Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40741 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40741 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Weariness that bordered on ennui suddenly weighed down on him, but just as he was about to turn away, the third person in line - a woman with short dark hair that fell in messy bangs - gave Lucius pause...since he couldn't remember the last time he had seen someone do what she was doing.
Pick up someone's trash like it was something nothing out of the ordinary, and if that wasn't enough, the woman also made no attempt to reclaim her spot. And the moment she went straight to the end of the queue to line up again, that was it for him.
Finally.
For two years now, Lucius had lived like a monk, but his celibacy was not by choice at all. It was as if he had suddenly woken up one day, and the women he used to find attractive had become repulsive.
Everything about them had seemed too fake and contrived. Everything they cared about had seemed shallow to Lucius while everything they didn't care about made them undesirably callous in his eyes.
For two years now, no matter where he went and what he did, all the women he met did nothing to him.
They were all as appealing as dry, hard logs.
Until her.
His gaze narrowed when he noticed her lips moving...in rhythm with the tapping of her feet.
Ah.
She was listening to something, her ears plugged with wireless buds. He studied the silent movement of her lips, and the words were surprisingly easy to read.
We've Only Just Begun by The Carpenters.
An interesting choice...which made it all the harder for Lucius to fight off the urge to take a photo of her with his phone.
Because that was all it would take.
He only needed to send her photo to his security team, wait an hour or so, and he would have in his possession a report that covered all the basics about her.
Name. Age. Address. Job. Email. Criminal history.
But if he was willing to wait an entire day, he would know more than that.
Depending on how much he was willing to pay—-
He could know everything about her.
Everything.
And his whole life, that was how he had always been with the women he fucked.
He needed to be in control, and he never risked leaving anything to chance.
Until now.
Because there was just something about this woman...
Something that made him want to ignore all his usual protocols...
And just go after her, the old-fucking-fashioned way.
Chapter One
VALENTINES IN FOXTOWN.
Tassy told herself this was good progress, never mind if she had needed a good 20 minutes just to come up with the title of her report.
Progress was progress, period.
3 words down, 997 to go, but who was counting? She was only forty minutes into her two-hour layover in Dallas, and that was usually more than enough time for her to finish writing, editing, and proofreading her report.
Usually being the operative word, but after everything that happened...
Maybe she should just quit?
Wasn't it a sign for her to move on when the things she normally found easy...now seemed impossible to accomplish? Even her own body didn't feel right; half of her struggled with lethargy while the other half of her battled against jittery, high-strung nerves.
Surely all of these had to mean something?
Anything?
Tassy fell back against her chair with a sigh, but even though its plush leather cradled her with the kind of comfort that was almost nurturing, it still wasn't enough to completely eliminate the tension coiling through her body.
Every embarrassing moment of yesterday's...incident...was still agonizingly imprinted on her mind. Tassy only had to close her eyes, and everything would come back to her in a flash.
The way everyone struggled but failed to hide their pity—-
And how the whole place would suddenly go quiet wherever she showed up—-
But the worst thing of all was how everyone seemed to be just waiting and expecting for her to...just give up and leave.
So what now?
Is that what I should do, God?
Is that what you want me to do?
Her workplace might have been like a second home, but she couldn't pretend not to see the writing on the wall.
Poor, poor Tassy.
That was how everyone thought of her now, and she had a feeling it was how things would always be.
Tassy pulled her legs up and tucked her knees inside her oversized sweater, but it still wasn't enough to keep her warm. Her skin prickled with goosebumps that had nothing to do with the temperature. With the cold bite of fear coming from within, there was obviously nothing she could do to ward it off from the outside.
Tassy opened a blank document on her iPad and forced herself to start typing.
Letter of Resignation
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard as she stared at those three words. Quitting her job was the logical thing to do. One of them had to go, but since Tassy highly doubted such a notion would even occur to Xylan...