Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
And maybe she would have been ready for a kiss, a touch, an orgasm. But she wasn’t for anything more than that.
I knew Lula.
I had one shot at this.
I had to get it right.
What might feel right in the moment, though, wasn’t what would be right long-term.
So I didn’t lean in.
I didn’t take the opportunity I’d been waiting for for years.
The disappointment unfurled slowly, like smoke, as I rolled onto my back, then climbed off the bed.
“Well, I better get to bed. Some of us actually need our beauty rest,” I added, making my way to the door.
I saw the confusion on her face as she watched me.
“Bright and early breakfast, so we can get on the road to do your fifteen-mile walk.”
“Oh, right.” Her brows were still pinched, her lips gently parted.
“Feel free to dream about me. And if you screw up and dream of someone else, wake up and start over, okay?”
She rolled her eyes at that, but I saw the twitch in her lips. “Goodnight, Raff.”
“Rafe.”
“Hmm?”
“My name is Rafe.”
Her eyes widened at that.
“Oh. Well, goodnight, Rafe.”
“Goodnight, pretty girl.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lula
I thought he was going to kiss me.
We’d both done the triangle thing with our eyes. We were close and cozy. His gaze was scorching.
Then… he just climbed off the damn bed. Like I wasn’t moments away from stripping naked and riding him.
Now, was the rational part of me happy that he’d missed the signals? Yeah. Because hooking up with Raff would have been a huge mistake.
It already felt like a mistake to know his real name. It made him, I don’t know, more of a person and less of a caricature to me. He wasn’t just some crazy, tattooed biker with a silly road name. He was a man with a real name, with a past, with hopes and dreams, and an extensive knowledge of sex toys.
Rafe wasn’t just a hot guy who constantly woke up under a pile of hot, content women. He was a name you could scribble on a wedding invitation. Or beside yours on a deed. He was a name on an emergency contact list. He was someone on the school log book to call to pick up a sick kid.
A sigh escaped me, making Raff look over.
“Tired of being in the car?”
That wasn’t it, not really.
The road trip had been the most at-ease I’d been in years. It had been more fun than I’d known longer than that.
We’d spent the last two days looking at Spanish moss draping from live oaks, listening to cicadas. We ate too much Cajun food in Lafayette and took a ghost tour of historic downtown Tallahassee. We’d stayed in two more luxury hotels. I’d enjoyed another spa package.
The thing was… Raff seemed intent on keeping us around other people and busy.
We went midnight bowling, did one of those wine and painting events, and had every meal in a restaurant.
Almost like he didn’t want to be alone with me.
What was that about?
He’d made it clear for years that his end goal was to get me alone and naked.
What had changed?
Had spending some actual real time with me ripped off his rose-colored glasses? Had it knocked me off the pedestal he’d placed me on?
My heart sank. Even as my mind told me that it was for the best.
“Not really, no. I think this home stretch is just reminding me that this was never actually a vacation.”
“It was a vacation, though. This is the only part that isn’t. But if all goes to plan, I’m hoping we can squeeze some of that in too. What’s the point of going to Miami if you aren’t going to have some fun?”
The point was, of course, to see if his hacker friend Arty had tracked down Drake yet. And if so, where we could find him.
The thing was, I hadn’t thought about Drake in… days. He had been my hyperfocus every second of every day back in Shady Valley. I felt queasy day in and day out from thoughts of him and what he’d done, how I’d been played.
I’d been fully immersed in the road trip, the experiences, the food, a little work, and, well, Raff.
As much as I hated to admit it, I’d been thinking about him a lot. And not just in a “what crazy or amazing thing is he going to have planned next?” kind of way. But just… as a person. As, yes, a man. A very attractive man who always smelled faintly of lime, coconut, and rum… even though I knew he hadn’t been drinking. In fact, aside from having a mixed drink with me at one restaurant (because, in his words, the margaritas were ‘life-changing’), he actually never drank at all. Which also tore down another preconceived notion I had about him, thanks to seeing him at The Bog all the time.