Текст книги "Slow Twitch"

Автор книги: Лиз Реинхардт

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Like to not date me because I didn’t hold up against the facts of Meathead, her like-interest. Because it was no love-interest.

I could tell he bored the hell out of her. I could tell he was basically a nice douche bag, and he knew there was a real reason he should like Cadence. He just couldn’t riddle what the hell that reason might be.

But I did know every reason why she was beyond amazing. I knew that she was deceptively brilliant. I knew that she was aggressively hard-working. That she had a thick shell and a soft interior that hardly anyone got to see. And I knew that if I was ever lucky enough to get a glimpse, it would be worth all of the hardship and waiting. Because she was good and kind and funny, and probably damn sexy if someone could just unknot the kinks she’d worked herself into.

Luckily, I was always a champion at deceptive mirages. So I knew that Cadence and the Goon weren’t as twitterpated as they were pretending. And I made whatever moves I could to take advantage of that fact.

But my real strike of brilliance was mostly an accident. It was one of those weird, rare nights off that I almost never had. Aunt Helene had been picked up by some of her old crone friends to get wild at the local Bingo hall. Before she left, she grabbed my arms hard and told me that I should get out and have some fun. I smiled and kissed her hard because she was so fucking cool I can hardly stand her, then I pushed her out the door and into the arms of late night Bingo. And I went to work putting up shelving until the goddamn drill lost power. I had forgotten to plug the extra battery pack in. I was shit out of luck.

The night was nice, kind of cool, kind of breezy. I sat on Aunt Helene’s front porch and found my pack of cigs. I lit up, but it didn’t feel the same. I only smoked it by half, then stubbed it out and decided to go on a little walk-about. I wanted to see the neighborhood. I wanted to move my legs. It was hard to believe I’d spent so much time back home cooped up in a house or a car, lounging. Now that my body had been working, I felt like I needed to keep it going.

I walked up the street, waving to the vaguely familiar neighbors I passed here and there. I walked back down and looked discreetly into a few lit windows, catching tiny glimpses of normal and not-so-normal families eating, arguing, watching television. I was avoiding one house on the block that I could bet was empty anyway. But I was drawn to it. And if I was right, and it was empty, what was the harm?

But fate was my lady.

The lights were on. Pammy’s car was gone and so was Tony’s. It was a long shot. I could get an earful of a pretty pissed Rosalie Erikson. But I just might get an eyeful of sexy Cadence Erikson. I decided to take the chance.

I was going to lean on the doorbell when I remembered that it was late and if Sullie was home, he’d be sleeping. This might sound very stalker-esque, but in the moment it felt pretty fucking Dark Knight; I climbed the fire escape on the side of their building.

It had been a set of apartments once, but Tony bought them out and finally renovated it into one big house with some weird apartment hang-ons. Like a fire escape. We didn’t have apartments in good old Sussex, so I was kind of jacked to jump up on one and scale it like I’d seen in the movies.

It was just as cool as I’d imagined.

I got to the lit window and peeked in quietly. Sullie was crying in the middle of a girl’s room. I couldn’t tell if it was Cadence’s or Pammy’s (or both of theirs if they shared), but he was pissed. I was so focused on him, I hardly noticed Cadence skid in. She was a knock out, even in bumming-around clothes with panic on her face.

“Sullivan, don’t cry,” she begged. “Here, bub, do you want a baba?”

She held a bottle out to him, but he only cried louder. Then Cadence’s face crumpled, and she sat on the edge of her bed, put her hands over her face and cried like a baby.

“I’m so sorry, Sullie. I’m so sorry. I just don’t know what you want, buddy,” she sobbed.

Seeing her cry turned Sullie’s waterworks on full blast. He was practically screaming when I knocked on the window.

In hindsight, it probably would have been smart to go back down the escape since I knew Sullie was up and Cadence was alone, but the whole moment came on me faster than I could think it through. When Cadence heard the knock, her eyes went wild, and she grabbed a field hockey stick that was next to her bed.

“Who is that?” she yelled. Sullie’s little mouth made an ‘o’ of surprise. “I will fuck your shit up! Get lost!”

She had good volume, and she was pretty damn scary. I help my hands up, surrender style and let her see me for a minute so I didn’t get clubbed in the head.

“Saxon?” She finally put the stick down on the bed, still well within reach. “What are you doing here? You scared the crap out of me!”

“I’m unarmed.” I gave her my most charming smile. “I saw the light on and–”

“Decided to spy on me?” she snapped. “Have you done that before?”

