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Jules sighed. “Time to get you cleaned up, monkey. And that goes for you as well, Taddeo Gianni DeLuca.”
He tried to steal a kiss but she ah-ah’ed him with a significant glance at Evan. “Let’s keep it PG.”
“Impossible with you in the room. My head is filled with Triple X.”
“Boy, those lines don’t improve the next day.”
He nipped her shoulder. “You’re the mint in my mojito, the honey to my bee…”
“Oh, hush.” But she was smiling as she said it.
As he headed back to the bedroom to dress, he mused on how terribly that could have gone. It was a risk he had been willing to take because his reptile brain had taken over and he was a greedy motherfucker. He wanted her and he had decided that the prospect of not having her body was worse than the prospect of not having her as a friend.
But there was more to this than friendship-risking lust. Frankie’s words echoed in his Jules-addled brain:You have a right to be happy, Taddeo.
Jules made him happy and he suspected the feeling might be mutual. Stepping out of the shadows and choosing life had never felt so right. And with Vivi’s cookbook in the house, it felt like his mom was looking down, giving her blessing.
Five minutes later, he was following her hot little tail as it twitched in those skimpy shorts all the way to the front door. Last night, he’d grasped that curvaceous ass of hers, molded it, owned it. He wanted to do it again, but for now he settled for grasping with his eyes.
“Well…” she said, her hand on the doorknob.
“Well.”
“These situations can be tricky, so it’s great that we were able to handle it with such…” She waved her hand, seeking the right word.
“Maturity?” he offered.
“Yes, maturity.” She looked at his mouth, and her mouth twitched, and his mouth twitched right back.
He leaned in. She leaned back.
Okaaay.
A thoughtful look came over her. “Sex conjures up all sorts of feelings that sometimes we’re not ready to deal with, you know?”
He nodded, content to let her lead. They could take it slow, take it fast, take it up the middle. He didn’t care as long as he got the chance to bury his body between those beautiful thighs in the very near future. And he wanted to hang with her and Evan more, maybe share his favorite recipes from his mom’s cookbook. Connecting with Jules like they had last night was the perfect amulet against the dark cloud that threatened to engulf him.
“You’ve no idea how nice it was to get back on the horse in a safe environment. With a friend.”
He nodded again before realizing he had jumped the gun. He tried to parse that statement but the words “nice”, “horse,” “safe,” and “friend” jumbled in his brain and refused to compute. A niggle started up somewhere in the vicinity of his lungs.
“Get back on the horse?”
She smiled again, and the niggle turned into a full-scale body nag. “It’s been a while. Well, you know that.”
Right, because he was her friend. Her nice, safe, horse-providing friend.
“And getting into this dating business, I was seriously worried I’d make a shambles of it.”
The surprise on his face must have been obvious because she added, “Make a shambles of sex,” as if what they were talking about needed clarification.
“I don’t think it was a shambles,” he said quietly. Best sex of his life, nothing shambolic about it.
She laughed and it sort of grated. That was a first.
“Oh, no, I don’t think it was. In fact, it was a great way to dust off the cobwebs. The last person I was with was Evan’s father and since then I haven’t always felt at my most attractive. There’s always been a spark between us, so it’s good we’ve done it and got it out of our systems.”
“I suppose so,” he muttered, unbelievably pissed that she had mentioned Evan’s father in the same sentence as her brush off. Because that’s exactly what he was getting. The old heave-ho.
