Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 105615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Well, duh. Maybe if we’d ever gone on regular dates, done regular couple things, then I might’ve been able to do something as regular as sit in the passenger seat while Jay drove. But we were not a regular couple.
Yet somehow Jay was driving us to my childhood home for Thanksgiving.
“My father brought me up,” I chirped, changing the subject as Jay pulled out of the airport. We still had an hour to go before we made it home.
“I’m aware of that,” Jay replied, eyes on the road, hands at ten and two.
“He brought me up on a modest salary, working twelve hours a day to make sure he could give me anything I needed and sometimes, the things I wanted too.” I paused, unable to quite figure out how to structure this conversation.
My gaze went to the signs outside of the small airport. Billboards for injury lawyers and condemning abortion. Not many houses, the area was mostly farmlands since this little airfield was out in the middle of nowhere.
“He is not a man used to the finer things,” I continued, glancing back to Jay. He hadn’t moved an inch, eyes fixed on the road. “Nor is he a man who understands my lifestyle. He leaves the state as little as possible and is content with living in the lifestyle which he is accustomed. And he has a certain ... distaste for people with money.”
I bit my lip, leaving it there. I’d said it as delicate as I could.
Of course, I could’ve said nothing at all, left Jay to discover this for himself. He certainly didn’t need any kind of assistance or saving from me, since he wasn’t all that interested in returning the favor. I don’t know why I didn’t just leave him to it.
No, I did.
I wanted my father to like him. Though it didn’t quite matter whether he liked Jay or not. His opinion of Jay was not going to change the end result.
Jay remained mute. His silence still unnerved me, even after being with him for all of this time. Which I guessed was the point. Jay liked unnerving people. Especially me.
“Beyond that,” I continued unable to help myself. “He’s quite obviously not aware of the arrangement we’re involved in. He’s going to ask you questions. A lot of questions. About your past. About your work.”
Questions I’m not allowed to ask, I wanted to say. Questions I’m not sure if I want to know the answers to.
I’d be getting to know Jay at the same time my father was. It was sad and pathetic. But exciting. Finally, I’d learn things about this man that he’d worked so hard to hide from me.
“Even though I haven’t done it before, I’m well aware of the practices involved in meeting a woman’s parents,” Jay said as he turned to briefly face me. “Or do you not think I can handle it?”
I stared at him. His face betrayed nothing. But I suspected there was a hint of amusement in his voice. He was teasing me. At least it really seemed like that’s what he was doing.
“Of course you can,” I replied, grinning ever so slightly. “I just wanted to make sure that you have information, some knowledge of what you’re getting yourself in to. It is power, after all, isn’t it?” I asked sweetly.
He continued to glance over to watch me in that way of his. My body reacted to it, knowing he wouldn’t be touching me, wouldn’t be satisfying me this whole weekend. I was already going insane with need.
“You’re definitely getting punished for this,” he muttered, moving his hand to touch high on my thigh. He squeezed the skin there and then left his hand.
I sucked in a breath, despite it not being an overly invasive touch. It was the fact that it was an intimate gesture. Jay was not an affectionate person. Sex was never affectionate between us. It was never slow. Or loving. It was fire. Passion. Violence. Even the way he held me afterward. I liked that, though. The safety in his violent embrace.
But this was something entirely different. His hand didn’t move up to try to create any kind of friction. To give me any kind of release. I wasn’t quite sure if it was there to punish me either. All I knew was that it stayed on my thigh during the entire drive.
We were just outside of Vern proper, which wasn’t a whole lot. It was just a collection of fast-food restaurants, a Walmart and a mishmash of houses and trailers. It was not a cute, picturesque small town with a main street and mom and pop stores who maintained their flowerboxes. We didn’t have festivals or parades. The town was built around the factories and was a hodgepodge of people looking for escape, looking to earn money quickly or who had no dreams beyond the town limits.