Just Good Friends (Cheap Thrills Series Book 5)

by Mary B. Moore

  Then he kissed me, not going for the usual nibbles and sweeping kisses but jumping right into a full-on hot make-out session. When he pulled back, I whimpered at the loss of his mouth.

  Kissing his way across my cheek to my ear, he mumbled, “What were you seducing me for, pretty girl?”

  “I don’t know,” I breathed, the only thought I had focused on what he was doing with his body at that moment.

  His mouth was working my neck, his hands cupping both breasts and breezing his thumbs over my nipples with the lace between us, his crotch grinding against mine… How would anyone think of anything else in my shoes? Or panties, seeing as how I wasn’t wearing any shoes.

  “You just wanted to seduce me, baby?”

  It was like truth serum because apparently, my brain was as much of a slut as my fandola, and it sang like a canary with the information I couldn’t have recalled if you paid me right then. “I wanted to know what you were keeping a secret,” I muttered, my head dropping back as he latched on my neck at the same time as pinching one of my nipples.

  “I see. And you wanted to tease me?” he rasped, one of his hands trailing down my stomach to my panties, slipping under the elasticated waistband and moving so that he could swipe my clit gently with the tip of a finger. “Drive me insane?” he did it again, stopping to slowly circle it before his finger moved away. “Make me desperate for you and get the information out of me?”

  This time his finger moved farther down until it was at my entrance, and then he slowly pushed it into me.

  Wrapping my legs around his hips, I leaned back slightly to give him better access. “I think so, but I don’t know for sure anymore.”

  Pulling the lace on the cup over the boob that he was still playing with under it, he leaned down and flicked it with his tongue.

  “Am I doing it right, baby? Is this what you want?” he asked as he rotated his finger inside me, hitting the spot that drove me out of my mind every time he touched it. “Or would you rather I did this?” He added another finger and started rubbing right on the same place as he sucked my nipple hard.

  The sensations of all of it were enough to have my legs shaking and my mouth running away from me. “I love you, Garrett, and I…”

  I never got the last bit out because as soon as I told him how I felt, the orgasm that’d been building hit me hard enough to make me scream. Fortunately, he still had the ability to be smart, so he caught most of it in his mouth, saving me from embarrassing myself in front of the people waiting for us in the living room.

  That didn’t mean he didn’t draw that sucker out for as long as he could, though. No, he rubbed inside me while his thumb did the same on my clit until I couldn’t take anymore and had to plead for mercy.

  Pulling his fingers out of me, he lifted them to his mouth and sucked them in, his eyes closing as he groaned. If I’d heard of someone doing that, I’d probably have felt kind of nauseous at the thought. But seeing Garrett do it had me almost melting off the counter into a puddle at his feet.

  It. Was. Fucking. Hot.

  “Every time I taste you, I try to think of something I want more than I want you. Know what I discovered?” When I shook my head, still unable to function enough to talk, he leaned in and rubbed his nose along the side of mine. “There’s nothing I want more than you. That means I’m going to do everything I can to keep you safe, even if I don’t tell you things until I have enough information not to freak you out. You’re everything to me, and I don’t say that lightly.”

  Blinking up at him, I saw the mixture of frustration and lust on his face as he watched me come back online. I could finally wiggle my toes again, so it probably wouldn’t be long until the rest of me could do the same.

  Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, with him still holding me up, I grinned up at him. “You blew my mind.”

  One side of his mouth ticked up in a grin. “Noticed that. You feeling better now?”

  “A bit like overcooked spaghetti, but I’ll get there.”

  Chuckling, he reached over for the over washed, soft as hell, flannel shirt of his that I’d fallen in love with, which was hanging on the back of the door. It was too low for me to sit on and still be able to see the mirror properly, so I hadn’t used it when I’d come through.

  He pulled it over my head and gently helped me get my broken arm into a sleeve and then worked on the other one before doing up enough buttons to cover my cleavage. On the floor beside us were the shorts I’d been wearing earlier, so he picked them up and pulled them up my legs before helping me down off the countertop.

