Lost in Love Read Online Free Page B

because it was so cold in London. Her doctor assured her the scar was thin and fading more every day, but to her it was livid, glaring at her every time she stood naked in the mirror.
    It’d been a wake-up call—one she wasn’t going to ignore. Eight months ago, as she’d sat in the doctor’s office after he’d told her the lump was cancerous, she’d made some decisions. She’d always lived the way it’d been expected of her, with a concrete life plan for success: school, a great job, and then marriage and kids. She’d been on track for all of that, too—only she wasn’t happy. Not truly.
    She didn’t want to die with regrets.
    She’d decided then and there that whether she had five months or fifty years to live, she was going to start living .
    The first thing she did was break off her engagement with Jackson. What a relief that’d been. Not that Jackson wasn’t great. He was the sweetest man she’d ever known. He’d have stayed with her out of kindness and obligation. But she knew how he felt about sickness given the situation with his father, and she didn’t want to saddle him with herself.
    She and Jackson had never been right for each other. He didn’t do it for her, which was crazy because he was hot . Women went tongue-tied around him. She appreciated his rugged beauty, but he was a little too rough around the edges for her.
    At the same time, he was too nice. Too sweet. Too gentle. He’d always handled her with kid gloves, and it’d been a turn-off.
    She knew it was a contradiction, but she couldn’t help how she felt.
    She looked at the sheet of paper. There was one thing she hadn’t put on her bucket list, one thing she wanted more than any other item on it.
    An orgasm.
    It’d never seemed important that she couldn’t climax with her partners. Pleasure wasn’t the end goal, after all—a family was. And she’d always had so much on her mind that it’d been hard to concentrate.
    The sad part was she hadn’t even realized she’d sold herself short until she’d overheard a nurse at the doctor’s office discussing her date and his impressive skills in bed. The nurse said that she’d screamed all night.
    All night. Meredith had never even whimpered during sex.
    The story had made her think. It’d made her long for an orgasm that’d make her swoon.
    Or any orgasm, really.
    She put her hands to her cheeks. They felt hot to the touch, from embarrassment and need, equally.
    She knew she could climax—she could do it fine on her own. And men excited her. She’d just never met a man who could deliver. Not even Jackson, though she’d gotten the closest with him. It was just that, at the last moment, she’d start to think . She’d analyze and over-process, and then the moment would be gone.
    It was the most frustrating thing, hovering on the edge of pleasure only to have it elude her. Now, she felt the yearning in her chest, the desire to explode at the hands of a man.
    She wanted it. Bad.
    Grabbing a pen, she wrote the word down in block letters that couldn’t be denied before she could talk herself out of it: ORGASM.
    A knock sounded at her door. “Meredith.”
    Oh no . Recognizing her boss’s voice, she covered her list with her hand as casually as possible. “Quinn, I didn’t hear you come.”
    Poor choice of words. She winced. At least he couldn’t read her thoughts. Thoughts about sex were always inappropriate in the workplace, but they were especially inappropriate in front of Andrew Quinn.
    His brow furrowed over his wire-rimmed glasses. He stepped into her makeshift office and closed the door. “Is everything all right?”
    “Everything is fine.” She tried to smile, keeping her hand where it was.
    “How’s the Suncrest project doing?”
    Awful. The upholsterer wasn’t returning her calls and the antiques dealer was trying to take her to the cleaners. But she always delivered, so she said, “I’ve run into a couple stumbling blocks, but nothing I won’t