Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
I shrug. “Oh… I don’t know. You seem to have a knack for sweet-talking my vagina every time we’re in the same room, so I’m sure it would have eventually ended up in a sticky, twisted mess.”
“Twisted?”
Jack puffs out a big breath when I sock him in the stomach. “Our night. Not my… vagina.” Don’t ask why my vagina comment this time around sounded like it was spoken by a prepubescent boy. It was high and nasally and not at all sexy, but you wouldn’t know that by Jack’s grin. He looks like a kid who won a race even after giving all the other contestants a head start.
“I’ve corrupted you,” he murmurs under his breath before the back of his fingers trickle down my inflamed cheeks.
I scoff. “It will take more than a vag comment to corrupt me. You’d need an arsenal of controversy to dint my sullied reputation more than it already is. I doubt you have one of them.”
“I bet I do,” Jack mutters more to himself than me because our connection is stolen by the gridlocked traffic surrounding us.
CHAPTER 15
OCTAVIA
Caleb eyes me over a spoonful of cereal when I enter the kitchen a little after seven the following morning. “You look like hell,” he mutters around a mouthful of Frosted Flakes.
“Shut up,” I snap back before moving toward the refrigerator.
I went to bed at a decent time, exhausted from multiple orgasms in the limousine, but I barely slept a wink. I couldn’t stop tossing and turning while recalling my day and evening with Jack.
He is still so hard for me to read, my loss apparent when I seek assistance from the last man I should. “Did Jack seem different to you last night?”
“Different how?” Caleb accepted Jack’s handshake when I offered a proper introduction last night, and he ate the burgers Jack supplied but gave him the cold shoulder most of the night. It isn’t that he doesn’t like him. He just thinks I’m playing with fire.
I’m beginning to have the same doubts.
“Like reserved? A little stand-offish?” I pull the orange juice out of the refrigerator before snagging a glass from the open cupboards above the burner. “Kinda like how you are with Jess?”
Caleb’s spoon drops into his cereal like a bomb, sending splashes of milk over the dining table. “Don’t bring her into this. She has nothing to do with your fucked-up idea of a fun time.”
“Hey—”
“No, Tivy. I’m not ever going to be okay with this.”
Aware of where his concerns lie, I say, “He may not be who you think he is.” When he stands with a huff, I push out faster, “Who would call their kid Jackson Carson? That’s just cruel. And you only met him for a second before last night, so you could be reading him wrong.”
He pins me in place with a cruel glare before muttering, “You said he had an issue with touch.”
I shrug before blurting out, “Maybe I was wrong. He didn’t have a-any issues last night.” I don’t mention the fact most of Jack’s body was plastered to the leather seats of the limousine or my body, so I couldn’t technically touch him because that’s just asking for trouble.
“You stuttered because you lied.”
“N-no.” I grind my teeth together before trying again. “I stuttered because I’m confused. He confuses me. You confuse me.” I throw my hands into the air. “The whole fucking world confuses me.”
My time in the limousine with Jack was mesmerizing. It was the highest of highs until I mentioned needing an arsenal of controversy to sully me, then it nosedived like the Chargers last season. He stayed throughout the two movies Jess selected and giggled at Jess’s infamous impersonation of James Franco, but he wasn’t the same attentive lover he was in the limousine.
Don’t misconstrue. My heart melted when he carried me to my apartment after I fell asleep during Zeroville, but when I suggested he stay instead of dragging his driver out of bed to take him home, he said he couldn’t. He brushed off my drooped lip with an excuse that he had an early meeting today, but I could tell he was lying. He was seeking an out, but since running mid-movie would be classed as rude, he held on until the end of Monday Movie Marathon, then fled at the earliest possible convenience.
“It isn’t like you have anything to be worried about. He bolted at the first opportunity.”
Caleb shakes his head before plonking back into his seat. After filling his mouth with cereal to hide the disdain in his voice, he tells me I’m an idiot before devoting his attention to the morning paper.
When he lifts the classified to get a better view of a job application, my gurgling stomach settles. The very man we’re arguing about is on the front page, sliding out of the limousine we shared last night, except I’m not on his tail. He is assisting a beautiful blonde woman with a blissed twinkle in her eyes out of the car.