Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
I lifted my eyes slowly. His waist came into view, his stomach flat and tight, hugged by an immaculate gray waistcoat. My eyes climbed higher, to where the twin slabs of his pecs pushed out his snow-white shirt. He seemed even bigger, up close, his chest wide enough to block my view of everything behind him. And tall: I’m 5’6” but I had to tilt my head way back to see more of him. Up past the knot of his blue silk tie, up past his shoulders…
Up into those amazing, pale gray eyes. The scalding lust was gone. Wait: no. Not gone. Controlled. Locked behind bars of ice. And he was frowning at me, demanding to know how I’d made his control slip.
I shifted from foot to foot, feeling small and vulnerable...but in a way I wanted more of. I wanted to drop my eyes to the floor but at the same time, I couldn’t look away. I pressed my fingertips against the wood of the counter to anchor myself. Then I took a breath and forced my voice almost level. “Welcome to All You Need is Books. How can I help you?”
He glowered down at me. God, glowering was invented for this guy. Scowling, too. With those dark brows and the gray eyes and the way those gorgeous lips tightened...it was pure sex. A memory scratched at the back of my mind. I’d seen him before, somewhere.
“I need a book,” he told me.
I blinked. Normally, I would have made some crack like well, you’re in the right place or unfortunately, we don’t sell those. But I was busy dealing with his voice. The words were heavy and cold as hunks of ice. And they’d been cut from a glacier by his accent, a silver axe that left the edges of the words wonderfully rough in places and silky smooth in others. I wanted to rub my mind against his voice. His accent fitted his cheekbones: somewhere cold and distant, but I couldn’t place it. “For yourself?” I managed.
“A gift for my cousin’s daughter. She’s fourteen.”
I nodded. “Well, okie dokie.” What? Since when do I say okie fucking dokie?! I flushed all over again, then rallied. “I’m sure I can suggest something. What does she read?”
This time he blinked. He glanced around the store, then back to me. “Books.”
I stared at him. He doesn’t read! For him, this must be like when I went to a sports store with my former boyfriend and they had two hundred badminton rackets that all looked identical. I tried to imagine what it would be like to not love books. To never have the glorious anticipation of taking a new book home, desperate to start it. To never open a book to chapter one and let your mind sink into the story.
He was scary, rich, and intimidating...but I felt sorry for him.
I forced myself to focus on the task. Luckily, recommending books is what I’m best at. There’s nothing I love more than pointing someone at a book and then a few weeks later having them come back into the store, grinning and floaty, having devoured it. I turned and marched over to a bookshelf, ignoring the pain in my legs. I plucked out a white-and-gold hardback and held it up. “This is a great book. It’s about a girl who finds out she only has six months to live...”
His lips tightened. “I want to give her a birthday gift, not traumatize the child.”
“No, no, it’s okay! Because she finds a portal to the Fae world, and time passes more slowly there, so she can live out her whole life.” I walked back to him, running my fingers lovingly over the embossed title. “And then she meets the Fae king, and they fall in love, and she learns how to shoot a bow and fights in a war, and—” I’d started grinning and couldn’t stop: I always get this way when I talk about books I love. “It’s got everything, adventure and emotion and romance—I mean, teen appropriate but it’s so good. She’ll love it.”
I looked up. He wasn’t looking at the book, he was looking at me. Watching me get stupidly carried away. I felt the heat start to creep into my face…
But then I saw how his eyes had softened.
He tore his gaze away and nodded. “I’ll take it.”
I nodded and scanned the book’s barcode. He moved closer and I caught a hint of his cologne. It was like nothing I’d ever smelled, citrus and vanilla but with an undertone of something darkly intoxicating, and I couldn’t get enough of it. If there was a magical, dark amber fruit that put you under a spell with just one bite, it would smell exactly like him.
He held out a glossy black bank card and I grabbed the card reader and went to tap it against the card…