Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“Jav—”
He cut me off. “So it’s gotta be me who shares they wait. If they can’t, that helps you make your decision. But until you’re ready to do whatever you’re gonna do, they are gonna lay the fuck off. I’m starting with your dad. He can tell the other two.”
“I could just block him until I’m ready to talk to him.”
“He know where you live?”
“I’m not living there at the moment.”
“He know where you work?”
Bluh.
I said nothing.
“Yeah,” Javi grunted. “Your fruit is in my fridge. Your yoga mat is in my other bedroom. Your ass is in my bed. I’m your guy. And I’m not only gonna do this, I gotta do this.”
This was definitely Alpha Man Territory (with capital letters), and since I as yet had not had my training, I had to tread cautiously.
“I can take care of myself, sweetheart,” I said carefully.
“I know. And you been doin’ that with them for thirty years,” he returned. “But you’re not alone now.”
“You’re not either,” I pointed out.
“I know,” he replied.
“So…you take care of me, what quid pro quo do I get with that?”
He stared at me.
Hard.
“And don’t you mention slutty cheerleaders,” I warned.
“Babe,” he whispered, and his tone made me go on high alert.
“What?” I whispered back.
“This is why my sisters will never get it, but it’s something”—he gave me a powerful squeeze—“you’ve gotta get.”
“What?” I said a lot more tremulously this time.
He didn’t hesitate to rock my world.
“I wake up to sunshine every day. We could live in fucking Russia, and if I woke up beside you, I’d wake up to sunshine. Don’t get pissed, but it’s the truth. You can’t say fuck, but you suck my cock like it’s your favorite thing to do and your mouth can get dirty when I’m inside you. You wave at me when you walk away from me to go to work. You bounce around my kitchen when you make your smoothies in the morning. You got nighties with you, but you wear my tees to bed every night. You look at me like I can command a flood and bring the rain. And from the time I was six to the time I was twenty-two, I didn’t have a home. I also didn’t have the luxury of my sole focus being my survival. I’m six and I’m lookin’ after me and my ma, so all that time, I had to focus on both of us making it through.”
His arms got tighter, and his voice got rougher. The first was good, because all he was saying was threatening to break me apart, and he was holding me together.
“And I got your perfume, which smells like flowers and sunshine too, on my sheets and a fancy blanket on my couch.”
His new blanket was nice, but it wasn’t fancy.
Even so, he’d definitely think it was.
“You give quid pro quo by breathing,” he finished.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Oh my God, God, God.
I was sooooooooooo having Javi’s babies.
My voice was a mess because I was struggling against crying when I said, “I’ll do my best to keep doing that for a really long time.”
“Obliged,” he muttered, his hold on me loosening, but he didn’t let go.
“And I won’t go see your dad,” I confirmed what I’d said earlier.
“Good,” he replied.
“I think if you really tried, you could command a flood and bring the rain,” I whispered, then watched as he closed his eyes very slowly, and that pain I saw the other night when I’d called him an endearment settled on his features.
But I was wrong.
It wasn’t pain.
Or maybe it was, but it was pain that felt really, really good.
I lightly ran my fingernails over his morning stubble, and he opened his eyes. “I really screwed up not giving you the clue I was into you a whole lot earlier, didn’t I?”
That got me his arms squeezing me again. “No regrets.”
“Okay,” I wheezed.
He loosened his hold. “You got anything else you wanna say about me goin’ to see your dad?”
God.
He was just…life.
He was giving me a shot to further state my case.
But I had no case.
If he had to do it, if he, being alpha, or just being Javi and having lived his whole life looking after a woman in it making this something he was driven to do, Dad was probably going to flip when he had a big man in his face about his daughter.
But Javi had to do it.
So I wasn’t going to say another word.
I shook my head.
“You need your smoothie?” he asked.
I nodded my head.
He cupped it and brought it to his for a quick kiss.
When he let me move back, he said, “Okay, babe, let’s face the day.”
Another part of my (our) new ritual, once I got back into bed after Javi went to get our coffees, as usual, I didn’t get myself out of it.