Bait (Wake, #1)(23)

Honeybee: I'm sure she has. Listen, friend, I have to get up early. I'll let you know how it goes. Tell Aly hi for me. Goodnight.

For a girl with a steady boyfriend, she sure did like the chase. Maybe I'd let her chase me for a little while. It was my best option. After all, I opened the door by texting her. And as much fun as it sounds grabbing her by the hair and dragging her through it, it would feel much more rewarding when she crawled through on her own. I just had to play the game she wanted to play.

Being forward didn't get her attention, but being cool did.

I'd be the coolest motherf*cker around.

Me: Nite, Betty.



She didn't respond after that, I didn't think she would. I hoped she was stewing over it. I hoped she was uncomfortable and irritated. That's how I felt.

I put my phone on the charger and turned it off, ensuring I wouldn't keep stoking a fire I hoped I'd set. I didn’t want to be a flash flame. I wanted to be a slow burn. I wanted to heat her from the inside out. And as I stood there alone in my hotel room, I thought about that night.

With my hands on the bathroom counter and my head hanging, I closed my eyes and remembered what it was like being between her legs. The way she smelled like jasmine and a fresh shower. Her lips were minty, but I could still taste the lingering bourbon on her silky tongue.

I didn't have to look. I knew I was as hard as the granite holding me up. So, I did what I did nearly every night since the one at Hook Line and Sinker, ripped off my clothes, set the shower to cold and climbed in.

I wasn't proud of the fact that I'd had plenty of opportunities to get laid and passed them up for yanking myself in a cold shower. But there I was. Again. One arm up on the wall and a fist around my stupid cock. Every pull I fought for the feeling of her wrapped around me. With every flex of my grip, I pictured her head thrown back against the pillow. I could hear her moans; I could see the flash of honest passion in her eyes.

Then I'd come and felt no better for having done it. Sometimes I'd go at myself again and others, like that night, I'd let my dick suffer for making me victim to reliving the night I couldn't forget.



My flight home was early the next morning, I didn't sleep well but that was nothing new. I decided that since my mom lived so close to the airport it would be a good time to pop in and say hello. Yeah, I was a momma's boy.

My feet shuffled up her driveway after stopping at her mailbox and getting her mail. I read her name, Deb Moore, and wondered why she never changed it after my father and her divorced. If I were a woman, the second my marital status changed my name would, too. Especially if the jerk ran off with a woman ten years younger, like my dad had.

Don't get me wrong, I was well past over that by then. People get divorced and remarry. But he did it in a hurry. My dad and Carmen married after a three-month engagement, then they gave Cory and me a little sister, Audrey, about eleven months later. They gave us two actually, Audrey and Morgan. Audrey was seventeen and wild, where Morgan was sixteen, shy and quiet. They were both good girls and I loved them as much as I loved Cory, even if we didn't share the same mom. It's funny how things like that work out.

I opened the door to my mom's house with the key I'd never part with and yelled, “Mom!? It's your favorite son and I'm hungry.”

“Cory is that you?” she yelled back as I saw her round the hall into the foyer where I was standing. We're twins, but she knew my voice. She just liked teasing me. “Cory, you look like hell,” she said sheepishly, laughed, then complimented herself. “That was a good one.”

“How long have you been waiting to use that?” I pretended to be wounded and placed my hand over my heart. “That hurts, Mom.”

“Oh you poor baby. If you visited your old mom more, I wouldn't forget what you looked like. Come here.” My mom was the picture of graceful aging. She was about five foot five and in great shape. That day, she wore cargo shorts and a tank top covered in dirt. Her tan made her long, wavy, silver hair seem even more polished. Her blue eyes sparkled as she leaned up to kiss me on the cheek. “I'd hug you but I'm mucky. I've been out back harassing the plants.”

I wrapped both of my arms around her anyway and picked her up. She protested and hit my shoulders telling me to put her down. “Casey, you'll get dirty. Knock it off,” she scolded through her contradicting giggles. I placed a kiss on her head when I put her back on her feet. She was the mom to twin boys and used to being manhandled by us.

“I flew in this morning and decided to stop by before I headed home,” I told her as we walked into the kitchen where she immediately started washing her hands to make me something to eat. I didn't expect her to, but telling her not to was a losing battle.

“Well, I'm glad you did. I've missed you. You're a busy man these days. I'll probably never get that shed painted now.” She opened the fridge, knowing exactly what I was after. She didn't like pastrami, but it was always in there. I wondered how much she threw away when I didn't show up for a few weeks. “Provolone and mustard? You want me to slice a tomato?”

“No tomato. That's fine.”

“I just brought one in. It's no trouble.” She looked expectantly at me, proud of her garden and wanting me to eat something she'd harvested. I was like that with my brews. The look in her eyes was easy to read. It said, “Eat the tomato, I grew it just for you.”