Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 106150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
The idea should have been ludicrous—I rarely had guests in my space, let alone hookups—but instead, it stuck in my brain.
“True,” I agreed, taking another sip of beer to distract myself from mentally calculating how quickly Kenji could arrange a helicopter to fly us to Southampton. “Do you suppose the designer realized I’m not great at relaxing?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You’re doing a pretty good job of it right now.” He laid a hand on my stomach, and the warmth of him stole through my shirt and into my skin. “All those things you invented about Sterling Chase… the mountain climbing, the polo playing, the adventuring. That’s you. The stuff you did.”
I nodded.
“So… were you supposed to be climbing that mountain this weekend?”
“I was. My parents asked me to attend the gala to represent the Daynes, so I changed my plans.” I darted him a look. “Poor Bubbles must be there all alone, pining for me.”
Rowe’s eyes crinkled, but he bit down on his lip, stopping his smile. “Are you disappointed you missed it?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, obviously. Instead, I found myself admitting, “Not a single bit. If I’d been in Borneo, I would have missed meeting the Sterling Chase. And I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that for the world.”
His smile lit up his face, enough to make me yank him by the legs even closer and dive on top of him to kiss his adorable mouth again. Snack mix and empty glasses went flying all over the place… and the sound of his delighted laughter had the same effect on my heart.
We have until tomorrow, I told myself. Maybe this thing will burn itself out, and then I’ll cut the sexy liar loose.
As I shoved his shirt over his head and nipped at his full lips, I ignored the little voice in the back of my head suggesting Rowe wasn’t the only Prince of Lies in the room.
ELEVEN
ROWE
Being naked with Sebastian Dayne was… unbelievable. Unreal. Mind-blowing. Insanely hot. I could hardly breathe with his hands on me. And they were everywhere, touching me as if he wanted to map my skin with his fingertips. By the time we stumbled back into his bedroom, I was rock hard again and willing to sign my freedom away for another orgasm at his hand.
This time, I felt like I knew him a little better, which was devastating. It made me like him more, want him more… and at the same time, it made me know, without a shadow of a doubt, this was going to end soon and hard.
Men like Sebastian Dayne, the crazy-wealthy heir to the Dayne Lumber company with his multiple homes and his adventure trips to Borneo, would never end up with the Burrito Bandito from tiny Linden, Indiana. Real life didn’t work out like that. Cinderella had gotten a deferment—one more night—but that was all.
Earlier, in the shower, that realization had made me pitiful. It wasn’t fair that the first guy in forever who’d made me feel smart and funny and sexy was meant to be the handsome prince in somebody else’s fairy tale. It wasn’t fair that I couldn’t keep him.
But on the other hand, this one night was more—better—than I’d ever expected to have with anyone. And if life had taught me anything, it was to enjoy what you had while you had it.
Tomorrow, I was going to walk away. I wasn’t going to wait for Bash to have to kick me out or do some awkward thing where he promised to call and didn’t. And I sure as heck wasn’t going to ask him for business contacts for my project, either. Two days ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated, just like I wouldn’t have hesitated to blurt out all the details of my project while we were cuddling on the couch and he mentioned ETC. But two days ago, I hadn’t realized that the least remarkable things about Sebastian Dayne were his money and influence. Now I did, so I was going to keep to the boundaries he’d drawn—no business talk, no pitch—and find a different way to get my project funded.
But all of that was a worry for tomorrow. For after the spell wore off and the world stopped being so shiny.
In the meantime…
“Can we have sex?” I asked, pulling back from a brain-melting kiss.
Bash looked at me, then down at our naked bodies, our clothes long abandoned in the living room. He lifted his eyebrow, which was even more compelling up close. “Aren’t we already doing that? I thought—”
I lurched forward and kissed him again for a long moment before pulling back with a gasp. “Sex, sex. The… sex kind. Of sex.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say anal. In the back of my head, my middle school PE teacher said, If you can’t say it, you shouldn’t be doing it.