Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“You’ve got to be pulling my leg,” I said, seeing nothing nefarious about the couple.
“Charlie is partially retired from the actual enforcing now. They run the local bar in town. But make no mistake, that is a fearsome man. And that woman is even more so if you cross her or the ones she loves.”
“Why would the mob and the loan sharks be so friendly?” I asked, ever the skeptic.
“A lot of the organizations around here are allies. They band together when common enemies show up in town. And since their business isn’t in direct opposition to each other, they can do it without any issues. You still don’t believe me,” Brock said, smiling. “Tell you what, the next time you have contact with Sawyer or Tig, ask them.”
“I think I might need to,” I said, unconvinced. Though it was a good story, and it made what could have been an awkward date-like moment feel comfortable and easy.
After he’d held my hand in his room and I’d opened up to him, I wasn’t sure that we could go back to casual and carefree.
Clearly, I’d underestimated Brock.
He could go from intense to laid-back in a blink.
It was both off-putting yet extremely welcome.
I did want to talk about the psych ward, let out a little of the steam before it made me implode, but I didn’t want to harp on it.
Brock seemed to understand and respect that.
“If the food is half as good at the coffee was, I guess I might be able to look past the fact that I’m enabling crime. So how did you come to know about all the crime around here?”
“I actually grew up, in a way, around it all. Antony’s sons—Luca and Matteo—went to our school. So did Reign, who runs the biker club. And Charlie and Helen’s kids,” he said, nodding toward the couple. “Sure, everyone was tight-lipped about family business, but shit always gets around.
“You never felt, I don’t know, unsafe, being privy to all that information?”
“Nah. Like I said, they have their code. Innocents don’t get caught up in their shit.”
“I hardly think you could call yourself innocent,” I shot back.
“Me?” he asked, pressing a hand to his chest. “I’m a starry-eyed virgin over here,” he insisted.
“Really? Is that why the bartender is giving you both a death glare, and a longing look?” I asked.
Maybe someone else might have been jealous about that. But, first, this wasn’t a date, regardless of how it looked, and even how I was beginning to feel about him. Also, second, we all had a past. Neither of us were starry-eyed virgins. I had men in my past, he women in his. That was life. It was silly to be jealous about that.
“You noticed that, huh?” he asked, looking both bashful and cocky at the same time, something that shouldn’t have been possible, but he managed to pull it off.
“I think it says something that it’s both, not one or the other,” I said.
“It was casual fun… two years ago,” he said, shrugging it off.
Two years ago and she still had that longing look? How good was this man in bed?
What?
No.
I could not let my mind go there.
Oh, who was I kidding? My mind had been there almost since laying eyes on him.
And since I’d been batting the question around for a few days, I was pretty sure I could say with some level of certainty that he was probably amazing in bed.
I had the feeling that he was not a one-trick pony. You know… the guys who had one move only. The ones who couldn’t handle a position change, let alone anything else.
And Brock’s casual confidence told me that he wasn’t the kind of guy who was intimidated by bringing some fun toys into the bedroom either.
I mean, I could just imagine him saying something about how toys were friends, not foes.
“Miranda,” Brock said, making me jolt, having been so lost in my own mind.
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to need you to stop looking at me like that,” he said, voice just a shade huskier than usual.
My sex clenched hard in response, damn him.
“Like what?” I asked, going for casual, breezy, as I reached for my wine glass, my mouth suddenly feeling dry.
“Like if I offered to climb under this table and go down on you, you’d let me,” he said.
And, yeah.
Not once, not ever in my current life, or my life before, did I ever choke on my drink because of something someone said to me.
But it happened right there, in the middle of a crowded restaurant, making a couple of heads swivel in our direction, concerned.
Brock silently passed me one of the crimson napkins, and I reached for it, wiping my mouth, trying to give myself a second to think clearly, to come up with something to say to that.