Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
And in a different world, one where she really was his, they would be how he could live with what he’d seen, what he’d done and what he’d lost in the dust, dirt and sand.
To be the kind of man who earned that look.
Who deserved it.
And who could claim the woman who wore it.
“It isn’t a big deal,” he lied.
“You’re absolutely wrong and you know it so shut up, pookie-loo,” she returned.
A good ten swats.
Bare ass.
Mo cut ties with her eyes and bent down to pick up the last bag, forgotten in the ice cream rush, not surprisingly carrying the fresh fruits and vegetables.
He put it on the counter and unpacked it.
* * * *
“So…Afghanistan?”
She’d barely shut the door on her sister and nephews.
He was standing in her living room where he’d retreated, really fucking quick, after he hovered close at her back when she was saying goodbye to her family.
She was standing in the arched entryway that led off her foyer into her living room.
“Lottie—”
“And,” she cut him off, “to go back to our discussion at the grocery store, you may have lived with that woman for two years, but I am a woman, so I know the plays she was making, and they were not what you think they were.”
Mo shook his head. “We’re not doing this.”
She started to move forward. “We are so totally doing this.”
He took a step back and she stopped.
“We’re not, because we can’t,” he declared.
“We can, we are, and I’ll get us started. Backtracking in a belated effort at being an adult, you should know, anyone else, no way I’d be in a nightie making breakfast.”
He clenched his teeth because he had an idea he knew what was coming next.
“I was in a nightie making breakfast with you because you’re hot and I wanted you to jump me,” she kept at him.
That was what he thought was coming.
He still knew better.
“The minute you opened the door to me, you took a step back,” he bit out.
“That’s because you’re enormous, Mo. There’s a lot of you.”
On that, she advanced again.
Mo took another step back.
She stopped.
But she didn’t stop talking.
“Now let me share my first reaction to seeing your face through the peephole, something you didn’t witness, and the exact time I decided I was pretty sure I was gonna want you to jump me. Okay, I’ll admit, the amount of you took me by surprise, but in no way was I withdrawing because I didn’t like what I saw, or I feared it. It was just surprise followed closely with the desire to climb you all the way to the top.”
Shit, fuck, he couldn’t listen to her talking this way.
“Lottie—”
She took another step forward.
He took a step back, hit her coffee table and began to skirt it.
She stopped so he stopped.
“You were a dick to me, Mo.”
Fuck.
He knew they’d get there.
He just didn’t want to be there because she was right.
He’d been a dick.
“I thought you were playing games,” he explained.
“You didn’t keep that secret,” she reminded him.
“I also needed you to back off.”
“You didn’t keep that secret either.”
“So how about you remember I need you to back off?” he suggested.
“No way in hell,” she returned.
“Lottie, listen—”
She advanced again, he retreated, and she didn’t stop until his calves hit couch and there was nowhere to go.
Which meant she got in his space but didn’t touch him.
But her in his space was bad enough.
Christ.
“Let me make myself perfectly clear. I like you, Mo.” She leaned closer. “A lot.”
“We’re not going there,” he grunted.
“We so are.”
“We’re not.”
She put a hand to his chest and her eyes warmed as her voice went soft and sweet. “We are, baby.”
“We’re not because there is no way I’m gonna be in the position of being inside you and my attention all about you something that would give some whackjob the opportunity to get the drop on us and put a bullet in the back of my head.”
Her face went slack and her hand curled into a fist on his chest.
But he wasn’t done with her.
“After that, he’ll drag you out from under my dead body, and no one will get the warning you’ve been taken because I’m dead in your bed and he’s got you somewhere, making you wish you were as dead as me.”
She pressed her fist into his chest but said nothing.
“Lottie, you get this is serious, but what you gotta really get is that I need to be focused and not on how badly I wanna make love to you, but on how badly I wanna keep you safe and healthy, physically, but more, mentally.”
“Okay,” she whispered, understanding the intelligence of that right away, and that was his girl. “We’ll wait until it’s over.”
Goddammit.
“We won’t do it then either.”
She showed her shock then her hurt before she said, her voice rising, “Why not?”