Justice
“What kind of party were you expecting?” I ticked my head to look over my shoulder as Milla followed behind me. Those pajama pants were too much or too little, depending on your point of view.
My opinion was that they were simultaneously too little and too much at the same fucking time.
“I wasn’t. Tansy tricked me. She has some kind of pregnancy voodoo hormone charms.”
I assumed she thought that was funny. It was. I didn’t laugh.
“Right through here.” I turned the knob and let Milla go in before me. I may have detested the female, but I wasn’t an asshole.
“Nicer on the inside,” she remarked.
“Yeah, well, we can’t all live in mansions.”
She chuffed. “Sounds like you have a real hang-up about money.”
“Nope. Just snobs. It’s over there.” I pointed to the cradle in the living room, finished and ready.
“It’s really beautiful. Looks like brand new.”
I shrugged. “I know.”
A smile took over her face and, for a split second, we were kids again. She’d smile at something stupid I’d said. I’d pretend I didn’t say it for the sole purpose of her gifting me that smile.
Everything was pretending.
“The rocking chair is for Tansy.” Fuck it all. I wanted to know what she thought about it. My gator beamed inside me at her speck of praise over the cradle, even though he didn’t lay a claw on it.
Wordlessly, she walked to the chair and looked it over. No, she wasn’t just looking, she inspected every detail. I squirmed under her gaze and touch, like she was evaluating me—touching me—instead of the chair.
She stood back up, tall and gorgeous, and squared her shoulders with her hands on hips that put those damned pajama pants to shame. “You undersell yourself. Your pictures are shit. Your website is shittier than your pictures.”
Not, “Gee, Justice. Your fucking furniture is beautiful.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
She smiled, but this time it was the vindictive version. I knew it well. “Yeah, but you wanted it anyway.”
“Yet, you tore my business to shreds and didn’t say a fucking word about the chair. Never mind. Just get the cradle and get back to drinking or stealing or murdering—whatever it is you do now.”
Damn it all. I sounded like a fucking prick. I wasn’t this person, but Milla brought it out in me. She turned up the volume on my attitude and my animal anger whenever she was around.
Angry. Mine.
My gator wasn’t even making sense.
“That trunk I bought should’ve gone for two grand, easy. I bet you spent way more than two hundred bucks just making it.”
She ignored my dig and kept needling me. Milla was a pro at that.
“You don’t get to come in here and tell me what to do and how my business is messed up, city girl.”
“City girl? Please. I’m more Coonass than you.” With every word, she’d taken another step toward me. My vision blurred around the shape of her, as though the rest of the world had fallen all around us.
“You are more Coonass than all of us. You hide it. You hide your animal. You hide her from me.”
My hand on her waist, I tugged her in close to me so that her breasts brushed my chest, hoping like fuck she could feel the rapid pounding of my heart.
“She doesn’t come out,” Milla whispered.
“She wants out.” My breath fanned out along her cheeks as I leaned in. The noise from the outside, of my crew, was far away. There was nothing in that instant but our shared breath and the heat radiating from her in waves that enflamed my skin and my gator.
“You don’t know what I am or what she wants.” Her tone was cutthroat, yet she didn’t move away.
“I know more than you think.”
“You know nothing. You are afraid. You cower here in the swamps.”
“Who made me cower? Huh? Who made me like this?”
Fuck. I hated this baring of my soul—this uncontrollable urge to tell her everything that boiled there. She’d always been this to me. The keeper of my secrets. The journal I’d written all my thoughts in.
That was, until she broke me.
She didn’t answer.
“You broke me. You broke my family.”
“Fuck you.”
No, but I would kiss the fuck out of her.
My hand curled around the back of her neck before I brazenly pressed my mouth against hers. Her eyes widened. She moaned and then let my tongue into her sweet mouth like I knew she would. Her scent told me everything I needed to know. Pushing against her, I stopped with her back against the wall, one of her legs wrapped around my hip, and she rocked her hips toward mine.
Milla’s hands were still on my chest, as though any moment she would push me away, but we both knew better. Her rigid stance melted, her defenses giving way.
And that’s how I would leave her.
At the doorstep to wanting more.
I pulled away, swiftly and harshly. And then walked away like she did years ago.