“No.” I cursed my ridiculous need to live like I was the Caped Crusader. “I was actually a little scared to get your mom and have her kick my ass for bugging you.”

Cadence relented a little. “She is a little scary,” she conceded.

Now that things were calm again, Sullie’s moment of silence was over for good and he was sobbing again.

“I heard Sullie-boy. I thought you might need a little help,” I offered.

Cadence’s brow knit and then her face flamed a bright red. She realized that I had seen her sobbing her ass off. “Okay,” she mumbled.

“Hey Sullie,” I said through the window. He quieted down a little bit. Cadence unhitched the screen, and I climbed in and bumped my head on the window. “Holy fuck!”

Sullie laughed a bubbly, happy sound.

Cadence looked at me like I was her knight in shining armor. So I spent the next half an hour being a buffoon, making Sullie laugh in any way I could possibly think to do it.

Nothing was too humiliating.

I barked like a dog and got on all fours like a horse so Sullie could pound on my back and get a ride up and down the stairs, I got bonked on the head and in the balls to the point where I was fairly sure I was going to be brain-dead and impotent before the night was over, and I sang along to seven lullaby songs, mostly making up words as I went along.

Soon I was able to lay Sullie down in his little Winnie the Pooh crib. I finished off, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Starfor him.

“Twinkle, twinkle little star, I like pickles in a jar, Salami’s good, don’t eat it dry, Yellow mustard you should try, Twinkle, twinkle little star, I like pickles in a jar,” I crooned quietly.

Cadence was standing in the doorway, arms crossed, her face calm and happy.

“Pickles and salami?” she asked in a whisper.

I shrugged. “I didn’t know the words. I don’t think Sullie cared.”

We moved away from his room like ninjas, and once we made it to Cadence’s, we both flopped on her bed in happy camaraderie.

She turned and looked at me with big, sweet, green eyes full of pure gratitude. “Thank you. So much, Saxon. I was losing it for a few minutes.”

“I’m glad I decided to climb your fire escape.”

She smiled a little and smoothed her hair. It wasn’t something just any guy would notice, but I was a practiced manwhore. She smoothed her hair because she was wishing that she looked a little better. Because she wanted to impress me.

“Tonight just got all screwed up,” she explained. “Mom and Dad went to a wedding in Maplewood and they got a hotel room, Pammy is staying out til God knows when after work, and Jimmy went to some all-night video game marathon after his shift. I didn’t have work, and I thought that I would have the night off. But since I was the only one home, I got kind of stuck with Sullie.”

“That sucks.” Our hands were just a few inches away. I moved my fingers slightly closer; not quite touching her, but almost.

“I don’t want to think about it that way.” She sighed, then turned on her side, pulling her hand away from mine to prop her head on it. “I love him, you know? It’s just, sometimes this family can be really, really overwhelming.”

“So where’s Jeff tonight?” I didn’t want to get caught in that trap where I joined in and bitched about her family. And that family was particularly scary to bitch about. I wasn’t doing cartwheels over the fact that Jeff had already come up, but I needed to know where I stood.

“He’s in this frat and they had a big party tonight.” Her eyes flicked down and her mouth crumpled into a frown.

“You were going to go?” I tapped her foot with the toe of my shoe and she looked up at me, those big green eyes tired and sad.

She shook her head. “It’s some kind of thing with the fraternities and sororities. Fraternity guys go with girls from their sister sorority. It’s not really a date. It’s just tradition,” she explained. “It sounds like it could be a tradition, right?” She looked at me with such a hopeful expression on her pretty face, I realized that I had two options.

I could blast her dipshit boyfriend out of the water and make a case for why he was probably a lying, sack-of-shit cheater.

Or I could go against my every instinct and be at least halfway reasonable.

This girl was doing strange things to me. I rolled onto my side and looked at her. “Fraternities and sororities have all kinds of weird traditions. That said, if you were my girlfriend, I’d have them make a new tradition right there.” Before she could say anything else, I changed the subject. “Did you eat? You want to order something?”

She looked at me for a long minute and pursed her lips. “Yeah, that would be cool. How about Chinese?”

So we went down to the Erikson’s small-as-hell falling-down kitchen, found the Chinese food menu, and started ordering our asses off.

“I have to have fried dumplings.” Cadence looked at the menu intently.

I wrote it down on a Dunkin’ Donuts napkin. “Alright. I need barbeque spareribs. And General Tso’s Chicken.”

