Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 99040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Laughing, Tracker shook his head. “Baby, sex is easy. I’ve been having sex since I was fifteen. I don’t blow smoke up someone’s ass for sex. Well, unless that’s what they’re into.” He winked, causing her to shake her head as she snickered. “You are amazing because you’re you. It’s not easy to go against what you’ve heard your whole life or what your family wants for you. But you did it.”
“Took me well into my twenties. Don’t think I’m winning any awards for standing up for myself.”
“Jo.” He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “You can take compliments about your looks with a simple thank you. I’m guessing you’ve heard them your whole life and you’re used to it.”
That was putting it mildly. Actually, the thanks she offered were more of dismissal than appreciation.
“But you’re shit at taking other compliments. You always find a way to counter them. I think you’re incredible. You. You started over in a new town, alone, with a new career and without the support of your family. Amazing. Own that shit.”
God, the man beneath the ink was sweet. He made her believe those words that she was more than a pretty face and body and that she’d done something impressive with her life. But the past few weeks had shown her there was a dark side to her decisions. “Tracker, thank you.” She swallowed and, for the first time, willingly gave a man power over her. “I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake,” she whispered so low he might not have heard it.
But the tension in his body said he had. “With me?” he asked with a hard edge to his voice.
“No! No, sorry. I mean with my career. I’m starting to wonder if I ever really wanted to be a cop or…” How humiliating to admit her weaknesses and fears after he’d praised her choices.
“Or if you just wanted to prove to your family you could do it?”
She nodded. “The more I think about it, the more I feel I dug my heels in about being a cop to prove them wrong. To show them I could hack it, and I’m not just a puppet for them to dress up and send out on stage. Because I’m finding there are some very fundamental aspects of police work I do not mesh with.”
“You know it’s okay, right? To change your mind.”
“I don’t know.” She lowered her gaze. “My pride might not let me, and even if it did, I have no idea what I’d do. Go back to modeling?” She shuddered. “No thanks. I made this bed, and I think I have to lie in it now.”
“Do you know anything about my background?” he asked as he resumed running his fingers along the curve of her hip. The slow stroking had a hypnotic quality to it. His fingers were magic and had to be part of the reason she so willingly confessed her feelings to him.
“Uh, well…” Her stomach flipped. “I might have looked to see if you had a record right after I found out who you were. And Andrew might have seen me and given me your history.”
Tracker snorted. “Fuck, I can only imagine how that went.”
“He mentioned you were picked up for stealing quite a bit.”
“I was. Started out as a way to get the things I needed. Toothbrush here, a roll of toilet paper there. Bread. Eventually, it became a way for me to buck the system and get a bit of a rush doing it. I was arrested countless times. Not once did a single person try to help better my situation. No one gave a shit that I had little to no supervision, or that I cut school more days than I went, or that I had one meal a day if I was lucky. No one gave a shit until I met Julian Conrad, or Jules, as I called him. He was a tattoo artist who owned my shop before I did. Busted me trying to rob him one night when I was sixteen. Instead of handing me over to the cops, he took me under his wing. Taught me how to be a man. I owe him everything.”
Jo smiled at the fondness in Tracker’s voice. “Sounds like an incredible guy. Wish I could have met him.”
“Oh, man, he’d have fucking loved you. Smart, beautiful, and you cuss as much I do? Fuck, he’d have lost his mind.”
His amused grin made her want to kiss him again, but she wanted to hear his story, and one kiss would lead to another and another and then to another round of sex. While she totally wanted it, she wanted to hear this story even more.
“Before he met me, Jules spent six years in jail for aggravated assault. He’d been out for a year and had opened his shop six months before I broke into his shop. He was forty-five when he went to jail. He grew up in Baltimore. His entire family sold drugs and spent most of their adult years in and out of prison.”