Fireball (Cheap Thrills #1)(28)

Before I could say anything back, I felt a mouth press against mine through the gap, and my eyes flew open. For a millisecond I’d worried it was an escaped convict, but then common sense had caught up with me. That didn’t mean I wasn’t relieved at the confirmation that it was Dave who was kissing me. Damn straight I was.

My mouth opened of its own free will, the betraying body part, and then his tongue was gently flicking into my mouth. I was lost. Lost in the taste of him, lost to the realization of him being a good guy, lost to the feelings that had hit me rethinking everything he’d done for me and Jose, lost to the smell of his cologne…

“Yo, if you guys are gonna do it, lemme know so I can go home. I just got told I can be a kinky book narrator so I’ve got some research to do. Maybe I can do those noises for porn, like a voiceover in case the dude’s is high pitched and squeaky.” My neighbor shouted from his cell.

Pulling back until only the tips of our noses were touching, Dave whispered, “You gonna go on that date with me then?”

I didn’t even need to think twice when I answered him. “Hell yes, I am.”

Dave had just moved in for another kiss, this time grinning, when the sound of Jarrod singing Kiss The Girl from The Little Mermaid distracted me. Still, I enjoyed that kiss. And how many women could say they kissed a man who’d arrested them twice, through the door of their cell, with a man who was going to have a future in erotic book narration who was singing a song from a Disney movie?

See – be you, and you become your own normal.





Chapter Eight





Tabby





The fact I was holding Olivia was the only reason my sister was still breathing the oxygen she was using to laugh about my second arrest.

“I can’t believe he did it again,” she howled into the cushion from my couch. If I held it over her face, just a little bit… “And you told Jarrod, Jarrod Kline, he had a career in reading erotica books. I just can’t.” She ended it by tipping her head back and cackling like a hyena at my ceiling. “The guy’s like… he’s huge. And he lifts cars for fun.”

More than likely that’s an exaggeration, but it would have been a shame to have a voice like his and be five-foot-four. I’m not being size-ist, if that’s even what it’s called, but all I could think of was the dude from The Green Mile or Idris Elba, not Ricky Bobby (yes, that was his real name) who’d grown up next door to me and had stopped growing at the age of twelve.

Refusing to give her a reaction and anymore details, something I should have probably not done to begin with, I focused on my sleeping niece and watched her little bow lips twitch. I wonder what babies dreamed about? Boobies? Milk? The moment they shot out of a vagina?

When Jose continued laughing, I refrained from launching the full bottle of booby milk at her head that was on the table beside me, and waited for Olivia to open her eyes. Jose’s milk had come in, and she was now expressing it with a new breast pump so we could feed Olivia with a bottle. Apparently she wasn’t comfortable whipping out boobzilla and her mammaronis in public to feed the baby, so this was a good compromise.

A glance at the time showed that Liv should be waking up soon, and that might shut her evil mom up. Maybe telling her a story would help her along?

“Once there was an evil witch who lived in a castle in… Tearsville with a beautiful little princess called Olivia. The evil witch loved to watch bad things happen to people, like the stunning princess Nabiba,” this really was a lame story, but in my defense I’d never had to make one up on the spot before. “The evil witch, Hose, because she was a ho, laughed at how princess Nabiba had a weird prince who kept locking her in his tower.”

“Tower,” Jose snorted, hitting the couch cushion beside her. “I can’t even…”

Evil cow. “He did indeed lock her in his tower…”

“Because the prince wanted to deflower her in his tower…” she snickered. “While the handsome giant called Jarrod read her dirty books and sang songs about sex.”

I never got to continue my story, which was probably a good thing because it was pretty shit and I’d never been good at making things up, because she started singing Red Light Special by TLC just as someone knocked on the door. Seeing as how I was stuck under seven perfect pounds of baby, I left it to the harpy to see who it was. I had other obvious reasons for not answering it – around six-foot-three-inches of them, with a sheriff badge on his shirt who I was avoiding. But see, this was where Olivia got her first lesson in karma. She may have been asleep for it, but little kids were like sponges so it totally would have made its way into her head in amongst the boobies and milk.

Still singing, and now adding butt shimmies, Jose made her way to my door and swung it wide open without checking who it was. On a side note, I really liked that she felt secure enough to do that, because it meant Larry and Rita Slutita had no power over her. She hadn’t even told me to check who it was on my phone, which was linked to the cameras and security that had been installed at the same time as hers. I liked it even more when she let out a yelp as she came face to face with the handsome Ellis who was leaning against the wall, grinning at her.

“I only came over to see if y’all needed a hand setting anything up, but you wanna give me the red light special, I’d be a stupid man to say no.”