He nodded, and the little flecks of gold in the center of his chocolate brown eyes bounced and glittered under the bathroom lights. “Anything.”
“Fuck me in the shower?”
“I don’t want to make you late for your flight, honey, and the things I’m picturing take a whole lot of time.” His words said no, but his cock was definitely saying hell yes against my belly.
“I guess you better speed them up, then,” I responded as I pushed his wet boxer briefs down his legs and started stroking him with my hand.
He smirked, but he didn’t resist, lifting me up by my ass and wrapping my legs around his waist. My back was pressed against the tile, and his cock was inside of me between one breath and the next.
The memory of this would stay with me, almost as clear as if he were with me himself, all the way to San Diego and back.
“Where are you?” Kline asked, without prompting or greeting, as I put the phone to my ear.
“Your mom’s house.”
The answer came on instinct and without any planning. Jokes and jabs were where I really excelled, and amiable insults sometimes felt easier than breathing. But my mind wasn’t really there, on the unexpected phone call with one of my best friends.
In reality, I could feel the cheap Berber of hotel carpet under my feet, and the sun reflected just slightly off the building across the street. The tinted floor-to-ceiling windows of my room kept it from piercing my eyes like it would have if I’d been outside in it directly, though, and my beard was longer than I’d ever let it get. It was like I was one of those Special Forces guys, highly trained to blend into my surroundings even if it meant acclimating to a completely different culture and becoming a longhair. Except, it was actually nothing like that, and the fact that my brain even came up with that analogy just proved how motherfucking insane I was becoming.
“Maureen would be nothing less than disgusted with you right now.”
I shook off my self-loathing and focused on the voice in my ear.
“Hey, I didn’t mean Maur any disrespect, and I think she knows me well enough to understand that.”
He laughed a little, but it was more than an auditory display of mirth. Sort of, Ha-ha, that Thatch, what a ridiculous fuck. And really, right now, I agreed with him.
“Trust me, she doesn’t.”
“Well, fuck. Do I need to worry about Bob hunting me down?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.
Kline breathed the sigh of the beleaguered. “I was calling to see if you wanted to have lunch. But now I don’t think I want to have lunch with you.”
“Well, then,” I said through a laugh. “I guess it’s a good thing I’m not in town then, huh?”
“You’re not in town?” I could practically see his eyebrows snapping together in my head. No statement was simple where he was concerned, and frankly, he was right. There was always deeper meaning. He was just better at mining for it than anyone else I knew. “Where the hell are you?”
“Business,” I answered as I lifted the binoculars to my eyes and trained them on the building across the street. Then I shook my eyes to clear them when I realized I was too close to need binoculars and set them back on the table to my right.
“Business?” Kline asked, skeptical. “How incredibly fucking vague. I was actually after a location. You know, a state, a country, maybe even a city on Planet Earth.”
“I’m busy, okay?” I told him honestly. I didn’t plan to tell him much else since I’d pretty much lost my goddamn mind, but I liked Kline. He deserved at least a little tiny crumb of truth.
“Busy doing what?” he pushed, and then I sighed.
My impatience was about to peak in an all-out musical crescendo.
She was supposed to have been there by now. I’d wanted to follow her the whole way. From her hotel to the supply pickup to the actual shoot, but I’d managed to talk myself out of going full-on paparazzi. That’s what made celebrities get into car accidents all the time, and well, that would completely defeat the entire point of everything I’d sunk so low to do.
“I have to go,” I told him, and I did. I didn’t particularly feel like weeping while I was on the phone with him, and the longer it took Cassie to arrive, the more scenarios of death and carnage and blood passed through my not-well mind. Seriously, this was probably the early stages of a psychotic break, and not at all in keeping with everything I hoped I’d be as a father.
Namely, not a fucking stalker.
Yes, stalking. I’m stalking the soon-to-be mother of my child.
Don’t say a goddamn word. I know, okay? I know.
“What’s going on?” Kline asked again, in that annoying as fuck voice that said he knew everything, and anything he didn’t know, he’d find out. Goddammit. The cliff above Lose-Your-Fucking-Mind-Burg was already steep, my huge tree-trunk legs walking right along the edge, and he wasn’t helping.