Page 20 of Sin

My eyes narrow on him. “Oh, you’re going down,” I promise, and start to tickle him mercilessly.

He squeals and tries to retreat, but ends up with his precious truck cutting off his escape.

“You think you’re clever?” I ask him, being sure to tickle the spot by his ribs where he seems especially sensitive.

“Nooo,” he giggles as he tries to escape my grasp.

“All you gotta do is tell me I’m tougher than you and it all ends.”

“Never,” he refuses, and I double my attack.

“I give up. I give up. You’re tougher than me,” he finally calls out in a fit of laughter. I let my fingers still.

He collapses into me with relief. Instead of pulling back, I leave my hands splayed across his soft skin.

Though soaking wet, suddenly I’m burning up at every point our bodies touch, my nerves igniting with a heat that spreads through my veins like a wildfire ready to engulf me.

Cassidy inhales in surprise, and I know he can’t miss my cock steel hard against him. I don’t move, only shift my upper body back slightly so I can see Cassidy’s face. His full, pink lips are slightly open, and the blue flecks in his hazel eyes almost glow.Is that desire I see there?

The question consumes me. I have to know. Slowly, I lean down, my lips a whisper away from his?—

“What in the hell are you two up to?” A shrill voice cuts through my brain. Reluctantly, I take a step back from Cassidy and turn around to see Sheila standing there dressed in her designer Sunday best, vibrating like a nervous poodle. “You’re brothers,” she screeches, “you’re disgusting.”

Says the lady whose background check revealed a lengthy employment stint at a brothel. No judgment. Sex work is an honest living, but being a hypocritical bitch is not.

“I’m ashamed to be your mother.” Sheila points to Cassidy, and I see his shoulders droop and his head hang down. Cut to the core by the woman who has done nothing but disappoint him his entire life.

I turn toward her. “I’m not sure what your Ativan-addled brain thinks you saw here today,” I say with an icy menace, “but it couldn’t be any worse than any of the things you took part in at the Bunny Ranch.”

At the mention of her former employer, her eyes bulge and her mouth gapes unattractively.

“And if you keep on your blathering about things youthinkyou saw, just because you’re bored and want to stir things up, I might just have to call up my good friend at TMZ and ask if they want the footage of a preacher wife and those parties she worked when the insurance convention came to Lexington.” I raise my eyebrows, “It shockedmeand I thought I’d seen everything.”

“I-I-I—” she sputters.

I roll my eyes.No one has fucking time for this. “Just tell your son you’re sorry, Sheila.”

“I’m sorry,” she dutifully says to Cassidy without even an ounce of sincerity.

I can’t stand it. I pull the hose down and, with a rapturous glee, aim the nozzle at Sheila and hose the bitch down.

When she resembles a drowned poodle, I finally stop, leaving her staring at me in shock and blessedly silent. “Come on.” I hold out my hand to Cassidy, whose mouth is hanging open at the sight in front of him. “Let’s take your new wheels for a ride.”

For a minute, his head swivels between his mother and me, but once again that mischievous spark comes into his eyes, and after only a second of hesitation, I feel his palm against mine as he takes my hand.

We climb into the old truck, and I turn the ignition. It coughs and shakes, but, sure enough, it starts. I look at the gauges. The tank is almost full, so I back up, avoiding Sheila, who has recovered enough to start wailing, and pull out of the back entrance of the garage and take good Ol’ Betty Jo for a joy ride.

Chapter 10

Cassidy

“Put to death the sinful thing within you.” I’m sitting in the front pew at the Citadel, and Gideon is at his pulpit for his regular Sunday sermon, but this time he seems only to be speaking to me. I look around, and the entire congregation is staring at me.

My attention returns to Gideon, whose voice fills the room with his fiery recriminations. “Lust is a crime. It’s fire that will burn all the way to hell.”

The room begins to fill with flames, but then Sin appears and holds his hand out to me. “Come on. Let’s take a joy ride.”

Then we’re lying back in the truck bed of Betty Jo as the sun bakes into our skin, drying our soaked clothes. Sin rips off his shirt, and I can’t help letting my eyes longingly travel over his tanned muscles.

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