Read All the Waters of the Earth (Giving You ... #3) for Free Online Page A

that ran through my head during these sessions were so random. Not sexy, at all. More like oh, I need to get milk from the grocery store. But occasionally I got into the restful space where I could think about my books, and I found myself thinking about my new novel.
    I’d completed more writing and I was happier than I’d been a week ago, but the story still wasn’t gelling. It was funny, the more that I wrote, the more that my hero was veering away from my standard issue Alpha male billionaire playboy and more into well, Jake.
    While Jake looked like a classic romance hero, he didn’t act like one. At least, not that I could see. He was too off-kilter with work, a little clumsy, and a lot of a talker.  But I liked how he kept after me.  
    He was real, he wasn’t some guy with a tragic past who needed to be taught a lesson. At least I hoped not.
    Still, my imagination ran away from me at times, and I found my new hero looking more and more like Jake, sounding like him, and talking like him.
    My thoughts carried me through the end of the class, when I was excused to go to the small adjoining room and get dressed. I took my time getting dressed, not really wanting to interact with any of the students, and when I got out of the room, only the teacher was in the classroom. She told me about the next week’s class assignment, I shook her hand, and left.
    I walked down the hall of the school and outside, heading for my car, when I heard a “Lucy” called out to me.
    Jake loitered on the steps, wearing jeans and a button down shirt.
    With a huge pad of paper under his arm and a pencil box in his hand.
    My eyes widened.
    No.
    My stomach plummeted.
    No.
    Was he?
    No.
    “Jake?”
    He had a strange look on his face. “Why didn’t you tell me what you did for a living?”
    “You never ask— Wait a minute. What? I’m a novelist.  This is just for some extra spending money. You never told me you were taking an art class.”  I felt heated, pissed, and confused.  And very turned on.  All these things coursing through my blood.  
    “I don’t talk about it.  It doesn’t mix well with my business.”
    We stared at each other.
    “You mean to tell me that you just stared at my naked body for an hour and a half?”
    “It was an hour and twenty-two minutes.”
    I didn’t know what to think of all of this.
    “The longest hour and twenty-two minutes of my life,” he continued, “because goddamn Lucy, you’re smoking hot.  I couldn’t handle being in there and I couldn’t leave.  I couldn’t touch you, I couldn’t acknowledge you, and I knew that you couldn’t see me because your back was to me the whole time and besides, your face was buried in your arms.”  He paused.  “Are you going to be the model for this class the whole time?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Holy fuck.”
    “What do you mean?” I asked, starting to get a little insulted. “Is that a bad thing?”
    “You know that’s not it at all," he said, and his eyes sizzled. “I don’t know how I can keep from dragging you out of there. I barely managed it today.”
    I had absolutely no idea that he was in the class. And now that I knew, the whole event had an erotic overlay that wasn’t there while I was in the moment. We had just compressed an hour plus of foreplay into a minute of talking outside.  Now I thought about his denim eyes—artist’s eyes, why didn’t I know that before?—studying my curves and restrained from touching me.  Damn, that was hot.
    “Are you going to show me what you drew?”
    He looked up at the sky and then back to me, very intense.  “Yeah.  Not now.  But I will.”  It seemed like it was hard for him to agree to this.
    We stared at each other some more, neither one of us wanting to move, both of us wanting to go.
    “Let’s go back and get ready.”
    He nodded quickly. “Yeah. Do you want to go early and get a drink and watch the sunset? This time of year, we should go before five if we want to catch