Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Fuck the job.
Fuck the assignment.
I wouldn’t say fuck Marty or Derrick because I’m a decent fucking guy who knows how to show respect, but fuck that motherfucking stalker straight up in the ass with a serrated blade.
Fuck Leo.
Fuck Johnson.
Fuck every asshole at Guardian who ever looked at me and thought, yeah, he’s the guy for this one.
Fuck them.
Fuck all of them.
And for the love of all that was holy, fuck Apollo Park just for the sake of it.
I exhaled hard, scrubbing at my jaw.
Fuck the barn.
Fuck the loft.
Fuck the equipment shed where I’d hidden like a coward, pretending I wasn’t already in way over my head.
Fuck good ideas.
Fuck bad ideas.
Fuck the thin line between the two that I’d sprinted across like a fucking Olympic athlete.
Fuck me for letting it happen.
Fuck me for not stopping it.
Fuck me for knowing better—always knowing better—and doing it anyway.
I let out a sharp, humorless breath.
Fuck Lofton Beck.
No—strike that. Been there, done that. Bought the absolutely-will-not-ever-recover t-shirt.
Fuck the way she looked at me.
Fuck the way she touched me.
Fuck the way every single instinct I had folded the second she got close.
And fuck me for that too.
Fuck sheer panties.
Fuck white button-downs.
Fuck whoever the hell decided those two things should exist in the same universe at the same time.
Fuck this bed.
Fuck this room.
Fuck the fact that I wasn’t even trying to get out of it anymore.
Fuck my career. And believe me, that was exactly what I’d done. If Leo caught wind of this, fucking myself would be the least of my worries.
“Hey, Devon,” her voice came from beside me. “Will you cut the bathroom light?”
Everything in me went quiet.
Right. She was there. Sweet and sated, after I’d gotten her off again with my fingers.
She didn’t even fuck me on that one, and still… Fuck me.
Fuck me for not asking for space when she crawled into my bed instead of her own. Fuck the guy who made her pale-pink oversized t-shirt so thin I could see her perfect nipples through the fabric. Fuck the guy who invented those tiny panties with strings for sides. What the fuck was wrong with that guy? And where did I send the thank-you card?
“Yeah, babe. I got you.”
“You always do,” she whispered sleepily.
Don’t fuck that, because I seriously fucking loved that she recognized that.
Wait… I was wrong. Definitely fuck that and anything to do with that godforsaken L-word.
I pushed up, swung my legs over the side of the bed, got up, and crossed the room.
I lifted my hand to the light switch, pausing for half a second to steal one more glance of her sprawled out, waiting for me to rejoin her. My permagrin stretched painfully.
Oh yeah. Especially fuck that Jekyll-and-Hyde bullshit.
I couldn’t wipe the fucker away. It was like half of my brain was ready to throw hands with a pack of grizzly bears and the other half was ecstatic to sign up to have my nuts crushed by this woman. Though maybe castration was exactly what I needed.
Because what the actual fucking fuck was I doing?
Right. I was smiling.
Fuck me.
I hit the switch, plunging the room into darkness, and then padded back to bed. My head had barely hit the pillow before she crawled into my side as if it were instinct and not our very first night together.
Which fuck that too, because I felt like I’d lived an eternity with that woman rather than a few weeks.
Fuck the fact that it felt so damn good, and not just when she was naked.
Fuck the fact that she was so damn funny and relentlessly kind.
Fuck the fact that I knew exactly what that feeling meant and couldn’t stop thinking about it even when my cock was buried in her heat. I mean, literally… Fuck that.
Fuck the version of me that swore, on the smoldering wreckage of the past, that I would never put myself in that position again.
Actually, fuck him specifically, with a shit ton of extra enthusiasm.
Because that guy—the Devon Grant of the past who had crawled out of California with nothing but a pink slip and a brutal education in what happened when you let a client get under your skin—he thought he knew what it felt like to fall.
He didn’t.
He had absolutely no clue.
Because that shit that had gone down with Levee Williams—the obsession he’d mistaken for devotion, the line-crossing he’d justified as concern, and the spectacular self-destruction that followed—that wasn’t falling.
That was a stumble.
The type of stumble that was bad enough to knock you on your ass, breaking every bone on the way down, but it wasn’t falling.
And I knew because whatever the hell was currently happening in my chest when it came to Lofton Beck had me teetering on the edge of the highest mountain.
So yeah.
Fuck that guy.
He was the real problem.
Always had been.
And just like that, we were right back at the start.