Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 134746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
My chest shouldn’t be a bundle of nerves as I push the curtain open and step outside to see what August thinks.
He’s settled on a long low leather bench, reading something on his phone with an impatient knit to his brows, sipping from a small espresso cup.
He doesn’t notice me—but he looks up as I clear my throat.
“So.” I smile, turning to let the skirt swirl around me. “How do I look, Mr. Marshall?”
VI
THE STORM APPROACHES
(AUGUST)
It’s a minor miracle I don’t face-plant on the floor.
Look, I’ve seen legions of beautiful women in dresses that cost more than the GDP of a small country. Women whose job is to be beautiful; who wear the very best like they were born to, their bodies and faces crafted to model perfection so elegant it’s inhuman.
Yet none of them have ever made me do a double take the way this messy little firecracker does when she sails out of the dressing room wearing gossamer and a smile.
When she clears her throat, I glance up at first without registering anything besides how well the dress fits even before any alterations.
Only, my fucking eyes get stuck.
I can’t look down again at the chart on my phone mapping years’ worth of Little Key’s quarterly reports and their ugly downward trend.
“. . . how do I look?” she asks again, shy and beguiling.
That’s when what I’ve seen really sinks in, and then I can’t look away to save my life.
She’s goddamned stunning.
Not messy.
Not infuriating.
Not dolled up like a scruffy art punk.
She’s a wind-tossed force of nature, delicate and too bright.
The dress swirls around her like an angel’s robes, this soft madness that makes me want to break down into writing sappy poetry if I don’t just throw her against the nearest wall and rip it off her with my teeth.
It’s all the light she exudes so naturally that sometimes just standing close to her burns.
Her arms are pale and slender, willowy things that flow with her movements and make her too graceful.
Her legs are slim and silky, demanding greedy caresses as they flirt in and out of the dress’s layered hem.
The modest neckline flatters the fragile line of her collarbones, extending her slender neck until it holds her finely crafted face up on a pedestal to be worshipped.
Although the dress isn’t made to be form hugging, her curves are as disobedient as the rest of her. They play fucking peekaboo every time she turns and the material hugs her chest, her hips, her sleek thighs.
She’s innocent and sensual, surreal and earthy.
I don’t understand why my eyes won’t work.
Why I can’t look away.
Why my heart beats so violently and my body tightens as I lose blood to a thrumming hard-on designed to torture me.
This is hell itself distilled into roughly five feet of sweetness too gorgeous for life.
Elle twirls one more time, just to finish me off.
Her strawberry blonde hair kisses her throat as she stops, a touch flushed and breathless, her hazel eyes glittering like stars.
“Well?” she asks—teasing as always. “I hope I don’t look half-bad. It’s a nice dress. And I think it makes me look pretty respectable. Hopefully?”
Right.
We’re here to make her fit in my world. It’s not about making her look beautiful, according to my tastes.
It’s just about her fitting in.
Yet when she told me to choose what I wanted to see her in, I rebelled at the idea.
Normally, I don’t care to see a woman in anything except stark professional attire when they’re working in my offices or on site with my clients. I have no use for pretty things flitting around, glancing at me with beguiling eyes and ruby lips, their soft hands an invitation to heartbreak and betrayal.
I’m over and done with that shit.
Yet when I saw that dress draped against the mannequin, looking like someone had teased a sunset into silk and spun that thread into cloth, it made me think.
It made me imagine the sunset hues of her hair.
Hell yes, I thought. This will suit her perfectly.
The end result turned out infinitely better than expected.
And I’m still staring at her blankly when she falters, her smile wilting. “August? Oh God, does it look bad?” She catches the skirt of the dress and spreads it out, looking down at herself, her gaze searching. “I didn’t get lipstick on it, did I?”
“No,” I snap off, shaking my head. That’s something my inside-out brain can still do.
Focus, man.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Clearing my throat, I stand, then tuck my phone into my pocket and set my empty cup on the nearby table. I take a longer look at her, trying to be objective before I look away.
“The dress works. Buy it and let’s get out of here,” I clip out tightly.
I choose my phrasing very deliberately.
I don’t want her to know I’m battling a case of blue balls from polar hell—let alone flirting—or it will just encourage her impish fuckery. Not to mention the issues I’ve had in the past with women reading interest into my complete lack of any.