Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
“No,” I say fiercely. “There’s nothing funny about this.”
“So maybe stop with the quippy little remarks?”
I chuckle deeply, walking across the room. “Turns out you are bratty after all.”
She spins on me as I approach, meaning we’re standing side-on to the window. The sunlight rests on her face, giving her an angelic look, a perfect look, a Lucy look.
“You don’t have to lie to me,” she says, ignoring my comment as she stares up, tears glistening in her eyes.
“I’m not lying. I mean it. It’s been ten years.”
“Fine.”
She folds her arms aggressively, still with that kissable pout on her lips. But when I see the fiery look in her eyes, I decide to leave out the part where I think she looks cute and beautiful.
“Who was the last person you slept with, then?”
My instincts try to make me roar instead of speak.
The thought of talking about another woman with Lucy is ridiculous, pointless, and cruel to both her and me. But at the same time, I can tell how badly she needs to know this.
She deserves the truth, as much of it as I’m able to tell her.
“A couple of years after the hit-and-run,” I say. “I was in a bad place and went to a bar, got shitfaced, and woke up next to a woman I’d met at a club. I said goodbye, and she went on her way, and that was that.”
“And it was the last person you slept with?”
“Yes,” I say. “It was.”
She throws her hands up.
“Then you need to explain. Because I seem to recall – pretty freaking clearly – dozens and dozens of photos of you with actresses, models, socialites, activists, even a political candidate, if I remember correctly….”
“Have you been stalking me?”
She doesn’t rise to the joke. Instead, she stares, her lip trembling.
“I had a crush on you before we met. When Never Alone approached me, I googled you, and…yeah, I had, have a mega crush. There. It’s out there. At least one of us can be honest.”
I grab her shoulders and kiss her. She whimpers in surprise as I push my body against hers, feeling fresh heat, my manhood going hard again.
She kisses me back for long moments, making those ball-swelling moaning noises, but then she pushes against my chest and takes a big step back, glaring up at me.
“I’m being honest,” I snap when she’s about to say something else. “I swear on Anna, I swear…I never slept with any of them.”
“So why bother? What’s the point?”
I sigh. “I shouldn’t tell you this. But I trust you, Lucy. Am I an idiot for that?”
“No more of an idiot that I am for trusting you.”
I smirk. “Touché. But I need to hear you say it.”
She huffs adorably, angrily, somehow putting the energy of both into the noise. “I won’t tell anybody anything you tell me. I promise.”
I can’t help but kiss her again. It’s the way she makes the promise, with complete sincerity despite her mood.
She returns the kiss again, moaning as I gently push her up against the window, then she grabs my chest and flips me around, shoving me up against the glass.
“I thought you were mad at me?”
She digs her fingernails harder, letting out a sigh of pure pleasure and release. “Maybe I am.”
She kisses me again. I smirk through the kiss, my length rock-solid again now, more precome seeping out of me.
“Tell me then.”
She throws herself away from me, turning and walking across the room.
It’s like she doesn’t want to be close to me when I tell her.
She knows we’ll keep kissing, and the kissing will lead to something else, then something else, until we’re naked and can’t stop.
I put my hands behind my back, ignoring Bryce’s voice in my head, warning me against it.
“When Bryce and I first started Never Alone,” I say, “I was still in a bad place. It was maybe three weeks after that stranger I told you about.”
Her shoulders grow tight, her lips twitching like the thought is hateful to her. Like she wants me all to herself…she has it, always.
Nobody else matters.
“Bryce convinced me to go to this fundraiser with him. He wanted me as his double date. A couple of actresses…so I went as a favor to him. It was a networking opportunity, he said, a way to meet high, net-worth donors. Well, it worked. After, he told me people loved my whole haunted routine, my story…losing the perfect family, rich and handsome and successful but broken. It appealed to people. It was the perfect narrative for a man heading up a charity for hit-and-run victims.
“The donations flooded in.”
She watches, moving closer. I think she’s guessed where this is going.
“So we kept doing it,” I go on. “Bryce handles that part of it. He arranges the dates and lets them know we’re attending more as friends than anything else. But the public doesn’t know. The tabloids don’t.”