Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
But it’s too soon for all that right now.
I just had to think things all the way through after seeing her this morning, to be honest with myself and decide if I was ready to open myself up, to take the first steps in making my ultimate dream a reality. If there was any kind of doubt in my mind, I wouldn’t even take this first stride forward, meeting her tonight to test the vibe between us, to see if what I felt for her online would even translate in person.
Sure, I’d stood close to her at Club Alias before and felt the static energy crackling between us. And yes, sitting next to her and speaking to her in the café had my heart pounding and adrenaline filling my veins. Plus, I couldn’t forget the night I helped her out of the dumpster, held her on my lap, and doctored her hand that was full of cactus needles. Just the act of taking care of her when she was hurt filled me with the intoxicating rush of being needed I had become desensitized to after having worked in an ER for so long.
But this meeting would be different than all those other encounters. This would be the first time we’d come face-to-face as each other’s prospective partner in a relationship that had the potential to be deeper than even a marriage.
This would be the real test, when everything before were just warmups.
With her head cradled in my hands, I feel like I have the whole universe held within my palms. George R.R. Martin once said “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.” But what would he say about the authors themselves? God only knows how many characters and stories, along with her intrusive voices, actually live inside this mind of hers. Countless more than she’d ever have the time, energy, or concentration to put down on paper.
If nothing else, I can help her with that. She craves the focus she was born without, replaced, it seems, with unharnessed creativity and an ability to weave together words with articulated magic that reach her readers on a soul-deep level. I’ve scrolled through reviews of her books, and the thing people kept saying over and over no matter which title it was under was how connected they felt to the little sub’s characters. She writes them in a way that brings them to life, makes them feel real, even giving the person reading the story a sense of longing that the fictional people on the pages were alive and walking amongst us, so they could find them and be their friends.
Little do they know, every single one of those heroines is Sienna herself. Maybe not entirely. Maybe they had a different backstory or family dynamic or lived in a different place and time. Maybe theirs looked entirely unlike the pretty face gripped gently between my fingers. Short hair instead of her lengthy mess of dark strands with highlights long grown out while she couldn’t move, weighed down by her broken heart and heavy thoughts. But however different she made the female lead from her reality, all those books were autobiographical, whether she meant for them to be or not.
Pushing all other thoughts aside to focus on the here and now, I take in the way she shivers each time my fingers make a pass up and down the column of her neck. Before she gave me all control to position her as I pleased, she had tilted her head into my hand, baring her throat to me in a purely animalistic and instinctive ritual that primal-prey submissives naturally revert to.
I try to remember what her test results said, how high her percentage was for that specific role, which would’ve been calculated from answers she gave based on her limited experience.
Just like this morning at the gym, I have the fleeting thought she’s playing a part. In the café, it was the role of the sexy librarian hidden inside the shy nerd. In this moment, it’s the vixen portraying the vulnerable little mouse for the prowling and ferocious feline, or pretending to be the kitten cornered by the salivating wolf.
But as I said, the thought is fleeting, quickly dissipating when I remember who this woman is, what she’s shown me time and time again what she truly feels and believes. This is no skilled actress trying to please a Dom by faking what she thinks he wants.
Instead, this woman is a geode that has yet to be split in two, raw and unpolished on the outside but valuable all the same. Because right now, she may seem contained, only what’s visible on the surface, what you see before she’s been cracked open, but there’s no doubt what’s clearly awaiting inside.
All she needs is a strong hand to reveal the wonderous beauty that lives within that shell.