“Oh my god, will you please stop that!” Mags got up from the tattoo magazine she was reading and stood right in front of me. Glaring.

“Stop what, Mags?” She’d been irritable all damn day and it was starting to get on my nerves.

“That!” She gestured to me, my face. Everything. “You’ve been whistling since you got here, and not like, a song stuck in your head or anything. Just whistling. Happy stupid whistling and I want you to stop it.”

I frowned at her. “I don’t whistle. Ever.”

“Correction, you didn’t used to whistle, but apparently now you do. Annoyingly so, I might add.”

I wanted to deny it again, but I had a feeling that I had really been whistling, and it was all Trish’s fault. The maddening woman came up with a new way to drive me out of mind every damn day, and I couldn’t find it in myself to complain. Not that I didn’t have a few dozen ways to drive her wild too, because I did, and I used one of them this morning to get what I wanted.

Trish was simple. She wanted sex, and lots of it, until we were clear to file for divorce. What I wanted, well that was still up in the air. Mostly. In the moment what I wanted was for Trish to see that I wasn’t such a bad bet in a relationship. For her to look at me and wonder if maybe, just maybe, we could have a chance at…something.

I was hooked on her, on pleasing her and hearing the sounds she made while I did it. And Trish was hooked on me, and I felt zero guilt about what I’d done this morning, waking her up with my tongue inside her while she was writhing, barely awake, her low husky voice was moaning my name. She was so hooked that it took nothing but back to back orgasms to get what I wanted, for now.

“Give us a real chance, no pretending we’re a happy couple.” She’d just come down from orgasm number one when I sprang it on her.

“A real chance? What the hell does that mean?” She looked down at me, big blue eyes hazy from sleep and an early morning orgasm.

“It means,” I told her, pausing to lick through her damp folds, “that until we file for divorce we are a couple. We go out on dates, I get to kiss you in public,” I licked her again to keep quite that objection forming on her lush lips, “and we live and sleep together, because that’s what couples do. Not for anyone else.”

I knew she wasn’t totally sold, so I shut up and put my mouth where she still throbbed and leaked for it. I licked and sucked, laved her vibrating clit, hell I French kissed it until she trembled beneath my hands, and then when she had such a tight damn grip on my hair that I thought she might take a few strands with her, my tongue curled around her clit and sucked hard. “Oh, Mason! Yes! Yes! Oh, yessss!”

That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Almost completely. “Was that a ‘yes’ or just an ‘oh yes’?”

The look she gave me was sharp enough to cut, but I flicked the tip of my tongue against her already tight nub and she nodded, but I kept it up until she was panting. Gasping. Grunting her pleasure.

“Okay. Fine. Yes, we can date and all that. We’ll be a real happy couple. No pretending.” To reward her, I left her with one final orgasm before she climbed out of bed and showered because she had to be in the shop by four.

“Ugh, seriously! Just go get a damn room.” Mags grunted and shook her head, looking utterly disgusted with me.

“It’s just me, Mags. No room necessary.” She was being ridiculous.

“Like that matters when your dirty and disgusting thoughts are written all over you face, never mind your stupid smiley, sex fatigued smirk.”

I wanted to laugh at her annoyance, but there were too many needles around. “Don’t you have some work to do?”

She stuck out her tongue with a laugh and another grossed out shiver. “Who can concentrate with those loud damn dirty thoughts? You’ve been going at it for nearly a week, shouldn’t the glow have worn off by now?”

That’s what I thought too, but the thing is, sex only got better and hotter between us. Every fucking time. And it wasn’t just the sex, it was all the fun we had during non-sexy times too, Slowly, I was becoming addicted to her.

“Should it?” She found new and creative ways to make me come harder, which only fueled me to find another spot that pulled those dirty, erotic sounds from her.

“Again!” Magenta tossed a pen at me, completely disgusted. But then her expression changed, softened and she did that little all-knowing head cock thing that drove me crazy. “I never thought I’d see the day big brother.”

“What day?” I shouldn’t have barked at her, but I didn’t know what in the hell she was talking about.

“Oh nothing,” she said a bit too innocently and walked away from me as a group of guys came in, looking to get their team numbers tattooed on their biceps. It was a quick job that look about an hour if you excluded the time it took to wake up the two dudes who passed out, and with my help we had them in and out with after-care pamphlets and ointment. “Thanks for your help, bro. I think we deserve some lunch. Sandwiches from Belle Bean, or greasy fried food from the diner?” Her green eyes sparkled with mischief, arms crossed like she knew what I would say.

So I did what any good brother would, I surprised her. “You pick.”

“Coward.”

“Busybody,” I shot back with a laugh.

Mags just shrugged. “This town is rubbing off on me. A lot. Yesterday an old lady came up to me with her hand out, telling me it was fifty bucks if I wanted to get in on the pot.”

“What pot?” The ladies in this town were notorious for starting pots for any and everything.

“On whether or not Trish’s bad mood was from PMS or pregnancy. Judging by that goofy grin on your face, I chose right.”

Pregnant? Trish? I laughed. “You’re kidding, right?” There was no way in hell Trish was pregnant. I’d know. Hell, she’d know.

Mags shook her head like I was crazy. “Well that’s what usually happens when a guy has that face,” she said, waving at my face with disgust. “Lots and lots of boinking, and not all of it protected, if you know what I mean big brother.”

Shit, I did know what she was saying, and suddenly I remembered every single time I slid into her damp heat. Her fiery hotness as it clenched around my dick. Bare. Unprotected. “Uh-oh, judging by your face you fall into both categories.”

“No,” I insisted a little more forcefully than necessary. “Just thinking about, like you said, sexy times.”

“Liar. And a bad liar at that.”

“Nothing to lie about Magenta, not that it’s any of your business anyway. Unless of course you want the details?”

Like she did when we were kids and I did my best to gross her out, Mags covered her ears and spoke over me. “Hey, if I’m gonna be an aunt, that’s totally my business!”

The front door smacked shut and the bells sounded. “You hear that, Maddie? Trish is knocked up already. You don’t waste any time do you, Mason?” Vivi and Maddie appeared inside the shop wearing matching grins.

I groaned and disappeared into my office knowing Mags would take care of them if they needed it. If not, well I was glad to be locked away. Away from the high pitched cackling of women talking smack. About me. “Thank god for paperwork.”

I was alone in my office with a week’s worth of inventory and other administrative tasks I put off for too long. And, unfortunately, I was left alone with my thoughts. Thoughts of Trish, possibly pregnant.

With my baby.

How in the hell could I have let this happen? I can’t resist Trish, that’s how.

Now I just had to decide how in the hell I felt about possibly being a father.