Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Although by the shape of this man’s body, time has not aged the rest of him at the rate it did the color of his hair.
He blows out one long, deep breath before angling his face back toward me, and I see his slight nod.
“All right, little one. Can you reach the bucket to the right of your leg there?” he asks, and my lady garden seems to illuminate with fairy lights at the nickname that’s always had that effect on me. I use it occasionally in my books, saving it for only my very favorite characters.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Maybe I’m more masochistic than I thought.
Because how else could I be getting this aroused while I’m in this much pain?
I force myself to concentrate on what he asked me though, and I glance down and to the side, seeing the bucket I dropped when I suddenly turned into Humpty Dumpty.
“Speaking of which, do you realize that nothing in the nursery rhyme states that he’s actually an egg?” I ask, easily picking up the empty black pot and lifting it toward the man. My eyes follow to where his should be, even though I still can’t exactly see them, and I realize I spoke that out loud but not the thought that preceded it.
Before I can correct myself and explain that my mouth sometimes blurts shit less quickly than my brain switches subjects, I see his head tilt to one side, almost like a curious puppy, before he takes the plastic container out of my hand. And then, shocking the shit out of me, he replies as if he heard the entire conversation I was holding inside my mind. “I believe I read somewhere it’s because it was originally posed as a riddle, asking the reader who or what Humpty Dumpty could’ve been.”
A smile pulls at the corners of my lips, first at what he said and then because he holds the pot in both his hands and tilts it toward the upside down cactus stuck to mine. I lift the heavy plant and align it with the bucket so that as I finally do tip my hand enough to let gravity do its thing, it lands squarely back inside its black plastic home.
Which in turn wipes the smile clean off my face as the cactus pulls free of my flesh wrapped in the green gardening glove. Before I can even begin to use my sudden sharp inhale of air to curse up a storm, the man stands with the same ease and balance of the feline he landed like moments ago, places the dangerous dumpster baby next to its twin brother on the metal ledge, and then bends to grab my wrist, my injured hand still in midair where I tilted it above the bucket. And then he lifts me off my ass and onto the plywood as if I weigh no more than the damn cactus did, his other arm wrapping like a steel band around my back to hold me to his much larger, much harder body.
I’m so surprised by what happens in those seven seconds that all the bad words I wanted to let loose just dissipate into the ether, as all I feel is every bulge and plain of his body fitting exactly to every dip and curve of my own. Everywhere he’s hard, I’m soft, and it causes us to mold together like I’ve never felt before.
My breath hitches in my throat as I look up, finally getting a better view of his eyes. It’s still impossible to make out the exact color, but they’re definitely light, not brown, and I’m able to confirm once again, up close this time, that it’s most definitely white salting his eyebrows and the hair at the edges of his black mask.
Which I’m extra thankful for—the mask, I mean—because I know I have to smell god-awful, a mix of mosquito spray and garbage. Mm, delightful.
Yet there’s something about the strength of this man’s body in conjunction with the age the visible part of his beard implies—it’s too wide-spread to just be one of those birth marks that shows up as unpigmented hair—that does spectacular things to my long-dormant libido. Add in the fact that both his ears are pierced with all those little silver hoops, and I’m damn near ready to tell the pirate-ish stranger he can plunder my booty right here in the dumpster.
I feel myself melt against him, relaxing my entire bodyweight along his ridges, when he tightens his grip on me even more and leans down to speak directly in my ear, the only thing separating his lips from my lobe the cloth of that damn mask—which I’m suddenly less grateful for.
“Let’s get you out of here so I can take a look at that hand, little one.”