August: Calendar Girl Book 8 (2 page)

Judi chuckled. “Okay, honey, you go ahead and believe that.”

“Why don’t you? It’s my apartment. I say what goes, and I definitely say where I move to”—I pointed a finger to the granite—“and it won’t be here.” Even though I would love living here. Having dinners made for me, scrumptious meals every night. Sitting on the veranda enjoying the ocean view, or the opposite one that looked out over the hills. Sleeping in the blissful cloud that was Wes’s bed. But there was no way I was going to do it now because my new boyfriend demanded it.

Judi stopped stirring, turned down the heat, and leveled her gaze at me. She set her elbows on the counter and leaned forward. “Love, I’ve been with Weston a long time. Since he was a wee one. There are very few things that he doesn’t get when he sets his mind to having them. You would do well to learn that now. If you are what he wants, you are what he will have, or he’ll die trying.”

When I thought about it, really thought about it, it was kind of nice to be coveted in such a way. However, I was not, nor would I become, some rich man’s possession. If he thought he was just going to get me to move in without any discussion, he had another think coming. “Well, my dear boyfriend is going to have to ask me himself,” I said with a determination I tried my damnedest to feel.

“Ask you what?” Wes walked back into the room from his office where he’d gone to check on some work before dinner.

“Judi tells me you want her and some movers to go pack up my apartment and move it all here during my stay.” I cocked a hip and braced my hand on it. My super-serious-nothing-is-getting-by-me pose had been perfected over the years.

Wes frowned and then shrugged. “Don’t you want to be with me?”

Jeez, when he said it like that, I had no response other than, “Yes, of course.”

“And you want to live here eventually?” His head tipped to the side, a non-defensive gesture.

“Well, yeah,” I said, not getting the point of where he was going with this.

“Okay.” He walked over to me, caged me in by placing his long arms on each side of the counter behind me. He brought his face down low so I could look him straight in the eyes. Green-on-green. His breath puffed against my lips and made other parts of my body start paying very close attention. “Mia, sweetheart, will you move your stuff into my house and let this be your home?”

I licked my lips and stared into his beautiful eyes, noticing the way the fine lines around his eyes and lips made him seem distinguished. Beautiful. More handsome. I sucked in a breath, and he waited, cool as a cucumber, until I gave him my answer. I was completely powerless to his brand of charm. “Okay, I’ll move in.”

He grinned that heart-stopping-melt-your-panties-into-a-puddle-at-your-feet smile, and I swooned. “Love you.” When he followed up anything with
that
, he was bound to get his way. Seriously, I needed to start preparing for the future of softly said love yous and their effect on my rational mind.

“Love you,” I responded.

He kissed me, the barest of touches before he pulled back, stepped away, and clapped his hands. “All right. That’s settled. Dinner ready, Judi? Everything set?”

I spun on a toe and planted my ass back in the chair. Judi smirked as she plated our dinner. “Everything is just right, Sonny.” She glanced my way and winked. I wanted to hate her for being right, but I couldn’t. The love she had for Wes stemmed from eons together, and at the end of the day, she knew him better than I did.

For now…but not for long.

B
ox number
five was taped and ready to go. I moved the giant box of clothes to the stack I’d already prepped. Judi was humming in the kitchen, taping up her stash of stuff.

“Done here,” she called cheerily. I scowled. “Poppet? What could possibly be making you so blue?”

I twisted my neck from side to side, waiting for that crack signaling release of tension, and frowned when nothing came. “I don’t know. I hate moving days. It always feels so final. Like when you take this step, you can’t take it back.”

“Oh, pish posh. You’ll settle right in with us like you’ve always been a fixture.”

A fixture. Great. Something stagnant and unmoving. But I would be moving to my next client’s house in a few days. Wes knew it, and we’d still not discussed it. I needed to know that I could finish doing what I had started for my family without being given a pile of money from my ridiculously rich boyfriend. The last thing I’d ever want to be was a mooch. People hated mooches. I hated mooches. They sucked rotten eggs, and I was determined never to be one. Wes, on the other side of the coin, must very much like mooches and wanted me to mooch away. Not going to happen.

