Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 79850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
When he walked into my room, I told him to get into the bed, and he immediately stripped down to a T-shirt and briefs and slipped under the covers. I did the same, turned off the light, then rolled over with my back to him.
“How’d you know?” He moved up behind me, spooning me, his face pressed to my nape, arm around my waist.
“How’d I know what? That you wanted to hold me?”
“Yeah,” he husked.
“It felt right,” I told him, just as I heard a sad little whine.
Gale chuckled softly in the darkness. “If you let him in the bed once, that’s it. Crate training goes right out the window.”
“The fuck is crate training?” I asked, leaning over the side of my bed to scoop up Misha and deposit him next to me. “Some kinda torture?”
“What if he pees in your bed?”
“He’s trained to ring a bell, for fuck’s sake,” I said dismissively. “If he’s gotta go, he’ll tell me.”
“Tomorrow night you have to close the barn door. I’m not doing it,” he said as Misha turned in circles until he found a comfy spot next to my chest. His long sigh was really cute.
“The sheep are weird,” I pronounced. “You close the barn door. I’ll give you a dollar.”
He scoffed but clutched me tight. “My bed is even better than this one.”
“Says you.”
“I’ll even let you bring your dog when you sleep over.”
I was glad he couldn’t see my stupid grin.
Gale said, “I had no idea when I first met you today that I’d be sleeping with you at the end of it.”
“But you wanted to fuck me.”
“Yes. Instantly. Desperately.”
“I dunno, I never got the desperate from you.”
“Oh no?”
I grunted.
“Well,” he said, “let’s be honest. My bet is that everyone who looks at you wants to do bad things to you.”
“That’s true.”
“No, idiot,” he said, playfully biting my shoulder. “Not things that would hurt you, unless you’re into that, but things like holding you down in bed.”
“I don’t normally get those kinds of offers.”
“That’s shocking to me. I mean, Jesus, Maks, you gotta know you’re beautiful.”
I snickered. “Scary, yes. Been told that a lot.”
“Promise you’ll get in my bed tomorrow.”
“That’s a deal.”
I hadn’t slept so well in years.
NINE
I had an idea in my mind of how I thought the renovations on the house were going to go. For starters, though I’d told both Gale and Ada that I was going to start making calls the following morning, I assumed it would take weeks for someone to get out and look at the house, beginning with a home inspector. Not only was the house in a tiny coastal town in Oregon, so someone had to come all the way here, likely from Portland, but the backlog had to be immense to begin with. What I couldn’t have anticipated was how important the Farley name would prove to be.
I thought perhaps a handful of people knew that Ada was tied to a great fortune, but it turned out that people in the know, builders for example, not only knew the name Farley, but it made them jump just as Lenkov had once upon a time. Back in the day, people moved for me out of fear. They moved now purely for the promise of cash. They knew all about the Farley fortune, and once I started making calls, I got confirmations from pretty much everyone.
I was an early riser and took Misha out, fed him, then jumped in the shower. I could hear my phone pinging, and when I was standing in front of the mirror ten minutes later, I was stunned at how quickly my inbox had filled up.
There was a soft knock at the door.
“Yeah?” I called out.
Gale opened the door, I assumed to say something to me, but instead he just stood there, staring.
“You all right?” I asked, concerned.
“I—yeah,” he said, leaning for a second on the doorframe and then swallowing hard.
“Gale?”
“Jesus, Maks, look at you.”
I had no idea what was going on.
He squinted at me. “Has no man ever told you that, between your face and your body, you’re absolutely gorgeous?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t like that,” I confessed. “The men I was with…it was fast and secret, so there was a lot of fucking but no time for how you’re looking at me right now.”
“I see,” he said, rushing over to me. “Well, then let me be the first to tell you that you are a stunning creature, Maks Gorev. I want to run my hands and mouth over every square inch of you.”
I felt the heat spread over my face and neck, and turned my head because he just said things—nice things—to my face and expected that I could look at him and be able to meet his gaze like that was normal.
“You know,” he whispered, leaning close and kissing the side of my neck, “watching you stand here, blushing, is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”