Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
The scarred and silent, heartbreakingly beautiful cowboy who was sent to hunt me down.
Just then I hear almost a whistle slicing through the air, followed by a thump, and I realize, in all my ogling, I forgot to pay attention to something important. As in, what he’s doing, standing there, facing away from me. From the looks of it, he’s throwing darts at a dartboard. Only the darts are knives—the size of pocketknives—and the dartboard is that freestanding mirror of his turned backward. Or at least that’s what I think it is. There are rows of knives laid out on his desk, all silver and gleaming beside his books.
He throws another one, his muscles twitching and rippling, and it goes whooshing through the air, making the same whistling sound in the pin-drop silence, and hits the board on the upper left side with another thump. When he picks another knife from his collection and throws it at the board, I flinch. I think I should leave. This doesn’t seem like a good time, definitely not when he’s playing with knives. But I can’t make myself move; I’m mesmerized. By the play of those muscles on his shoulders and back; by how graceful his movements seem, how practiced and skilled.
“You plan on just starin’ at me all night?” His words make me flinch again, and he finally turns to face me. “Or you wanna come in.”
It’s not as if I haven’t seen him around for the past couple of weeks. I have, but only in passing. Either coming out of Mars’s office after a meeting or riding around the ranch on his white horse that I still don’t know the name of. One time I saw him with other ranch hands, working on repairing the fence. I was, as always, with Haven, passing through in the ATV, and even though those were just glimpses, I noticed that most of the time when he’s around other people, he keeps his face covered with a bandanna—which made me really angry because I know why—and he’s always busy with one task or another. People are always coming to him for problem-solving. He’s their leader, their safe space, even though they’re afraid to look at him directly. And his family? They love him. He might be the silent one, but they always make sure to include him in some way. Oh, and no matter how busy he is, he always seems to know when I’m close. Because at every single sighting, without fail, his eyes have found mine and locked in across the space.
All this to say, I’ve seen him, yes. But not like this, never like this. With his arms and shoulders bare and golden, wearing a T-shirt so tight that I can make out every ridge and groove of his torso. Not to mention his chest hair. Something I had no clue he even had. But I can see the dark sprinkle of it peeking over the neck of his shirt.
“Thought I told you to stay put,” he continues when I just stand there like an idiot, perving over his sexy chest hair.
“I have,” I say, shuffling my feet.
He looks down, noticing my squirming. “Until tonight.”
“I had to come see you.”
He keeps watching me for a few beats. “Well, can’t call it wanderin’ off when you knew where you were goin’.”
“I—”
“Although, whether you’ve stumbled upon danger or not, that remains to be seen.”
I take a step back.
And he notices that too. “If you’re thinkin’ about runnin’, I wouldn’t advise it.”
“I wasn’t,” I lie.
“Runnin’ never helped you anyhow,” he reminds me, his eyes penetrating. “Besides, the time to turn back was the second you opened the door to your room, looked right and then left, before bitin’ your plump lip, tuckin’ your shiny hair behind your ear, and steppin’ out ’cause the coast was clear.”
A massive shiver runs down my spine. At the way he describes my every move, so explicitly. It makes me think no matter where I go, his eyes will follow. He will follow. It shouldn’t be exciting, but God, it is. “You were watching me?”
What a useless thing to say, and he agrees with me because he doesn’t respond, simply cocks his head to the side and glances over at his desk. I follow his gaze to find his phone, sitting beside the long row of his knives. I can’t exactly see the screen, but I know it’s lit up and I’m assuming it’s the camera feed.
Goose bumps break out on my skin, and I look back at him as he jerks his chin up. “Left the door open for you,” he says with a glance down my body, going from the top of my head to the bottom of my cowboy boots, as my breath gets tangled up in my throat, “Seein’ as you had a hard time pushin’ it open last time.”