by Shen, L. J.
I let out a quick breath. Could it be that simple? “Gabriella. You’re still in contact with her.”
“She calls every now and then. What am I supposed to do, hang up the phone in her ear? So what?”
“She thinks you’re getting back together.”
“I think nudist beaches should be opened for hot people only. So what if she thinks something? It hardly makes it true. Neeeext.”
“Your mother is starting to suspect we’re sleeping together,” I hurried to point out, watching as he set three plates at the round, chipped dining table in my kitchen, inviting himself to stay. “She insinuated as much when we were on the cruise.”
“While you wouldn’t be my mother’s first choice of daughter-in-law, it is not her business who I sleep with or who I choose to live the rest of my life with. Don’t worry your pretty head with things that have nothing to do with you. Now that that’s settled…”
“Wait, I have more!”
He grabbed me by the waist, picked me up, and removed me from blocking the fridge with ease, placing me by the counter and opening the fridge to pull out a bottle of Diet Coke. He set three glasses on the table, too.
“I’m listening.”
“Trinity specifically asked me not to start anything with you. She doesn’t want any wedding complications.”
That made him freeze mid-stride. He turned around slowly, his jaw ticking again as he watched me through narrowed, hawk-like eyes.
“You mean our lives are now being managed by a ditzy twenty-five-year-old who cannot even recognize a class-A douchebag when one asks her to marry him?”
He had a point, but it wasn’t that simple. Trinity was my sister. I couldn’t go against my entire family for a fling.
I swallowed hard.
Cruz set the Coke on the table, making his way toward me with purpose and confidence. I knew Bear could come in any second now, and the thrill of getting caught made my pulse quicken. But it was more than that—I’d missed Cruz.
Every nerve in my body tingled when I thought about Cruz’s hands on me. Again. His big, strong body against mine. He parked his arms on either side of me on the countertop, his lips an inch from mine.
“I’m sick and tired of people telling me what I should and shouldn’t do. How I should and shouldn’t act. I want you, and you want me, and that should be enough. Am I understood?”
I never thought I’d be one of those women who’d take a liking to the possessive, Me-Tarzan-You-Jane alpha male. But in that moment, when I could feel his erection pressing against my middle, when his eyes were liquid velvet, so blue you could drown in them, I knew there was a fairly good chance I was going to hump his leg.
Tilting my chin up, my lips moved over his.
“As long as you keep your mouth shut and don’t tell anyone, I might keep you as temporary entertainment,” I murmured.
Ah, why not? Let’s admit it. I was never going to remember to charge that vibrator.
“Define temporary.” His lips were on mine when he spoke, and it felt divine.
“A few weeks.”
“No. Details to be discussed.”
“You’re missing the point of temporary entertainment.”
But really, I just couldn’t see myself going out with anyone, not to mention a man who could break me in a hundred different ways without even touching me.
“Your temporary entertainment is staying over after dinner. And wants you in black lace as soon as the kid goes to sleep.”
“I don’t have black lace.”
“Wearing nothing’s even better.” He snatched a quick kiss and pulled away from me just in time. Bear walked in, dragging his sneakers across the floor before plopping in his usual chair at the dining table, oblivious.
“Pasta and chicken nuggets. Sweet.”
“Did you wash your hands, young man?” I asked primly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Dinner was surprisingly stress-free. Cruz and Bear exchanged notes regarding their video game, coming up with new strategies on how to kill the boss monster.
Afterwards, Bear told us about his upcoming trip into town with his mamaw, which was supposed to happen this weekend.
Cruz snuck a peek at me. “How long are you going to be away?”
“Dunno. Like, six or seven hours, I guess.” Bear shrugged.
“Interesting.”
I kicked Cruz under the table. Hard. He chuckled in response, obviously still unfazed by my panic.
“Are you going to ask my mom out or something?” Bear looked between us, more intrigued than repulsed judging by his expression.
I choked on my Coke, spitting some of it out, with a good portion shooting out of my nostrils.
Cruz seemed perfectly at ease as he studied Bear casually.
“Undecided. What’s your take?”
Bear used a fork and a spoon to roll as much pasta as he could fit into his mouth and took a huge bite. The food, I had to admit, was edible, which was astounding, seeing as Cruz was a single male and largely considered to be God’s greatest gift. He had no business being talented in the kitchen and in the sack.
“I’ll have to think about it. If you guys date and then break up, we won’t be able to play video games anymore.”
“But if we date and end up getting married, you’ll have your own game room.”
I almost coughed out a lung, as flustered as I was. This was straight up cruel. A man like Cruz would never marry a woman like me. Bear had to pound my back because he thought something got stuck in my air pipes.
“No one’s getting married!” I shrieked.
“Auntie Trinity is,” Bear said, turning back to Cruz, “Anyway, yeah, you can ask her on a date if I can have your game room.”
“That’s not how it works. At any rate, if we ever decide to go out, your mom would want you to keep it a secret. She’s ashamed of me.”
“Why?” Bear cocked his head sideways, glaring at me accusingly.
I bought time by shoving a chicken nugget into my mouth and getting a third-degree burn on my tongue.
