Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
When she touched me, every instinct I possess roared at me to flip the table and grab her.
A beast howled inside of me, my seed rioting, commanding me to take her someplace private as quickly as I could. Unleash my inner animal on her, pulling up the fabric of her dress and bringing my throbbing dick to her hole.
Fuck.
We’re getting closer to her apartment and the traffic is annoyingly light, meaning we’re making good time.
Or bad time, as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t want us to make good time.
I want it to take forever, so we have more time together, more time for me to inhale her perfume and her just-Jessie scent, to feel her warmth beside me.
I warn myself I can’t do anything, but it’s like the words are coming through a thick haze, meaningless as I repeat them again and again.
She’s my employee. She’s more than two decades younger than me. She’s already nervous enough as it is without me unchaining my desire on her.
The reasoning rings hollow as I come to a stop outside her apartment.
I expect her to say goodnight and reach for the door handle quickly. Relief washes over me when she places her hands in her lap instead. My eyes devour the shape of her thighs beneath the dress, the juiciness of them, my fingers twitching to grab onto them, squeeze, listen to the breathy sexy noises she’ll make.
“Thank you,” she murmurs. “For bringing me home.”
“Thank you for coming.” I sit back, make my hands relax. “It would’ve been so much worse if I’d gone alone. You did me a massive favor tonight, Jessie.”
She looks at me in that way of hers. It’s skittish, a quick snapping movement, as if she’s afraid to stare too long or too hard just in case… in case what?
Does she think I’m going to get angry with her?
Does she think I could ever be angry with her?
“Are you excited about the physical stores opening? I know they’re already open, but I mean the big event,” she asks.
She’s talking about the city-wide discount initiative we’re running, as an announcement to the local neighborhoods that we’re here and here to stay.
“Yeah,” I tell her, passion infusing the word. “I’m more excited for this than I’ve been for anything in a long time. It feels like when I first started the business.”
She stares, patiently, with that unreadable glimmering in her eyes. But I think she’s interested. She doesn’t strike me as the sort of woman to talk for the sake of it – except maybe when she gets adorably nervous – and I appreciate that.
She doesn’t seem nervous now. It’s like she’s waiting for something.
For you to kiss her, a voice whispers.
I try to quieten it as I go on. “There’s something about physical stores that call out to me. Even if that sounds cheesy as hell.”
“It doesn’t,” she says. “Not at all.”
We’re silent for a few moments, simply staring at each other. It feels good not to have to fill every minute with babble, to look at each other and let the lust marinate, let our desire rise and rise until—
Dammit.
Didn’t I just promise myself no more fantasizing?
“I wasn’t born into money,” I tell her. “My parents are finally living the lives they deserve, with a nice chunk of land in Maine and all their expenses paid for. But it wasn’t always the case. When we were kids, my old man had this electronics store.”
I’m not even sure why I’m telling her this. It’s a period of my life I rarely talk about, and yet I want her to know more about me, the same way I’d love to know more about her.
“I spent a lot of my childhood in that store, tinkering with the computers, playing with whatever Dad would let me.”
Her smile contains so much. There’s shared understanding and appreciation and, in a glimmering moment, a hint at the maternal way she’ll smile at our children.
I can imagine her dotingly aiming this expression at our son when he returns from the garden, covered in mud, a grin on his face as he says, “Mommy, Mommy, I dug a hole.”
The vision hammers me with the power of a memory lived.
“Anyway, I saw first hand how my old man struggled to stay afloat, all the stuff he had to put up with. Eventually, he was forced to sell the store to pay his debts, and after that, they spent the rest of my childhood working odd jobs.”
She keeps watching, as though it isn’t almost midnight. As though she has all the time in the world. She’s not looking at me like the socialites have over the years, as though she wants to extract something from me. This is total attention.
Her attention, the only woman I’ve ever wanted. It intoxicates me.
“I promised myself I’d do something for the everyday store owner whenever I got the chance. First I had to build up my business, but I never forgot, not for a second, the look on my dad’s face when he had to give up his dream. It made me never want to give up on mine.”