Page 102 of The Fine Art of Faking It
He released her nipple with apopand took her mouth as they rode out their releases in sync wrapped around each other.Partners.
* * *
Mom: Just saw The Monthly Moon’s article on your cousin setting the fire at the Gates house. Why didn’t you tell us it wasn’t you?
Eden: I did! You didn’t believe me!
Mom: Well, whose fault is that?
Eden: Yours!
Mom: I guess I never gave Moon Beam enough credit for family loyalty. I owe her an apology. You’re retroactively grounded.
Eden:head desk GIF
39
Thanksgiving followed suit with the rest of November in Blue Moon—fifteen degrees colder than it should have been with a mess of snow flurries that flirted with freezing rain.
The shit-tastic weather was tempered by the town’s reaction to the special edition ofThe Monthly Moon. Eden lost count of the number of neighbors who came up to her on the street and lied sweetly to her face, claiming that they never believed she’d set the fire to begin with. But Eden was feeling magnanimous—or maybe that was orgasmic—and graciously accepted their sort-of apologies.
Moon Beam was enjoying her newfound notoriety as an accidental teenage fire-starter. “It gives me a bad girl edge without the fear of being packed off to the commune,” she’d insisted.
With the weather and the extra workload of planning HeHa festivities, Eden had considered backing out of the Pierce family invitation. Her fireplace and sweats would have made up for missing out on turkey and homemade gravy, but the Pierces were a tenacious lot.
On Thanksgiving morning, an inch of snow fell, and Summer and Phoebe had both texted Eden to make sure she and Davis were still coming. To drive the point home, Joey had called her on speakerphone shouting above what sounded like a wrestling match between Jax, their foster son Caleb, and Waffles the family dog and issued the ultimatum that they “better get their asses over to the farm.”
“We could have spent the day naked in bed,” Davis lamented beside her. They’d been spending most of their recent nights that way. And Eden was growing rather fond of their new hobby. Sex.
He stomped his feet on Jax and Joey’s front porch, dislodging the snow from his shoes. The house was a cozy-looking log cabin with a wide porch and gabled roof. It was a quick walk from the back door to Joey’s beloved stables where Pierce Acres had launched a wildly successful breeding program thanks to Jax’s apology stallion.
“Hold on to that thought,” Eden told him. “If we play this right, we can be back at the inn and naked by four.” She tightened her grip on the two bottles of wine Davis had thoughtfully brought for their first stop.
“Count me in.”
“No eating too much or drinking too much,” Eden cautioned. Sex on a full stomach was no one’s idea of fun.
Davis’s hand found its way to the nape of her neck, and he gave her an affectionate squeeze when she rang the doorbell. “Three hours. We’ve got this,” he whispered.
The door flung open, and two dogs raced past them into the front yard. Waffles, the scruffy mixed herding dog, was happily nipping at the heels of a small black and white pony—scratch that—Summer’s rescue Great Dane Valentina, who dashed ahead of Waffles in a game of tag.
“Sorry about that.” Reva was Jax and Joey’s foster daughter. A high school senior, she had a serious face and quiet nature. The girl had been raising Caleb on her own after their mother skipped town before Sheriff Cardona and Jax and Joey intervened.
She was wearing yellow and orange leggings decorated with turkeys and an oversized hoodie.
“Someone didn’t get the dress code message,” Reva said, eyes skimming Eden’s jeans and forest green blouse.
“Joey was serious about that?”
“How the hell else are you supposed to eat eight hundred pounds of food if you don’t have an elastic waistband?” Joey demanded, appearing behind Reva and glaring at their apparel. “Rookie mistake.”
Their hostess was decked out in gray sweat pants and one of Jax’s old t-shirts.
Eden shot an apologetic look at Davis. She’d assumed Joey’s “don’t get dressed” message was a joke.
Eden held up the wine. “We can just go home if the dress code is—”
“Get your asses in here.” Joey wrestled the wine out of her grip and motioned for them to come inside.
