***
I woke up to sunlight streaming through the windows.
I rolled around in the bed, startled when I hit the masculine body only inches into my roll.
“Mmmm,” I said, curling up into Silas’ chest.
He hugged me tightly, but just as suddenly, got up to leave.
“Where you going?” I asked around a yawn.
“Gotta go to the office. And you’ll have to come with me now, or I can come back for you at lunchtime,” he mumbled.
I shook my head and opened my eyes, mouth going dry when I saw his bare ass slipping into another pair of tighty whities.
I moaned in sadness, causing him to look over his shoulder and wink at me.
“What?” He asked.
God, he looked so good.
Not one single inch of his body wasn’t in perfect shape.
He had zero fat on him whatsoever.
That should be illegal.
I had fat, so he should have some, too.
“You look good,” I informed him.
He smiled. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, watching as he slipped jeans up his thick, well defined thighs.
He shook his head. “Fine. My brain wouldn’t turn off last night, so I didn’t get much sleep.”
“Is this because of what we talked about last night?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Yes and no. Or, at least, it started out about that. Then I couldn’t turn it off, and I started thinking about other things. But did you want to stay or for me to take you to your place?”
“What about my car?” I asked.
“I’ll have it brought to you by this afternoon.”
“I have to be at work at ten,” I said to him, reluctantly getting out of bed and walking naked to the shower.
He didn’t follow me, and I found myself greatly disappointed.
He seemed different today.
More distant.
Not at all like he was yesterday, or even this morning when we went to sleep in each other’s arms in the wee hours of the morning.
I took a long, hot shower, relishing the way the hot water felt over my skin.
I was sore.
My vagina felt like it’d been pounded with a fist.
Silas wasn’t a small man.
In fact, I would say he was on the bigger side of big.
Which explained why my vagina wanted to revolt when I pressed the bar of soap to it and slid it through my legs.
My nipples were just as sore, not because they’d been pounded, but because they’d been pinched.
Wearing a shirt today should prove interesting.
The lace bra that I’d worn last night was definitely not happening.
I’d just have to go home and put on a sports bra for the day.
Although I’d promised myself that I’d never wear one of those torture devices again since that was all I was allowed to wear while in prison, I couldn’t think of anything more comfortable to wear right at that moment.
Especially with the way that even the slightest of water hitting the tips caused a little sting of pain.
I cataloged the rest of my injuries.
Bruises in the shape of fingers ringed each wrist. Hand print bruises spanned each hip. Hickies on my chest.
I looked like I’d been through four rounds…not that I was complaining.
Last night had been just what I needed…all the way up until the retelling of what had happened that horrible night.
I forgot…and I felt again.
Something I’d been needing for going on eight years.
“I set some clothes out on the bed,” I heard Silas rumble from the open doorway.
I looked over at him to see him looking straight at me.
“Thanks,” I said. “But I can put my old ones back on.”
He laughed. “We left them outside, and they’re soaked. It rained last night.”
“It did?” I asked in surprise.
He nodded. “Hard.”
“Okay,” I said, smiling at him through the glass.
He stared at me for long moments, and I let him, pressing my chest up against the slick surface as I leaned my forehead against the glass.
His eyes seemed to darken, but I heard the doorbell, and he growled.
“Hurry, we need to leave in ten,” he ordered before slipping away just as silently as he’d come.
I turned off the water, happy that I would now smell like him, and pulled a towel off the rack beside the shower.
It was as I was drying my sore breasts that I heard it.
A sound that you never, ever want to hear when you’re naked in a man’s house that you barely even know.
“Hey, Silas. I was wondering if you could spare another beer. I’m making a roast today,” my mother, Reba Berry, asked sweetly from the other room.
I froze mid nipple drying, and stared in horror at the wall.
I hadn’t realized that my mother and Silas knew each other.
And well enough for her to ask him for a beer, at that?
Why wouldn’t Silas have said something last night?
