Games of the Heart (The 'Burg #4)(21)

“A challenge,” he muttered, moving his hands on her and feeling the sexy way her body shifted under him, telling him nonverbally she liked his hands on her.

“You up to it?”

His eyes held hers even as his lips went to her lips.

“Let’s see,” he whispered.

“Awesome,” she whispered back.

His head slanted, hers tilted and Mike set about besting the challenge.

*

“Hungry?” Mike asked then watched the woman in his arms burst out laughing.

They were outside standing by her rental car. Or, more to the point, he had her pinned against it.

He’d f**ked her before donuts. Then they’d eaten donuts and drank cold coffee. Then, with the water pouring down on them, Dusty on her knees in the tub, her fingers wrapped around his hips, she’d very nearly sucked him off before he pulled her up to f**k her in the shower. Out of the shower, she dried her hair and did her makeup after inviting Mike to scroll through her phone and find Hunter’s number. He’d dressed, taken her up on the invitation and programmed it into his phone in order to call her friend later. Then he’d stood in the doorway to the bathroom while she bent over the counter, her sweet ass pointed out, and did her makeup as he programmed all her numbers (cell, home, the “shed” where she made her pieces and gallery) into his phone and he’d programmed his into hers.

When she was done getting ready, they’d made out in bed, going at it like teenagers but before it got too heated, since the time was nigh, he’d stopped it.

They’d made plans. If she was staying, he was at her hotel room to spend the afternoon with her before he had to get home before seven when his kids returned from Audrey’s. If she wasn’t staying, he was following her in her rental to the airport, driving her from the rental place to the terminal and taking her to check in. Then she’d call when she got home. She’d also call when she figured out when she could come back.

Then they pulled on their coats and he walked her out to her car.

Which brought him to now, holding a beautiful woman in his arms and watching her laugh.

She thought he was a good guy but there were occasions in his life where he’d acted like a dick and knew it. None of them he was proud of.

But he sure as f**k was glad he’d done it the day before.

She sobered but, still chuckling, answered, “Famished.”

“Excellent,” he muttered on a squeeze of his arms and she kept chuckling.

Then her amusement faded, her eyes grew intense and she pressed closer, getting up on her toes, her arms around his shoulders going tighter.

“Sucks,” she whispered. “Totally. Thought it sucked before because I want to be with my family. Totally sucks now.”

He knew what she was talking about. She’d told him she had to get home because there was some gallery showing of her work in Austin next week. She was still preparing. Darrin’s death, as deaths always did, came at a shit time.

He bent his head and touched his lips to hers, saying after he lifted away, “Go and be with your family.”

She nodded.

“Text me or phone me,” he ordered.

She nodded again.

“Now kiss me,” he finished, her eyes flared in that way he liked so f**king much, she pressed deeper and did as she was told.

He took over, lost control and they went at it like teenagers, out in the cold, Mike pressing a beautiful woman against the side of a rental car in the parking lot of a hotel in his hometown.

Then he tore his mouth away, kissed her forehead, opened her door, deposited her ass in the driver’s seat and stood, arms crossed on his chest, eyes glued to her car watching her hand moving from between the seats in a wave as she drove away.

He did this grinning.

*

Debbie Holliday sat in her rental car staring at the couple who had been standing in each other’s arms talking then the woman was laughing then they were making out.

As in making out.

In other words, going…f*cking…at it.

Her sister and her ex-f*cking-boyfriend.

“Seriously?” she asked the interior of her car, her voice vibrating with fury. “Seriously?” she hissed.

She’d come by before her conference call to make peace. Her mother had spilled last night that Dusty was in town. She knew this because Mike already told her. She didn’t know the whole f**king family knew all about it.

Right after her mother told her, her father gave her a lecture that he’d lost a son, his wife had too and both his girls had lost their brother. They didn’t need discord. They needed harmony.

It sucked but Dad was right. So Debbie bit the bullet and decided, unlike her little f**king sister who’d holed up in a hotel room and hidden, to do the right thing. Olive branch. Make peace. Give Mom, Dad, f**king Rhonda (who wouldn’t even know, she spent so much time sniveling) and the boys time with all the family together.

And doing the right thing, this was what she got.

Darrin was dead and somehow her little f**king sister was banging her ex-boyfriend and standing out in the parking lot f**king laughing.

Debbie hated it that all her life, even when Dusty went off the rails and exposed the bitch within, that her Mom sang her sister’s praises. “Look at this,” she’d crow, pointing at some bullshit Dusty had scribbled with a crayon like it was Picasso who had held that freaking crayon. “Listen to her, she sounds like an angel,” Mom would whisper reverently anytime Dusty had a solo in church or at the high school.