Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
Her jaw dropped as she nodded. “I know. I thought once they’d done it a couple hundred times they might be chill, but no. I can’t walk into most rooms in our place anymore. And I can’t get any sleep because TJ convinces Lou it’s normal to wake up and have sex. He’s loud. I can’t sleep through it.”
Oh, TJ would kiss his feet if he managed to get Kala to sleep in his bed instead of sneaking into Lou’s. Because she had bad dreams, and it was a comfort from childhood.
He intended to become her comfort. “Don’t forget your sister.”
“She and Dare do it at work,” Kala said. “Dad walked into Dare’s office and… Well, he did the I-can’t-see thing for two days. It was kind of funny. All my siblings embarrass my father when it comes to sex. Seth sleeps with any woman with a pulse. Travis forgot to wear a condom. Tasha humps a Canadian on a regular basis, and Kenz really wants to. Though a different Canadian.”
“Your dad loves Dare.” Big Tag was a character. So was his daughter. “I think Parker is a different story, although the man bought a lot of goodwill with all of us. He didn’t have to save you.”
She put a hand up. “I can’t talk about that tonight. I talk about it too much. That’s what I’m saying. I need a distraction. I need sex. If you also need a distraction and need sex, then I think we should discuss having sex together.”
So intellectual. So practical. He needed to be the same. He was sure his mother would tell him he should sit down and talk to her, get all their feelings and emotions laid out on the table. But oh, she’d tried to talk to him once and he’d shut her down. He was certain she told herself that rejection didn’t matter now, but it did. There was still a vulnerable fifteen-year-old girl in there, and he wasn’t about to disappoint her again. If she needed him to play the stud for a while, he could do it. But they didn’t need a bunch of talk.
His heart threatened to clench even as his dick hardened to the point of pain.
He was finally, finally getting his hands on Kala Taggart. He had his chance. He wasn’t going to blow it.
“I think that sounds like a plan. Let’s start now.”
* * * *
Kala was fairly certain her heart was going to explode. She was too young for a heart attack, although she sometimes thought what Huisman had done to her was very similar to The Princess Bride. There had been a torture machine in that movie, and it took years off the victim’s life. Maybe she was actually eighty now.
He said yes. And he didn’t want to wait.
And she was supposed to be this cool, sexually experienced chick. She was not supposed to be a twenty-seven-year-old maybe virgin who lied about sleeping with men because she didn’t want any of them besides Cooper McKay.
He had. She knew he’d slept with women. He’d had a couple of serious girlfriends in college.
Not even Lou knew she’d never slept with anyone. She’d lied to her best friend so she didn’t look like the sexless, scared-to-find-out-if-she-was-a-virgin freak she was.
Only Kenzie knew. Even her parents thought she had boyfriends in college. Her father had even praised her for not bringing the dumbasses home to meet them. Though that might have been a complaint now that she thought about it.
Cooper held a hand out. “Let’s go to a privacy room. I’m not fucking you for the first time on a spanking bench.”
For the first time. Oh, this was so many first times. He didn’t even know how many first times were going to be had tonight.
And he wasn’t going to because this wasn’t about happily ever after. This was about getting him out of her system so she could properly focus on her job. She’d gone to that freaking bar the night Huisman kidnapped her because she’d been thinking about Cooper. She’d watched Tris and Carys and Aidan fighting and wished Coop cared about her enough to fight with her.
She had to get him out of her head, and not sleeping with him hadn’t done the trick. So here she was. But no one else had to know about it. “The bench is fine.”
He stared down at her. Without her boots, he had a good five inches on her. And a hundred pounds of muscle. Pretty muscle. She’d never seen him naked before. Tops didn’t tend to get naked during scenes.
Shit, was she a top so she didn’t have to be vulnerable?
She wanted to punch her therapist.
“The bench is uncomfortable. It’s supposed to be. It’s a punishment bench. And it’s too low for what I want to do. I know they clean in here, but I’m not laying on the floor.”