I wasn’t a secret.
He had to know I was related to her.
I mean, if she was comfortable enough to come over here like that, than he had to have seen the resemblance between the two of us.
I mean, I looked just like her.
Long black hair, the same birth mark on our necks, in nearly the same place.
Same body type.
She was me, and I was her.
Only thirty years separated our ages.
So I sat on the bed and listened as my mother spoke with Silas about her roast and my father, all the while being livid.
It went on so long, in fact, that I got bored.
And started to look around.
Then I started to clean because, seriously, what was the deal with not throwing the clothes into the hamper?
So while I listened to my mother talk about her rose bushes that were lining the edge of her property, and the way my dad cooked steak last night for dinner, I started to launder Silas’ clothes.
I started with the ones on his floor, picking them up and shoving them into the basket that had all of two things in it. A single sock, and a pair of his underwear.
By the time I was done, the entire thing was filled to the brim.
“Silas, my son tells me you called him the other night when you saw my girl on the side of the road…at the scene of that crash. I wanted to thank you. She really needs all the help she can get,” my mother said, making me freeze in place.
I couldn’t hear Silas’ reply, but I didn’t need to.
Mostly because my mom repeated his answer verbatim.
“Oh, I know you don’t think you did anything, but you did. Dallas said he caught her crying, but decided to leave her alone. He also says there’s been a lot of drinking going on. He finds all of her bottles in the trash the next morning,” my mother said.
He’d been going through my trash?
What the fuck?
And I knew he had to be going through them.
I was the one who’d walked the fucking bags out to the trash can.
He’d have had to physically pull out the bag to know there were bottles in there.
Not like there were a lot of bottles.
Granted, there were some, but not enough to count as excessive.
This time I heard Silas’ reply.
“She’s allowed to drink, Reba. She spent eight years having her life dictated to her. Let her live her life without you all second guessing every single thing she does,” Silas reprimanded her gently.
Then I heard the distinct sound of Silas’ screen door opening.
Last night I’d remembered the grating screech, and I wondered how I’d not heard it when my mother had entered.
I heard the two of them talking more from the front porch and decided to go ahead and get dressed in the clothes he’d left me.
They looked new.
And in style.
All of my clothes were still what I wore in high school. Which meant I had a lot of things that probably wouldn’t ever be acceptable on a twenty nine year old.
I wore them anyway, though.
Not like I had much choice.
Maybe I should make a stop by the Goodwill later.
They would surely have something better than what I had.
Like the pants and shirt he’d left me draped over the edge of the bed.
I picked through them, seeing that there were no bra or panties.
So I did what any normal woman would do.
Went to Silas’ dresser drawers and pulled every single one of them open until I found the underwear.
I laughed when I saw how high up they came on my belly, giggling as quietly as I could as I slipped my feet into the jeans.
The pants fit a little loosely in the waist, but fit perfectly everywhere else.
The shirt fit everywhere but the boob area, but I didn’t think that mattered as much as it could have since it was just a simple red, fitted t-shirt.
The only thing that was wrong with it was the fact that I had no bra to cover up my nipples.
And the tightness over the breast area was accentuating that fact.
“It fits,” Silas rumbled from the doorway, causing me to jump and turn.
I had to smile when Silas’ eyes automatically went to my breasts.
Such a typical man.
“How are you getting past that creaky porch door?” I asked, tugging my shirt down to cover my belly.
He smiled.
“Magic,” he answered, starting to walk towards me.
“So you know my mom,” I accused.
He nodded. “Yep.”
“You knew who I was the entire time?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yep.”
He wasn’t ashamed that he hadn’t told me at all. He just said ‘yep’ like it wasn’t that big of a deal.
“She seemed friendly with you…do you hang out with my dad and mom a lot?” I asked.
His eyes widened slightly.
“Not your dad, no,” he said. “Are you ready to go?”
I wondered what he meant by ‘not your dad,’ but he was gone before I could ask him.