“This has nothing to do with shame. We’re just not compatible, that’s why. People might have somethin’ to say.”
“People always have stuff to say about anything,” Bear spat out. “So what?”
Cruz gave him a fist bump, and now I was officially the opposition in this dinner dynamic. I couldn’t believe all Cruz had to do to form a coalition with my son was play a video game with him and throw a few microwave-friendly nuggets into the mix and that was me, sold off for marriage?
After Bear went to bed, Cruz poured both of us a glass of cheap wine. We stuck around in the living room, giving Bear a chance to fall asleep.
We watched the news without really watching the news, sitting on the edge of our seats, waiting anxiously for my son to fall into slumber.
Unlike other thirteen-year-old boys who were perfectly content to stay up all night and then struggled to wake up for school the next day, Bear went down like a log.
The kid could sleep his way through a third World War. I suspected it was due to his busy schedule during the day, which normally included lots of skateboarding from place to place, school, homework, and helping his papaw with some handiwork every afternoon.
“Think he crashed?” Cruz asked when the clock hit eleven.
“There’s a good chance, but let me double-check.”
I got up and padded to Bear’s room, feeling Cruz moving behind me. When I got to the narrow hallway, I pushed Bear’s door open, revealing a cozy room full of posters of Zelda and Halo and Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen.
Bear was snoring, sleeping sideways, his entire upper body out of the bed. I resisted the urge to shift him into a normal position.
“Out cold,” I whispered.
We tiptoed our way to my room and closed the door. As soon as we were alone, surrounded by the silence of the night, my queen-size bed and nothing else, I felt self-conscious again.
I moved to my old, do
or-less closet, removing my cheap earrings as I spoke.
“Don’t say things like that again. About getting married to me, I mean. It’s unkind to Bear. He is going to start thinking you mean it. He’s a kid. He’s literal.”
“You’re a grown-up and you’re literal.” Cruz began unbuttoning his black dress shirt. “And besides, I wasn’t kidding. I refuse to let other people’s opinions fuck me if they’re not giving me an orgasm, too. I reserve the right to do whatever I want to do to you, and with you.”
“When did you decide that?” I asked, outraged.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Sometime this week, when I found myself being given a phone number of a woman I didn’t want to call, then heard a rumor that you were selling weed at Fairhope High to pay for your Botox, but found myself completely unfazed by what it said about me if I went out with you.”
It was bull, and we both knew it.
He had too much to lose.
Even if he didn’t, dating him wasn’t worth the wrath of my family and the townsfolk. I opened my mouth, but he shut me up with a scorching-hot kiss, soaked with sweet memories and hunger and the garlic from the pasta sauce he’d made.
Biting down on his lower lip, I tugged his slacks open, fumbling unsuccessfully with the buttons and zippers.
“What is this thing, a darn chastity belt?”
He laughed into our kiss gruffly, pushing down my uniform from my shoulders, clawing it off me.
“I still have the clothes I bought you at my house.” He unbuttoned the front of my mini dress. His fingers sank deep into my skin, leaving dents.
“Burn them.” I bit down on his stubbled neck, pushing a hand into his pants and cupping his massive erection brazenly.
It jerked happily into my palm in greeting.
Hello to you, too, handsome.
“Only if you come and help me,” Cruz challenged.
“I plan to come, all right.”
But weirdly, when I thought about those clothes, I wasn’t full of stubborn, defiant dread. I happened to quite like those ridiculously expensive garments and some of the memories created in them.
Especially the floaty bohemian style ones that made me look like one of the Olsen twins taking her trash out. I missed them (the dresses, not the Olsens. I mean, they were great in Full House, but I never got into their newer stuff).
A minute later, I was on my back in my bed, watching him slap a condom on. He rolled his hips, sliding into me in one, achingly slow movement, grinning down at me.
He rotated his hips, gathering my hair in his fist and tugging it to extend my neck and make me look at him. The planes of his face, his heartbreakingly stunning cheekbones, were too much for me.
I moaned loudly, with no regard to the fact there was someone else under this roof.
“I missed this.” My breathing was choppy, my voice strained.
“I missed you.”
In that moment, I hated to admit it, but Trinity did not chart in my universe. Neither did Wyatt, Gabriella, Catherine Costello, my parents, nor the entire state of North Carolina.
Only Cruz, and the way he made me feel.
“I think you just found my G-spot.” I caught his face in my hands.
“You mean, here?” He pulled up and thrusted deep inside me again, a husky rumble coming from his chest.
“Y—y-y-es.”
“Just to make it clear, that spot over there?” He withdrew and sank into me once more.
“Ohhhhh.”
“This one, right?”
I was so close to the edge, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Luckily, I didn’t have to know. Cruz did all the work for me.
He entered me fast and hard, his cock gliding into me again and again, creating delicious friction. My climax spiraled up like climbing ivy, encircling and chaining every organ in my body.
It was so intense. So delicious, I couldn’t stop panting. My body begged for release.
“Cruz. Cruz.”
He kissed me roughly, stuffing his tongue down my throat to shut me up.
“Shhh. You’ll wake the kid up and then I’m never going to visit Tennessee again.”
