When I hear something shatter in the kitchen, hear a round of cursing, then smell burning, my lips twitch. I’m vastly amused that Lancer was right about the burning. I feel even more exhausted after that long afternoon, and I still have to get through dinner…or maybe not if it’s hopefully been burned to a crisp. I know I certainly don’t owe anyone anything, but I guess my manners are too good to lock myself in my room for the night and not come back down. Or maybe it’s just too exhausting thinking about having to deal with the interruptions that would no doubt materialize, probably in the form of a banging on the door or the said door being taken off the hinges by an industrious granny who has been called back and won’t take no for an answer.I head upstairs to wash my face and hands since I could use a splash of cold water to revive me. I can’t remember the last time I ever felt so exhausted. I know that if I fell into bed right now, my body would buzz with everything I’ve learned ov
How so?” Mike’s frown digs deep trenches into his brow. I think it’s basic human nature and concern that causes me to want to reach over and smooth them away. “Living at home—if I could use that word because it wasn’t a home at all—was…it was…not fun. It was the opposite of fun. My father… well, I’d liken him to the devil, but that would be doing Satan a serious disservice. I don’t think the devil himself could be as bad as my father was. I saw him do terrible things to other people. Other men. But never women. Unless that woman was my mother, though he never hit her. He was too controlled for that. Instead, he controlled her in every other way possible. She was like a puppet, a zombie, doing what he wanted. She was strung out on prescription meds to make her biddable, but also probably because it was the only way she could survive getting through the day. I imagine she thought about killing herself just to escape. All the time. She never intervened in my father’s business, and to her
I watch as my words have the desired effect, and Sharon starts grinding her teeth. I also watch as she pulls back her arm and hurls the pickle at me. It hits me in the forehead, between the eyes, with a soggy, vinegary splat. I get some residual splash in my eyes and have to blink against the sting. I rub my left eye with my hand.“Ouch. That burns.” It’s half a deadpan and half the truth.“So will this,” Sharon growls before she stalks over and raises her knee, trying to angle it right at my groin.“Oh, hell no. That is not happening again. Bag me once; shame on me. Bag me twice…well, no. Just. No.”She slams into me, but I block any and all access to my junk by angling away and giving her my knee only. I grasp her wrists, angling them above her head to subdue her since she goes for my eyes, her fingers like claws after I cock block her. Mmm hrmmm. I’m not exactly sure that’s how you use that saying, but whatever. I use her momentum to twist her against the wall, and I trap her there
And nope, I’m not crouched down over here by the door, admiring his body. Which is, uh, so obviously a ten that it makes my mouth water and turns my nipples into diamond peaks. Damn it. It’s not my fault. His naked chest is just so potently beautiful that I can’t not notice. Also, it’s about as bright red as it gets. Gleaming, glistening, and drawing my attention hook, line, and sinker. My body is on the highest of red alerts alright, so maybe that’s also a good way to describe his chest and I realize I’m slowly sinking into a moment of madness, round two.“Manscaping?” I choke out just to say something. My eyes slingshot up to his face, away from the danger zone, which is pretty much everywhere below the neck.“I was, uh, I didn’t think body hair was attractive. I didn’t anticipate this happening, or I would have prepared before. Now it seems I’ve ruined everything.”He’s so miserable when he says it that it makes me smile, and then I feel like a royal jerk. “I’m not laughing at you,
Not Mike,” Ransom protests, and I wonder where he’s going with this and why he’s suddenly defending me. “He’s way too straight-laced for that. He lives, eats, and breathes hacking.” He goes off half-cocked, putting his hands on his hips and strutting around the room, imitating my deep voice even though his is already plenty deep enough. “Not dragging anyone into our life. That would be a straight-up liability, and it’s not fair to them, either. Love is for sissies. What’s a crush? I’m immune to any and all such nonsense.”“Oooooh! Has someone finally broken through those thick arse walls? Broached the barrier? The old seal sprung a leak? Burrowed into thy formerly impenetrable brain?” Lancer goads.Marcus stands back, puzzled. “Wait, is the wedding real? I thought it was fake.”“The wedding is real. The marriage is fake,” Atlas informs him.Then why’d he shave?”I let loose a warning noise as I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. “It’s official. I thoroughly and truly hate you all
I told you the crying wolf thing was going to get you in trouble one day,” I say, trying to be playful, though my voice is still full of very real concern that is in no way an act.Mike grunts, but he does manage a small smile that I feel is just for me. And dang, if that smile doesn’t light up every corner of a world I didn’t know was so very, very dark before.“Are we ready to continue?” The frazzled JP, who I had forgotten about completely, finally steps back toward us. He snaps open his binder and winces like it’s going to trigger a second big fall.Mike grasps my hands again. Both of them. What do you know? It’s official. The storm of butterflies in my gut has turned into a full-on murder of crows. That’s what a group of crows is called, in case you didn’t know. A murder. Very, very interesting.I’m ready.” Mike squeezes my hand. The squeeze goes up through my arm and explodes to the rest of my body.I have to squeeze back. It’s just another instinct, and it’s polite, the right t
SharonHiding. Behind a computer.”“No. Not hiding. Sacrificing. You’re not a coward. I know that you know you’re facing this head-on. You don’t want justice for them; you want it for all the victims in the world and the many people out there who have been wronged and forced into a life they didn’t choose. You’re not just doing it for granny or yourself. You’re doing it for them. For the people that you don’t even know. That’s heroic. I think the brain, they say, is most impressionable before age twenty-two, so if you were going to go bad, then you’d have gone bad already. You chose the other path. It’s a harder path. The hardest. To be kind and good.”“You don’t think I’m kind and good. I kidnapped you.”Her eyes soften, and her plush lips part. Her tongue sweeps along her lower lip as she sighs. “You did. But I’ve forgiven you for that. It was a moment of insanity. I think we all have those. It might have been a bad decision, but it’s worked out now.”MikeBecause of Granny. And my b
I want everything, all the touching, all over, but that’s only because Mike's hands, parting my legs and opening me up to him, feel absolutely divine, and it’s short-circuiting my brain all over again. My heart is beating so hard that it could be a jackhammer or some other cement-demolishing tool in there. He bends his head and proves to me, with a single hot kiss over my lace-clad core, that magic is possible, and it does indeed exist. I’m so wet that I know that scrap of lace is totally soaked. When Mike hums low in his throat and licks his lips, it confirms the fact. And it just about gives me a heart attack because what could possibly be sexier than him licking me off his lips? I dare you to come up with something. I just dare you.When he glances up at me, his eyes are dark. Not haunted. Just dark. He lets me see that, lets me see the most intimate parts of him before he goes back to admiring the most intimate parts of me.He kisses me over the lace again, and my hips arch up int