Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 66859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
“You, Poppy, girl who is scared of nothing, is scared of a bunch of rats?”
“They were in my bed,” I squeak. “In. My. Bed.”
He laughs harder.
I thump his shoulder. “Stop laughing at me.”
He stops laughing and even though I can’t see him in the semi dark room, I can feel his warm breath against my face. It’s then I realize we’re a whole lot closer than I realized and at that particular realization, I inhale a deep breath. Beckett falls silent, his body stops trembling from laughter, and I can feel him ... so close. The silence is deafening, but the tension in the air is without a doubt, the strongest I’ve ever felt.
I want to kiss him.
God, do I want to kiss him.
I bite my lower lip, wondering if he’s going to close the tiny space between us. His hand is on my back, and I feel his fingers move against my bare skin. I’m wearing only a pair of undies and a crop. I swallow, and it sounds incredibly loud in the silence. God, I need him to do something, anything.
“What are the chances you’re pregnant?”
Not what I needed him to do.
Not at all.
I stiffen and all the sexual tension leaves the air. Sweet Jesus, that’s what he was thinking about? I was thinking about the insane connection between us and he was wondering if I could possibly be pregnant.
Good god.
“Poppy?” he urges.
“I ... I don’t know.”
“Is it too late for the morning after pill?”
Good lord, that hits me like a smack to the face. I mean, sure, he has every right to ask that question but it still makes me feel two inches tall when he does.
“I don’t know, I guess we can ask tomorrow.”
“You’re not on the pill?”
“No.”
“Fuck.”
I climb off his lap, my body feeling very numb and tingly. “Can you get the rats out, please,” I say, my voice soft and flat.
“I was askin’ a question, I wasn’t tryin’ to be a dick.”
“The rats, Beckett.”
He stands, and I feel him brush past me as he goes into my room and flicks on the light. I wait, watching as a few minutes pass and then Ratticus and his little ratty family come running out of my room as Beckett charges out after them with a pole I had stuffed into the window. He chases them across the warehouse, half naked, and I must admit it’s a good sight.
I walk into my room and pick up my blanket from the floor, then I place it on the bed before turning to see Beckett in my doorway, staring at my half naked body, his eyes zoned in on a scar just above my underwear line, a scar that runs halfway across my stomach. Unless you’re looking at me naked, you’re not going to see it. I can hide it well. It almost looks as if I’ve had a c-section or a tummy tuck, only it’s no way near that neat.
“I thought I saw that when I showered you, didn’t want to ask what it was,” Beckett goes on. “What happened?”
I glance down at it. I don’t really care if people see it, they assume it’s from an accident of some sort, and it’s so faded now you can barely tell. But, nobody ever asks me, either, and that’s how I like it. I don’t have to answer it if I’m not asked.
Still, if he wants to know I’ll tell him.
“I was in trouble, before I met Mateo. I was doing bad things, with bad people. I ... I swallowed some bags of drugs they wanted me to transport across the border, and a man who was after them got hold of me. He told me he was going to cut every single bag out of my body. That was his threat,” I say, pointing to the scar. “It was deep, and it nearly killed me. Mateo ... He saved me, and I guess that’s why I married him.”
“That would have hurt like hell.”
I remember the pain as if it were yesterday. I recall my screams. I remember how it felt as he slowly plunged that knife into my skin and dragged it across, slicing me open as if I were nothing more than a piece of meat. He would have killed me, he would have cut those drugs out of me if Mateo hadn’t showed up and saved my life. It took two surgeries to get the scar to look halfway normal, but the memory remains.
“It was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in my life,” I tell him, my voice a little shaky at the memories fighting to come into my head.
“Why’d you swallow drugs?”
“I was getting paid good money to do it,” I explain. “I would swallow up to fifty small bags of drugs, which was a lot of money’s worth. Then, I’d just cross the border and deliver them as promised. It was dangerous as hell, and disgusting work, but let me tell you, they were paying me well to do it and I was fucking messed up. Messed up in the kind of way you never want to be messed up in your life. Mateo got me out of that, I owed him everything.”