Chapter 19 I'm kind of like a finger in the ass. I'm either a wonderful surprise, or I make everything really fucking awkward and uncomfortable. -Audric's secret thoughts AUDRIC "No, look," I said to Eedie. "This right here is why you wouldn't want to do that particular set up with the pipes." I then went on to show her if she didn't have the P-trap what would happen. "Oh." She frowned. "That makes sense." I winked at her and went back to work, stopping periodically to talk with a few of my employees I encountered as I moved through the area, inspecting the job that they'd done. That was how I'd spent my entire morning, and I was just about to knock off for lunch when the prettiest sight in the world walked in with a bright pink hard hat on her head and a Cheshire grin on her face. The smile that lit my face when I spotted her caused the men I was talking with pause in their conversation with me, looking over their shoulder to see what'd caught my attention. "Shew," one of my longest employees, Rod, whistled sharply. "She's fucking hot." The whistle caught Eedie's attention, and Eedie squealed. "Creole! Hey!" Eedie hustled over to Creole, threw her arms around her, and said, "I'm so glad I got to see you. I missed you last time." The soft smile that overtook my face was alarming to my employees, too. "Who is this girl?" Rod asked Dan, one of the newest employees. "I've never seen him smile before." I flipped him off. "Oh, fuck off. You know you have." Rod grinned. "Just glad to see you looking happy, my man. Haven't seen you look like that in a long while." No, he hadn't. Because I hadn't been happy in a really long time. In fact, if I had to gander a guess, I'd say I hadn't been happy since I was sixteen and walking in on my mom's face half-hanging off. Speaking of my mother, she chose to call me in that moment, making my happiness start to fade. I contemplated not answering it, but realized that was the cowardly way out and excused myself to go stand in a deserted corner of the nearly finished corner apartment. "Hey, Mom," I said quietly. I'd been ignoring her calls for a week now, unsure if I ever wanted to take another one. But I wasn't a coward. "Hey, Audric," my mother's computer spoke for her. "Do you have time to meet with me and my therapist soon?" I nearly said no. But I wanted her to go to a therapist. She hadn't been to one ever. She'd refused to ever even work with one. The fact that she was willing to go made me agree, even though I didn't want to. "Sure," I grimaced. "When?" There was a long gap of time while she typed and told her computer what to say. "I'm leaving next week, and he agreed to take me on remotely," the computer answered. "So, preferably, in the next three or four days." I looked at my watch and thought about what I had to do in the next few days. I did fully plan on getting on a plane with Creole to Hawaii Friday and planned to stay there all weekend. So that left today or tomorrow. "I can do tomorrow," I replied reluctantly. "Perfect," she typed. "I'll see you tomorrow. Noon would be best. Love you." I hung up without replying to her words of endearment. I wasn't sure that I'd loved my mother for a long time. At this point, she felt more like a burden. Had since she decided that her life started and ended with my sister. Since she stopped being a mother to me, and a wife to my dad. My dad was my best friend. And she'd been jerking him around so fucking long. Instinctively, I called my dad and said, "Did Mom call you?" He hesitated. "Yes. I'm going to go up there either today or tomorrow and meet with her and her therapist." He cleared his throat. "We're officially divorced. A judge fast-tracked it for her." That was news to me. I'd always thought a divorce took a long time to accomplish, even when both parties were in agreement. "Um," I hesitated. "Congrats?" My dad snorted a laugh. "Dad," I said quietly. "You should call her." My dad made a strangled sound in his throat. "I'm guessing neither one of you ever moved on. You are in love with each other. It's time to start living again." Dad sighed. "I don't think you should go tomorrow," I said. "I think that you need to clean your hands. Don't go. Don't dredge up anything else with her. If there's anything important said, I'll relay it. But you don't need to be dealing with her shit anymore. I'm not sure what, exactly, this is supposed to be, but I'm not letting her keep her claws sunk in." Dad didn't say anything. "Just, trust me, okay?" I pleaded. "Go to Hawaii. Go see her." Dad made a noise in his throat. "I thought you were using the house this weekend." I grinned. "I am." "Are you saying I should go, and then stay with her?" He chuckled. "If she'll have you." Dad made a growling sound under his breath then said, "You'll tell me what she said?" "If I think you need to hear it," I agreed. After a few more words of encouragement on my end, and agreement on his, we hung up. I leaned forward and rested my head against a stud in the wall when I heard, "You're good for him." I twisted my head, not lifting it off the wood, and said, "It's like trying to coax a skittish horse into doing what you want." "Is he going to go?" she questioned. That's when the smile lit my face. "Oh, yeah. Hopefully she lets him in the door, though, or we're going to be spending our weekend with my dad." Her nose wrinkled. "I guess that's better than nothing." I chuckled, then pushed off the wall and walked toward her. She still had an armful of bags, and I bent over her to peek into one. "What'd you get me?" "I stopped at the Mexican food place around the corner." She held the bag open so I could see the white queso. "I didn't share any of this with the guys, but I did bring enough chips and salsa to feed ten." "They better have thanked you," I said as I led her into the corner of the room where there was a table set up to cut boards on. "Did you get the fried donut things?" She scoffed and shook the last bag she was about to place on the table. "How can you go to El Sombrero and not get them?" I dug into the queso while she started setting out the rest of the food. She even produced a couple of beers out of her huge Mary Poppins purse. "Damon used to love this place," she smiled wistfully. "I'd order him the kid's meal, and they'd always bring the donuts out with his meal. He'd eat them first every time, then we'd all act like he didn't get any and we'd ask for more." She snickered. "The ones closest to our old house used to love him. They even came to his funeral. Brought