Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 70630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
I frowned. Did Sabrina really think I was that petty? Was I? “I won’t, but I just don’t see the sense in all that fancy talk.”
“And maybe you still won’t after tomorrow night, but maybe something Jeremy says will make it click for you. I’m just glad you’re going to be there.”
"Yes, yes, I need to get out more.” Maybe this excursion would get Sabrina off my back.
“Right. Glad I didn’t have to say it.” Sabrina gave me a cheeky grin.
“I’m not sure why, since you love saying it.”
Her expression softened. “No, what I would love is seeing you smile.”
“I smile plenty.” I did, didn’t I?
“When the clients expect you to—”
“That’s not the only—”
“And when you’re proud of something you’ve accomplished.”
Sabrina had a point. Most of the time. But not today. Today I’d smiled a lot because of Jeremy. But Jeremy was a client, and I couldn’t seem to admit I was gay no matter how friendly the community, Sabrina, or anyone else was. Why the hell had I agreed to this?
“You okay?” Sabrina asked.
“I… yes, just tired.”
“You should be,” she said as we unloaded equipment from her car. “Or maybe today was easy for a Marine.”
“Hell, yes. I could clean ten houses with one arm tied behind me, run twenty miles, and then do a thousand push-ups without breaking a sweat.”
“Ha!” Sabrina waved in the direction of my apartment door. “Go get some dinner.”
I picked up the vacuum and bag of cleaning supplies. “Fine.”
“I’ll see you and Jeremy tomorrow.”
“Six o’clock at the amphitheater. I got it.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“I’ll find it.”
“Just don’t try to sniff it out with your super tracker skills or something. Use GPS like a normal person.”
“Very funny,” I said. “Jeremy can just tell me.”
“Goodnight!” she called.
Marines do not get nervous. How many times had I tried to convince myself of that in the last week? I wanted to believe it, but the fluttery feeling in my chest as I drove to Jeremy’s house the next evening told me otherwise. Sabrina was wrong about me disliking Jeremy, but I was uncomfortable around him. Jeremy seemed uncomfortable too, or at least flustered. And the way he looked when he was flustered was… distracting. Would I even be able to keep up a conversation with him on the drive to the theater?
This is a bad idea. I’m only going to want him more.
He wants you, too.
He likes looking. That doesn’t mean anything. If he talked to me for long, he’d change his mind. I’m nothing like him.
Then maybe tonight will cure you. Maybe his love for Shakespeare will be a turn-off.
For someone else that might have been the case, but I was certain that seeing Jeremy excited about the play was only going to make me crush harder on him. When he talked about things that excited him, the increased pace of his words and the brightness of his eyes made me want to grab him and kiss him senseless. Something about the way Jeremy got worked up over little things made me certain he’d be that enthusiastic in bed, warm, bright, flushed, and…
Fuck! When had I cared about any of that? All that had mattered in the past was a willing partner to shove my dick into. The sex had been fast and furious, a wild rush to get off while the fear of discovery hung over our heads. I’d fucked in storage closets, bathrooms, filthy alleys, back rooms of bars that weren’t much cleaner, and even once over a desk in an unoccupied meeting room. Every encounter had been about getting off, about a need that had built too high not to attend to it. Like the rush that came with the danger of a mission, sex had fed a need.
Sex with Jeremy would be about more than how hard I could fuck him, or how quickly I could make him come. Dammit, now I was getting hard just thinking about Jeremy’s pale skin and what it would be like to touch and taste him when he was stretched out naked in bed.
When I rang the bell at Jeremy’s house, I was grinning like a loon because I remembered Jeremy sliding across the floor in his ridiculous socks. Would Jeremy wear them again? I doubted it, since he’d seemed embarrassed by them. He’d probably wear the hippie sandals he’d worn the day before. Since when did I even notice other guys’ shoes? In the military, the only time I paid attention to shoes were when my blisters got so bad I knew I was bleeding, or when I had to shine parade boots—I’d been damn sure no one’s boots looked better than mine.
If Jeremy wore those silly socks, I wouldn’t feel so intimidated or so like an idiot for not understanding what the fuck was happening on the stage.