Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 129676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 519(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 519(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
She never laughed for me, but whenever she did laugh, life ceased to be an endless torture of medieval fucking proportions.
“Certainly not! But the custom tail lettering…uh…” Hans paused. Gulped. “It reads My Husband Is a Knobhead across the empennage.”
A long silence strained between us before I let loose a joyous burst of laughter. It was, to my knowledge, the first time I laughed in my entire life. I was not a laugher.
I was barely a smirker.
Row, Rhyland, and Kieran stopped their conversation again, shifting their stunned gazes to me.
“Think he’s going through some kind of a nervous breakdown?” Row murmured.
“Looks it.” Rhyland fumbled with his pocket, tugging out his phone. “Shit, get your phones out. We can extort him with the evidence.” He pointed it at me.
“Where’s your humanity?” Kieran chided, turning Rhyland’s phone from vertical to horizontal. “Nobody can pull off vertical videos.” He took his own phone out. “I’m sending this to Gia. Maybe it’s her way out.”
“Hans,” I addressed my financier, who was likely unconscious from mortification at this point. “Make it My Husband Has a BIG Knob and approve the transaction.”
“As I always say, sir, you have excellent taste. Understated elegance. I shall do that immed—”
I killed the call.
It was half past midnight when Gia texted me that she was heading home. Even though I’d already showered and dressed for bed, I summoned Iven to usher me to La Grande Boucherie to pick her up. I wanted to see for myself she was alive and in one piece.
Purely for capital reasons, of course.
She stood at the curb surrounded by huge, scary-looking security detail and Enzo, and for the first time in my life, something that resembled guilt speared me. I’d snatched away whatever little normalcy she had left.
One of the Ferrante soldiers opened the back door for her, and she poured inside, all smooth legs and breathless giggles.
She wore a velvet burgundy dress with gold buttons. Sophisticated, rich, and demure. I was glad she’d outgrown the phase of wearing skimpy clothes to piss me off. While I was certain I could get away with three murders, killing the entire male population of Manhattan seemed like a stretch, even for a savant like me.
Her long legs folded nimbly beneath her pert ass, and she flung her head back in a fit of uncharacteristic snickers. Beneath her normal scent of sensual oils and Tom Ford perfume was a hint of daiquiri.
“Are you drunk?” I asked deprecatingly.
“Positively plastered. Is my bottom on your crotch?” She wiggled in her seat before I managed to buckle her up.
“No.” I hoped I didn’t look as flustered as I felt, seeing her dangled in front of me like bait, decadent and alluring, knowing I couldn’t bury my dick in her even after putting a ring and—more recently tonight—a fucking thirteen-million-dollar private island on it.
“What do you reckon I’m sitting on then?” She twisted back and pulled something from beneath her. “Oh!” She snorted. “It’s the liquor I bought earlier tonight.”
A Bhakta 1990 Jamaican rum.
“Flattered you’d mix the two up.” I scanned the 750-milliliter bottle. My dick was ramrod straight and deserved its own zip code at this point.
“Are you cross?” She sobered, rotating toward me as the vehicle slid back into traffic, the dregs of amusement clearing from her delicate features.
“Why would I be?” I asked evenly.
“For, you know, spending all your money?” Her pearly upper teeth dragged over her bottom lip.
“First of all, it wasn’t all my money. It wasn’t even point two percent of my money.” I reached to release her lip from her teeth with my thumb, appalled by her words. “Second, it was the only entertaining thing about my evening. Did you have fun with your friends?”
Her mouth dropped in shock.
“What?” I scowled.
I thought she liked small talk. Would she make up her mind already?
“You’ve never asked me a thoughtful question. You never ask anyone how their day is going.”
“Never truly cared.”
“And you do now?”
Fuck, no. But you seem to care an awful lot about social niceties, and I’d love to skip to the part where your thighs are pressed so hard against my ears I’ll be able to hear the ocean.
Before I had time to answer, she started blabbing, “It was great. Always good to catch up with Cal and Dyl. After the third cocktail, Enzo’s reinforcement came along, and I got a bit upset. Cal and Dylan challenged me to take the piss by running your Amex through every available PIN card machine. We waited for you to stop us. But…you never did.”
She sighed dreamily, allowing her head to plop on my shoulder. My heart hammered violently in my chest. Sickening desire and a heady sense of danger swirled inside my gut. I wanted to push her off and jerk her closer. To ruin her and save her from me. Each sexual encounter we had ended with me spiraling into an attack of rituals. Equations. Counting. Rereading soothing paragraphs.