Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 75891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
She was always Jessica until she started shacking up with some bastard; from then on, it was Jessie-Belle. “Unhand me!”
“What?” I looked down at where she was staring. When the hell did I close the space between us, and how did her hand end up in mine?
You see this? This is the shit that I’m talking about right here. “Accept my apology?” What the fuck!
“What apology? I didn’t hear one. Oh, you mean when you were blaming me for getting under your skin? That was supposed to be an apology? Lame!”
“I shouldn’t have taken a cheap shot at you. That was way below the belt. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.” Now, she was giving me that suspicious look as if I were a foreign object she happened to step on.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, I’m out.” She started to leave, and I felt like something was being taken away from me. There was a sudden emptiness in my gut that I can’t explain, but I’m pretty sure I knew. How the hell did I run from her all this time, only to get snagged the one time I let my guard down?
.
JESSICA
What the hell was that? I couldn’t get back to the safety of my car fast enough, and even though my legs were like Jello and my knees were no longer existent, I pushed myself to get the hell out of there and away from him before I made an ass of myself.
I fumbled with the door handle and hoped that he wasn’t looking down from a window somewhere in the building, even though I was pretty sure his office was on the other side. By the time I sat in the driver’s seat, I’d lost every ounce of strength I had left. What the hell just happened up there?
Even sitting in the parking lot wasn’t far enough away from whatever the hell that was. Thank heaven for no contact key fobs because I probably couldn’t find the slot at this point; as long as I had the key on me, my engine would start, which it did, and for the first time since I had it I was tempted to let the thing self-drive even though I don’t trust it just yet.
I turned the AC on high, and it still wasn’t enough to cool me down. My skin still burned where he touched me, and my breathing was all over the place. I felt jittery and nervous, and my gut was tied up in knots that refused to open no matter what I tried.
I made it back to the house in one piece and hightailed it to my room to hide from any prying eyes. I didn’t need to look in the mirror to know that my face was as red as a sunburn right now. My cheeks have been on fire since I walked into his office, or more like I was dragged in.
I jumped into the shower and stood under the cold stream, searching for relief, but when I tried to wash myself, it felt like little pinpricks of electric shock were running just beneath the surface of my skin. Everywhere I touched felt like a powder keg about to go off, and I kept reliving the moments he touched me as if they were happening all over again.
My mind was doing its best to shy away from the obvious answers, but there was no escaping the truth. That bastard had done something to me. I don’t know how or what, but I know this shit started with him. Angry scrubbing my flesh till it was raw didn’t help either; beneath the sting still lingered that feeling of electric excitement, as if my body was waiting for something.
I slammed out of the shower since all the water did was make things more pronounced. Now I’m wet and twitchy, standing here like a ninny outside my shower stall with the knowledge that there is no way in hell I was going to scratch this itch. Hopefully, it doesn’t last and wears off like most unwanted ailments tend to once they’ve run their course.
I was satisfied with that thought, the thought that this was just one of those passing fancy things, like when I wanted to be a concert pianist at the age of twelve and made my poor parents set up lessons and buy me all the necessary equipment, right down to the twenty-thousand-dollar piano they got because I said I wanted it.
I must’ve played that thing three times in my existence, and the flurry of exhilaration didn’t last longer than it took for me to get over the recital had gone to that had started that whole mess off in the first place. By the end of the first month, I couldn’t even remember the artist’s name.
That wasn’t the first, nor was it the last thing I had gone nuts over, only to lose interest in a short space of time. Besides, I’d ignored him for years now and was damn near an expert at it, so I tried my best to ignore the nagging voice in my head that insisted that this time was different.