Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
They’d taken damn near everything.
Which was extra insane since he’d had nothing when he moved in with me except his gaming equipment and a couple of plastic plates and bowls.
Everything else had been mine.
Including the giant TV I’d bought for the living room as a couple’s gift to us for Christmas.
I guess he figured that because he gamed with it, it was his.
The dick.
So, yeah, I needed the walk to clear my head. Not be slowly driven insane by June Bugs like that character in that Edgar Allen Poe book who went crazy with the beating beneath his floorboards.
I went ahead and let myself fantasize about killing and stuffing my newly-ex boyfriend under my floorboards before I shook the thought away, not wanting to be bitter and ugly about the whole situation.
It was right then that I heard it.
A squeal, a crunch, a cry.
I didn’t stop to think; I just charged forward around the curve in the road. There was no mistaking the sound of an accident. And someone was clearly hurt.
I’d never been much of a runner, so I was heaving an almost embarrassing amount by the time I made it to the crash scene.
Chrome was scattered across the pavement, bits that had once made up a motorcycle all about, but the rider nowhere to be seen.
It was his hissing and cursing that alerted me to his presence several feet up over the curb at the park he’d crashed in front of.
Bracing myself for the worst, trying to steel a very unsteely stomach, I made my way in his direction.
Then there he was.
The biker in his funny little leather vest thing, lying in the grass, writhing in pain.
Blood trickled down his arms and legs, the road rash making a little bile rise up my throat, making me need to choke it down as I dropped to my knees beside him, reaching for my phone.
Then I got a look at him.
A good look at him.
And, my God, was he gorgeous.
Tall, fit, covered in black & gray tattoos, with dark brows over hauntingly beautiful gray eyes, and a full, nicely maintained beard.
—
Okay.
Fine.
Did the biker in the story resemble Donovan?
Yes.
But, well, what was it they said about art imitating life?
It wasn’t my fault that when my brain decided to conjure up a hot biker character for my story, that it chose him in all his handsome glory.
The heroine, though, was going to be nothing like me.
She was going to be sure of herself, outgoing, sexually empowered, and much more comfortable around hot men than I was.
Maybe she would like books or flowers, but she was definitely not going to be a fictional version of me. Likely because I was painfully aware that a character like mine would never go for a girl like me. Much like a man like Donovan wouldn’t want a partner like me.
I was going to go ahead and just pretend that I didn’t feel a little pang about that.
I’d long since accepted what my prospects were with the opposite men.
And that was mostly, well, nerdy guys. Or geeky guys. People who were as uncomfortable in social situations as I was, who had hyper fixation hobbies like I did with books and gardening.
I mean, was that exactly my type? No. Absolutely not. Or else I wouldn’t have a damn fan website dedicated to the guys in the biker club whose stories I’d heard all about.
I couldn’t help it.
I guess I could blame reading all those steamy books from my formative years. With all the morally gray anti-heroes who would burn down the entire world for the women they loved.
I’d always been drawn to the sexy outlaws, the bad guys with good hearts.
But, I understood my lot in life.
Guys like that liked girls like Triss and all of her friends.
Not me.
So, I settled for the guys who wanted me, and tried to pretend that was enough.
Except, of course, I wasn’t doing a very bang-up job of that. What with being single for, like, ages at this point.
I would often, quite unconvincingly, claim that I was trying to focus on my writing career, on my books.
Though, yeah, I was starting to think that having a partner might help me when it came to the eventual steamy scenes.
It had been so long I swear I was starting to forget what it felt like.
And on that very depressing note, I tucked my laptop and notebook away, drank the leftover drags of my latte, and left the coffee shop.
I had my smoothie bowl, then browsed the bookstore for several long hours, excited that there was a paperback sale that let me get six new books for only about half the list prices.
Was it still pretty much most of the money I’d made that day with my little writing gigs? Kind of. But I tried to convince myself that it was research, so I didn’t feel guilty about it.