Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
He sounded short and impatient, something I’d never heard from Mo.
“You’ve never had a bad dream,” I pointed out. “And besides, in case you missed it, I wouldn’t mind.”
He lifted a long arm so he could rub his face with his hand.
I bent my neck and put my mouth to his skin.
“Really, babe, love you, but I don’t want to associate your mouth on me after dreams like that,” he announced.
But I arrested.
Really, babe, love you.
Love you.
He loved me.
Loved me.
His other hand came to the small of my back and drifted up until his fingers were in my hair.
“Go back to sleep. I’m gonna go to the gym,” he muttered.
“Okay,” I whispered, though no way in hell I was going to be able to go back to sleep.
He pulled me further up his chest, gave me a closed-mouth kiss and rolled me to the bed.
He threw back the covers and got out but tossed them over me and pulled them high up my shoulder before he walked to the bathroom.
He didn’t turn on the light until the door was mostly closed.
Mo was a man who didn’t turn the light on until the door was mostly closed when the room he left was dark and his woman was in bed in that room.
He was a man who pulled the covers up high to my shoulder.
Mo was a man who loved me.
Loved me.
I didn’t feign sleep and Mo knew I didn’t after he left the bathroom, went to the closet, put on workout clothes and came right to the bed to smooth my hair back before touching his lips to my temple.
“We’ll go out and get breakfast when I come back,” he murmured and gave my hair a soft tug. “Try to get some more sleep.”
And then he was gone.
I lay in bed, unable to do what he asked (get more sleep), making plans of reading websites and finding books and bucking up so next time this happened, I’d have some tools to deal with it that could help Mo.
I was feeling this was a decent plan, but not feeling much better (except about the part that he loved me, loved me, and said it), when I heard noises coming from the kitchen.
You couldn’t hear much in Mo’s place, even if Mo and Mag’s rooms were both right off the open-plan living space, just on opposite ends of the condo.
Though if it was early, silent, you were jazzed and not entirely in a good way and had already made your plan about how you were going to help your boyfriend with his PTSD so your mind wasn’t jammed up, you could hear.
I got up, dashed to the walk-in, tore off my nightie, threw on some sleep shorts, a bralette and a cami, darted to the bathroom to take care of business, wash my hands, slap water on my face and brush my teeth.
Then I walked out.
Two Sundays ago, in the morning, Mo and I had been confronted with something Mo warned me later I’d see a lot of at his place: one of Mag’s girls. A pretty brunette who spent the time Mag allowed her before getting her ass out of the condo to take her home looking at him like she was wondering if she should tranquilize him so she could successfully put a ball and chain on his ankle.
She hadn’t been seen again.
That said, last Sunday morning, we’d met a redhead. She also had the ball-and-chain look.
And she, too, had been hustled out the door by Mag so he could take her home.
The good news was, he was not a man who made them Uber it.
The bad news was, he was a Slam Bam Thank You Ma’am Man.
Mo explained, unnecessarily, this was about Nikki. He’d been rabidly faithful to Nikki, and with any woman he was seeing, staunchly monogamous.
But now, his bud was attempting to fuck Nikki’s memory away.
This was doomed to fail. I knew it. Mo knew it. Mag probably knew it. Though it was clear he needed this pointed out so he not only knew it subconsciously, but also consciously, and then he could stop breaking hearts all over Denver doing it.
I wasn’t prepared to get into that just then.
I wanted to take care of the Denver sisterhood at the same time help Mag over his heartbreak, but…
Priorities.
Luckily, right then, I didn’t have Mag’s latest random piece of ass.
I had Mag, Auggie and Boone filling camelbacks with water (Mag) and downing a protein-load breakfast (Auggie and Boone) which, along with them all wearing various forms of running gear, shared with me they were going to take to the streets.
“Is there a marathon I don’t know about?” I asked in greeting, and got three big, white smiles.
Just to share, Mag was nearly as tall as Mo, built tough, but lean, and he had a mess of black hair that was longish, prone to wave, curl, flip and often fell in his eyes in a way that he knew worked so good, or he’d tame that mane. This was paired with rugged, rough-hewn features and electric-blue eyes.