When the morning was over and we’d packed up my entire life in the span of three hours, my mood had not improved. I opened my cell and hollered at a bitch.

“This better be good. I’ve got my eyes on a high-roller,” Gin said into the phone.

My scowl likely deepened when I added the choking, gagging, gurgling noise.

“What? Don’t judge. I’m not sitting sweet on hot mother fucker number one hundred and twelve, in the span of—what—six months? A girl has to look out for her future, you know!”

“Gin, seriously? A high-roller? You were the one who told me there was no such thing as a high-roller out on the floor. That those bastards were all just losing their home, their wife, and their kids’ college tuition in the hopes of winning against the house. Don’t fall for that garbage. A true high-roller would be behind closed doors having clandestine poker tournaments with his other Monopoly-playing rich buddies, not showing off to a Vegas girl. Cool your jets and talk to me.”

Her gum smack sounded loud in my ear, and even though I think it pierced an eardrum, I’d rather hear that sound than the sound of her giving herself cancer one breath at a time smoking those cigarettes. “I’ve moved into Wes’s house.”

The gum-smacking stopped. Everything stopped. No sound at all came from the line. I pulled the phone away and looked at the display. No, still connected. “Gin? Hello?”

“You fucking moved in with bachelor number one? Get. The. Fuck. Out!” Her tone was astonished and laced with a heavy dose of ‘holy shit.’

“Er, not exactly. I mean, kind of. Yeah. Maybe. Um…yes?” I worried my nail with my teeth and waited.

“You moved in with Malibu Ken?”

I blinked and waited.

“Mr. Rules?” She scoffed.

Again, staying silent was the only option. I’d known her for a lifetime, and these things took time to process.

“Golden god on the surf board?” Her tone turned dreamy this time. Okay, now we were getting somewhere.

“Movie writer guy, the one that changes characters so they look like my hot BFF guy? You moved into his house, in the Malibu mansion?”

“It’s not really a mansion…” I started, but she cut me off.

“Zip it! Are. You.
Insane
? Do you need your head checked?”

I rubbed on my dome and felt around. “Not since the last time I checked.”

She groaned. “Okay, tell me one thing. And it’s gonna hella suck to have to ask you this babe, but I gotta.” On a slow inhale, I braced for whatever she would throw at me. “Are you doing this because of that needle-dick prick that assaulted you in DC?”

I closed my eyes and hugged myself. “No, honey, no. Not at all. When I was in Miami, Wes came down for my birthday.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I sent the smooth operator, remember?”

“While he was there, we both admitted some feelings—things that we’d been going back and forth about since I was here in January. Gin, I love him.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ on a fucking pogo stick. Not the love-him shit again!” She started mumbling something I couldn’t quite hear but knew was a full-on rant. “You love
everybody
, Mia. It’s part of your DNA, your genetic code. You meet hot guy. You fuck hot guy. You fall in love with hot guy. This is not the first or the last time you will repeat this pattern.”

Ginelle had a point. In the past, that was my MO. Not now, not with Wes. “I didn’t with the other guys I fucked this year. Explain that?”

“Explain a roll in the hay. Okay, when a boy and a girl meet, there is this chemical that puts off pheromones…”

I groaned and blew out a harsh breath. “Ginelle! Focus here.” I almost stomped my foot in exasperation. Shit, I’d called the wrong sister. I should have called Maddy, the blood sister, not the soul sister. She’d have been over the moon. Mostly because she had found her one and only and was engaged to be married. People like that wanted everyone else to be in the same place they were: happy and in love.

“Mia, I…I just don’t want you getting hurt. Again.” She sighed long and deep. So much so that I could feel the rumble of her distress even at this distance.

“I know, Gin. I do. It’s just, you know I’ve been going back and forth with him for months. If I hadn’t had Pops’s shit to deal with, I’d have still been here.”

