Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
CHAPTER 7
What’s next? Santa can’t say ‘ho, ho, ho’ because it’ll hurt your mom’s feelings?
-Swayze to a prosecutor
SWAYZE
Pulling my hair up into a high ponytail, I walked outside, groaning when the wave of hot, humid heat hit me straight in the face.
Today was my ‘long run.’ I was running seven miles today, working my way up to thirteen and a half marathon that was set in October, and the very last thing I felt like doing was going out for a run.
However, this was something that I’d wanted to train to do since I was a young teen.
I would accomplish it, even if it killed me.
Even if I had to run on two hours of sleep just to make sure I got my mileage in that week.
Pulling out my phone, I searched for the podcast I wanted to listen to—a podcast about nutrition for runners and maximizing training plans—then walked farther out of the alley.
After stretching my calves on the brick building of my office, I walked to the edge of the alley and faced the opposite direction of town.
This way would take me to the lake, and not very many people traveled it this early in the morning.
That meant that I wouldn’t almost get run over by a car, or be attacked by any stray dogs.
After I was done stretching my calves, I pushed play on my phone, put my earphones in, and then stowed my phone in the carrier around my waist.
Once I was ready, I cued up my watch and started out.
My podcast started out, and I was laughing about the woman’s reaction to peanut butter on a race day when I felt more than heard someone coming up behind me.
I swallowed hard and turned to look.
Nothing was there.
Turning my head back around, I was just turning the corner of the road that would head to the lake when I all but ran into something solid.
Something solid in the middle of the street, in the dark, where no people should be.
My pulse skyrocketed.
Before I could fall to the ground due to the collision, strong arms encircled my hips, and pulled me in tight.
“Shit!” I cried out, my hands going to sweaty, muscular, bare shoulders.
“You okay?”
And even over the podcast in my ears, I could hear that dark, deep and menacing voice.
All my terror fled as if it never were there to begin with.
“You scared the hell out of me,” I grumbled.
“Why are you running in the dark?” he growled, pulling out one of my earbuds so that I could hear him better.
I knew he hadn’t done it for any other reason other than that.
“I’m running in the dark because if I don’t, then I don’t have time to run at all,” I explained, wondering if I should be pushing myself away from his sweaty chest.
Normal people would, right?
But hells bells.
I liked the way it felt being in his arms.
“I don’t care,” he growled. “You should really be doing this a safer way.”
I did push away then.
Or tried to. He didn’t let me go.
“I could’ve been anybody,” he said, squeezing me into him a little tighter. “It’s not safe out here for you to just be running without paying attention. What if I were a robber? A man wanting to rape you?”
I had my small twenty-two pistol in my hand and was pressing the butt of it up against his throat when I said, “I would’ve shot you. Right in the fucking eye.”
He stilled, feeling the cool metal of the handle, and even though it was too dark to see him clearly, I knew that his eyes were wide.
“Is that real?” he rasped.
I felt a distinct hardening of a certain part of his anatomy and knew that he was just as turned on now as I was.
“Yes,” I answered. “Why would I carry a fake gun?”
He let me go, then reached for my hand and placed the earbud that he’d taken out of my ear into my palm.
“Where did you stow it?” he asked curiously.
I put it back in the small pocket that I carried it in when I ran and then told him where it was. “Near my right hip. There’s a pocket that most people use for a key. I use it for my gun.”
His hand went up, and all of a sudden it was on my hip, right where I’d just told him that I kept my gun.
It wasn’t ‘intimate’ by any means, but damned if it didn’t turn me on anyway.
Having his hand on me at all was enough to have me panting in excitement.
Or maybe I was panting due to exertion. Whatever the reason for my panting—and for now I was blaming it on exertion—I needed to get out of here.
Having his hands on my body didn’t take away from the fact that he didn’t like me.