Evie Ever After. Beth Ciotta

woman on earth. I thought about how awful I looked and how wonderful he’d made me feel. He was right. I did focus too much on outer appearance. I thought about all the whining I’d done over the past few weeks. How I constantly compared myself to women in their twenties or Bond-type women and came up lacking. Yet I’d given a bad boy, a younger bad boy, a hard-on even with my less than perfect body slathered in chalky pink medicine.

      I felt a shift deep inside. A snap.

      I palmed Arch’s cheek, smiling when I noticed a pink smudge on his chin. “Thank you.”

      “My pleasure.”

      “Not the sex. Although that was…”

      “Fan-fucking-tastic?”

      I grinned. “Actually I was thanking you for the life lesson.”

      “Just reciprocating, Sunshine.”

      I blinked. “I’ve taught you a life lesson?”

      “A couple, yeah?”

      “Really?”

      He kissed me. “Really.”

      I wondered what, but I didn’t ask. That could wait. My need to exert my newly found confidence, couldn’t.

      Looking down, I palmed John Thomas. “All tuckered out, big guy?”

      “If he could talk,” Arch said, clearly amused, “he’d ask what you have in mind.”

      I rolled out of bed, naked as a jaybird and more comfortable in my skin than I’d ever been. So, I looked like a flamingo threw up on me. So, I had a few smile lines and could stand to lose a couple inches in my hips. So, what? I strode to my closet and whipped out two costumes for his pleasure. “French maid or harem girl?”

      Arch’s eyes twinkled and I knew he was a goner. “Bollocks.”

      Yup. Toast.

      CHAPTER NINE

      MILO GLANCED AT HIS DIGITAL alarm clock. Three-fucking-twenty in the morning. Seven minutes later than the last time he checked. He lay in bed, his own bed, alone. Nothing new there. Aside from a few random dates, he’d slept alone most every night since his divorce. That had been more than a year ago.

      As for sex, he hadn’t been laid in months. Not for lack of opportunity, mind you. At first, he attributed his low sex drive to depression over his broken marriage, then later, to his frustration with the AIA. After a few scattered one-night stands, he realized he wanted something more than a disconnected lay. He wanted mind-blowing sex with a woman who got under his skin, a woman who challenged him, a woman who brightened his dark world.