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“Dad?”
I look up to find Alexis standing at the door. She’s looking at me closely, in that perceptive way of hers. For a moment I’m certain she somehow knows. She’s reached into my thoughts and she hates me, hates me for wanting her friend, for needing her.
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“Why do you ask?”
She gestures at me, at the room. “You seem a little angry. Are you sure it’s okay if Tamia stays?”
“We can’t send her back there,” I growl. “We don’t know what that asshole will try to pull. It’s fine.”
She nods. “Do you want any pizza? We’re ordering soon.”
“No, thank you,” I say. “I’m not hungry.”
The truth is I’m too distracted to eat. All I can think about is my woman’s body, the shape of her, the way she’d feel in my arms, the warmth of her body penetrating mine.
Dammit.
I can’t stop.
No matter how hard I try.
Alexis shrugs and walks away. I stalk toward my bedroom and strip my clothes. Stepping into the shower, I look down.
My manhood is rock hard, my tip bulging as though getting ready to explode with a river of come. I grit my teeth, fighting the urge to handle it, telling myself I can’t keep fantasizing about Tamia.
She’s too young. She’s my daughter’s friend.
And it’s not a normal friendship. It means a lot to Alexis, forming a bond with Tamia, proof that she doesn’t have to feel guilty about her new heart.
“Get your shit together, man,” I snarl under my breath, as I turn the water on.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tamia
“These are amazing,” I murmur.
A sense of unreality hits me, not for the first time since arriving here, in their large modern house. There are no spots of dampness on the walls. The wallpaper isn’t peeling. The corners of the carpet aren’t covered in grime and dirt. Everything is clean and neat and beautiful.
I sit cross-legged on the bed, Alexis next to me as we look at her laptop. We’ve spent the day watching movies and talking, about everything and nothing, the way Lisa and I used to.
“You think so?” Alexis asks.
I look at the next photo, a flower with the sun setting behind it. “I really do.”
“I’m so happy you agreed to come,” she says. “I know it probably sounds strange, but I feel like…”
“What?” I urge.
She laughs, shaking her head. “It’s silly.”
I grin. It feels so much easier than before I met her, which makes this all the harder. All day I’ve been listening for her father’s footsteps, pounding through the house, imagining them coming my way.
“Then be silly,” I say.
“I’ve just never bonded with somebody so quickly. And I was thinking, well, maybe it has something to do with…” She taps her chest. “But like I said, it’s silly.”
I swallow, thinking about Lisa, the kind and generous girl who would always give me her juice box if a bully stole mine. She’d always hold me as I wept over my parents, stroking her fingers through my hair, whispering it would be okay… even if her situation was just as dreadful.
Alexis is the same, not the sort of girl who deserves to be lied to.
I need to forget about her dad. I need to end this.
“I think you might be right,” I whisper.
Alexis smiles, then yawns. “Who knew watching movies could be so tiring, huh? I’m going to bed.”
“Goodnight. And thank you, Alexis.”
After she leaves, I decide that a shower is in order. The fact that there’s another bathroom in their third bedroom blows my freaking mind. I stand under the shower head, a smile spreading across my face as the warm high-pressured water blasts down on me.
It’s so much better than the spitting trickle at my old apartment.
Not, not my old apartment.
It’s still my apartment. I’m not staying here like my fantasies are telling me to. Triston isn’t going to fall in love with me, or ask me – no, tell me – to stay with him forever. If I kissed him, just said screw it, and stood on my tiptoes to reach his lips, he’d either laugh or shout at me to leave.
Or, worse, he’d look at me like I’m a silly little kid, pity in his eyes.
After the shower, I lie in bed, pick up my book and try to lose myself in the story. It’s a battered edition of a thriller, from the thrift store that I found pretty absorbing before I met Triston. Before I was able to sink into the story and forget about the world.
But now everything returns to him, the words shimmer and become Triston. Instead of the main character saying something, I hear my man, my protector, the beast who made Mr. Reynolds look like a pathetic bully.
“Your pussy better be wet for me,” I imagine him growling in my ear. “It better be soaked. Are you ready, Tamia, hmm? Fuck, you’re drenched…”
