Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 84864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Ajax straightened, some of that wicked playfulness leaving his eyes. “No,” he said. “I was visiting someone.”
“Oh,” I said, shoulders dropping. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “It led me to you.”
“How old are you?” I asked, honestly not being able to make a good guess. Maybe early thirties, but with the way he sometimes looked at me…it was like he’d been around a lot longer than myself.
“Eight-hundred and seventy,” he said, deadpan, and it tore a laugh from my lips that cut through any previous tension lingering in my chest.
“Of course, you are,” I said as the people in front of us took their dive off the bridge. “What other age could you possibly be?”
He smiled at me, that amusement that sometimes lit up his eyes sparkling there now. “Tell me more about the things you want to get done before…” He let the sentence hang there, and I couldn’t lie, it was refreshing to have him be so nonchalant about the whole death sentence thing. “Is it all heights and jump scares or are there other things you want to get done? Things you're upset you have to give up?”
“I’m sad I’ll never get to open up my own practice,” I admitted. “And I really regret not rescuing a dog sooner, but I was barely ever home when I was in college, so it didn’t seem fair.”
“A dog?” He furrowed his brow. “You regret not getting one?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Are you a cat person?”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “No, I’m a dog person. I just…I guess I expected you to say you’re sad you don’t get to have children.”
Again, that casualness in which he spoke about my condition, about death so easily made me wonder if he really was some supernatural creature here to whisk me into the otherworld.
“I never wanted children, not after knowing I carried a gene that could kill any I may have, but a dog? I would’ve loved to rescue one and give it all the affection I had to offer.”
Ajax pursed his lips. “What else?”
I laughed. “You’re very good about asking for my story, yet you’ve barely shared any of yours.” I tilted my head at him. “Doesn’t it creep you out? All this death talk?”
“I’ve been a friend of death’s a lot longer than I care to remember,” he said, his voice lowering. A chill scraped the back of my neck, my pulse skipping a beat.
“What does that mean?” I asked, my voice coming out as a whisper.
A dull ache pulsed behind my eyes—
Strap them in. Go over rules. Two more and you’re out for the night. An unfamiliar voice tumbled into my mind.
So beautiful, so fragile—that voice was all Ajax.
God, why now? Why was I imagining voices now?
“You two are up!” the attendant said, cutting through the voices. I popped open my eyes and headed over to where he waved us on.
Ajax followed close, and the attendant had us stand side to side, our bodies touching as he hooked us in tandem. From this position, it looked like we were standing on top of the world, the water stretching out hundreds of feet below and seeming to go on forever as the sounds of the city behind us faded into nothing.
“Shit,” I said, fear crawling up my spine with icy fingers. “Why did you agree to this?” I asked, glancing up at Ajax.
He grinned down at me. “Because you asked me to.”
Something warm burst in my chest, shifting around his statement in a way that it had no business doing. This man couldn’t mean anything more to me than a fleeting moment in time that was about to run out.
The attendant explained the instructions, telling us how to fall off the platform when he gave the signal before he asked us to step up to the very edge.
I couldn’t move.
This was so stupid. Yeah, I was going to die, but I didn’t have to hurry the process. Why had I ever—
Ajax slid his arm around me, gliding his hand down my back and settling it on my hip. We were already attached and close, but somehow, the move enveloped me with a warmth I couldn’t explain. This ridiculous sense of safety wrapped around me, chasing away the fear as heat sizzled under his touch.
That ache wrenched between my thighs again as I savored that touch, so innocent yet so consuming with his scent swirling around me. Something inside me unfurled, like a flower blooming in the night.
“You ready?” he asked, motioning his head toward the go-signal that was flashing.
I nodded, my pulse skittering along my veins as he smiled at me, as he held my gaze and dipped his weight forward—our weight forward—and then we were flying.
The free fall had my stomach rising to meet my throat, but after a few seconds, the wind on my face and the strong arm wrapped around me felt like nothing else in the world. I was flying through the night sky with the most gorgeous man I’d ever set eyes on and nothing else existed outside of this moment.