Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 188002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 940(@200wpm)___ 752(@250wpm)___ 627(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 188002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 940(@200wpm)___ 752(@250wpm)___ 627(@300wpm)
Watching her is an old favorite habit of mine. A guilty pleasure. I watched her for a long time before we ended up in that gazebo talking. She’s the very reason I picked that park to play at every day—so I could watch her up close.
So I could be close.
She already knows about the time I saw her when Acorn and I were walking down the sidewalk past her office. She dropped her things on her way to her car and I turned to catch her kneeling on the pavement with her skirt riding up just enough to give me a tantalizing glimpse of her thighs. Her black sunglasses fell from the top of her head as she bent forward and I watched her wrestle to untangle them from her hair. Although she was dressed in office attire, the outfit contradicted the fact that she didn’t look more than sixteen years old. She had tiny, faery-like features and was so short I doubted she could see over the steering wheel of her car. She cursed at herself under her breath and I thought she was the most awkwardly adorable chick I’d ever laid eyes on.
The second time I saw her she was in her car at a red light downtown. She was singing badly along with the radio and looked so incredibly free and lost in her own world that I literally would have sold my soul to crawl into that world with her. To feel so unbound and oblivious. As I stared at her, lusting for her free spirit and wanting very badly to run my hands through her hair, she suddenly decided to turn on red and came close to running me over where I stood at the edge of the crosswalk.
She never saw me, but that only added to her appeal.
The next time was when I was scouting the park and stumbled upon her reading on a bench. It was a delightful surprise. By then, I didn’t give a shit if I’d make a dollar or a thousand playing guitar there every day. I just wanted to be in the same space as her. My body ached looking at her—the way her legs were tucked under her, her small bare feet poking out. She was entirely engrossed in the book, her tongue sliding seductively across her lips as she read, her eyes widening at the words on the page. I lit up a cigarette and watched her from my perch on the hill. Close enough to see her, but far enough where she didn’t notice me. I squinted at her paperback, filled with curiosity over what my little magical faery would be reading. I grinned when I saw the embracing couple on the cover.
A romance.
She believed in love, or at least wanted to.
I didn’t.
At least not yet.
She changed that. She made me believe in it, she made me want it, and she made it so I couldn’t live without it. I fell hard and fast for her. She haunted me; lived in the fabric of my soul and inspired all the emotions and words that had always eluded me. Without ever even knowing it, she vaulted me to the top of my career.
I was going to leave that rainy night years ago. Once that fucking headache stopped, I was going to make myself gone. Get far away from her shy glances and childlike laugh and blushing cheeks. But I couldn’t, because I couldn’t let her go. I wanted her to be mine.
Does that make me fucked up? That her innocence made me hard as a fucking rock; made me want to corrupt her, ruin her for everyone else? To set the bar so high that anyone else would fail miserably?
But then she came, creeping through the fog on petite feet in high heels with a little bag of goodies and a smile that could knock me on my knees and a head of lemon-blond hair and big innocent eyes and those perfect pink lips and a sugary sweet voice. Then there was the skirt and the way the wind skimmed it across her pale thighs.
All that, I could have just ignored if I really wanted to. It was her breathing that did me in, the way her breath caught in her throat as I stepped closer to her, how she held me in her lungs and got high on me before exhaling over her quivering lips. She was scared, but not of me, of wanting me.
She was a rabbit hopping straight into the talons of a vulture.
I knew I was going to devour her. I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted her too much, needed her too much... and when she didn’t push me away, when she gave herself to me—that was it.
She made me want to stay, when all I ever wanted to do was run. She made me want more, and she made me want things I couldn’t have. And worse, I knew she wanted things I couldn’t give, and it created yet another battle inside me.