  “You can do whatever you want to me after our guests leave later, pretty girl. But in case I forget to say it, I love the underwear.” He tapped me on the butt and steered me toward the door. We were just going through it when he whispered, “And I love you, too. I even love your obsession with poop powder and how you want to show our boy how to use it.”

  “That boy’s in trouble. He didn’t even warn me that you were coming through the door with company,” I huffed, glaring at Clyde, who was trotting happily ahead of us.

  Stopping me halfway down the hallway, Garrett threw his head back and burst out laughing. “Baby, he came out to greet me at the fucking door. How deep in your head were you?”

  Sex. It’d totally fried my brain.

  I probably should’ve been embarrassed that we’d just done what we’d done while I had Hurst, DB, Jarrod, Bond, Canon, Reid, Raoul, Logan, Carter, and Alejandro in my living room, but none of them looked like they’d heard anything.

  The thing was, it was just as well it had, otherwise if I’d have heard what they had to tell me without having it and all of the distractions it brought to me in my life, I would have had a panic attack.

  I stayed calm and didn’t freak out when they told me that the man who had a deep-seated hatred for my family had been seen ten miles away from us. If that wasn’t bad enough, five strangers in town seemed to be taking a great interest in the residences, and the door to my old place had been kicked down last night, too. With that information, any embarrassment just left, and I was left with a feeling of dread.

  My new safe haven wasn’t safe for me anymore, neither were the people in it.

  I was staring at the floor when I heard a deep voice sigh and say, “Hold her broken arm.”

  A hand reached in and grabbed it, but I lifted it voluntarily without volition. Then, it felt like an elephant landed in my lap, knocking the breath out of me when they accidentally tipped into my stomach.

  Not giving me a moment to recover, Canon bounced slightly, making me squeak. “Good, I’ve got your attention. You walked in here with pink cheeks ten minutes ago looking like a girl who had it all. Now you’re withdrawing and thinking too hard.”

  “Totally smelled burning over here,” Bond added from where he was sitting across the room. “Maybe it was Reid’s ass.”

  “Nope, I used the poop powder in the bathroom, so I smell like roses, man,” Reid told him proudly.

  Over Canon’s shoulder, I saw some of the men turn to look in the direction of the bathroom, their expressions intrigued.

  “Anyway,” Canon huffed. “We know from the shit that went down with Katy that shit happens. It can happen in a big way, it can happen in a little way, but it always happens. To win, you need to hold your head high and fucking fight. If you curl up into a little ball or admit defeat before you’ve even fought, you’re doing yourself an injustice, and the Zuri Hadid I know wouldn’t do that.”

  Chewing on my lip, I thought about what he was saying. He was right, I knew he was right, but a girl was entitled to a moment of self-pity, right? It’s not like I’d just found out that something I wanted to order was out of stock. This was a big fucking deal, and I was a normal human fucking being.

  Lots of fuck’s in that, but fuck!

  Moving to stand behind his brother, Jarrod crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You gonna fight it?”

  Seeing as how his brother weighed s
ignificantly more than a feather and was still against my chest, I couldn’t get enough oxygen in to give them a full-sentence back, so all I did was nod.

  “Give us the words, Zuri,” Canon sang, wrapping his arms around my head. “Repeat after me—I’m going to be a brave girl and kick the Albanian psycho’s ass.”

  “Uh, Canon, man. I don’t think she could even say yo right now with your weight on her,” Carter pointed out.

  Jumping off my lap, he backed away, looking slightly embarrassed. “Sorry, got carried away.”

  Drawing in big lungful’s of oxygen, I nodded. “I’ll be brave and kick the psycho’s ass.” They all looked satisfied at my reply, so I pointed out, “But just to say, when you hit someone with news like that, you’ve got to give them a moment to feel sorry for themselves before you smother them like that.”

  “It’s all of my muscles,” Canon smirked, holding his arm up.

  Bond and Reid both snorted disbelievingly as they walked up beside him, but Jarrod just rolled his eyes and sighed as he joined them.

