Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
“That’s not a pig,” Dr. Morgan says gazing down at me. “It looks like a lamb.”
Lamb.
A memory from my past washes over me like a tidal wave, sending my heart rate racing by what feels like a hundred million beats a minute.
I jump to my feet, stepping to the left clumsily before I find my footing.
“Els, are you okay?” Penny’s hand circles my elbow as she steps in place beside me. “It looked like you almost fell.”
I did. I fell into the memory of the best night of my life.
I keep my gaze on Penny’s face. “I have someplace I need to be.”
That’s anywhere but this place because my mind is playing tricks on me. Dr. Morgan uttered the same word that my masked lover called me when he brought me to orgasm with his skilled hand in a club I had no business being in.
Why did Dr. Morgan sound just like that man when he said lamb?
“I think I’ll stay with Saylor and Mrs. Robinson,” Penny says. “Unless you want me to get you home.”
“I’m fine,” I reassure her before I look at Saylor. “I’m going to go, okay?”
“Please make Piggie a sweater just like Pen’s if you can,” she whispers.
I nod. “I’ll give it to Penny to give to you.”
“Thank you.” A soft smile accompanies the words. “Can I have a hug, Els?”
I take a step forward to wrap my arms around her, acutely aware of how close I am to Dr. Morgan. I’m so close I can smell his cologne.
That cologne. That word. This man.
It’s him.
I let Saylor go with one last stroke of my hand over her forehead before I hug Pen and turn around in search of the nearest exit.
CHAPTER SIX
Gaines
“That’s it, my sweet little lamb. Just like that.”
I’ve replayed those words over and over in my mind since that night just over two years ago. I saw the way the woman’s eyes had brightened when I first called her my lamb. That was right after I approached her at the bar in the club.
She was sipping on a cosmopolitan. Her face partially obscured by a black mask emblazoned with red and green crystals.
I’d opted for a plain silver mask to hide my identity.
She offered a name when I took the seat next to her.
“I’m Loretta Lamb,” she claimed in a breathy tone edged with the nervous delight that every person who entered that club felt.
We all knew what we were there for.
Fucking. Raw and primal. Anonymous and forgettable.
At least it always was for me until that night.
When I looked into her bluish-gray eyes I saw something I had never seen in a woman’s eyes before. Promise. I knew touching her would be an experience unlike anything I’d known. I could sense that a kiss of her lips would ruin me.
I had never kissed a woman in that club before.
I’d gone down on a few, but actual kissing felt like far too intimate an act to share with someone whose face is hidden behind a veil of secrecy.
But Loretta was different. I wanted a taste of her lips as soon as she pursed them after taking a sip of her drink.
She asked my name, and I responded as I always do when I’m there looking for a quick fuck. “Garin.”
It’s the surname of a poet I’d studied in high school. A reading of one of his works had gotten me laid for the first time, so I used the name as a cover when I was in the club.
Loretta called me out on that in short order. “Garin? Like the poet, sir?”
Sir.
That stuck. It stuck like fucking glue for our entire encounter that night.
“I’m twenty-five, sir.”
She offered that without any prompting from me.
“Please make me come, sir.”
I had a literal hand in that one.
“I need to suck your cock, sir.”
How could I possibly refuse?
And then, just as I was about to drop to my knees to taste her sweet pussy as a prelude to fucking her, she whispered the words I still curse to this day. “I need to go, sir.”
She’d run out of that room and that club with the same swiftness as she had today at the hospital.
I’d watched Eloise leave the cafeteria without a glance back after hearing me say lamb.
That one word had opened a vault to her memory bank. I saw it as she gazed up at me. I felt it as I watched her avoid eye contact with me.
She knows.
“Hey, daydreamer, I believe I have some good news for you.”
I’m not in the mood to deal with Evan’s persistent glorious mood, but I paste a half-assed smile on my face and turn to look at him. “What’s that?”
“Good news is the opposite of bad news,” he jokes. “The good news is you get to buy me dinner tonight because Chloe and our beautiful daughter are having dinner with her dad and his wife.”