Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
That was wonderfully romantic. Because it was, I felt elation.
But I fake pouted.
And gave in.
“Okay. After dinner then, I suppose.”
“Poor baby,” he murmured, pulling at my ankle until my leg was in his lap. Then he pulled at the other one. “Sexual frustration is hard on us all. I should know.”
“And how long has it been for you?” I asked flippantly. I really didn’t want to know, and I didn’t expect him to answer, except as a joke.
“Since yesterday evening, after you left my room. I came for you all over my stomach.”
My vagina clenched.
He knew it and grinned roguishly.
This made my vagina clench even better.
Bastard.
“I’m glad I brought my vibrator,” I replied blithely. “After you kiss me tonight, I can come up here and finish myself off.”
His hand still around my ankle squeezed.
“Bad girl,” he murmured, staring at my mouth.
“Down boy,’ I returned. “It’s your rule about delayed gratification, and you were the one who brought up touching yourself.”
His hand went up my cords along my calf.
He had a light touch.
I shivered.
It was his turn to smirk.
“Now who’s the tease?” I asked.
“And who’s the flirt?” he returned.
I dropped my head to the back of the lounge and cried, “Ugh!”
He slid his hand out of the leg of my pants and promised, “I’ll be good.”
I looked at him. “That’s the problem.”
He chuckled.
“Shall we change the subject to one that won’t require cold showers?” I suggested.
“Shoot.”
“It’s not going to be fun, but it’s on my mind.”
“Then get it off your mind, darling,” he invited.
“What did you mean when you said Daniel shit on women?” He appeared confused for a moment, before I reminded him, “You were talking to your father. I was listening in the hallway.”
Humor lit his eyes at the reminder, then, as usual, he didn’t delay or prevaricate.
He socked it right to me.
“I mean, like your sister hasn’t grown out of pulling nasty pranks, when it comes to women, my brother hasn’t grown out of laddish behavior. What do you Americans call it? Frat boy.”
“Has he ever had a serious girlfriend?”
“Yes. Portia.”
Good God.
Daniel was thirty-five years old.
Not good.
He rounded my legs with one arm while he turned to me and rested into an elbow on the back of the lounge, giving me his undivided attention.
Not that I didn’t have it before, but he was definitely settling in to share.
So I relaxed with him and settled in to listen.
“I’ve not been a choir boy,” he confessed. “And when I end things with a woman, and there have been many…”
He paused to watch my response.
But since I already knew about the many women from my Google search, I didn’t have one, so he carried on.
“I cannot tell you they were all in agreement that our relationship had run its course. But I learned to be careful about leading a woman on. I had a girlfriend when I was eighteen and I was not serious, but I liked her. Our relationship was intimate, and it was the first time I had that with a longtime partner. I liked getting it, so I wasn’t as careful with her emotions as I should have been when I put in the work to keep her. This meant, when it was over for me, she was blindsided. It might have been over, but I cared about her still, and I felt like an ass. To this day, if we’re ever in the same space, she avoids me. And to this day, I still care about her and I’m aware I hurt her so much, it still stings, twenty years later. And that, my darling, doesn’t feel very nice.”
I hated he hurt her, even inadvertently.
And I hated they both still suffered for it.
But I loved that he got why that was.
“I bet not,” I said, because he’d stopped talking and I needed to say something.
“So I take pains not to do that again. It isn’t to say a woman hasn’t been ugly because she’s not getting what she wants from me. But I always know I gave her no indication I intended to give it. If she misread things, that’s one thing. The other side of the coin…” He gave my legs a squeeze. “We’ll just say, I’m careful to make sure the other side of the coin never happens.”
“I like your honesty, Lord Alcott.”
“Eyes open, love,” he reiterated his earlier warning.
I nodded.
He kept speaking.
“To finish, I would hope you’d understand that if I’m with a woman, she means something to me, during and after. So when Danny would swoop in and toy with someone who used to be mine…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what word to use to express it. But it isn’t fun to know my brother shits on any woman, but one who means something to me is far less fun.”
I could see how it would be, and I was reading between the lines his words were a vast understatement.