  And that’s when I saw what Katy was saying—they were four versions of each other. Yes, they all had different colored eyes that set them apart, and they weren’t identical at all, but they had the same features mixed throughout the four of them. Two had the same nose, they all had the same shaped eyes and faces, three had the same chin… it was uncanny.

  Taking a step back, Reid frowned down at me. “Why’s she looking at us like that?”

  “I see it,” I cried, pointing between them. “Nose, eyes, ears, jaw, forehead… Holy shit, they got the same pieces and spread them across all of you.”

  Rubbing the back of his neck, Canon looked slightly embarrassed. “Maybe I deprived her of oxygen for too long. She seems like she’s got issues.”

  With Reid and Bond glaring at me, and Canon watching me like I was a new science experiment, I looked up at Jarrod and grinned when I saw him looking at me blankly. “Sorry about that, but your girlfriend’s right.”

  Nodding slowly, he leaned into me, almost making me giggle like a teenager. “I’m the oldest, so I’m the original version. They’re just wannabes.”

  It was so unexpected and also so funny that I burst out laughing and leaned into Raoul, who was sitting beside me, chuckling at what Jarrod had said too.

  “Right,” DB said loudly, silencing us all immediately. “Now that we’ve got Zuri back online with us, we need to discuss something.”

  Turning, he walked over to the door and opened it to reveal a pretty red-headed woman holding a little girl who was more tanned and had dark brown hair in her arms. Alex appeared behind her and whispered something to her that had her walking in to join us, the toddler watching all of us with wide eyes the whole time.

  “As everyone a P.V.P.D. knows, this is Naomi Kelly. The little girl waiting to say hi—”

  “Hi,” she squeaked in the most adorable voice I’d ever heard.

  It seemed the men all felt the same way because there was a chorus of aww’s from them.

  “Hey, cherub,” DB chuckled. “That’s her niece, Shanti, who she has custody of. Naomi moved here two weeks before Zuri did, which was why we had a plan in place for people needing the protection of the city. The plans and building of the safe room at the precinct were already underway by that point, but it was completed slightly more quickly than originally planned because of them.”

  One of the new members of P.V.P.D., Carter, stepped forward, the expression on his face hard to read. “What do they need a safe room for?”

  DB raised his eyebrows at Naomi, who rolled her eyes and came closer to us.

  “Just after Shanti was born, my brother and his wife were in an accident. I was babysitting her when the officers came to tell me what’d happened. After that, I started to get people turning up at my door, pretending to be CPS officers doing spot checks on how I was looking after her. Because the IDs didn’t look genuine, I refused to let them in, called the number on the card I had from them, and found out they hadn’t sent anyone round. Weird stuff kept happening, but then my parents—who both have records and drug habits—started turning up to see her. They became more persistent until one day, I went to the store to get diapers for her. She was only about three months old then, so she was in her car seat in the shopping cart.”

  As she spoke, Carter got closer to her until he was close enough for Shanti to touch—which she did, latching on him and reaching out for him to take her.

  “Hi,” she squealed, beaming up at him.

  “Hey, sweetie pie, I’m Carter.”

  “Cah-tah,” she nodded, slapping him on the chest.

  Looking slightly pale, Naomi continued, “I turned around to put the diapers in the cart, and my dad was there with a gun pointed at me while my mother lifted her out of it. If it hadn’t been for two off duty police officers, they would’ve gotten her. They got away, but after they did some digging, they found out that my parents were in deep with a dealer in Florida, so they’d arranged for a couple who couldn’t have kids to buy Shanti to pay him off.”

  There was silence as we all stared at her, only a few of the men not looking surprised by the story.

  “That there is some daytime car crash television show shit,” Reid whispered as he sat down heavily next to me. “What in the fuck?”

  Clearing his throat, Carter rubbed Shanti’s back as she lay happy as anything with her head on his shoulder. “I know Naomi’s family because we’re from the same place, but I didn’t know any of this.”

  Judging by the way her jaw tensed, there was also some bad history between them. Glancing at Reid, I saw that he’d noticed it too when he raised his eyebrows at me and looked back at them all.

