Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 114647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Shock poured through me. How the hell would he know I didn’t tell everything? I wasn’t fidgeting. Nor was I sweating. How could he possibly know? Then he ringed my wrist tighter, and I realized that two of his large, blunt fingers ran over the beat of my pulse at the base of my wrist.
Busted.
Sam’s eyes followed James’ movement, and then read the look of surprise on my face. “What else?”
The man’s body language reading abilities were just uncanny.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with what you’re asking.” I clipped.
“Shiloh,” Sam sighed.
“It won’t do you any good. She wouldn’t tell me anything either.” Sebastian muttered and then took a sip of his beer.
“Alright. We’ll talk about this more in the morning. It’s fifteen until midnight. Let’s sleep on it.” My father said as he stood up gingerly and made his way to the back of the house where he was staying.
We all watched him go. None of us moved.
“Does anyone else think it’s weird to have him around?” I finally broke the silence.
“Fuckin’ nuts.” Sebastian and Sam agreed at the same time.
“Well aren’t y’all cute.” I said sarcastically.
Cheyenne snickered from across the couch, but quickly covered up the lapse in judgment with the palm of her hand.
“Sebastian,” Cheyenne asked as Sam handed her her sweatshirt and pulled it over her head.
“Yeah?” Sebastian raised his eyebrows.
I took a sip of James’ coke that was on the floor between our feet, and promptly spewed it everywhere with Cheyenne’s question.
She pursed her lips. “What’s your middle name?”
Sebastian’s head whipped around and glared at me.
“What?” I asked innocently.
I might have mentioned to Cheyenne that we all had matching themes for middle names, but that was only because I was emotionally compromised with Lyle’s death, and I needed something happy to lift my spirits.
I did not tell her what his middle name was, though. I wouldn’t go that far. Sebastian may not kick my ass, or harm me in any way, but the man knew how to hold a mean grudge.
Sebastian turned his head slowly until he regarded the sincerity in Cheyenne’s question. I think she truly wanted to know. It was important for her to know more of her husband, and that meant getting to know his family.
Finally coming to a decision, he told her. “Sue.”
“That’s fucking awesome!” She said in awe.
“Glad daddy dearest decided to bestow that name on you and not me.” Sam muttered as he grabbed his wife’s hand and led her to the door.
In the next instant, they were gone, closing the door quietly behind them.
James followed them to the door and locked the dead bolt, chain, and armed the alarm. Sam’s bike roared to life, and pulled out of the driveway moments after. The sound of the Harley’s pipes disappeared, and Sebastian cleared his throat behind me.
“You love him, don’t you?” Sebastian asked as we watched James disappear into the kitchen.
Startled, I turned from staring at James walk around the house, checking the windows and locks. When he disappeared into the kitchen, I replied. “I’m fucking screwed.”
He chuckled at my less than succulent comment, wrapped his arm around my neck, pulled me into him, and kissed my forehead. “You deserve someone to love. Tell him about what happened with Zoolander. He may’ve hurt you, and he may have brought you down for a while, but he no more broke you anymore than I was able to get you to stop following me around when you were a kid. He deserves to know what happened.”
“Zander.” I corrected automatically.
The man was notorious for saying Zander’s name incorrectly. Sebastian had hated Zander with a passion. So much so, that every time they were within the same air space, Sebastian referred to him by anything but his actual name. Then what he’d just said finally sunk in with me, and I gasped.
“You know?” I asked incredulously.
“I know everything.” He said cryptically before leaving the room silently.
“What does he know everything about?” James asked as he came up to me, pulling me into a hug.
I wrapped my hands around his torso, and buried my head into his chest. “I’ll tell you. I promise; just not right now.”
He tightened his hold for a few moments, and then loosened it. “I wish you could stay in my room with me. I just don’t want your dad to hear and feed my nuts to me when I’m sleeping.”
I laughed. “You’d wake up before he got too far with it.”
“That I would.” He agreed with a laugh of his own.
Our kiss goodnight was anything but chaste, and by the time I was lying on the couch with my borrowed pillow and blanket off James’ bed, I was feeling anything but tired. In fact, I was downright horny.
After an hour of zero sleep, I decided that just maybe, I needed some ice cream.
Getting up, forgoing the pants, I tiptoed to the kitchen in James’ newest SWAT t-shirt, a pair of panties, and rainbow knee socks. I got the spoon, the half-gallon of chocolate banana Blue Bell Ice Cream, and took a seat at the table. Boris, my cat, leapt up beside me and took his spot, waiting for his turn to lick the spoon.
I ate a quarter of the ice cream, which had done wonders at cooling my body heat down, but not the heat still pooling in my core. Getting one more spoonful, I set it down on the table, and Boris started licking away, purring so hard that it vibrated the table, and the chair. Hell, it might have even been vibrating the floor.
Feeling the chill in the air, because, hey, it’s normal for a man to leave the thermostat set on off when it’s forty degrees out, I grabbed my blanket, and made my way downstairs. TV was better than nothing. Even if I had to settle for infomercials.
Only I didn’t have to, because the first thing I saw when I turned on the large flat screen TV in the basement was a soft-core porn on HBO. Which I immediately turned back off. Or tried to.