Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 111096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
Her body was a fucking dream. Curves to die for. Curves I wanted to worship.
And then there was her voice. Low, raspy yet delicate at the same time. I felt it in my dick whenever she spoke.
And today, when she’d started fucking babbling about some TV show, the apples on her cheeks seemed to grow larger, making her freckles look darker against her skin. It had almost spelled the end of me.
Her hair had been falling around her face, her emerald eyes glowing with what looked to be panic but still made me want to yank her across the counter and finally taste her rosebud mouth.
Especially now that she wasn’t wearing that fuck’s ring. Now that I wasn’t in danger of spending fifteen to life in a state penitentiary for killing him after laying his hands on what was mine.
And she was mine. Whether or not she was wearing that ring. I knew that was fucking insane since I barely knew her, but I felt like I did. I knew that she was shy, that she showed every single emotion on that face of hers. Knew she blushed easily. That she smiled at children. Knew that she donated all of the leftover baked goods to the homeless shelter at the end of every day. That she was soft-spoken and a little goofy. Knew that everyone in town fucking loved her. That she was a goddamn treasure in this town. I knew that she had no fucking clue just how indescribably gorgeous she was.
She didn’t go out… I never saw her at the bar. Knew she spent almost all her time at that bakery of hers. Which she’d built into a nationwide fucking sensation.
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” I said to my best friend as we climbed into the truck.
“Bullshit,” he returned, his voice muffled by the huge bite of brownie he’d taken. Which was followed by a groan I really didn’t need to hear from my best friend. Though I knew it wasn’t voluntary; there was no way you could eat that shit without having some kind of physical reaction. I didn’t eat sugary shit. Not until I found myself in that fucking bakery three years ago.
Now I had dreams about the fucking croissants.
Well, Nora was usually baking them in my kitchen, and she was usually naked, but the croissants were there.
Kip chewed noisily as I placed my coffee in the cup holder of the truck, still staring at me, wordlessly calling bullshit.
“We’re not talkin’ about this,” I barked, turning the truck on. “We’re talkin’ about the house we’ve got to finish by the end of the week and the renovations we’ve gotta start next week, the quote we’ve gotta give tomorrow, and the scheduling conflicts we’ve got with two big clients,” I said, willing myself not to stare at her from the windows like a total fucking stalker.
At least not when Kip was watching.
“We need to hire more guys,” Kip said.
He was not wrong.
“Or girls,” he added. “Women are just as capable, if not more capable, than men at any and all things.”
He was not wrong about that either.
“If we hire women, you cannot fuck them,” I told him, sipping my coffee to distract me from not taking one last glimpse at her before the bakery was out of sight.
Kip huffed beside me.
“It’s a lawsuit,” I informed him.
“That’s what lawyers are for,” he muttered around the brownie. “Nora doesn’t work for us, she works for herself.”
“Since we don’t bake fucking cookies for a living and she doesn’t build fucking houses, I think that’s goddamn clear.” Fuck… Now I had the vision of Nora in a hardhat and nothing else in my head.
“So, you have no lawsuits to get tangled up in when you fuck her,” he rambled.
A car honked as I pulled the truck over to the side of the road so I could glare at my best friend without getting into a wreck.
“You are not gonna talk about me fuckin’ her ever again,” I growled, pointing my finger at him.
Now it was not something I was particularly proud of, but I could be a scary guy. Most of the time I was a scary guy. Kip knew that it was more than just a glower, too, because he’d been with me. He knew the look in my eye when I had left part of myself behind, when I was ready to hurt someone without regret or mercy.
Similarly, I knew that behind those easy smiles of his, Kip could kill a man in less than ten seconds without spilling a drop of blood. I knew that those easy smiles were just a fucking farce, that he was forcing them with everything he had because otherwise, he’d have to think about what he lost four years ago.
His teasing smile lingered despite the promise of violence I knew he saw in my eyes. Kip was fearless… He’d faced things regular people feared only because they were foreign, unknown. We both knew horrors most people couldn’t even dream of. Him more than me.