Total pages in book: 27
Estimated words: 24429 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 122(@200wpm)___ 98(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 24429 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 122(@200wpm)___ 98(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
It’s as bad as it sounds, but that’s where my brother’s best friend keeps an eye on me. He is, and has always been, out of my league and off limits.
Until suddenly one night, he’s not.
I’m a professional at avoiding painful memories and pushing people away, but when my pushing goes too far, the ex-Green Beret I used to call my second brother shows me a side of him I never saw coming. He's six feet six inches of every fantasy I've ever had with eyes that melt the icicles around my heart.
Enter human sized Teddy bears and red hot cheeks (and not the ones on my face). Things I never knew I wanted become the very things I need. And, he’s the at center of them all. But, now I call him Daddy.
Author's If you’re into stubborn women, determined men, and a spark that can’t be snuffed by spilled drinks or unspoken desires, come on in, the beer’s cold and everything else is hot. You’ll get a hero who won’t back down, and things are going to get messy—but there’s a happily ever waiting just on the other side of last call.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter
One
“Four-fifty!” I screamed over the loud bass and cat calls.
“Hey, Kat, how about you suck my cock too? How much extra would that be?” Romeo grinned, his four good teeth like brown fence-posts among the thatch of his beard. Inebriated, his swollen face took on a bright red sheen that you could use to land a 747 in the middle of a hurricane.
Drunks have a generally overinflated idea of what’s funny.
“Oh? Wow! Yeah, well, that would cost you your dick. ‘Cause, last guy that tempted me with an offer like that went home with his cock in a pickle jar. Now, you got four-fifty or have I gotta call Jesse?”
His twisted smile deflated into a puffy-lipped frown.
Nobody fucked with Jesse. Though I knew a lot of the girls here would have liked to. Just saying his name started a shiver in the vertebrae of my neck that didn't end until I clenched my core and bit down on the inside of my lip.
Romeo tossed a nasty, wet five-dollar bill across the beer-drenched counter, along with his best drunken badass stink eye, throwing me a “Bitch” under his breath to make himself feel more like a man.
“Fucktard.” I gave him my most heartfelt smile as he stumbled back to his table of other toothless wonders, all of them screaming and waving dollar bills at Renee and Vanessa as they gyrated and bent over in their 7” platform black leather boots.
At this point in the evening, that was all they had on. Those boots and their smiles, the latter somehow still in place despite the sorry excuses for human life that walked through our doors.
One thing I've learned after over a year working in this shithole, you are always a bitch once you tell a guy you won’t suck his cock. It’s like magic. One second you’re the answer to their prayers, the next you’re the foulest cunt that ever walked the face of the earth.
Just one of the deep revolutionary lessons I’ve learned at Diamond Rocks.
“Jesus. What the fuck now?” I asked myself as the very same human garbage stumbled back toward the bar, bolstered by his screaming throng of cronies.
It was a slow night. There were a couple of other guys sitting at the counter, nursing their beers, but otherwise patrons were thin on the ground.
“Hey, Katrina, why you gotta be such a bitch?” Romeo slurred, apparently under the impression I wanted a conversation.
“Go sit down.” I glared back into his blotchy red face. Too many years, too many bottles and God knows what else had left a road map of lines and pit holes over what once could have been human but now looked like someone stuck a beard on a turd.
“Fuck you! Get me a shot of Jager and a Bud. You gotta be nicer to the customers, you know? You ain’t no beauty like them girls up there. They could piss in our faces, and we'd thank 'em for it." He glanced behind, and I wrinkled my nose at the thought that, yeah, he would thank them for that. He'd probably pay extra. "I’m doin’ you a favor bein’ nice to you," he muttered as he turned back around. "Fat girls need love too.”
The swinging pendulum of his tone went from fighting mad, to somehow thinking I needed his advice, to some odd joke-between-friends smile. And the horrible thought occurred to me that we might actually be friends.
Was this the closest thing I had to a friend? A turd on legs that called me a bitch if I refused to suck his dick?
I shook that thought away, reminding myself that I had friends, and they were better than Romeo. Jesse, for starters. When I was 14, my brother Kent fought for custody of me, and he couldn’t have done it without Jesse to give him a safe place for both of us to live. Jesse and Kent had been my family, and it was better than the one I’d been born into. To Jesse, I’d been like a little sister, and that came with a lot of benefits for me.
It also came with heartaches for someone who idolized him as a lot more than that.
“I bet you’re all teeth when it matters the most.” Romeo sneered, and I blew out a hard raspberry style breath.
Tonight was going to be a five shots and ten White Claw kinda night.
Pointing to his table, I pulled myself up to my full 5' 4", leaning over the bar to glare, then almost puked as his tongue came out to do a loop around his lips as he stared at my cleavage. I self-consciously pulled back, aware that my v-neck System of a Down t-shirt barely contained my triple-D's. Which were real, I hasten to add, unlike most of the other females that worked here.