Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 128260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Kissing her in my truck the night before had just gotten me all crazy possessive—and fucking horny. Let’s call a spade a spade. And so when she had burst into my office, talking about him again, I had taken charge in a way that I knew she’d probably respond to—and she had. And she’d asked me not to stop. But the fuck of it was, she probably regretted it. And that made me feel like shit.
What didn’t make me feel like shit? The fact that not only hadn’t she slept with her fiancé, she hadn’t slept with anyone since me. But why? That was the question. There had to be something there. Something we needed to talk about. And the sooner, the better.
Grace lived in her head a lot, and she was hard on herself. I had known that about her an hour after meeting her four and a half years before.
I put my hands behind my head, picturing Grace. Now she was almost certainly walking around convincing herself that she was a bad person who had done something immoral to her fiancé, which wasn’t entirely untrue. And that wasn’t going to help my case. She was going to feel guilty now, and guilt didn’t bode well for her telling him to take a hike like I had asked her to.
I swung my legs out of bed and headed toward the shower. I had to fix things. I wanted her. Plain and simple. I had told her that I was pushing a lot of shit aside to give the two of us a shot. That was true, but it wasn’t… I couldn’t push a lot of the shit I had going on aside, and some of it, I’d be asking her to push aside, or at least accept. The situation was complicated. But I knew how to multi-task if something was important to me.
If Grace would just tell me she wanted what I wanted, we could try to work through the complications together. But before that, I couldn’t risk confiding in her. There was too much at stake. Yeah, we needed to talk.
CHAPTER 25
Grace
I brought my legs up under me and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, leaning back on my couch. I had just gotten home from the office, after a twelve-hour day, pulled on my pj’s, turned on the TV, and settled myself under a blanket. It was eight o’clock and I hadn’t eaten dinner yet, and I was starving. But a few minutes of couch time felt like the priority. I felt… guilty and vulnerable.
God, I had told Carson I couldn’t see him again and then humped his leg like some horny, little lap dog. Mixed message much? It was beyond humiliating. And wrong. I was a terrible person.
I was supposed to be a professional. I’d convinced myself I was. I showed up at work every day in conservative suits and sensible shoes. In court, I was efficient and confident. In my personal life, I paid my bills on time, called my dad at least once a week, was a good friend, a loyal girlfriend, and an all-around honest person. But enter Carson Stinger, and suddenly I was a crazed basket case. A nutjob. A lying, deceiving nutjob who let him manhandle me against his office wall. And he hadn’t even had to work very hard to get me there. I had practically begged him. I didn’t necessarily need a plan for every aspect of my life anymore, but I did like things well-ordered. And Carson’s presence didn’t even allow me to maintain that. I put a hand over my forehead and squeezed my eyes shut.
Beyond the embarrassment though, was sadness and shame. I had betrayed Alex. And worse, I had told Carson that I hadn’t slept with Alex or anyone which wasn’t only none of his business, but was going to give him the wrong idea.
How’s the sex?
Nonexistent, actually. It wasn’t that I wasn’t attracted to Alex—it was just that everything had gone so fast for us. We had started dating practically the day I moved to Vegas, gotten engaged quickly, and were talking about getting married as soon as this spring. We had been intimate in other ways, of course. I just wanted to wait until we were married to have sex. I hadn’t even told Abby we were waiting because I knew she’d give me flack. And okay, maybe it was a little old-fashioned, but why not? I thought it was romantic. And Alex, being the gentleman that he was, was okay with that. I thought the anticipation added some spice. I thought—
I was startled out of my thoughts by a loud, pounding knock on my door. Who the heck knocked like that?
I shrugged off the blanket and tiptoed to the door, standing to the side of it as I called, “Who is it?”