him some donuts. We buried him with them." I pulled her into my arms and dropped my forehead against hers. "He lived a really good life while he was here, baby. He was so loved. You should've heard how much everyone talked about him. They never had a single bad thing to say about him." "He didn't have time to get a reputation." She snickered. "But, man, he was a pretty rotten kid sometimes. He was sick so often though that when he did something naughty, you didn't want to reprimand him because he was feeling well only such a small amount of the time. So you didn't want to upset him in any way." "So what you're saying is he was spoiled rotten," I teased. Her eyes twinkled as she reached for a chip and completely submerged it into the queso. Again, something she'd always done. I'd always gotten a kick out of how much she liked cheese. I waited until she'd pulled her chip out, which she let drip over an open tortilla in her other hand, before going for a dunk of my own. We ate and talked about anything and nothing, not a hint of awkwardness between us. There was, however, a certain understanding. I knew just as well as she did that the moment we were done eating, I was going to be feasting on something else. Once I'd broken the dam, it was an unending feeling that simmered beneath the surface: wanting her. It was something that I almost felt was paramount to living at this point. She ate half her meal, then offered me the other half. I took it and ate the enchilada in two bites before scraping the plate clean of her rice and beans-that she did not, under any circumstance, let touch. I'd just placed the trays down when she was on me, her hands in my hair as she pulled her lips down onto my own. "Spicy," she said as she tasted my lips. "Beans and queso, my favorite." I growled and picked her up, my hands going to her ass. Her bare ass. "Cree, honey," I said as I felt bare skin where there definitely should be fabric. "What are you wearing underneath this dress?" Her smile was sly as she replied, "Nothing. You were a foregone conclusion." I snorted. "Was I now?" My cock was now so hard that my tool belt was making it damn near impossible to move without it digging in deep into my tip. "Oh, yeah, you were," she said. "I'm deliciously sore, but I couldn't stop myself. I needed you. I felt like I was about to die if I didn't have you inside of me again." God, I'd needed her, too. I'd been thinking about her all morning. It was making it damn impossible to work. "Well, I can't leave you feeling like you're going to die." Luckily the one apartment I'd come in to talk on the phone was mostly finished with framing and insulation. It meant that we were hidden from prying eyes, but still, I took her into the bathroom and situated us in an alcove in the corner anyway. Just in case. She may be comfortable with me, but I knew she wouldn't be comfortable with anyone else seeing her. My hands skimmed up the length of her bare thigh, then farther until sinking into something a little bit more wet. "So hot for me, baby," I whispered as I dotted kisses along her jawline. "How long you been thinking about me here?" I swept my finger over her entrance, gathering her wetness and smoothing it in ever-widening circles. "Since I woke up an hour ago," she admitted. "I kept wondering if you'd come back home if I called, but I figured you'd need to work today and tomorrow to be able to skip out for the weekend. So I came to you, I knew you'd have to take a lunch break eventually." I let her slip gently to the floor, and only when she was steady on her feet did I rip off the tool belt and drop it to the floor along with my jeans. They caught around my boots, along with my underwear. The phone and keys that were in my pockets hit the floor so hard that there's no way that the people in the other rooms hadn't heard it. I knew that I looked silly as fuck, but I wanted to be inside of her about as much as I wanted to take my next breath. She obviously did, too, because she hopped into my arms and wound those beautiful legs around my waist. My cock bobbed as I kissed her, bouncing against her pussy with each beat of my heart. She moaned, reaching back to catch my cock so she could press it against herself. Her hips started to move, coating my cock with her flowing juices. "Inside me." She pulled back, lifting her hips as she did. I helped her by holding her up, watching as she lined my cock up with her entrance. Both of our eyes were downcast, watching where we were about to be joined. "Now, Audi," she ordered. I smiled and slowly lowered her down onto my cock, watching as her pussy engulfed me. "God, you're so fucking hot." I groaned. "Why are you so warm inside?" It felt like I was sinking my cock into an electrical socket. Shocks of pleasure zinged through my body, starting in my balls and shooting straight down the length of my spine. "Goddamn," she breathed, her hips jerking. "I have no clue why I feel so hot inside, but let's talk about how deep you reach. I've never felt like this before." A dark thought entered my head, making me stutter inside of her for a second before I picked up the pace. My mind going there wasn't ever going to do any good. I couldn't change the past, but I could mold our future. Fingers tightening around her hips, I pulled her down onto my cock as I used my thighs to thrust upward. She gasped, her head falling back, and caught some of her hair on a stray nail. Neither one of us stopped to untangle it as I took her. Deep, hard, rough thrusts as my mind went dark. I wanted to keep her. I wanted to fill her belly with babies. I wanted to live the rest of my life making her happy. I wanted to wake up every day, watch her with our babies, and go to work while I knew they were safe at home with her. I wanted to roll over in the middle of the night and reach for her. Pull her into my arms. There were a hundred thousand things that I'd thought about over the years-missed and wanted. I'd watched several of my club brothers find their happily ever after, and I wanted that, too. I wanted her to be mine. I wanted to marry her. I wanted to grow so old that we could finish each other's sentences. I wanted it all. A warm, soft hand pressed against my cheek, and I opened my eyes. Equal intensity met my own, and I knew that she was on the same page as me. I slammed myself home at the same time I leaned forward and kissed her. Our tongues tangled, my ass flexed, and then I was swallowing her scream of completion. And when it was time to pull out...I didn't.