“Yeah. Exactly.” He’d articulated my exact sentiments. “You’re a complex soul, Rush.”
I really wished I could’ve hung out here all night with him. Catching myself falling hard again when I was supposed to be working on getting over him, I suddenly forced myself up. “I really better get going.”
Rush came around from behind the bar and stopped right in front of me. “Be careful on the road.”
He was uncomfortably close, and his scent, the mixture of cigarettes and his signature cologne was making me weak. It reminded me of the night he spent in my bed. I was supposed to be leaving, but I hadn’t moved. My nipples were tingling, and I had the sudden urge to answer his question from earlier.
“I’ve never had anyone come in through my back door, but I would be open to it with the right person. Very open.”
Before I could capture his reaction, I slipped past him and headed for the stairs.I went to bed hard.
I woke up hard.
I was totally fucked.
There was no talking my dick down after those words exited Gia’s mouth last night.
Very open.
Fuck. Me.
I needed to get myself in check before I had to go to breakfast with my mother.
After yet another jerk-off session in a long, cold shower, I finally made my way downstairs. I didn’t even normally love jerking off. I much preferred being inside of an actual woman, but jerking off to thoughts of anal sex with Gia—well, that was just about the best I was gonna get aside from the real thing.
Mom was waiting for me in the kitchen when I finally emerged.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.”
“Morning, Ma,” I said, pouring some of the coffee she’d made.
“I wasn’t sure if you were ever coming down.”
“Yeah, I slept in. We should go eat. I’m starving.”
Starving for Gia’s ass.
“Actually, I wanted to wait for you to come down, but I can’t go to breakfast. I have to get back home. I completely forgot my new couch is getting delivered this afternoon.”
“Oh. Well, that sucks.”
“Why don’t you call Gia? Ask her to go to breakfast. I really like her.”
“Ma…”
“Sit down, Heathcliff.”
Fuck. My mother sitting me down and calling me by my given name was never a good sign. The last time she’d had me sit for a little one-on-one was when I was seventeen and she told me our dog died.”
I pulled the chair out and planted my ass in it anyway.
“You know I rarely poke my nose into your private business.”
And after last night’s ass debauchery, I figured it would stay that way.
“I know…”
“You don’t talk about women. In fact, pretty much the only time I even laid eyes on the women you…met…was when I saw them climbing out of your bedroom window in the middle of the night when you were a teenager.”
My eyes widened. “You knew about that?”
She laughed. “Of course. And the water you filled my liquor bottles with to replace the alcohol you’d stolen. And the first tattoo you got at sixteen, but didn’t show me until you were eighteen. And all the times you rolled my car out of the driveway and borrowed it for the evening when I’d taken away your privileges for coming home late. By the way, I do appreciate you filling up the tank each time after you stole it.”
I shook my head. “How come you never said anything about all that shit?”
“Because it’s all part of growing up, sweetheart. I kept my eye on you from a distance to make sure you weren’t going overboard or getting yourself into too much trouble. But I needed to let you live a little and experiment while you were under my roof. If you didn’t start raising hell until you moved out, there would be no one to watch you. It’s like those kids who drink for the first time when they go off to college. They’re the ones who get hurt more than the kids who have experimented and learned their lessons already at home.”
“Well…I’m not sure what to say. I’m sorry, I guess. For bringing girls home and being rotten.”
My mother smiled. “That’s not necessary. The point of my bringing this up to you now wasn’t to make you feel bad or to have you apologize. It’s to show you that while you might think you’re hiding things from me, you’re not always as good at it as you think.”
“I’m not following you, Ma.”
She reached over and patted my hand. “You have feelings for Gia. And she has them for you. Strong ones.”
I raked a hand through my hair. “She’s not a casual fu…” I caught myself just in time. “She’s not someone you have a good time with and walk away from without hurting, Ma.”
“So why do you need to walk away and hurt her?”
I opened my mouth to answer and realized I honestly didn’t have one to give.