“And eggdrop soup.” She closed her eyes and crinkled the menu against her chest. My heart dropped to the bottom of my guts. “Do you like that?”

“The one with the weird white floaties?” I asked. She nodded. “Yeah, that’s cool.” I fucking hated egg drop soup, but I really liked her, so in my warped mind eating that slime soup was a way to show her I cared.

We got spring rolls and egg rolls, cream cheese wontons and extra pork friend rice. By the time I got off of the phone, Cadence was smiling hard and didn’t want me to see. She looked straight down at her lap.

“What’s up?” I pushed on her shoulder with two fingers. It wasn’t nearly enough touching, but it was going to have to do for now.

“It’s going to be a lot of food.” She shrugged. “I can afford it,” she rushed, her smile dropping a little.

“Are you kidding? You could have smashed my head in with a field hockey stick. Or called the cops and nailed me for a B and E. I’m paying as thanks for your overall sanity.”

She laughed out loud. It was a loose, happy sound. “Thanks, Saxon. I kind of thought tonight would suck. I’m…I’m glad you came up the fire escape.” She looked a little embarrassed and flustered.

“Don’t thank me yet.” I crossed my arms and leaned back on the counter. “I might have peaked with my idiotic version of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’ Maybe it’s all downhill from here.”

She shook her head and all that dark, shiny hair spilled over her tanned shoulders and sweet, gorgeous boobs. “I doubt that.” She looked around her kitchen, swiveled her sexy hips, and raised her eyebrows.

“What do you want to do while we wait?” I asked. So she could throw out an idea that wasn’t me leaping across the room and tearing her clothes off in a fit of uncontrolled lust, ‘cause this girl was messing with my head in a serious way.

“I don’t know.” She linked her hands behind her neck and let her arms open and close like butterfly wings.“I don’t usually have guys over. Actually my parents would probably kill you if they knew you were here.”

“I can keep a secret,” I promised. “So, doesn’t Jeff come and hang?” There he was again, the Goon-in-the-room, but I wanted to know.

“He’s really busy with school and stuff. I only see him when I have a night off and he’s up here.” She dropped her hands and grabbed the end of her ponytail, and she was twisting it around her fingers. “It’s not that often. And we always go out. Like with his friends. He doesn’t like to hang around here much.”

I just nodded. “So what do you do with your girlfriends? When they’re around?”

“Oh!” She laughed nervously. I had never seen Cadence this jittery. I kind of loved it. “We do stupid stuff. Like paint each other’s nails. Or we do karaoke. We got it for Wii. Or we look at old yearbooks.”

“Alright.” I put my hand out. She looked at it for a long second, then took it. “Let’s get this party started. Will karaoke wake Sullie?”

“No.” She squeezed my hand, just slightly, and smiled a little. “Once he’s out, he could sleep through a hurricane.”

“Cool. Um, I guess we should paint our nails while we wait for the food, right? So we can rock our hot looks when we’re performing?” I felt a little like a tool, but just a little.

I was usually trying to keep up a persona, and it got old after a while. Being jaded and sexed-up and rebellious was fine, but it was also kind of humorless sometimes. As ridiculous as the night’s activities sounded, I was kind of looking forward to them.

“You want me to paint your nails?” Cadence pulled my hand over and inspected my nails. “Really?”

“Hell yeah.” I wiggled my fingers at her. “Don’t think I’m going to do yours and not get anything in return.” Alright, I had to get one kinky shot in the midst of all of the flaming girliness.

“I’ll be right back.” Candence ran to the staircase, hopped up a few steps, then looked down at me, smiled, and hopped up the rest of the steps. She came back down a minute later with a bag of polishes. There were probably about fifty thousand, and a lot looked the same, but I wasn’t going to pretend that I knew shit about what a girl needed to keep her nails different colors.

She handed me the bag and we sat across from each other on the couch. “Okay.” She clapped her hands a little. “You pick a color first.”

“I like this green.” It was kind of an olive, metallic color. Not very girly.

“Do you want me to do your toes or your fingers?” She grabbed the polish and smacked it against her palm a few times.

I laughed. “You’re asking me that because you’ve never been exposed to my feet. I guarantee you they stink. You’re not getting near them.”

She unscrewed the top from the polish with a twisted smile and took my hand. Hers were everything you’d want a girl’s hand to be; soft, small, delicate, pretty.

I loved the feel of her holding my hand, and I loved her painting my nails with her ridiculous polish.

“So you think I won’t like you if your feet stink?” She dipped the brush and softly, smoothly, coated one of my nails with a thin coat. Her hands were sure and steady.

