Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Right now, I’m just getting off the bus at the convention center in downtown Milwaukee. It’s not an arena this time, but it’s every bit as large. I don’t have a ton of stuff to set up, and by now, I’m good at it. I have a little cart packed with everything that I’ll load up. Peach Lips is used to being in her little travel carrier or her backpack. She never leaves my side. I do all my set up with her watching.
She’s all loaded up and ready to go. I just have to take the small pile off the front of the bus and set it up on our foldable cart.
It won’t take me longer than an hour to set up, and then the cat con starts tomorrow morning. I’ve got my head in the let’s set up and split back to the campground for a shower, a good book, and plenty of cuddles mode, but I sure as all fack don’t fail to see the shadow looming right by the bus.
Over the past few days, I’ve literally debated about starting to carry pepper spray, but that could blind someone, and I think there could be legal repercussions to using it. It seems kind of terrifying.
Yeah, that’s basically me in my little nutshell.
I freeze, my cart still folded up in my hand. The hulking figure is none other than Thorn Stone. He has his arms crossed a few feet away from me and is staring me down directly. I’ve been here in the parking lot, on my bus, for at least half an hour. Yes, the doors were locked, but the feeling that he was just watching me in that broody, creepy way of his made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
If I’m honest, it does more than that. It makes my pulse race at an erratic, totally unpredictable, and unacceptable rate. My stomach plummets and leaps back up, clenching hard as I give him as good a staredown as I’m getting.
A quiver rattles through me in zones that aren’t supposed to be quivering. I might be twenty-five, but I haven’t spent a lot of time experimenting. It’s a bad time to find out I might have a stalker kink.
For the love of hairy cat legs.
This isn’t a damn kink. I might be nice, but one of my major faults is that I do have to rise to generally harmless challenges.
Thorn is effortlessly menacing. It’s his all-black ensemble outlining his chiseled, tall, deadly form that does it. The black T-shirt with muscles sticking out all over, huge arms, a six-pack that his shirt tightens over, black fatigues, and motorcycle/army-style boots. They could be either. I’m no expert. He’s all veiny forearms and a thick neck with an endless, impressive height to the tune of six-three or so. His dark hair, dark eyes, and almost aggressive facial features give rise to a comic book villain brought to life. He’s got the bone structure of a statue, but his physique is heavier and more rugged, with just enough imperfection that it makes him more physically appealing, not less.
I bet tons of women bust an ovary at a mere glance, but not me. I am so not in my bad guy era either.
I do get a twinge in the lady cave, AGAIN, but I have been celibate for three and a half years. Who freaking goes that long, you might ask? Well, I haven’t been a saint or anything. I’ve gone through a rough patch. A horrible patch. A devouring chasm of a soul-eating dark, chompy plant. I’ve had to get shit in order. My mom died, and my relationship at the time didn’t survive it. I also dropped out of college and became (almost) homeless.
But I’m doing better now.
I’m not desperate. I’m fine by myself, and I have a full life in a different way. I have everything and everyone I need who is still here on this earth. I have zero time or desire for a relationship, be it long-term or a casual fling. I’ve had zero reaction to anyone in the past years, so…why Satan here?
Being annoying is probably this guy’s evil villain superpower. I’m the one who breaks the staredown first, or we’ll be here all day.
“You’re here, following me across the state…” The universe forbid that it’s across the country. “I don’t want a bodyguard. Peach Lips doesn’t want a bodyguard. I didn’t call you, and I’m not signing anything with you, not even for free. That’s the end of it.” But I’m not naïve enough to think it is. Thorn wouldn’t be here if it were.
And seriously, why are my nipples now getting stupidly excited to see him?
It’s not like I’ve thought about him as I drove from one end of the state to the other. Or at night. Or in the morning.