Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 53725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 269(@200wpm)___ 215(@250wpm)___ 179(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 269(@200wpm)___ 215(@250wpm)___ 179(@300wpm)
Satisfaction fills his handsome face. “I’m glad you do.”
“Are you as adept at the ins and outs of whiskey, too? I’d think that would be so very Wall Street.”
“Hell, yes, I am. I’m a scotch guy myself, but I know a good bit about whatever you can throw at me in a bottle, as does most everyone in my father’s world.”
“Your father’s world?” I query, shifting around to face him. “Isn’t it your world as well?”
“Not yet,” he says. “But that’ll change. I’ll make sure of it.”
“You’re still not getting along,” I state, and it’s not a question. There has always been tension between the two of them. His father pushed him to be just like him. Damion wanted—wants—to be his own person.
“We get along. We just don’t agree on everything, and thankfully plenty of the board members like the idea of young blood. It forces my father to actually listen when I speak.” He dismisses the topic and shifts the conversation back to me. “What about you? What kind of law do you want to practice?”
“Real estate. My parents don’t understand the value that can bring to the business, but they will.”
His lips curve. “Yes, they will.” He sets his wine glass down, and then mine, before he eases against the cushion and pulls my legs across his lap.
I settle against the arm of the couch, which I’m only now realizing is some kind of soft tan leather that is warm. Maybe it’s actually velvet? Whatever the case, the entire apartment is money, especially the art on the walls. I’m a bit of an art connoisseur. It’s my favorite hobby, but not one that would benefit my family and their business.
“Did you decorate this place yourself?”
He laughs. “As if I’d decorate anything. Remember my room growing up?”
“Yes, I remember. Hot women were the only theme you knew.”
He laughs. “I was a young boy.”
“Oh, please. I bet your bedroom is still all about hot women.” It’s out before I can stop it. “Please do not reply to that and embarrass me.”
He laughs again, a deep, rumbly sound I feel in every part of me. “My parents own this place. They hired whoever they hire to decorate. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here.”
“Which will be when?”
“I’m looking at places now.” He catches my foot and runs a thumb down my arch, and I don’t know why it’s sexy, but it’s sexy. And intimate.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I remember when you stepped on that toothpick right here.” He presses on my foot and massages.
I moan, because come on, it’s a foot massage, but at the same time, my mind travels to the past. We’d been seventeen. Actually, he was eighteen. It was only months before he left for college, and we’d been at his pool. “We” meaning us and his girlfriend. He’d forgotten her to help me, but how could he not have? The pain had been excruciating, and he’d helped me calm down enough to get help. “That was brutal,” I say, shivering. “I can hardly think about it going straight up into my foot without freaking out. You just… yanked it right out.”
“It was bad. I still don’t know how that toothpick got there. No one in our family used the damn things.”
“You always had friends over. I’m sure it was one of them.”
“My friends always hit on you, and you never dated even one of them.”
“As you already said, you were weird about me and other guys. Dating one of your friends didn’t seem like the way for us to stay friends.”
He scoots in closer, draping my legs fully over his body. One hand plants on the other side of me. He leans in, his face close to my face, his lips so very near. “I followed your rules.”
“I know,” I reply, and I do. That doesn’t mean I didn’t wish he wouldn’t.
“No more rules,” he declares, “not if they include you with everyone but me.”
I could read into that declaration, and therefore say so many things, but I don’t let myself do either. One thing I’ve learned is that men are different from women. Per one particular psychology instructor, at least where sex is concerned, men are about the moment. Women are about forever. He’s living in the moment.
I need to be sure I do the same.
Otherwise, I will end up hurt.
As if there is any other way this ends.
Chapter Thirteen
Alana
“No more rules, not if they include you with everyone but me.”
Everyone but him. That’s actually the truth. My world has been everyone but him, although somehow still all about him. Tonight, that changes, I decide. Tonight is about me, my pleasure. My desire. My obsession that must end because it’s unhealthy. Otherwise, it’s about him again. And three years without him proves it has to be about me.