Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 82143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
I pulled my clothes out of the washer and put them into the dryer before heading back to the weight room to do some more reps. While lifting, I couldn’t get my mind off of Kylie even though four days had passed since our trip to the Dancing Horse.
She was a little thing, but it hadn’t mattered when we danced together. Her body had moved loosely and easily against mine. And she had moves, too. I bet, if I’d asked her, she’d say she couldn’t dance, but she sure did a good job of shaking her hips and moving her body to the music.
It would have been a very enjoyable evening if that asshole hadn’t grabbed her. And scared her—that was somehow worse in my book. I knew I could protect her from physical harm, but I couldn’t prevent her from being scared.
She’d bounced back pretty quickly, however. The day after, at lunch, she described a few other incidents that had happened to her while serving drinks at her uncle’s bar. The fact that things like that had happened to her more than once made my blood boil.
Now, it was Wednesday, and though Kylie seemed over what had happened at the bar, Jude wasn’t. He felt guilty that he’d invited her to come and she’d been manhandled. No matter how many times she told him it wasn’t his fault, he still looked almost as gloomy as Parker.
The strange thing was, though that bar was a dump, it wasn’t usually as bad as that. On nights without live music, it was actually a pretty tame place. Still, I doubted Jude would be inviting Kylie to any more of his shows, which was a shame because he and his pals were good.
Kylie was still on my mind when my phone alarm went off in the middle of my pushups. I finished my set before going to get my clothes.
Speak of the devil—Kylie was in the laundry room getting a load started when I came in. My mouth spread into a grin before I could catch it. Since when did I get all goofy at the sight of a pretty girl?
But it felt different seeing her out of the suite and on her own. Like I could talk to her without worrying about bothering Sad Puppy—er, Sad Parker. Or without Jude hovering around, ready to reel me in if I did something he deemed too insensitive or crass.
Which, I admit, I was fully capable of doing, but so far, Kylie had done a good job of holding her own. That wasn’t a quality I saw in many women. “Hey,” I said, heading to the dryer.
“Hi.” She watched as I pulled out a tangled mass of warm clothes. “You’re done?”
“Yeah.”
Kylie sighed. She was sorting her remaining clothes into piles. “Can I trade you? I’ll take your clean clothes and you can wash mine?”
I grinned. “I don’t think my clothes would fit you.”
She shrugged. “One of your t-shirts would.”
That was true. It would swamp her, but she tended to favor oversized shirts anyway. Normally, that would be annoying since it hid so much of her upper body, but she made up for it by wearing very short shorts. It was a tradeoff, but since she had great legs, it was a good call.
I fished in my pile of clothes and pulled out a light gray v-neck. “You could have this one to sleep in or something.” I tossed it over to her.
Kylie ran her hands along the fabric. “It’s so soft.”
I liked the idea of her sleeping in one of my shirts… but I liked another idea even better. “It’s yours as long as you promise it’ll be the only thing you wear to bed.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Without panties? No way.”
“That thing will be so big on you it’ll go down to your knees. It’ll be like one of those nightgowns in Little House on the Prairie.”
She laughed, cradling my shirt to her chest. “If I had to guess the top ten thousand TV shows you might reference out of the blue, that wouldn’t have made the list.”
I grinned. “I like to keep you on your toes. So how about it? You get to wear a hot guy’s shirt to bed and you’ll also get to use your new toy without an extra layer in the way.”
Kylie reddened as she looked around to make sure we were still alone. “Don’t talk about that here,” she hissed.
“I’m just talking about sleepwear,” I said innocently. Except I’d never managed to sound very innocent.
She was still clutching the shirt and didn’t look inclined to let it go. “But what if some night I toss and turn, and in the morning I end up on top of my covers?”
“Then I hope to God I wake up first.” The thought of her bare legs on top of her comforter with the gray shirt having bunched up around her hips was an erotic one that I’d be revisiting soon. But then I sighed. “For the record, every time I wake up first, you’re buried under your covers like a bug in a rug. I can’t imagine you’ll stop doing that when the weather gets colder.”