Page 47 of Of Angels & Absolution

Gloria must feel it too, because she arches her back and hooks her leg over mine. I roll us over, and she kneels over me while I thrust my hips up like I’m fucking her from below. Gloria swings her long blonde hair around, running her hands up her bare body.

I run my hands up her thighs, and she throws her head back and rolls her hips, riding me hard. I could fuck her if I wanted. Maverick says she’s easy, and even though he’s fucking her, that’s never stopped me before. We’ve been known to share a bitch on occasion, and this one is smokin’ hot. The only question is, why don’t I want to?

She’s writhing on top of me like a thirsty bitch, and it’s doing nothing for me. Maybe my dick is broken.

Except that can’t be true, because just thinking about Mercy makes shit start tingling.

Is that normal? Maybe I need to go by Dr. Swift’s, have him check me out, see if I suffer from Tingle Dick Disorder.

It’s not just tingling, though. Lately, whenever I catch a whiff of her scent on my clothes, my cock instantly takes notice, and if I let myself think about why the smell of her is all over me, it’s standing at attention in sixty seconds flat.

So, it’s not my dick. That makes me wonder if it’s Gloria, or any girl who isn’t Mercy Soules. I’ll have to study the topic further, gather some data. I’m not ready to throw in the towel, admit I’m whipped like a dog.

It’s definitely never happened before. I’ve never cared about a connection beyond the physical. Sure, I’m a little more discerning than Maverick, whose motto is “If there’s a hole, there’s a goal.”

I’m not a prude by any means—my motto is “the more, the merrier” when it comes to my buddies and my bed—butI’m downright old-fashioned by Mav’s standards. I prefer my partners have at least three holes, even if I can’t use them all at once. I can always loan them to a couple friends, make a party of it, and it never bothers me if a few swords cross in the process.

The big difference, though, is that I believe in happy endings and other fairytale shit, the very suggestion of which Maverick would find hilarious. My parents remain madly in love and concerningly obsessed with each other to this day, and they’ve never attempted to hide it. It’s embarrassing, and I’d never admit it to them, but I want that.

It doesn’t matter that I’ve never had a serious relationship. I always knew I would. I was waiting for the right girl, so I could have that kind of fairytale ending. I want to embarrass my kids by fucking my wife so hard the headboard busts a hole in the drywall.

Is Mercy that girl? It’s hard to imagine someone less likely to knock a hole in the wall than an uptight little virgin, but maybe there’s a tiger in there just waiting to be unleashed. I always figured the girl would be someone more like Gloria, who owns her body and her sexuality and isn’t afraid of anything. But clearly she’s not the one. My dick has made that abundantly clear.

When I finish my set with her, I go downstairs to the diner that is both my mom’s passion project and a front for the more fun stuff that goes on upstairs.

“Angel baby,” Mom calls, hustling from a table to wrap me in a tight hug. She could work in the back, or not at all, but she still waits tables between rushes so she can chat up the locals, pick up bits of important intel, and keep abreast of the more salacious gossip in town. I think part of her likes to freak strangers out with the huge, gnarly scar that bisects her face too. It makes people wonder about her, and she never corrects the rumors and lore that circulate about how she got the scar. I thinkshe likes that too, so I never weigh in when people speculate in whispers behind their menus or on the sidewalk in town.

Even as a kid, it never embarrassed me, not even when other kids called her Scarface Scarlet. I liked to watch her swing around and fix them with her fiercest scowl, making her scar crinkle. Without uttering a word, she’d sending them scattering like rats. Then we’d laugh and high five.

If one of them got brave enough to ask, she’d always say, “It’s natural to be curious, but there’s no excuse for being rude.”

She never forgot the ones who didn’t listen, and she’d turn them right back out the door if they tried to come back later, even if it had been a year since they insulted her.

I hug her back, then sit when she insists I stay for dinner. Mom loves serving people she loves. That’s how she shows it, by taking care of us.

“Any of your friends coming?” she asks. “Heath, or the one who puts ranch on everything?”

“That was one time,” I say, laughing. “Maybe two. How do you remember that?”

But I don’t need to ask. Mom remembers everything.

Fifteen minutes later, she carries out two plates of steaming buckwheat pancakes, my favorite, and slides into the booth across from me. “Well, isn’t this a treat?” she says. “Figured I’d make myself a plate too. I never get to eat with my firstborn son.”

“I see you every weekend,” I point out.

“Yes, but that’s the whole family,” she says. “I get you all to myself tonight.”

“I did want to talk to you about something,” I say, glancing up at her as I spread the pad of half-melted butter across the top of my stack.

“Shoot, baby,” she says. “You know you can ask me anything.”

I do, but I don’t know how she’ll take this. She never forgets, and rarely forgives, and Mercy sent away her eldest son. And even though Heath is right about how I was treated in there—basically like royalty, thanks to my family’s close connection to Fish-Face Frederick upstairs—to Mom, she will always be the girl who took away her boy at just sixteen.

“I was wondering,” I say, dumping the cup of strawberries onto my flapjacks. “How do you know if you’re in love?”

Mom thinks it over while she spreads her own butter. “I’m going to be honest with you,” she says. “Now, a lot of people will say you just know, or if you have to ask, you aren’t in it. But the truth is, not everyone loves the same. If you got a big heart, it’s all filled up with love, and it’s all too easy to give it to the wrong person. I made that mistake once, before I found your daddy.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask, cutting a triangle from the edge of my stack. “How did you know that wasn’t the right one, and Dad was?”

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