Total pages in book: 16
Estimated words: 14490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 72(@200wpm)___ 58(@250wpm)___ 48(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 14490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 72(@200wpm)___ 58(@250wpm)___ 48(@300wpm)
I help her gather and carry snacks from the kitchen to the living area, where we set out the makeshift dinner on the coffee table. Roxie grabs an orange and peels it, all her attention focused on her task.
She doesn’t seem ready to keep talking, and I decide to offer her the same information she’s given me. I want to get to know her, every sweet part, every dark part, every inch of her. It’s only fair that I give her the same.
Very few people truly know me. My brother’s perhaps the only person who does. I’ve never wanted to change that … until now.
“I didn’t come from much,” I start, and the piece of peel she was holding between her thumb and forefinger falls to the floor. Her head snaps up, gaze meeting mine. As always, she holds my eyes, totally unafraid despite the darkness I know lies there. “My brother and I left our home when he was sixteen and I was fifteen. We worked like hell to get a shitty apartment. It was damp and tiny but it was ours. Nobody thought we’d ever make anything of ourselves, coming from where we did. But we refused to end up like our parents, we wanted more for ourselves and we didn’t care what we had to do to get it.”
Roxie nods, peeling the white veins from an orange slice absently, her focus still utterly on me. I love having her attention. It’s intoxicating.
“We worked hard as hell for years until we had enough to buy a rundown bar downtown,” I explain. “It took months but we turned it around, fixed it up, spread the word. Blood, sweat, and tears went into that place. And it paid off. Now we have two locations and were looking into more before I went to jail.”
“That’s amazing,” Roxie says, and it’s not in the same patronizing, pitying tone I’ve heard from others my whole life. No, she says it like she really believes it. “You made something of yourself. I want to do that someday, too.”
“You could, you know,” I tell her, grabbing a cracker off the tray and crunching it between my teeth.
“Not here,” she says softly, shrugging. “Tell me more about your bars.”
I nod, letting her direct the conversation, wanting her to be comfortable. I want to know everything about her, but I don’t want to push her too far too soon and fuck this up.
So, I tell her about the bars and my brother and the city. It shocks me to find out she’s never even visited my city. In fact, she’s barely been out of this town at all.
“Can’t imagine being a wild teenager in a town where everyone gossips about everything,” I say with a laugh.
Roxie grimaces. “You could say that,” she answers. “If anyone even saw me and a boy look at each other, it got back to my father and his next sermon would be about keeping our eyes on ourselves or something ridiculous.”
I frown. “That sounds pretty controlling, sunflower.”
A spark lights up her eyes and she smirks. “Just made me more determined to break free one day,” she says, taking a drink from her glass of water and licking a drop off her bottom lip.
“And how, exactly, would you like to break free, Roxie?” I ask, my voice low and rough.
She sets her glass down, her breath hitching. “By doing all the things he’d hate,” she says, leaning closer to me. “Being loud and unafraid, not caring what the gossips around here say, tearing my good girl reputation to shreds, doing whatever I want with my body, with whoever I want.”
Fuck. “And what is it you want to do with your gorgeous body, sunflower?” I ask, leaning closer too so there’s barely a breath between us. Her pupils widen, swallowing the beautiful blue of her eyes.
“It’s not what I want to do with it,” she admits, her voice breathy and tinged with desire. “It’s what I want you to do.”
“Tell me exactly what you want, Roxie,” I demand, needing her to say it, needing her to tell me with her words.
She shifts in her seat, and for a second I think she’s going to back down. Instead, she straightens her spine and lifts her chin. Her hand lands on my knee, and fuck if all my blood doesn’t rush south at that mere contact.
“I want you to kiss me again,” she whispers huskily. “I want you to touch me again. Everywhere. I want to touch you, too. I want … God, I want it all.”
I grab her hand, dragging it up my leg to the bulge in my trousers. She gasps, her hand cupping me, squeezing experimentally.
“You want me, baby? You got me,” I tell her. “But if I kiss you again, if I touch you again, you need to know—you’re mine. There’s no going back, Roxie.”