Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
“Nothing. I’m already perfect,” he said, with a straight face too.
There was no hesitation. I reached under my head, pulled the pillow out, and whacked him in the face with it.
Well, I tried to. He grabbed it right before it touched him.
“You’re such a shit, Alex.” I laughed. “Your brother and your sister are so nice and humble, and you are just….”
He tugged the pillow out of my hand, smirking.
I had to fight the urge to squeeze my eyes closed so that I wouldn’t have to see it.
“It’s not useful, but I like the guy in the Shinto comics who could put magic into objects and throw them,” he told me.
I took the pillow back and stuffed it under my head again. “That’s what you would want?”
“It looks fun.”
Fun. I couldn’t help the smile that stretched across my mouth. “You are the most complicated person I’ve ever met in my life. When we first met, I thought you were so damn grumpy all the time, but you’re not. You’ve got a little bit of everything in you, huh? Being a superhero is just a tiny part of who you are.” My heart gave a single, hard beat. “Anyway, did you choose your costume? Is your cape just for decorative purposes?”
“It’s not a costume,” he answered. “And no, I didn’t. My grandfather did. He insisted on a cape to follow along with the Electro-Man image, it doesn’t help us fly any better.”
“Did you burn your suit with your secret laser eyes at my house by the way?”
His smile confirmed it.
“Why didn’t you want me to call you Alex at first?”
“I had wanted to keep some distance between us. The only people who don’t call me Alexander are my family.” He didn’t lose his smile. “You get it.”
I did. He hadn’t wanted us to become friends. I hadn’t either. Not at the beginning. I tugged the covers up higher over my shoulder. “Why were you in a bad mood when you showed up at the bar?” I asked.
There was no hesitation. “I got home, and I didn’t know where you were.”
That was… not what I expected him to say. “You make no sense, you know that?”
“That’s why I was gone for a month.”
I didn’t understand him. I didn’t understand him at all. I had to clear my throat and pick my fights: this wasn’t one of them. “If you say so. All right. How many people have you dated?”
“Next.”
“No, this is my time. You told me you owed me. Tell me. I’m not going to judge you.” I would, but he’d figure that out later, if he didn’t already realize I was full of shit.
He grunted.
I was pretty sure he knew damn well how full of shit I was.
Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t about to give up. Maybe he would leave tomorrow regardless of what he’d promised. Maybe we wouldn’t get a chance to talk like this again if he was in and out of the house, even though that wasn’t how the Trinity worked.
But if there was one thing I’d learned in my life, you never fucking knew shit.
And this was my shot. “Alex, in this moment, you’re in my circle of trust. I’m not going to make fun of you or call you anything. You’re a gorgeous, pretty much perfect man. Physically, calm down, cowboy, your attitude could still use an adjustment. But all jokes aside, how many women have you been with?”
He’d lifted his gaze to the ceiling when I started talking, and it was still there when I was done.
Fine. “Okay, okay, you don’t have to tell me.”
He made a growling noise in his throat before saying, pretty much spitting both syllables out like they tasted bad in his mouth, “Zero.”
“Zero?”
He side-eyed me. “I told you we only marry once.”
No.
No.
Was that possible?
“You”—I pointed at him, scrunching my face up—“haven’t been with anybody ever or anybody recently?” I asked slowly, not sure I was going to believe either.
He turned to look at me, not fucking amused at all. I’d swear he might have even been glaring at me too. “Never.”
I swept my gaze from his face down to the girth of his strong neck, to the shoulders stretching his T-shirt, across his pectorals and flat stomach, to those long legs and the black socks covering his feet.
This GQ motherfucker was trying to tell me he’d never been with anyone?
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I focused on the muscles in his arms, in the general direction of a midsection that I knew was a masterpiece of an abdomen, and said in the dumbest, most distracted voice of all time, “I’m just….” I was fucking speechless. He’d said zero. “For a second, I was wondering how someone that looks the way you look could never have….” I waved my hand at him, still not comprehending how the hell that number was possible.