Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 126589 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 633(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 422(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126589 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 633(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 422(@300wpm)
Beth had no reason to be jealous, or feel excluded, regarding this paintballing thing. It had been Gideon’s birthday activity after all, which had made Beth persona non grata. Just as he hadn’t been welcome at Beth’s clay café birthday gathering the year before.
But nobody ever discussed activities involving Beth with such lively enthusiasm and nostalgia.
She shoved her irrational feelings aside. She had a terrible habit of making things about her. She was self-aware enough to know that. It was something she was trying to improve about herself.
Beth shook off the veil of self-pity and exclaimed and laughed at the before and after photos on Lucy’s phone screen. How badass they’d all looked in their protective gear, posturing with their odd, skinny paintball markers. Despite the fact that they were all wearing face guards, she could easily pick Gideon out among the crowd. The biggest guy there, he stood with his arms folded across his broad chest, biceps bulging beneath the form-fitting tactical shirt he was wearing, feet spread shoulder width apart. The navy-blue cargo pants he wore clung lovingly to his thick thighs. He had a back-to-front baseball cap shoved over his shock of thick black hair.
The after pictures were cute. Everybody dotted with spots of red or blue paint. Some of them even had paint streaked on their face guards. Gideon’s face guard was off and he had a beefy arm slung over Cam’s shoulder. He was grinning directly into the camera. His expression one of pure joy. It was such a contagious smile; Beth felt her own lips quirking at the corners in response to it.
Her attention was drawn to the next series of pictures before her smile could fully bloom and she blanched. Really, that was the only word for it. She blanched at the very many pictures of bruises that followed in the days after their paintball adventure.
“Oh my God,” she muttered, feeling a little queasy. Not a single one of them had escaped bruising. Some were much worse than others. Bruises on legs, arms, torsos, backs, and thighs.
There was a picture of Gideon dragging the back of his boxer briefs down a fraction to show off a bruise just above the swell of his tight butt. Her eyes kept drifting back to it. Not because of the bruise, but because of that sexy, sexy—
“You’d go technicolor with that sun averse skin of yours, Lizzy-bit,” Gideon gloated, interrupting the beginnings of a highly inappropriate perve session.
“Shut up, Gideon,” Cat told him, her usually sunny expression folding into a glare. “It’s not that bad, Beth. You barely feel it with all the adrenaline coursing through you. But it can be a shock seeing the bruises that pop up in the unlikeliest of places just a day or two later.”
“I have a really low threshold for pain,” Beth confessed, in an embarrassingly thready voice.
Everybody rushed to reassure her that it really wasn’t that bad, while Gideon sat back with a twisted little grin on his face. But his silence spoke volumes and she knew that if anyone was going to be brutally honest with her, it was him.
She pinned her eyes on his face and waited. And once all the well-meaning reassurances had completely died down, he leaned toward her, bracing an elbow on the table, so that she felt half-caged in by him. He lifted his other hand and lightly traced a forefinger over her bare upper arm, raising a trail of gooseflesh and instantly beading her nipples and clit in the process.
She was so distracted by her instant horniness that the sting that followed dragged a horrified, pained gasp from her.
What the—
She lifted her shocked gaze to meet his smug eyes, her hand instinctively covering the spot on her arm that he had just painfully flicked with his finger.
“Ouch.”
“That hurt?” he asked, and she glowered at him, rubbing her arm vigorously. It hadn’t truly hurt, a sharp sting that was fading already. But her reaction had been so over the top, she felt the need to justify it in some way. Which meant milking the situation for all it was worth.
“Yes, it hurt. Why did you do that?” His eyes darkened and she was watching him closely enough to see the doubt flash across his face.
“It was just a light tap,” he muttered defensively. He looked discomfited and his hand crept to the nape of his neck and squeezed. “I thought I’d judged it accurately. That’s about as hard and uncomfortable as most paintball hits would feel if you were properly layered up.”
It hadn’t been just a light tap. It had been as painful as a rubber band snapping against her skin.
“Let me see,” he said, lowering his hand from his neck and reaching for her arm. She shied away from him and he flinched. “I’m not going to hurt you. Look, you can’t seriously tell me that still hurts. Can you?” More doubt. “Does it?”