn’t something I was going to actually go through with.
Or was I? The second I saw him here tonight, pointed out by Cass, of all the men in the bar she could have pointed out, it felt a little bit like, I don’t know…destiny or something, and the only drink I wanted was a tall drink of him. Seriously? Here I am, valuing my brain over my lady bits. Ha. Not.
A shadow flickers over his face, and I think he’s going to be smart and ignore me. If he does value his best asset, be it his brain or his balls, he should really back the heck down, pretend he didn’t hear me, and serve someone else—anyone else in this whole club—their drink.
Instead, he splays his inked hands across the counter and leans against them. I can almost hear the rustling of his leather jacket as the worn, buttery soft material stretches over his huge, striated muscles. It’s almost obscene how masculine this guy is. I can see why they call him Smoke. It’s not his strange gray eyes with the dark spokes that wind through the lighter irises. It’s not the wispy tendrils of ink that writhe up every digit onto ridged knuckles, covering the veins under his skin—skin that I’m sure is actually as soft as the wisp of a cloud. It’s not the powerful build, the six foot four or five, solid muscle of him. It’s not even the fact that he looks as though he’s got this latent power in him at all times, like a dangerous snake and a really amazing athlete had a baby, and the baby came out with a lethal combination of all sorts of mad skills. I guess maybe it’s all of it combined.
They don’t call him Smoke. He chose that name.
Smoke. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Smoke. The one thing you’re going to see in the daylight every time, but never during the night. Smoke. Delicious, dark, dangerous smoke.
Suddenly, his lips are moving before my brain catches up. Maybe I have my own smoke clogging up my gray matter. Smoke created by the hard burn of my ovaries going up in flames at the smoldering look he sends me. Heavy lids, thick lashes, and those biting gray eyes. I attempt a sort of haughtiness in response, a look I throw his way that says I don’t care if he’s not going to tell me where he lives.