Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 87181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
“Are you kidding me?” he barked with his pouty moue.
My eyes darted from him to my novel. “You ruined my book!” I scolded, feeling an extremely reasonable amount of annoyance building inside me. The pages were now sticky and tarnished. It was just getting good! The couple was about to share their first kiss after the most epic slow burn I’d ever witnessed!
“You’re joking. You ran into me. Not the other way around.” His deep voice growled with frustration. He raked his sticky hand through his dark brown hair and shook off a bit of the liquor. He had brown eyes. Brown eyes with flickers of emerald. They were the eyes that could make a person fall in love with him or fall in hate. It all depended on how he stared at you.
I was receiving the hatred gaze.
“I was walking here first,” I argued. “Plus, you shouldn’t be moving around with a big box of booze without being aware of your surroundings.”
“You shouldn’t have your nose stuck in a book without being aware of your surroundings,” he countered mockingly.
“Is everything okay?” Curtis asked, walking into the lobby to see the big mess.
“No!” the stranger and I said in unison. That was about the only thing he and I would ever agree on.
“She knocked all of this out of my hands because she wasn’t facing reality,” the guy told Curtis.
I pouted at Curtis and held up my book. “He stained the pages.”
Curtis smirked a little and shrugged. “Life happens when we’re not looking in all directions. Sometimes it’s messy.”
Good ole Curtis and his doorman life messages.
The guy huffed, not seeing the charm in Curtis’s words.
Some people didn’t appreciate dialogue the way I did, that was for sure.
Curtis walked over to the guy and patted him on the back. “Don’t worry, Kai. I’ll get the team to handle this mess. You go ahead and get cleaned up.”
Kai.
Gosh, I was not too fond of his name. He looked like a Kai, too. Smug. Arrogant. Nasty. And not the nasty that I was into.
I hated all men's names that morning, except for sweet Curtis.
First Bentley, then the taxi driver, and now Kai.
Men were making me consider going another year without inner thigh touches.
“That was over a thousand dollars worth of booze,” Kai groaned. “Who’s going to cover that loss?” His eyes moved in my direction. His grimace was still top-tier grimacing. I couldn’t help but wonder what his blood pressure had been. The man looked stressed.
I tossed my hands up. “Don’t look at me. You owe me a book.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, because your smut is the same amount as all of this.”
“It’s historical smut, thank you very much. And just because you can’t see its value doesn’t mean it’s not worth as much as your booze.” Okay, the book was $5.99 at Walmart, but he didn’t have to know that. Him and his uppity personality. I bet he was a grand time at parties.
Also, I didn’t appreciate how the word smut rolled off his tongue. He used it as an insult when really, it was a compliment. Smutty books were what got me through my dry spell. Smutty books were what I took to bed each night and why I kept my ceiling fan running nonstop. The heat from the pages was almost enough to cause an orgasm.
Almost.
Kai didn’t say anything more. He grumbled and scowled as he brushed his thumb against his nose. Kai began picking up the big pieces of shattered glass and placing them into his box. His arms slightly flexed as he bent down into a squat. His biceps hugged the fabric of his plaid shirt, and my eyes took notice. I couldn’t help but notice his thick thighs either. I bet he could crush a watermelon between those bad boys if he tried hard enough.
The other day, I fell into a weird part of social media and watched a shirtless man chop wood for like five hours straight, and then he crushed a watermelon with his thighs. Why was he crushing fruit with his thighs? Please don’t ask me. Why was I watching him crush said fruit? Well. It was…impressive.
I bet Kai could do that, too. With a grumpy frown, of course.
I hated that a pool of want found me as I stared his way. My body was a traitor. We were supposed to swim in a pool of hatred, not attraction. Why were all the jerks so undeniably attractive? It was a shame Kai was so handsome. His personality easily earned him a Grinch face.
For a moment, I felt a bit bad for the broken glass on the floor. I went to help pick up a few pieces.
“Just leave,” Kai ordered with a slight growl.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” I spat back, picking up a piece of glass. I tossed it into the box, which seemed to piss Kai off even more.