Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
I can think of countless ways to relax her, though relax probably isn’t the right word.
This close, I can smell her perfume. It’s subtle, just like her makeup is, a light layer that draws out her natural beauty instead of hiding it. Everything about her seems real in a way no other woman ever does. I’m not sure what that even means, except I feel alive just looking at her.
Adrenalin pumps through me.
“Hello,” I say. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Logan.”
She laughs softly, looking down. There’s so much shyness in my gorgeous young woman.
“I know.”
I chuckle quietly, thinking for a moment. I can feel my cheeks going red. But I’ve never really gone red, not even when I get embarrassed.
But the sensation’s there.
It’s new like everything is in her presence.
“I guess you would. What’s your name?”
“Lucy,” she says.
I offer her my hand, knowing I just want an excuse to touch her. It’ll give me something to think about, some memory to cling to when she’s gone.
At home with her boyfriend, living her life, whatever shape it takes.
She raises her hand slowly.
As we shake hands, I feel even more certainty twisting through me.
Her touch is soft and warm, and I can feel the shyness, excitement, and the need, all clashing together…
Or maybe that’s my exhilaration, my need, my nerves making me project onto her.
We shake hands for a few seconds, then she laughs in the cutest way, a tremor in it as she cocks her eyebrow.
“Are we going for some kind of record?”
I chuckle, withdrawing my hand, warning myself to keep this surface-level. I can’t spend the whole evening talking regularly with everybody else, then suddenly become a different person for Lucy.
She’d be able to tell how achingly I want her. She might get scared.
Or if a miracle happened and she wanted me, too, in the same way, I need her, then my entire life’s going to change.
My work will change.
No more photographs.
And maybe I’ll even have to tell Lucy the secret.
Both secrets about my work and my past.
“I think we broke it,” I smirk, removing my hand with an effort. My body roars at me to make physical contact again, to keep it this time. “What do you do, Lucy?”
“I’m an admin assistant for a chain of thrift stores,” she says. “But….”
She trails off.
Without discussing it, we’ve moved to the edge of the table, then past it, the food is forgotten. We’re standing in a corner of our own, as though we’ve claimed it, the same way we’ll claim a wedding hall one day, a new home, a place by the lake for holidays, all that stuff I thought was lost to me after Anna….
Because I could never find somebody perfect, mine.
And here she is.
My thoughts are stampeding again. Surface-level, I remind myself.
“But?” I ask after a pause.
She waves a hand. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” I say firmly.
Looking up, she blinks. It’s like she’s trying to understand my sudden intensity.
It’s a fair thing to wonder since there’s no reason for my body to be burning up this way from her point of view. Or for my mind to strip her, tear off her strappy top and jeans to reveal her curvaceous body, her hips begging for me to sink my hands into them, her soaked young….
Stop. Focus.
She laughs awkwardly. “Why?”
There are many reasons I want to say about wanting to know her better, deeper, and more intimately. My need to protect her and fight any bastard who’d ever cause her harm.
Instead, I smirk. “I’m a curious man.”
She shrugs. “I was just going to say I was in college. I was going to become a counselor. I’m going to; I meant to say. I took a break after Dad.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ve helped,” she replies. “Never Alone has, I mean. My Dad’s killer was prosecuted last week.”
“And my daughter’s killer is dead,” I tell her. “It never makes it any easier.”
She looks closely at me. There’s so much emotion in her eyes. They’re a light green color, giving her a somehow optimistic look despite the grimness of the conversation.
Or maybe it’s just her essential goodness.
I do not know this woman at all.
My thoughts are flipping around and around into unlikely futures and rewritten pasts. Lucy stares at me from every single one, tempting me.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Locke.”
“Logan,” I say quickly.
“Logan,” she goes on without missing a beat. “It’s awful. I hate it. I hate….”
She trails off with a sigh. Her shoulders sag.
When she looks at me again, I’m left wondering about that optimistic glint. She looks ready to give up, and it makes me more than sad, more than angry, more than human.
It makes me a wild beast who wants to hurt the fucker who made her feel this way.
He’s in prison. Our charity did its work.
Anybody, then, who’d even think about hurting my woman.