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)
He’d never made a secret of the fact that he didn’t like her. She knew he thought she was bossy, and irritating, and judgmental. Which she was—around him. He was such a slacker and he annoyed the crap out of her.
Take this house for example. He’d moved in here because Cam owned it and—as far as Beth knew—that meant Gideon could get it at a third of the usual rental price. God only knew where he had lived before. In the two years Beth had known him, she’d been happy not to have that information.
He was the worst kind of man-child. She had no idea what he did to earn a living, and when she’d asked him, he had leered at her and told her that he was gigolo.
A reply that she was actually inclined to believe. Since he had moved into this house three months ago, there’d been a steady stream of women of all ages traipsing in and out at all hours. It wasn’t hard to guess what he was doing with them.
It made her queasy to know that she’d succumbed to his questionable charms as well. When had she become such a cliché?
“It was a mistake,” she said. “A momentary aberration. We were both in a weird space.”
“You were crying,” he recalled, his voice grim. “Before we danced, I found you crying on the patio. You never told me why.”
“It’s not important. Can we just move on from this, please? And forget it ever happened?”
He rubbed his beautiful eyes, which looked bleary from lack of sleep, before reaching back to massage the nape of his neck. His bicep bulged with the movement and Beth’s throat went dry.
Damn it. She was being so basic right now. His masculine beauty had been distracting enough before this. Due to some unfortunate voyeuristic bad habits she’d developed since he’d moved in across the road from her, Beth had known what lay beneath his usual uniform of old t-shirts and butt-hugging ripped jeans. But that had always been from a safe distance. Now that she’d been up close and personal with his perfect body, it was going to be difficult to get the image of a naked Gideon Hawthorne out of her head.
She had also known of his tattoos, but she’d never been close enough to appreciate how beautiful they were. A full sleeve wrapped around his bicep and down over his left arm, which also extended over his shoulder and halfway down his broad back, as well as, a half-sleeve on his right forearm. Cryptic, beautifully designed artistic pieces.
“Why were you crying?” he persisted. She glared at him, annoyed that he was pushing this.
She didn’t want to think about the devastating day she’d had yesterday.
Not now. Not in front of him. Not when—combined with the disastrous mistake she’d made last night—it would send her spiraling again. She needed to be at home.
Needed time to process everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
“That’s none of your business. I’m going to get dressed, leave, and forget this whole thing ever happened. I’d like for you to do the same.”
“It’s going to be hard for you to forget the most amazing night of your life, Lizzy-bit.”
The ego of the man. It annoyed her that she was also fascinated—and a little turned on—by the fact that the mild lilting Scottish burr of his was thicker this morning. He tended to code switch around their friends and the accent was usually barely noticeable, but right now those rolling r’s were coming thick and fast. And it was making her knees wobble a bit. She refused to let him see that though.
“Get over yourself, please,” she grumbled, backing away from him with the pillow still clasped in front of her.
His lips angled upward in a lazy, sexy grin. He leaned back against the headboard and folded a long arm behind his head. His muscles, so beautifully delineated beneath all that smooth, tanned skin, bunched and tensed with the movement and her throat went dry as saliva pooled in her mouth.
“Three—no four—orgasms, was it?”
“I was faking it,” she lied.
Aah, the irony. Beth usually did fake it. She often found sex boring, messy, and overhyped. She couldn’t honestly say that she enjoyed it much.
Usually.
Last night, however, had been primal, crazy, unbelievably hot and—yes—those four orgasms had been mind-blowingly real.
Why? Why him? Was it his size? His penis was long and girthy. It had filled and stretched her and had hit her spot with unerring accuracy—something only her trusty g-spot vibrator had been able to do before. Beth wasn’t entirely sure if that was because the man himself knew his stuff, or if it was because of the meaty heft of that beautiful penis.
Stop thinking about it.
She continued to backtrack toward the chair, hoping she wouldn’t trip over another unseen obstacle, just wanting to get out of here without humiliating herself even further.