Laughter bloomed inside my chest, a weird mix of happiness and horniness taking over me. A minute later, I was riding the most intense wave of chain-orgasms I’d ever had in my entire life.
Period. Full stop. Exclamation point.
As soon as Cruz felt my release, he flipped me on my stomach, like I was light as a feather, and entered me from behind.
Spreading my thighs for him and coming up to my knees, I felt him pushing me back down, a little more roughly than your trusted MD should.
“Legs closed and ass down, sweetheart. More friction.”
“You have a dirty side. I like it.”
“Good, because there are a lot of filthy things I want to do with you.”
He was right. This was so much hotter than the classic doggy style I’d watched in porn (okay, let’s just get it out of the way—I’d watched a lot of porn prior to having sex with Cruz).
It was exquisite, and rough, and full of passion. I felt like he was setting me on fire. Another orgasm rippled through me in no time.
Cruz came, too.
This time inside me.
When he rolled off of me, he kissed my temple and said, “And no, you’re not pregnant.”
I shuddered. “You know me nauseatingly well.”
He placed his lips on my hairline, mulling it over. “I do, don’t I?”
“Since kindergarten.”
“Nursery,” he corrected me.
“Ugh,” I groaned. “We’re old.”
“Better than staying young forever. The implications are not so great.”
“What really happened today?” I asked into his hard chest, my fingers once again tangled in his chest hair. “Has Bear really broken his skateboard?”
Because I was going to have to break a few piggy banks to buy him a new one. It was his favorite form of transportation.
“Yes.”
There was a brief silence.
“With my encouragement, I suppose.” He propped himself on one elbow, studying me with his confident, quiet gaze that made me feel like a seed blossoming into a flower in the sun.
“You tricked me.”
His chest rumbled with a chuckle that quaked against my ear.
“We needed a good excuse.”
“You could’ve found a cheaper excuse,” I protested.
“It’s just a small chip. He said his grandpa can superglue it back together. If not, I’ll give him my old skateboard that I have lying around in my basement. I’m in no risk of ever using it again. Kids are into vintage stuff like that these days.”
“Leave some room for Rob to try to win his son’s affections.” I giggled, marveling at how good Cruz and Bear were together.
That made Cruz tense.
My nose twitched, and I tried hard not to look embarrassed. What kind of weird thing to say to the man you’d sworn off (to your sister) who was currently inside your bed.
I truly was a piece of work.
“I’ll tread carefully,” Cruz said, finally.
I knew he meant with Rob, but I so very wished he’d take mercy on me, too.
“There he is, the man of the hour, the town’s beloved.” Mrs. Underwood, who was approximately a thousand years old, wobbled her way toward me outside the clinic after I closed shop.
I stilled, inwardly punching my own face for forgetting to check the windows before I got out of work. There was always someone wandering past wanting a favor. A ride, a quick medical diagnosis, some life advice.
“Heard you’re treating Beau Duggar’s pregnant wife under the table ’cause she’s got no insurance. That’s kind of you.” She waved her walking cane in my direction, flashing her blindingly white dentures at me.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
And then, because it was still ingrained in me, because I was so deeply and acutely attached to the r
ole this place designated to me, I forced myself to add, “Can I take you anywhere, Mrs. Underwood? Home, maybe?”
“Oh!” She put her hand to her chest. “Are you sure?”
No.
“Absolutely.”
“How nice of you to offer. I was actually on my way to your mother’s, if you can believe it. We’re working on the next luncheon.”
“It’d be my pleasure.”
It would also be my hell.
Mom lived on the other side of town, which meant a longer drive in the opposite direction of my destination, in the presence of the town’s biggest gossip. But I couldn’t backtrack, could I?
“Lovely. She’s telling me you are going to help her with the seating arrangements at the rehearsal dinner next week. You must be excited to see Wyatt getting married again.”
“Bursting at the seams.”
“You next?”
“Unfortunately for the future Mrs. Costello,” I jested mildly.
“Ah, c’mon. Anyone would love to have you, Cruzy.”
Not the town’s most infamous and gloriously scandalous waitress, so it seemed.
After I dropped Mrs. Underwood off—and walked her to my mother’s doorstep, arm-in-arm—I went back into town to take some promotional pictures for the Wellness Awareness Program I was taking part in.
I was going to run a marathon with a few more folks to raise money for a foundation designed to help children suffering from obesity. When I was done with the promotional stuff, I checked my watch to see if I had a moment to check in on Tennessee at the diner.
I had about three minutes before I needed to go back home and get ready for Wyatt’s bachelor party in the city.
My showers, my snacks, my coffee breaks—everything was timed perfectly with a stopwatch to ensure the utmost time efficiency.
I was about to open the door to Jerry & Sons—could almost spot her through the windows—when a small figure reeking of flowers blocked my way.
“Dr. Costello! How nice to see you. I’ve been hopin’ to run into you, actually.”
Mrs. Holland threw herself in front of me, in a pastel cardigan, designer jeans, and a Chanel purse. Her brunette bob was sharp, her eyes shrewd and cold. You could tell Gabriella was her spawn, because they both looked perpetually put-together and hungry.