Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 70444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“What kind of treatment were you subjected to?” I asked hopefully.
My hand on his abs instantly felt the tension in his muscles as he realized that he was answering questions that he hadn’t intended to answer.
Instead, distraction mode came on, and I could practically see the change in his demeanor.
Not that I didn’t love the way he distracted me, but now was not the time for distractions. Now was the time for answers.
Lots of them.
I quickly scrambled off of him, just missing kneeing him in the balls by a scant inch and stood beside the couch staring down at him.
“You will not distract me!” I bellowed, waving my hands around wildly.
His eyebrows raised, and he settled back on the couch with his hands behind his head, staring up at me with amusement written all over his stupid, plump, sexy lips that I would kill to have pressed against my…shit! Distracting!!
That cocky fucking smile of his!
It got me every freakin’ time!
I narrowed my eyes at the man on my couch and then turned my back on him to gain the ability to think past my traitorous vagina.
“We need to talk about these evasion tactics of yours that you use when you don’t want to talk about anything personal,” I said. “We also need to talk about the fact that we’ve been dating for two weeks now, and I just learned your middle name.”
“If you’d have asked about my middle name, I would’ve told you what it was,” he drawled.
I turned back around to him and glared. “You knew my middle name the very first day we met. It’s only fair to share!”
“No,” he paused. “The only reason I knew your middle name was because I pulled you over. It’s not a common practice for cops to give their middle names to people that they pull over—you’ll have to trust me on that since you don’t often pull people over.”
I gritted my teeth and glared. “You’re so…mean.”
He laughed and sat up, and I would like to add that I didn’t stare—very long—at the way his abs rippled with the movement of his body.
I took one single glance, and then looked away, staring at the afghan at his back.
“I’m not mean,” he countered. “I’m right and you know it.”
I didn’t like his smug attitude at all.
I turned and walked over to the t-shirt he’d discarded the moment we walked in the door—apparently, he hated wearing shoes and shirts if he didn’t have to. Though, that I had to deduce on my own.
Once I had it in my hand, I picked it up, balled it into my hands, and then tossed it at his face.
He caught it, but the tails of the shirt swung around and caught him in the cheek anyway.
I tried really hard not to smile.
“Very mature,” he said as his lips twitched.
I didn’t laugh.
I was still quite pissed.
“Why don’t you talk about yourself?” I asked. “You know everything there is to know about me—the fucked up, and the even more fucked up. Everything. I don’t think there’s one single thing that I haven’t told you about. Hell, you even know that I sleep with a stuffed animal at night—and not even Amanda knows that I still do that.”
He looked down at his hands that were now linked together between his splayed thighs.
Then he sighed.
“If I tell you, you’ll run.”
I frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“That night with those brothers?”
I nodded. “Yeah?”
“I pulled them over, but it didn’t have to turn out the way that it did. What I failed to mention was that they’d goaded me, taunted me about being a veteran. They saw the tattoo on my arm, and then asked me if I was dumb because I couldn’t do anything else with my life but go into the Army.”
I frowned.
“You’re not dumb. In fact, you’re one of the smartest men I know,” I admitted.
And he was.
That was no lie.
He shrugged, dismissing my words as if they meant nothing. “I probably could’ve handled my mouth differently, but I didn’t. And look at where it got me…where it got you, too.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I mean, on one hand, he was right. However, I wasn’t a politically correct type of person. I never had been, and it was unlikely that I ever would be. If someone had said something like that to me, I would’ve reacted the same way—I actually had reacted the same way.
“I know that you know that I was arrested…but did you ever find out why?” I asked curiously.
He frowned. “No. You told me it was something to do with being a youth.”
I nodded. “When I was seventeen, I was asked to the prom by the most popular guy in school.”
He nodded as if it didn’t surprise him in the least that I had been asked to prom by the most popular boy in school.