Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 130307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
I laughed at those — mostly because I knew that option was off the table for me.
I couldn’t fall in love. I couldn’t be in a relationship. I couldn’t have anything with Will Perry because my matriarchy would disown me.
And it might not have made sense to anyone else, but it meant everything to me to have their approval. It meant everything to me to work hard, save money, and provide for myself the way they wished they’d done. With the money I was earning right now, I was opening endless doors of opportunity.
I was close to being able to pay off what was left of my student loans.
And after that, I’d be setting myself up for an easy future — the one they’d always wanted for me.
I wanted to show them that I listened, that I learned from their mistakes, that I was an independent woman with her own career, income, house, and hobbies.
Falling in love with a hot NHL goalie who made more money than God was not the way to do that.
Which left me sighing a bit as I scrolled through the message board because I was racking my brain with one repeating question.
What did I want?
What did I actually expect and desire out of this situation?
I liked Will. He was grumpy, sure, and I was failing miserably at my attempt to make him smile. But I respected him. I admired how he was with his team, with Chef Patel, with his daughter, with me.
I also had never been so sexually frustrated in my entire life than I was after almost three weeks of living with him.
When I was at my little house, I rarely ever felt like this. Once in a blue moon I’d reach for my vibrator, and usually, I’d feel guilty afterward, like I’d committed the ultimate sin against my family and myself.
But here, it was all I could do not to hump my pillow every fucking night to the thought of my boss.
And I didn’t feel dirty about it. I felt… empowered. Especially after last week.
He wanted me, he just didn’t want to mess with what we had.
It made sense. He’d searched high and low for a nanny he could trust. He’d fought off a dozen women trying to get to him through Ava. I didn’t want to be added to that list. I didn’t want him to think even for a second that I was the same.
Because I wasn’t.
I didn’t want a ring or any kind of promise.
I didn’t want the fame or attention that came with being his girlfriend.
I just wanted him to touch me.
I wanted to know what it felt like to have those goalie hands on me. I wanted him to prove to me that not every man on this planet was as terrible as the one I let inside me in college.
I sighed, shaking off the thought and the pure impossibility of it as I scrolled through more comments at the kitchen island. I was standing, sipping on a glass of white wine and absentmindedly stroking Nacho’s soft fur where he was lounging on the counter. I was also debating deleting the thread and my username altogether. Clearly, no amount of advice was going to help me, because this was just one of those situations that there wasn’t a way out of.
I had the hots for my boss, and he evidently didn’t think I was too terrible to look at, either.
But we couldn’t go any further than that.
I lifted my wine glass to my lips, and then nearly dropped it when the sliding glass door of the pool house slid open so hard it hit the barrier and shook the whole place.
Nacho jumped and scrambled off the counter, paws skittering as he bolted for the bedroom. I saw another blur of gray fur follow him.
Panic gripped me by the throat, and I was already running through all the self-defense I’d learned over the years. I was one second away from breaking that wine glass over the counter so I’d have something sharp to work with when I realized it wasn’t a predator who’d burst in.
It was Will.
He stood in that opening like the god of war arriving at a battle, his eyes wild, hair blowing in the breeze, chest heaving. He stared at me for one long, hesitant moment, like he was about to turn around and storm right back out just the way he’d come in.
Instead, his fingers curled around the edge of the sliding glass door, his jaw flexed beneath the beautiful bronze skin stretched over it, and then he took a full step inside.
“Sit down,” he ordered, pointing at the dining table.
My pussy fluttered at that command as if he’d told me to drop to my knees and open wide.
I hastily shut my laptop, abandoning my wine and scurrying over to the table. I dropped down into a seat just in time to watch Will calmly, slowly, shut the sliding glass door behind him.