Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
When I opened the door, Lang was there waiting, and I carefully closed it behind me.
“What did you do?” he groused at me. “If you fuck around, he’s gonna put me and Pazzi together and you and Yamane, and that will seriously end in bloodshed.”
“That’s exactly what I told him,” I said, grinning.
He fisted his hand in my Henley and yanked to get me moving. Like I wouldn’t follow him anywhere at any time…ever.
THREE
That night, after I got out of the shower, I was standing at the window, staring at the city lights from my one-bedroom apartment in the Loop, near Grant Park, and thinking how pretty everything was. Even better, seeing as I was without my cockblock of a best friend that evening, it might be a great time to get lucky.
The issue was, whenever I would meet a man and they would seemingly be interested—I wasn’t Frankenstein’s monster, after all, though some guys were into that—somehow or other, when I leaned in to drop a line on them, coupled with my accent, that was when my favorite person on the planet showed up.
The last time we were out playing pool, a couple of weeks ago, a guy came over, very handsome, nicely built, with glasses—I had a thing for glasses—and put a hand on the middle of my back and asked if I would like to play with him. His meaning was clear, his body language even more so, and I took a step closer and…bam. There was Lang. Arm draped over my shoulder, not so much visiting my space as living there, not even a hairsbreadth of daylight between us.
“Who’s your friend?” Lang asked happily, smiling like he did with the killer dimples. And of course the guy mapped his broad shoulders, the six-pack abs clearly visible with how tight his T-shirt was, the wide, perfectly sculpted chest, and his long-ass muscular legs that his vintage jeans were molded to. The flawless sepia skin with the bronze undertones was overkill, and the long-lashed deep brown eyes flashed whenever he was happy, which he was at that moment. He’d annihilated all comers at eight-ball, and since he loved to win, he was riding high.
What made it even worse was that he had a beer for me and a beer for him in his hand, and I was not surprised when the guy looked Lang over and turned tail and walked away.
I did a slow pan to him.
“What?”
“I was tryin’ to hit that,” I told him.
“Eww,” Talia said, walking up beside me. “We don’t say hit that, thus dehumanizing the very handsome man who ran out of here as though he thought you had the plague.”
I groaned loudly, leaving them both to return to my stool in the corner.
“I was just being friendly,” Lang said, rubbing his hand over his short hair. He had the fade touched up earlier, and I was wondering if he’d showered after.
“You keep doin’ that. Are you itchy?”
He started rolling his shoulders then, quickly, and there was more squirming.
“What’s wrong with you?” Talia asked, looking him over. “Do you have cooties?”
“I didn’t shower after my haircut.”
“Are there little hairs all over your back?”
“Now there are,” he snapped but grinned because we’d done shots at the bar before we started playing, and that, coupled with the beers and no food, meant he wasn’t wasted, but he could not have stopped smiling if his life depended on it.
We ended up leaving his little sister with her friends, and going to his condo in River North. He took a shower, and then he wanted pizza, so we ordered in because by then it was late. I slept on his couch. He was fine with me being there, but we both had the same rule about having strangers in our places after midnight because then they might want to sleep over. Neither of us could fall asleep with a guest in our home. We knew too many stories, had seen too many crime scenes to ever be comfortable with that.
Sharpe, one of the guys we worked with, had someone different every night and was sneaking out in the wee hours, doing the walk of shame. I had no idea how he had that kind of stamina or how he got any rest that way. But he too never slept over. It was too dicey.
A week ago, I had picked up a guy at a bar where I was drinking with Bon, Cher, Cho, and Lopez, and they all gave Lang shit when that guy bolted for the door because of him. Lang had shown up in a suit, with his fancy cuff links on, not his everyday ones, looking like he walked off the cover of a magazine, with an extra ticket for a play at the Steppenwolf.
“You’re killing the vibe, man,” Lopez told him.