Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Jj
“Hey, you okay?”
The voice wasn’t particularly loud, but considering my head felt like it was going to twist right off my body, the guy could have been screaming in my ear.
I was sick of the question that my brother and pretty much everyone I’d come into contact with during the past week kept asking me.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. Only one or two of the guys who’d fucked me at Tank’s had asked me that, probably because I’d been so unresponsive. I hadn’t even been able to fake the moans of pleasure my hookups liked to hear while they were fucking me. Thankfully, none of the guys had been interested in getting me off, so they hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared that my dick had remained limp the entire time.
“Yeah,” I muttered as I reached into my pocket for the small bottle of aspirin.
The guy I was with was new. Luckily, he was even less chatty than Axel, who’d barely spoken more than a handful of words to me outside of the ones related to the job.
Boone. That was this guy’s name. I had no clue if it was his first name or his last. I didn’t really care, either. It could have been anyone behind the wheel; I wasn’t looking at faces.
Just like I hadn’t looked at any of the faces of the men who’d used my body the first few nights I’d gone to Tank’s after my disturbing run-in with Cass.
I would have liked to dismiss my pounding head as the result of drinking too much the night before, but I hadn’t had even a drop of alcohol when I’d gotten to Tank’s. I hadn’t had any guys, either. I’d sat at the bar for half an hour sipping a glass of club soda. Several men had come up to me and spoken things in my ear in an effort to steal me away from the bar, but I hadn’t responded to any of them. Not physically and not verbally.
There’d been only one man on my mind and while it had been a week since our encounter, thoughts of Cass and that kiss—that goddamn kiss—had taken up most of the real estate in my head for the entire seven days.
My run-in with Cass had sent me scrambling to Tank’s the second Axel and I had been relieved of duty for the day. I’d immediately tossed back enough shots of cheap scotch to make my head spin and then I’d let some guy tug me off the barstool and to the back of the club. We hadn’t even made it to the bathroom before the guy had pressed me face-first against the wall, yanked my jeans down and thrust himself inside of me. I’d lost track of how many men had taken me after that. I’d lost track of a lot of things.
Time.
Place.
People.
But not Cass.
My mind hadn’t been able to disconnect from reality like it always had before while nameless, faceless men used me. I hadn’t been able to lose myself in the haze where I was no longer JJ, the former cop turned fuck toy for complete strangers. The price to get to that place was high and included doing a lot of ugly shit, things I never would have even considered doing before a bullet had ripped through my brain, but once I was in there, the silence, warmth, and safety were worth it because I got to be any version of the JJ I wanted to be before I’d lost a chunk of my life to a bullet and endless darkness.
In that dreamlike place, I could be the kid who’d helped the guy I’d hero-worshipped build his dream car. It let me be the JJ who’d made both his father and brother so proud when he’d graduated from the LAPD police academy. The silence had given me permission to go back to any moment in my life that I wanted. Time always stopped in that place, and it let me remain hidden until the numbing effects of the alcohol wore off. When I was really lucky, I got to see the woman who’d given birth to me. I’d had to make up a voice for her because I couldn’t remember her real one, but I hadn’t been there to talk anyway. I’d just walked into my mother’s waiting arms and sobbed as she’d held me and promised me that everything would be okay.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to find that peace again from the moment Cass had grabbed me on the side of that canyon road and kissed me. I’d tried to forget the feel of his mouth moving over mine by downing shots between a couple of rough fucks, but the place I’d needed to escape to hadn’t materialized, and I’d sat at the bar sipping club soda until I was sober enough to drive or at least hail my own cab.