Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68814 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68814 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
I stepped closer then, unable to help myself, and stared.
“No…” one woman said as I got in line with all the other ladies that were watching from the sidelines. “She told Maxine that she would make the routine better in a different way as long as she didn’t have to wear a revealing outfit.”
That sounded like Hades.
“She’s so exotic looking,” another woman said.
CHAPTER 11
A lot of people are only alive because I shed too much hair to get away with murder.
-Hades to Hannibal
HANNIBAL
I agreed.
Up there, wearing all black, she looked like an ethereal being that was made to be in the spotlight.
She threw these short swords up in the air, twisting them around like she’d done earlier with the juggling sticks, and caught each pommel expertly. As if she’d been doing it for years.
The lights changed color, and the song that was playing went to something more dramatic and scary, and I took an involuntary step forward.
She threw one sword up impossibly high, did a weird twist, then sat down on the floor in time to catch the sword a scant inch from her face.
Without. Fucking. Looking.
My heart was in my throat for the entire performance, and by the time she’d finished and bowed, I was fairly sure I had acid reflux burning up the back of my throat.
Who knew just watching her perform something so dangerous yet spectacularly beautiful could both turn you on and frighten the absolute shit out of you at the same time?
She walked off the stage toward us with thunderous applause following in her wake.
She smiled at me upon noting me there, then frowned. “Why are you so sweaty?”
I looked down at my dirty yellow shirt.
I’d cut the sleeves off of it halfway through the day, then gone a step further and shucked the shirt entirely right after that.
Now, wearing the shirt that was getting cool with my sweat plastered against my skin, I wondered if I should’ve changed before seeing her.
“It’s hot in that room,” I said, my breath coming a little faster than it should after that performance. “That was beautiful, Hades.”
“It really was,” a woman whispered. “As in, that’s the best performance I’ve ever seen with juggling in it. Maybe even in some without.”
Crew, who’d remained quiet up until this point, said, “You’re officially hired and off probation.”
Hades smirked at him. “I had no doubt in my mind I’d make it.”
Hades, the bold.
“Are you interested in grabbing lunch?” she asked.
I was interested in getting something for lunch and then dessert after.
Though, she didn’t need to know where my mind was wandering when it came to what kind of dessert.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”
“There’s a café across the street,” one of the ladies, a little waif of a thing in the back, said. “Pretty good burgers, and decent chicken fried steak.”
I lifted my eyebrow at her in question, and she nodded. “Sounds perfect.”
I pulled my very wet t-shirt away from me and said, “I have to run by my bike to get another shirt. This one is drenched and I don’t want to go all the way back to Crew’s office.”
She let her eyes rove from the top of my head to my lower body.
Then she smirked.
I felt that smirk in my dick.
Which instantly got hard the moment she started shooting that look my way and stayed that way through the next ten minutes of our conversation.
When we finally got out of there, she was wearing her stage makeup and a t-shirt and shorts—something she’d had underneath her outfit from her performance.
I eyed her clothes.
The shirt was sleeveless, tight, and short.
The shorts were tight, short and practically painted onto her skin that I could see the indentions her thong was making into the meat above her ass.
When we stopped at my bike, I ripped the shirt I was wearing off by tugging on the back of my collar, and laid it over the seat to hopefully dry out some.
I didn’t have many clothes and I needed to do a laundry run. Unfortunately, I wasn’t planning on making any trips to the laundromat.
Meaning, it would be better for it not to sit in my hotel room wet as fuck from sweat.
“Wow,” Hades said. “How’d you get that?”
She pressed a cool finger to my overheated skin, and I knew instantly what she was talking about.
It was the only part of my shoulder that I couldn’t feel.
“Took a machine gun ricochet. It grazed my shoulder only, but it took off all the skin, broke my shoulder blade, and I had to have surgery to fix it all. Now when it rains, I get this feeling. But that’s really the only feeling I have in the back part there. Like everything moves, muscles still work right, but the feeling there is just gone,” I explained as I came up with a semi-clean—I say semi because it’d been riding around in my saddle bags for a while—t-shirt.