“I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anyone about my feet before.” I felt like a slightly different version of myself around Cadence. A more honest version. Who didn’t mind letting a hot girl know how bad my feet smelled.

“Didn’t any of your girlfriends complain about them?” she asked slyly.

She was fishing hardcore, and I was glad for the interest.

“I’ve never had any complaints from the ladies.” When she rolled her eyes, I amended. “I’ve never had any complaints in the physical department.”

“What did your girlfriends complain about?” she asked, laying rapid, even strokes of green paint on my fingernails. It was weird to watch them transform.

“Basic stuff, you know. That I’m a cold-hearted asshole. That I’m a womanizer. That I’m an egomaniac. Basic girlfriend gripes.” I wrapped it up with my best cocky smile, even though I was sweating fucking bullets. I wasn’t into false advertising, but this was pure Kamikaze shit.

She laughed, her shoulders shaking slightly. “So, are you, like, the Casanova of Sussex County?”

“You could say that.” She leaned her head closer, and I could smell the girl shampoo sweetness of her hair.

“So every girl just falls in love when you snap your fingers?” Her green eyes flicked up and she stared right at me from under all those sexy black eyelashes.

“No.” At the word, the light in her eyes cooled and changed. She was hooked and hungry for more. “Not every girl.”

“Even the great Saxon Maclean has been burned?” She was giving every nail a second coat. I was trying to pay attention. It looked easy enough, but, like most shit, I seriously doubted it was as easy as it seemed. And I was going to have to do her in a minute. I smiled at my own dirty mental innuendo.

“Yeah, I’ve been burned.” I watched her cap the polish and flexed my green-nailed fingers.

“Tell me,” she suggested casually. “Unless it hurts too much.” She lifted my hand a little, pursed her lips, and blew gently on the drying paint.

There was something undeniably erotic about watching her blow on that nail polish. Even though I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, I definitely had a visceral reaction to it. One that I had to cover quickly with a throw pillow before I drew any attention to it.

“Alright.” I swallowed hard and tried not to stare too hard as she blew on my fingertips. “I had a thing for this girl. Really, really smart, mad talented, gorgeous, funny, the whole package.”

“Sounds good,” Cadence said coolly, but I could tell her back was up just a tiny bit.

“Too good.” All the stupid fucking memories bumped and burned in the corners of my brain, still pretty raw and mostly just humiliating. “For me, that is. She thought we might work for about three hours. Then she met my brother.”

Cadence’s eyes snapped up. “You have a brother?”

“Yeah.” My mind flipped back to Jake, and, for a split second, I dealt with the weird ache I usually managed to keep smashed completely flat. “And, unfortunately, he’s considered very hot by the women-folk. He’s naturally a nice guy, you know, into all that romantic shit. And he’s a little bit of a straightedge, a totally hard worker, and madly in love with this girl.”

“Wait.” Cadence looked up from her torturous nail polish blowing. “Are you the evil twin?”

I laughed outright. “I might as well be.” I shook my head and immediately wished I could tell Brenna. She’d like that idea. “Anyway, they met and it was like fucking Romeo and Juliet, you know? No competition. I did manage to get her away from him for, like, three weeks. But she was just desperate to get back to him as soon as she could. She figured me out quick.”

“What’s so bad about you, Crackhead?” She put my hands down on my lap, and I felt a little bad about that. I admired the finished product. I’d never had nail polish on my fingers, so it was kind of fascinating.

“I really am cold-hearted.” I tapped the polished surface of my nails with my thumb, surprised by how smooth they were. “I don’t care about other people. I’m kind of a man-whore.” Her eyes popped wide on that one. “I have no ambition. I have no respect. I’m too smart to ever worry about school. I start fights on purpose. I’ve done enough drugs to kill a small horse. I think the real question is, What’s good about me?That one might take less time to figure out.”

Her whole face went still while she looked right at me for a long, uncomfortable minute. “I think there’s a lot of good about you, Saxon.”

“Thanks.” I pushed the bag her way. “Pick your color.” I felt…something. The sociopath in me was taking a long hibernation, and I was suddenly curious to know what she saw that was good in me.

She handed me a pale pink. Hardly a color.

“Wuss.” I raised my eyebrows.

She grabbed the bottle back and picked up a bright purple.

“Alright, you’re brave.” I took the bottle and examined the glittery color. “But maybe also a little reckless.”

“Is this your first time?” She started to smile at her own joke, but the smile got stuck halfway between flirty and something way more serious.

