Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
I study the menu like my life depends on it, but I already know what I want—Pad Thai, extra lime, and a green papaya salad so spicy it’ll make my eyes water. Bean’s been demanding sour and hot all week. I’ve known what I was going to order since I texted Blue earlier. The menu is just somewhere to put my focus, so it isn’t on him.
On the look in his eyes.
On the sexy rumble in his voice as he asks if I want to share a pot of the jasmine tea and a Thai iced tea with extra coconut milk. And, of course, I do.
I want to do anything that sexy voice tells me to do.
I have since way before that night in April. Hell, if my truest, horniest Self had been given free rein, I would have dragged him into the creepy BDSM taxidermy bathroom at The Brass Monkey the night we met. We would have gone straight from gazing deep into each other’s eyes as we crooned “I don’t know much, but I know I love you,” to violating each other ten different ways under a stuffed squirrel in a ball gag.
Only it wouldn’t have been “violating” in any sense of the word. It never is with Blue. Even when he’s fucking me like a freight train with that massive cock, his good heart is front and center. He fucks me hard because he knows that’s how I like it. If I asked him to be gentle, to make love to me like a trembling virgin from a historical romance on her wedding night, there’s no doubt in my mind he’d deliver that, too, and then some.
So, of course, I can’t ask for that.
Rough, sexy Blue gets to me like no one ever has. Gentle Blue with his wide-open heart and those eyes that promise he’s ready to be my forever would destroy me. I might start weeping and never stop.
And maybe that’s why I’ve tried so hard to hold him at a distance.
Maybe it’s not Bean I’m protecting. Maybe it’s…me. Maybe I’m not as “over” the death of that soulmate dream as I thought I was.
“So, tell me about the meeting,” Blue says as the server finishes taking our order and hustles toward the kitchen. “Why was it a shit show?”
Right. The meeting. The whole reason I texted him.
That’s the reason I texted him, not because I’m looking for a reason to spiral deeper into the angst pit.
I’ve already had enough angst for one day.
I have to focus on getting the album back on track before time runs out. Blue seems determined to stick around. He’ll still be here in a month or two or three.
The same can’t be said for my capacity to pull off a photo shoot, devise a marketing campaign, and execute on a revamped launch plan for this album before I’m too busy recovering from childbirth and learning how to care for a newborn to think about anything but feeding schedules and whether I need to order more diapers.
“Basically, Checkers fired me.” I keep my voice level, determined not to get worked up about it all again. “Or I fired him. He was trying to bully me into having something else on the album cover aside from my hideous body, but I said no. He said pregnant women are nasty, I told him to go to hell, and we decided we should dissolve the contract and go our separate ways. We never even got around to talking about remastering the old songs.”
Blue’s eyes go wide before quickly narrowing again. “What? He said that?”
“Not those exact words, no. But not too far off, either. He was such a dick. I’ve never seen him act like that before.” I roll my eyes, fighting to keep my blood pressure from spiking. “He said he’d done ‘market research,’ which apparently involved asking a bunch of girls at an open mic night if they thought pregnancy was sexy. The consensus was, no, it is not. That it’s actually scary and gross and no one wants scary and gross with their music, so…”
Blue goes still, aside from the muscle balling in his jaw. “He was polling women at a bar about your body,” he repeats slowly.
“I’m not sure if it was my body in particular or pregnant bodies in general, but…yeah.” I trail off with a shrug. “That seems to be all it took. Though I suspect he isn’t a pregnancy fan, so there was probably some existing bias.” I glance up, spirits lifting as our server appears with a tray of steaming plates. “Yay, food’s here!”
I wait until the woman with the three tiny pigtails has placed the dishes on the table, assuring us she’ll be back with another Thai iced tea when we’re done with this one, before I continue, “But Checkers wouldn’t have been on board with the new sound. Marcus confirmed my gut check on that. So, even if he hadn’t canceled the photo shoot, we would have been at an impasse. I guess it’s best we ended things now, while there’s still time for me to pivot.”