“If you hadn’t had Pops’s shit to deal with, you would have never been there at all!” Touché. Point well made. “And what about that va-Gina chick? What’s the deal with her?” Her tone was hoity-toity, not hiding her distaste.

“Gone.”

She harrumphed. “Gone. That’s it. End of.” The exaggerated way she said it indicated she didn’t believe it.

I shrugged, but she couldn’t see it. “According to Wes, yeah.”

Another choking sound came through the line. “At least he has good sense.”

A laugh bubbled up, releasing the constriction that had been pressing on my chest. The tightness that felt like I had heartburn started to dissipate, bringing relief with it. “Be happy for me,” I whispered. A hint of begging lingered at the edge of the request.

“Honey, I am. Always will be, but you know that your best friend has to play both sides. Protect you even when you won’t. It’s in the fucking book of best friends, right under the part that says pat them on the back and make them feel better when they’ve had a one night stand and can’t remember the name of the guy they fucked, totally making them a whore. It’s my job to make sure that even when you’re being a whore, you don’t feel like a whore.”

Her logic had merit. Fucked up, twisted merit, but still, she cared. Ginelle loved me more than most people, and I knew that the same way I knew I loved kick-ass concert tees and my motorcycle, Suzi. “Thank you. For caring and worrying…even though you’re a two-bit skank.”

She sucked in a breath. “I see. So we’re back to that. Okay.“ She clucked her tongue. “I got you. I
so
got you, wackjob hussy.”

There was my girl. I smiled. “At least I don’t shake it to make it,” I threw back.

She feigned a gasp. “At least I don’t lie down on my back and open my legs for cash, hooker!”

“I love you, Gin.”

“Love your ugly face. See you soon?”

“Hope so, pancake ass.” I hung up superfast. That was the rule. I win. I pumped a fist into the air and did a little touchdown dance, complete with wiggling my knees in and out while rolling my ass the way Maria De La Torre taught me back in Miami. Hell, this white girl could dance. Now, whether I looked like a chicken with my head cut off or not was an entirely different story. At least I got the last word in with my best friend. It rarely happened, but this round…all mine.

“
I
don’t want
you to go.” Wes rolled his hips, pressing deep. He was rapidly hardening again while inside me, even though we’d just finished a very active round of mind-blowing sex.

“We’ve been through this already. You agreed.”

He frowned and thrust his hips ever so lightly. The sweat on our bodies hadn’t even cooled, and he was already working toward round two. Insatiable. I was a lucky, lucky girl.

Wes’s fingers tightened around the meaty part of my hips. “I know we did, but I figured maybe I could sway you in another way, a more pleasurable way.” He leaned up and took a pink tip into his mouth. The heat of his mouth around my nipple combined with gentle flicks of his tongue made me instinctively grind into his pelvis, forcing his hard flesh between my thighs even deeper. We both groaned. “See, you’re already starting to get it.” He grinned and pushed up while pulling my waist down. Fully hard inside me. I placed my hands on his chest, used the strength of my thighs to lift up, and slammed down.

“Ugh, Jesus! Warn a guy next time. Baby, you’ll unman me before the fun’s even begun.” He lifted up, pressed into his heels, and shifted back to the headboard where he lay back and cuddled me into his arms. Lifting up both his knees into ninety degree angles forced the steely length of him into a new position, a beautiful position. I’d marry this position if I could.

Sighing, I looped my hands around his neck and brought his lips to mine. Tongue-to-tongue, chest-to-chest, and heart-to-heart, we made out. Neither one of us moving our position, he was thick and long, still buried deep inside. I kissed Wes, giving it my all. I wanted him to know that this thing between us was real, and no matter where I went, I was committed to it. To him. To us.

Wes growled and nipped my lips. “You’re going to leave on that plane tomorrow, aren’t you?”

I nodded and rubbed my forehead against his. Our mouths were so close we were alternately breathing one another’s breaths. It was intimate and private. Being this close to him, sharing life-sustaining air, him deep within my body. All of it was beyond magical.