“You have officially popped my nail polish cherry.” The air in the room sizzled, hot and tense.

“I guess there aren’t many girls who can say they’ve popped any of your cherries.” It made us laugh and burst whatever tense, weird-ass thing we were feeling. She held out her hand to me.

I’m a big admirer of the female body, and certain parts get more worship than others. Hands usually aren’t in the running. This time, I was going to have to make an exception. Her hands were soft and small, but the nails were short and clean, for work. Even her knuckles were nice, kind of lovely ridges, and I brushed my thumb over them experimentally. It felt good.

It didn’t exactly do it for me like a handful of tits or a nice ass grab, but it really felt good. Like essentially, elementally good.

I copied Cadence as best I could, setting up the paint and holding her hands out so that I could see all of her fingers.

“I think your hands are nice,” I said, and it sounded awkward. Especially for me. I’m usually a little more glib, just by definition.

“Thank you,” she said a little stiffly, but with the sweet hint of a smile.

I took the brush and blobbed a dot of purple on her finger nail. She tried not to laugh at me outright. “Not so much,” she warned. “Thin coats. Here.” She reached over and got out her bag of cotton balls and the nail polish remover. She rubbed it on the nail and it all came off. “Okay, Casanova. Again.”

So I did it again, and it was better. When I had done one coat on the first three fingers, I felt confident enough to multi-task. “So,” I began, “tell me about your dating life.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s a pretty lame story.”

“I love lame stories. For example, I’ve seen The Notebooktwice.”

“That is a classic,” she gasped, horrified. We laughed again. “My love story is pretty basic. I meet a reasonably attractive guy, we date a little, he turns out to be a complete loser, I get dumped. Wash, rinse, repeat.”

I halted progress on her ring finger and stared at her fallen-fucking-angel face.

“You get dumped?”

“Yes.” She pinched her lips tight and nodded. “People think that if you’re a good-looking girl, it just doesn’t happen. But I guess I’m dense. Because I’ve been dumped. A lot.”

“Why?” But I was already answering my question in my head, because the answer was obvious; Cadence didn’t put out.

“I don’t like to rush things.” Bingo. “I mean, guys want to do a lot when you’ve only known them for a few weeks. Then, once they dump me, I feel kind of glad that we didn’t do anything I wasn’t comfortable with.” She looked up at me. “Did you stay with any of the girls you dated longer because of sex?”

“Nope.” I had to refocus because I was squeezing her fingers tighter than necessary when the memories popped up. “Actually, the girl I liked the best wouldn’t even think of it. And, frankly, I didn’t want it if she didn’t.”

“That’s cool.” Cadence looked intently at my not-half-bad paint job. “Jeff has been bringing it up a lot. He says I have Puritan ideals about sex.”

“Sounds like the big man took an intro to psych course,” I said between clenched teeth. “Look, if a guy likes you for you, he’ll wait, okay? Speaking as a walking hard-on, sex doesn’t mean faithfulness. If you were my girlfriend and you wanted to wait, I’d wait because I was into you and that’s what you wanted.” Then I looked down at her nails and blew gently.

I heard her draw a quick breath in. What was so sexy about blowing on fingernails? Crazy!

“Did you mean that hypothetically, or were you being literal?” Her voice was a mix of breathy and high-pitched.

I blew again, slowly, before I answered. “What do you mean?” I knew what she meant. I just didn’t want to get duped. I wanted her to say what I wanted to hear.

“I mean, do you think about me as a girlfriend or is it just a general–”

The doorbell rang. It was loud in the hushed house, and Cadence jumped up to get it. I followed right behind her. She reached out to take the food, but I reached over her.

“Your nails are wet,” I reminded her.

“Oh. Yeah. Of course,” she fumbled.

I paid the guy and over-tipped, just in case this became something Cadence and I did once in a while.

I was already plotting time together, thinking about us as something like a unit.

We unpacked the white paper cartons and spread them on the coffee table in the living room. We sat cross-legged in the dim yellow light and ate our food, laughing now and then in between. Slowly, we got closer. Before we knew it, we were sitting right next to each other, close enough that my breath moved her hair.

“You need to have a boneless sparerib. They’re the best I’ve ever had.” I was going to scoop it onto her plate when she opened her mouth and closed her eyes.

I didn’t even hesitate. I picked up a piece and put it in her mouth, then tried to control my raging wood when she sucked the meat off of my fingers and licked at the sauce with her hot tongue. The entire thing couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, but I felt on fire, turned-on like I’d never felt before.

