Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
He holds a bottle in each hand, taking a long swig out of one.
I blink at him. “Would you go get them, please? Like a gentleman?”
We went out on their boat last time I was here, and he drove me home from there. I need my car back now.
But he just teases, “You may have left other things. May as well go look.”
I arch a brow, reading into his ploy to get me into his room. I start up the stairs. “Like my vibrator?” I grumble. “I used it here more than at my house.”
“So rude.”
He starts up the stairs after me, and I keep my laugh to myself. I didn’t come a lot with Trace, but to be fair, I didn’t expect to.
Nor do I think he was trying that hard.
I’d read somewhere that the majority of women can’t orgasm through penetration, so I gathered I was part of that majority.
Sometimes I made him slow down so I could help myself get there. I used my vibrator a lot here, as it turns out.
He’s a good kisser, though. Touching him and being close to him felt good, and for a while, feeling him helped me forget about my troubles.
For a while anyway.
At the top of the stairs, I pass his sister’s closed door and smile a little, because I know I’ll see her in a few weeks when she’s home for Thanksgiving. The bathroom and Macon’s room are on the right, his door closed as well, and I spot Iron and Dallas’s room ahead, to the left of Trace’s.
Army’s is closed, his son’s cries now quiet, and there’s a door in the far corner, always shut. I’ve never seen anyone go in or out of there.
“Why didn’t you want to come to the party?” Trace asks, following me into his room as I go to his desk that’s simply a dumping ground for discarded junk.
I start moving things, looking for my keys. “You mean the one today as opposed to the one yesterday?”
I meet his green eyes for a quick glance, seeing him smile. I look away, feeling that familiar flutter in my tummy. That easy smile was all it took when this one-night stand started six months ago.
“You’re not the only thing I have to do in life, Trace.”
Doors slam downstairs, the house growing quieter as engines fade away down the street.
“Oh, come on, Ms. Conroy.” He sets one of the beers down, coming up behind me and taking my waist in one hand. “You love coming down here to the servants’ quarters to get serviced.”
I shake my head, lifting a tackle box and prying up a greasy car part. “You don’t need me,” I tell him. “There are plenty of girls hanging around your house.”
I glance at the mussed bed.
He nuzzles into my ear. “I like to think about seeing you around town for the next fifty years,” he tells me, “pretending to be a sweet, southern wife when I know what you look like underneath me. I’ll see you. You’ll see me. We’ll smile as we pass on the sidewalk, remembering. Clock’s ticking, Conroy. May as well have some fun while you can.”
There’s a lightheartedness in his twenty-year-old voice that I love, but it always gives me pause, too. He’s never serious, and after six months of playing around together, I’m starting to suspect it’s on purpose.
I stop looking for my keys. “You know I don’t think of you like that, right? As a servant, I mean?”
His family has more money than mine at this point. My parents are locked in a divorce battle, and my father left us nothing while they duke it out. The Jaegers, on the contrary, probably aren’t as poor as they like to seem.
But Trace just teases, “Shh, don’t break the fantasy.”
I spot my keys on his bedside table and grab them, turning around to face him. “I’m going home.”
“Will you come back sometime?”
I’m taken off guard by the question.
No.
I won’t be back.
There’s nothing here that’s good for me, and it’s time I got my ass in gear. I need plans. Some direction. College, maybe?
But I still have no idea what I want to do with my life.
I never wanted to be a lawyer, a stockbroker, or a CEO.
All I ever wanted was to love waking up. To be counted on to make someone’s life better.
And I want a man who breathes me. Who craves me and needs me.
I’m not going to find any of that in Trace’s bedroom.
“Maybe I’ll see you around town.” I smile a little. “Over the next fifty years.”
He takes my face in his hand, his nose nearly brushing mine. “You need one more good memory to take with you.”
I shift my mouth away, about to push his hand off, but someone knocks on the door.
“Trace?” It’s a woman’s voice.