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Finally, I reach what looks like an important one.
Prize winner announced – one-on-one training sessions, starting tomorrow…
I nod as I remember.
As part of a fundraiser for the charity, I raffled off five free training sessions to a member of the public via Facebook. The prize was sponsored by several big sports and fitness equipment retailers, giving us more funds to open more gyms and help more underprivileged kids.
As part of the requirements for the prize, the winner had to submit a photo and a short bio, along with answers to fitness related questions to help me tailor their workout.
But I can’t think about any of that as I stare at the photo.
At her photo.
My woman, the woman I’ve been looking for, she’s staring back at me.
With pale blue eyes and a wide smile across her gorgeously full face, with long dark brown hair falling in curls down to her shoulders, with a hoodie on that does nothing to hide her curves and yoga pants that do everything to accentuate them, I know I’ve finally found her.
Thunder rumbles inside of me. Lightning strikes and pounds and roaring berserker desire barrels into me, as my manhood stiffens and my balls pulse with feral hunger.
Roselind Williams.
She’s put “Rosie” in quotes next to her name, and I repeat it in my mind over and over again.
Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.
Fuck.
She’s mine. I have to have her.
My search is over.
This woman belongs to me.
Chapter Two
Rosie
“I won that fitness raffle,” I announce over breakfast.
Breakfast has been an important ritual in the Williams household ever since I became a member since my best friend’s family adopted me when I was just ten years old. I don’t like thinking about what brought me to this home, but I’ll never stop being grateful for the mere fact I’m here with them.
Sadie smiles over at me, my best friend always with a glint of genuine kindness in her eyes. She’s short, like me, but she veers toward the thinner side whereas I… I’m curvy, maybe a little too curvy some might say.
Hell, I know the jackasses in high school did.
God, I’m glad to be free of that dumpster fire.
“That’s great, sis,” Sadie says, brushing a hand through her stylish pixie cut.
We started calling each other sis the year I moved in. We made a promise that we’d treat each other like sisters, even if we’re not biologically related.
“I still don’t think you need it,” Josephine declares.
I smile over at my adopted mother. Sometimes it’s difficult to believe I’m the adopted one, not Sadie, because Josephine and I look so much alike. She’s got long dark brown hair, like me – okay, hers is dyed, but still – and she’s on the curvier side too.
She’s also a painter, like me… or, at least, like I aspire to be.
Her eyes always with a mischievous glimmer to them.
“Mom, it isn’t about her needing it,” Sadie says, idly moving her spoon around her cereal bowl. “It’s about the massive crush attack she got the moment she saw Ryker what’s-his-names pictures, the man who was running the raffle.”
“Ridge, it’s Ryker Ridge,” I murmur.
A thrill goes through me as the truth of her words slams into me, my heart pounding and sending surging tempting tingles around my body.
She’s right.
The second I saw Ryker Ridge staring back from the post on Facebook, with his steel streaked hair and that intense twist to his lips – with his bare muscular arms that I just know would feel so freaking good, so freaking safe wrapped around me – I felt something I’ve never experienced before.
It was like there was this feeling deep inside of me, this carnal compulsion, screaming at me to find a way to be with this man, screaming at me to give myself to him the first chance I got.
Of course, that’s the silliest thought in the universe. He’d never want me. But, with Sadie’s encouragement, I entered the raffle, even if I felt a little silly as I stood for the full-length picture.
“Well, I’m going to strut in there and seduce him,” I say, laughing self-deprecatingly. “The second he lays eyes on me, he’s going to want me. Just you watch. He won’t be able to help himself.”
Is this a defense mechanism, all this joking?
I don’t let myself ponder that question too long, because if I can’t make a joke of it, I’ll have to bluntly face the cold truth. He’d never want me, full-stop.
“In fact, he’s probably driving himself crazy just looking at the oh-so-sexy picture I sent.” I laugh, shaking my head. “I bet he’s in his fancy apartment right now with a boner the size of the Eiffel Tower, drooling so much you could fill up a freaking swimming pool with it.”
Josephine and Sadie laugh along with me, but Sadie gets this look in her eyes, one I can read well. She won’t call me out in front of her mom, but she’s told me several times she hates it when I put myself down, jokingly or not.