I pulled my hand away reluctantly. We ate in silence for a minute.

“You didn’t eat any of the dumplings. I think I ate seven. You need the last one.” Cadence snatched it up with her bare fingers and I opened my mouth.

I know I had talked a big game about taking it slow, but I was talking thebig game: sex. Once I had a taste of her, even if it was a highly polished taste, I wasn’t about to let go without at least taking a swing and trying for some kind of anything physical. I ate the dumpling, then grabbed her hand so she couldn’t pull it back. There was a second where we both just stared across the couple of inches that separated us. Then I licked the dumpling sauce off of her fingers. Her eyes were big, but eager. She was waiting for me to make the next move.

I kissed her fingers, then down to her palm, then along her wrist. She was wearing an old tank top that was rapidly becoming see-through from too many washings, which was a boon for me. I kissed up to her elbow, along her bicep, nicely shaped from lifting so many trays, and up her shoulder.

That’s where my mouth stopped.

I hovered over that smooth skin, breathed in the smell of her that was partially clean girl, partially something sweet and fruit-like, and mostly just Cadence. Her hand moved then, and I watched it, the purple paint I painted on it rising up until she grabbed at my face, then quickly with her other hand, she pulled me up to her mouth.

My mouth found hers hot and fast. What had started at barely a simmer exploded into a full-blown kitchen fire.

Her mouth opened up and licked at me, nipped and bit, and I gave her lips and mouth similar treatment. Our bodies strained up and towards each other, her hands ripped at my t-shirt, pushing up underneath it and spreading out over my abs and chest. I lifted her onto my lap, facing me and let my hands roam every good, warm place on her. I didn’t venture under her clothes; I wanted to. Holy fucking hell, I wanted her. But I had a feeling letting her be in charge would serve me well.

I didn’t know if I had ever been kissed the way she kissed me. It was like her entire body threw itself into the kiss. She was wild, her mouth was sweet and hot, her hands were greedy and quick. I was strained against my pants, and she rubbed against my erection, moaning a little into my mouth. I pulled away from her mouth and sucked down along her jaw and onto her neck. She dug her nails into the bare skin of my back and ground down against me.

“Saxon,” she breathed, grabbing at my shoulders under my t-shirt and kissing all over my ears and neck and down to my arms.

I felt like I was being ripped apart. I wanted so much more. In another life, with another girl, I would have had her on the carpet, my hand down her pants, her shirt crumpled on the floor, my pants undone…and she would have been happy with it. At least in that moment.

But this was now and it was Cadence, and there wasn’t going to be any of that. I couldn’t ruin it like that.

“Saxon,” she said again, this time her voice ragged. It was like she was begging me. I had to use every iota of patience in my body to wrestle with my need for her.

God, I wanted her, wanted to show her how good it could be, wanted to knock any thought of anyone else out of her mind. I knew I had the skills to do it, but I didn’t want to risk it being the first and last time we did it.

She pressed her body to mine harder, said my name again, this time right against my ear, like a promise. She rubbed her face against my neck, and all I could think about was making her mine totally. All of my good intentions were about to burn in Hell when there was a knock at the door. Cadence pulled away from me, her eyes wide with panic.

“I’ll get it.” I tried to calm my breathing and figure out what the hell I would do if I wound up face-to-face with her parents.

“No!” Her eyes were perfectly round with startled fear, and it occurred to me that Cadence knew who was at the door. And I was willing to bet it wasn’t her parents. “No, Saxon.” She smoothed her hair down, took a deep breath and walked to the door.

I wasn’t about to straighten my shirt and make it look nice. Maybe because I had a pretty good idea who it would be.

“Jeff!” Cadence cried, and she returned his hug. Not in a half-hearted way. Not like she had just been sucking my face and grinding against my dick for the last half hour.

Jeff had already looked over her shoulder and seen me.

“Who’s that?” He pointed at me.

I stood, feeling like a grade-A jerkoff.

Cadence looked at me, her face worried, and shook her head.

“I had to drop something off to Cadence. For work,” I ground out. “I was on my way out.”

I stood and walked to the door, and Cadence ran after me. In the house, I could hear the Goon call out, “Who the hell was all this food for, Cade?”

“Saxon, please,” she begged once we were on the porch.

“Don’t sweat it, Cadence.” I forced myself to believe I didn’t give a fucking shit so I could deliver what I was about to say convincingly. “I know how to have a good time. I’m not going to rat you out to your sad-sack boyfriend.”