Page 79 of The True Garza

I’ve not bothered to ask why we’re here. With this man, it could be anything, so better to just go with the flow.

“I’m only gonna be about thirty or so minutes,” he tells me as he parks outside one of the many identical houses. “Wanna come in or wait here?”

This dude…. “Care to fill me in on what’s happening right now?”

“Oh, sorry. Smut Sundays,” he replies. “I completely forgot. You distracted me.”

“What’s Smut Sundays?”

“A commitment I made to read smut at this book club on Sundays.”

Seriously? “Shouldn’t you be taking them to church instead?”

“Yeah, better to just stay in the car if you’re gonna be such a puritan killjoy.”

He’s out of the vehicle before I can retort. I glare at him through the windshield, count to ten, then get out and trail him along the paved pathway lined with pretty flowers and up to the house.

He knocks only to announce his presence, opens the door, then navigates to a living room where there are about a dozen white-haired women gathered with iced-tea, cupcakes, and brownies.

“Trueman!” they all dissonantly exclaim.

A cheeky one, who appears to be the leader of the pack, beckons True with a giddy grin, patting the empty chair next to hers. “We were worried you wouldn’t show.”

“Sorry I’m late.” He flashes his heart-stopping grin at them as he goes to sit. All is no doubt forgiven after that grin. “I’ve got a friend with me today,” he says, gesturing to me. “She’s a narc, so hide your pot.”

The women throw halfhearted waves my way. One all-out glares at me. Quite territorial of their “Trueman,” this lot.

To assuage their displeasure, I slink to the back of the room, then lower down to the floor with my back against the wall so I’m out of sight.

“Okay, ladies, are we picking up where we left off last week?” True asks. “Or did you all get cheeky and finish it on your own?”

“Beatrice did and spoiled it for the rest of us,” one says.

“I did you all a favor!” another, whom I’m assuming is Beatrice, retorts. “The bastard cheated on her. I saved you from having to throw your tablets across the room.”

“Ahhtt. I hate cheating in my books,” says another.

“Eh, I wouldn’t have minded. I love the angst cheating brings,” a heavily made-up one says. “The cookie-cutter stuff bores me.”

“Of course,youwould,” one with poofy hair chimes in. “That’s why you have four ex-husbands.”

“We’ve been hearing a lot about this one,” says the leader beside True, passing him her tablet.

True takes it and reads aloud, “The Very Virile Barbarian King.”

The women titter blushingly. “We’ve been told this one is super spicy.”

“You do know how to pick them, Marianne,” True teases.

With that, he lifts his ankle onto his knee, leans back in the chair, and clears his throat. “Chapter One. Zandor Zalomon sneered at the wild-haired woman knelt before him, her chin tilted upward, eyes steeled with resolution and bravado. She was beautiful, even under all that dirt and stench. Her big gray eyes bright and daring, her supple lips without a quiver. He couldn’t understand if she was that confident and brazen to try to steal from him, or just plain stupid. Anyone else would’ve been prostrating before him right now, begging for mercy. But not her. She stared up at him as if he was a challenge, and fuck if that didn’t make his cock wrestle behind his trousers. Did she not know the kind of beast she was provoking? Did she think the rumors about him were just rumors? If she wouldn’t beg for mercy, then he wouldn’t show her any. And by the time she realized he really was who every wagging tongue said he was, her mouth would be too busy choking on his cock to beg….”

Some forty minuteslater, when we’re in the vehicle and on the move again, I tell True, “When you get tired of being a commando, you should seriously consider narrating audiobooks. Your voice-acting skill’s insane.”

Ass to the ground, I’d listened with rapt attention to him read. He’d breathed life into the words, sped up the pace in the dramatic parts, and slowed it when the emotions were heavy. He made the sighs and growled the epithets. HebecameKing Zalomon. I don’t even like smut books, but I’dpayTrue Garza to read them to me.

“How did you even get locked into that, anyway?”

“I hate reading,” he answers honestly. “Blocks of words give me literal migraines and anxiety. So, I committed to a book club with women who don’t judge me—’cause they’re too distracted by my kingly handsomeness—and use it to practice making reading enjoyable.”