Page 39 of Moonshine Lullabies

“I like to wash!” he cried.

“Too slow,” I said. He grumbled, but he took up the dish towel and waited for me to get started.

I was just wiping down the counters after Tate headed for his room when Collier came up behind me, pulling me back by my belt loops before he thrust his hips forward and pinned me between himself and the counter.

I smiled, slowing, and stopping, closing my eyes as his lips closed on the shell of my ear and he traced the edge with his tongue, his breath hot and sending goosebumps down my opposite side as he growled and breathed into my ear.

“Tomorrow night, nothin’s gonna stop me from making you scream my name,” he said in a low purr and I swear my insides turned to liquid heat that pulled somewhere behind my clitoris.

I thrust back against him, pushing hands against the counter to put a little extra oomph behind it. He stepped back marginally, but it was enough to get me turned around to face him. I put my hands to his face and dragged his mouth down to mine even as he thrust a knee between mine and pressed the top of his thigh hard up against my pussy.

I moaned quietly into his mouth and he chuckled darkly into mine and backed away with a little bit of a warning look. I nodded. He was right. I didn’t want to move too quickly and get caught by Tate. John-Paul I wasn’t worried about when it came to me… I mean, I was an adult, and he was back on the boat already so there wasn’t any concern there. I did low key worry about how he might take it where Collier was concerned, though.

Actually, come to think of it, I didn’t know if he’d put bros before hos… and I know getting pregnant with Tate at thirteen had branded me with the mark of the ho according to our daddy and our mamma. Hell, Daddy still let it be known how much of a disappointment I was in his own way to this day.

I tended to stay away from him unless it was a family gathering. Still, he doted on Tate, him bein’ his first grandson and all.

It was confusing and hurtful a lot of the time and so I did what I did best anytime anything got either confusing or hurtful. I shoved it away and just tried not to think about it.

No sense in cryin’ about it, just like there weren’t no sense in borrowing trouble afore it happened.

My phone chimed, and I went and looked. It was a text from Bertrand’s mamma sayin’ things was all good. She even said she’d be happy to pick ‘im up bein’ that my truck was totaled.

“Damn, news travels fast around these parts,” I told Collier, showing him the text. We’d gone to look at a truck or two yesterday but neither one of ‘em had been right, dang nab it.

Collier had said we should look the other side or even closer to the city and I was thinkin’ he might not be wrong. I’d just had yet to expand my search.

Tate was occupied with some video game on his computer with his friends and so Collier and I settled on the couch to watch a movie. Or really, a movie played while we were each on our phones, lookin’ for something that would work for me truck-wise.

We got a couple of promising prospects on the other side of the city, but it would have to wait for the weekend before we could go look at them.

Finally, it was time for my favorite part of the day… the part where we settled down for bed and got to read a little.

I stood in the bathroom and brushed my teeth while he stood in the doorway and watched me in my thick socks and just a long tee. The way he looked at me was like I stood there, hair and makeup perfect, and in the finest lingerie… but it wasn’t how I was used to being looked at by a man.

I mean, I was used to bein’ looked at as an object of lust. A distinctlywrongoruncomfortablenuance to the male gaze on me.

This wasn’t that. He looked at me like he saw the whole of me. Like he looked past my skin and bones, staring me right into the soul and that he liked what he saw.

I couldn’t help but blush some as I finished swishing my toothbrush in my mouth and bent over the sink, holding my hair back to spit.

“What’re you lookin’ at me like that for?” I asked and his softly painted smile on his lips grew.

“Can’t helpbutlook at you,” he said, stepping in and sliding a hand along my lower back, curving his hand around my hip. He stood behind me, facing me toward the mirror and I met his blue eyes in our reflection.

“Just look at you,” he said, and I did but I didn’t think we were seeing the same thing.

I looked at me and what I saw didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

“What stole your smile, honey?” he asked me gently, and I leaned my head back against his chest and closed my eyes until I was sure I wouldn’t cry as I fell into the deep well of my feelings. When I opened them, his eyes were fixed on our reflection.

“I was just thinking I don’t think we see the same thing when I look at myself in that mirror.”

He kissed my temple and yet he didn’t take his eyes off of me in the mirror.

“There you go with your secrets again,” he murmured just above my ear.

“I suppose I do have a few,” I confessed softly.

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