  “The point in us telling you all of this,” DB spoke up, “is that we need to be vigilant for a multitude of reasons. We’re not fortunate enough to know everyone’s purpose for moving here. Some of them may be doing what Zuri and Naomi are, and others might be the people they’re trying to run away from. We’ve got a facility now to help the residents of Piersville stay safe and live comfortably, but we have to be part of it.

  “Now, we’ve seen some of Gjorka’s guys near here, so we’ve got to be vigilant now. Just to add to that, we’ve got a duty to the other residents to keep them safe too, and you never know what’s going to happen or who’s going to be targeted by someone next. This used to be a peaceful place, but the world changes, and now we’re as vulnerable as any major city.”

  “Except,” Alex interrupted with a small smile on his face, “we’ve got a smaller population, so it’s easier for us to notice a face that doesn’t fit or one that we’re not familiar with.”

  Nodding in agreement, DB looked between Naomi and me. “Now, ladies. Knowing all of that, how safe are you feeling?”

  I didn’t even need to think about it. “Safe. I’m worried about y’all’s safety, but I feel better than I did ten minutes ago.”

  Winking at me, he turned to look at Naomi, who just shrugged at him. “I didn’t not feel safe before now, but I do feel better hearing that.”

  All of the men looked amongst each other, but it was Hurst who finally spoke up for them. “Welp, it seems some of you were shitting your pants for nothing. The women have the information, the men have it all too, and no one lost their mind. Now, if you don’t mind, Lindee was making pot roast tonight, and I’m already in deep crap with her,” he muttered as he walked toward where Carter was.

  Once he got to him, he stopped and grinned at Shanti, who gripped Carter’s hair tightly in her little hand, like she was claiming him. “Miss Shanti, my name’s Hurst, and I’ve got a lot of little girls and boys who’d just loved to meet you. My wife Lindee will think you’re the sun, the moon, and the stars.” When she giggled, he continued, “My grandkids have pretty much everything you can imagine to play with at their houses. They’ve got animals, too, even a turkey—”

  “And a bunch of jackasses,” Raoul mumbled, shooting Hurst a grin when he glared at him.<
br />
  “When your aunt’s ready, you guys will have to come out and meet them and play with the animals.”

  “Can I bring Cah-tah?” she whispered. Her immediate attachment to him struck me as weird, but I couldn’t even cope with a kid’s ass, so what did I know about them?

  “You can bring Carter, absolutely.”

  “He knew daddy.”

  Okay, ever watch a television show where something happens, and that dramatic music follows it? Well, after she dropped that bombshell on us, the chorus of Flash suddenly blasted, making us all jump.

  “Sorry, that’s mine,” Canon said sheepishly, pulling his phone out and pressing the side of it.

  “Is it just me, or does this whole thing just keep getting weirder?” Raoul asked me quietly, his eyes not leaving what was going on in the middle of the room.

  Naomi was nodding and smiling at DB while trying to get Shanti back from Carter. Not wanting to let go of her new toy—girl, I do not blame you one bit. I loved Garrett, but if I had the chance to wrap myself around Carter, I’d be all for it—Shanti was holding on for dear life.

  Because they were talking amongst themselves, I didn’t hear what Carter said as he stepped forward, but eventually, Naomi nodded, looking pissed off, and the three of them walked to the door.

  “It was nice to meet you,” she called over her shoulder as Shanti waved at us over Carter’s.

  Realizing we were sisters in bullshit, I shouted, “Get my number from DB tomorrow, honey, and call me. We’ll get together and talk it out.”

  “Can I pay wiv your horse?” Shanti asked, pointing at Clyde.

  “Absolutely. We’ll get you a cowgirl hat so you can be the best cowgirl in Texas.”

  She’d looked slightly wary when I’d first called out to her, but after I’d said that to her niece, Naomi smiled brightly at me. “I’ll definitely do that. See you soon.”

  Once they left, there was silence for a moment, but then it hit me that I still had my own shit to wade through.

  “So, what am I meant to do?”

  I shouldn’t have asked. I really should have just stayed quiet because the list of rules they gave me left me feeling like a Gremlin. Really, all that was missing was feeding me after midnight.