Channing’s smile was warm as she gestured for me to take a seat. “Do you want some coffee?”
I thought about that for a long moment, then shrugged. “Actually, I’d love some.”
***
“I’m going to have to ask you to share your parents with me,” I said hours later as Justice was showing me to my room. “They’re great. I love both of them.”
“They’re great until they embarrass the shit out of you,” he agreed, sounding amused.
I wouldn’t care about the embarrassment, either. Not if I had them.
He pushed open the one and only door that was at the end of the hallway and said, “This is my old bedroom.”
I turned to stare into the darkness, and he reached forward and flicked the lights on, illuminating the room.
The quick glance into the room had my heart rate picking up speed.
The room wasn’t anything too fancy. Mostly it was just dark colors and clean lines.
But there was a hint of masculinity. A hint of Justice.
“It’s…bare,” I found myself saying.
“My mother took down all the half-naked girl posters after I left,” he chuckled. “But the colors and everything are the same.”
I stepped through the door and looked at the king bed that was the focal point of the room.
“You had a king-sized bed when you were younger?” I asked, looking at the bed, then back at him.
I had a twin-sized.
Both now and back then.
My phone rang in my pocket, and I silenced the vibration and set the phone down onto the table next to the large bed before turning to see Justice studying it.
“Yeah,” he said. “Had one since I was young. It was my parents’ cast off at first. Then when I was thirteen or fourteen, I got another one because one of my buddies spilled carburetor fluid all over it. Stunk to high heaven, and nothing my mom tried got the smell out. I got a new one the next week with explicit instructions not to let Ford anywhere near my room.”
“Carburetor fluid?” I asked. “What the hell was that doing in your room?”
“We were working on a motorcycle and my mom said that we couldn’t watch what we were watching in the living room anymore.” He grinned. “There was too much violence and cuss words on it, and she was tired of hearing it. So we went to my room, and then Ford fucked my bed up.”
I just shook my head and sat down on the bed that had cradled Justice’s body once upon a time.
Something that I wanted to do. Preferably with my thighs parted.
I shifted on the bed uncomfortably and looked around at his room.
I could practically see where the posters were hung once upon a time.
“So are you a boob man, or an ass man?” I found myself asking, thinking about the posters.
When he didn’t answer right away, I turned only my head to see him studying me with such intensity that my heart started to pound.
“Are we talking about with you? Or just in general?”
“Ummm,” I hesitated.
His grin was positively wicked when he said, “Goodnight, Royal. I’ll be in the guest room right off the kitchen if you need me.”
And with that, he was gone.
He took my inhibitions with him.Chapter 15
If you clean the receipts out of your purse and stack them together, it explains why you’re broke.
-Royal’s secret thoughts
Royal
I couldn’t sleep.
I’d tried.
Oh, boy, had I tried.
But I couldn’t find sleep.
And that all had to do with a certain wicked man that had known exactly what he was doing when he’d left me with that comment earlier.
Are we talking about with you? Or just in general?
I groaned and flopped back over onto my other side, eyes squeezing shut as I tried to tell myself that what I was about to do was the completely wrong idea.
I shouldn’t do it…yet I was going to.
Practically throwing the covers off of me and onto the floor in my haste to stand, I marched to the door and came to a sudden halt when I looked at my state of dress.
I was wearing a long t-shirt, panties, and nothing else.
But, with it being three in the morning, I highly doubted that I’d be seeing anybody else.
Mind made up, I cracked the door open, peeked out into the hall, then opened it wider. I used the light from my phone to help navigate in the dark.
The house was quiet besides the sound of the grandfather clock that I’d seen when Justice had led me to the bedroom he’d once occupied.
Hell, it was pretty damn loud now that there were no other sounds to mask its clicks.
Creeping down the hallway to the kitchen, I finally spotted the door to the guest room that Justice said he’d be in and walked up to it.
I didn’t give myself time to think.
Instead, I just opened it, then closed it really quickly behind me.