As he’d said before…paradise. And that’s when it dawned on me. Wes and I would have years of this, a lifetime of sharing, of loving, of living for the other. Unfortunately, right then, I had to do some living on my own, for Pops and for me, before I could stay in this bubble forever.

“Wes, honey, you know I have to. Our relationship needs to be clean of my father’s debt.”

He shook his head. “It would be so easy to just take the money. Pay off the goon and stay here, with me. Don’t you want to stay here? Start your life over, fresh?”

“I’d love to, Wes, but I know me.” I pressed my hand into my chest over my heart. “I know that in my heart, I’ll always feel like I owe you something. A half a million dollars is not something I’ll ever be able to pay back. Ever. We can’t start our relationship with one beholden to the other. It’s not right. That’s not a fresh start.”

His shoulders slumped, and he cupped both my cheeks. “It kills me to know you’re going to be spending time with another man. Allowing him to woo you, fall for you.”

I cupped his cheek this time. “That’s not going to happen.”

“No?” His eyebrow quirked defiantly.

Rubbing the soft brow up and along the arched shape, I shook my head. “No, it’s not.”

“But it happened to me. I fell for you. I’ll bet half the men, if not all of them, fell for you in some way. Who’s to say that over the next five months one of them isn’t the most amazing man you’ve ever met? And what if he wants to sweep you off your feet? Huh? What then?”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “Not possible.”

“But it is…” he started, until I placed two fingers over the lips I was dying to nibble on.

“No, it’s not possible because I’ve already been wooed. I’ve already met the most amazing man I’ll ever meet, and I’ve already been so completely swept off my feet that the ground now feels wrong to stand on.” He smiled that sexy-surfer-boy smile I wanted to look at every day for the rest of my life. I took it as the signal it was, time to show him just how much he meant to me. Hovering my lips against his, a scant hairsbreadth away, I whispered, “My heart belongs to you. My body belongs to you because I love you. You need to take a leap of faith and trust me.”

Wes closed his eyes. He looked like an angel when is eyes were closed. Stark black lashes against sun-kissed brown skin. His hair, a golden blond messy tangle of layers, struck my heart with a wave of devotion so deep I could hardly breathe. I swept a lock of hair over his brow and caressed his temple with one finger, trailing it down the side of his face and chin, where I held it between thumb and forefinger. I lifted his face up until he opened his eyes. “I love you, Wes.
You
. Please trust me to do what I need to do and know that I’m going to be faithful.” Then I kissed him.

I knew the moment the kiss changed. His lips were firmer, mouth open wider, tongue greedier, and when his teeth came into play, his hand wrapped around my neck and he took the kiss from me. Led the way through a fiery trail of lust and a desire so fierce, it stole everything but the need to mate. Our bodies melded until all thoughts of anything but the other fled on gossamer wings a hundred miles from where we loved.

“Want you all the time,” Wes growled, his fingers digging into my shoulder at the same time his hips pressed up, piercing me stroke after stroke. Mind-numbing pleasure was so intense my teeth rattled with each thrust.

I sipped from his lips, rubbed my mouth along his cheek in a wet trail of kisses, reaching his ear and sucking on the soft cartilage until he moaned and his body tightened. “Want more always,” I confirmed breathless, mindless as I lifted up again, squeezing his dick tight within the sensitive walls of my center, attempting to wring as much pleasure as possible, not only for me, but also for him. When I clenched down around his cock, using the muscles of my pussy like a vise, his jaw tightened. I loved making him grin and bear it. Bear so much pleasure he’d forget any woman who had come before me.

Thrust after thrust, we hit one another with as much as we could take. This wasn’t making love. It wasn’t sex. It was hard-core fucking, not exactly angry, but definitely not filled with butterflies and rainbows and soft vows of love. The dirty things he said in lieu of those frilly vows made me hotter, wetter, and downright insane for his cock.