So I followed him, shoeless, and came to a stop when I got to the living room.
“Wow,” I said in awe. “This is nice.”
The living room, kitchen, dining room, and what looked to be a study were all one huge, open space.
The walls were what looked like real tree logs stripped of the bark, and the ceilings had huge beams running along the rafters.
There was a large, brown leather couch in the middle of the room, facing what had to be the largest TV screen I’d ever seen.
And the kitchen was to die for.
Beautiful mahogany cabinets with black granite counter tops rounded off the living space with their simple but elegant addition to the large space.
All of it made me smile at the man who resembled that description to a T. Simple but elegant.
Silas was standing at the kitchen sink, putting water into a bottle.
My mouth went dry when I saw the look he aimed at me over his shoulder.
Sex and hunger.
Geez.
I took a step back, and his eyes changed, going to curious.
“Yeah, I put a lot of time and effort into this place,” he said, screwing the lid down tight onto his bottle and making his way toward me.
He grabbed a hold of my hand on the way, walking and talking.
“I’ll drop you off at your house so you can go change. I’ve already called one of my boys to get your car. They should have it there in time for you to leave for work,” Silas said, leading me out to his garage.
I was thankful that he handed me a different helmet this time.
It was one that covered my face completely, the only thing anyone would be able to make out was my hair…but I tucked that into the helmet, too.
Perfect.
I smiled at Silas as he watched me do this with a small smile on his face.
“Embarrassed to be seen with me?” He asked as he tugged his own helmet on.
I shook my head. “No. I just don’t want to see my mother.”
And that was the God’s honest truth.
I was tired of seeing her.
All she could do was go on and on about how sorry she was that I’d had to go to prison, and how she prayed for eight years, every single day, that I came out in one piece.
Seriously, I loved the hell out of my mother, but I didn’t love her smothering me.
It was as if she was trying to make up for the eight years, but she couldn’t, and instead it felt as if she was suffocating me.
He actually looked relieved when I said that.
“So you don’t mind if you’re seen with me?” He confirmed.
I nodded. “I wouldn’t have left with you last night had I minded.”
He grinned, and I was struck again by his handsomeness.
“Hop on, sweet cheeks,” he ordered.
I winked at him, but it was lost on him since he’d turned around and started up his bike without watching me get on.
Which was probably good, because then he didn’t see the way it hurt that he’d just dismissed me.
We made it out of his little lakeside retreat without seeing my mother, or anyone else for that matter.
Hell, we didn’t see a single soul until we were nearly fifteen minutes into our drive.
I hadn’t noticed how far out he lived yesterday on the ride to his home, but now that it was light out and I could see just where I was going, I was surprised.
He lived nearly fifty minutes away from my place, once it was all said and done.
And when we pulled up in front of my house, I had roughly forty-five minutes until I had to be at work.
Slipping my leg off the bike, I stood up and turned to him, holding out the helmet.
He shook his head.
“Keep it,” he said, eyes on mine. “You’ll need it later.”
I blinked.
“Why will I need it later?” I asked.
He smiled, giving me those beautiful white teeth again.
“Because I plan on taking you for a ride again,” he grinned.
My face blushed fifty shades of red.
Especially when he started to caress his bike in a loving manner.
“And I still have your ass print right here on my tank,” he continued. “There’s no way I won’t want more of what I had last night.”
My brows rose.
“Who said I was doing more than a night?” I asked, turning on my heels and going straight around the back of the house.
The garage apartment was detached from the rest of the house, thank God.
Because if I’d have had to go into the main house, I was sure I’d be asked why, exactly, I was panting, as well as the reason my face was so flushed.
And there’d be no way in hell I would tell them, seeing as my brother now reported my entire life to my mom.
Which reminded me.
Pulling out my phone from my pocket, I tossed a small wave over my shoulder at Silas as I rounded the corner.
It was time for my brother to hear exactly why his snooping pissed me off.