Reaper's Stand

Biting Reese Hayes wouldn’t be a problem if you ditched the boyfriend, my brain whispered insidiously. I decided my brain was right. If Nate gave a shit about being in a relationship with me, he wouldn’t have been such a dick.

Oooh, and now I was cussing in my head. Fun!

“C’mon in,” I told Reese, suddenly starving. That bag of little white cartons smelled fantastic and I couldn’t wait to rip into them. His eyes widened.

“You seem to be in a good mood,” he murmured. I held up my wine bottle for him to see.

“I decided I needed a distraction,” I told him bluntly. “I called my cousin Amber. She’s a bitch and I hate her … Also Jessica is with her. She’s fine, perfectly safe. Flew down there yesterday and they didn’t bother to tell me. I’m washing my hands of both of them.”

I tried to rub my hands together like I was washing them and dropped my bottle in the process. Reese lunged, catching it midair. The motion set me off balance and I fell on my ass, laughing. He stared at me, a slow grin crawling across his face.

“You’re drunk,” he said.

“No shit,” I told him. “Feels great, too.”

“Do you have to work tomorrow?”

“I’m the boss,” I informed him proudly. “I make my own schedule.”

“I see,” he murmured, then reached down to catch my hand, pulling me to my feet. I lurched into him, rubbing my face against the hard muscles of his chest.

“You smell really good,” I told him. “Reeallly good.”

“You got a coffeepot?”

I blinked up at him, running my hands up and over his shoulders. They were nice and hard, like silk stretched over … something hard. I giggled because I couldn’t think of the right word.

“Coffeepot?” he asked again.

“Why?”

“Time to sober up, I think. What the hell is that smell?”

I beamed at him, feeling pleased with myself.

“The self-cleaning cycle on the oven. I like to clean when I get frustrated, and there’s nothing quite like a sparkly oven. You just turn it up to a million degrees, bake it, and then vacuum it out. Gas does all the hard work for you. Very cathartic.”

“You’re gonna kill me,” he muttered, running a finger down my cheek. “Let’s get some coffee in you and eat. No more wine.”

I pouted, because wine was my favorite. Then I forgot to pout because he smelled all yummy, and I wanted to see if he tasted as good as he smelled.

Now if I could just catch his lip and find out …

REESE

This was officially the most fucked-up dinner date I’d ever had in my life.

London—

Everyone calls me Loni, Reese, but I hate it. I like how you use my real name … Can I touch your stomach?

—was drunk off her ass, and I had a very bad feeling that if I fucked her, things wouldn’t end well. Not normally a factor for me, really. I liked it when things didn’t work out with women. Generally that was the goal.

Unfortunately, karma’s a bitch and she had a lot on me.

I stared at the TV, pretending to watch the world’s least interesting movie with London passed out all over me. Her tits smashed up against my chest, her legs straddled my thigh, and her hand lay on my stomach, precisely six inches from the top of my straining dick. I knew this because exactly once every sixty seconds I looked away from the screen to make sure it hadn’t ripped a hole through my pants. Then I’d start counting down again, because the counting was the only thing keeping me from rolling her over and shoving my cock so far up her cunt it hit the back of her throat. Yeah, that’d wake her up …

Why wasn’t I doing this? Good question.

It wasn’t because I’m a good guy or she was too drunk or any of that shit. I’ve never been a decent human being and didn’t see a whole lot of reason to change things up at this stage of the game.

Decency isn’t really my thing. This was about strategy.

London sighed in her sleep, pulling me a little closer as her hand slipped down. I groaned, and somehow my dick got harder, something I would’ve bet a hundred dollars wasn’t even possible. It actually hurt, and the smell of her hair drifting up toward my nose didn’t exactly help.

She smelled like vanilla cookies.

I asked myself again why I wasn’t currently fucking her. I had her at my mercy—she was all over me. I should just take what she offered and enjoy it. Strategy was overrated.

She might actually make you happy, Heather told me sternly. Don’t blow it, asshole.

Goddamn ghosts in my head.

Heather needed to back the fuck off, because I wasn’t down with this shit. I hadn’t actually died with her, despite the fact that it occasionally felt that way. She’d left me to raise our girls all by myself and sometimes I hated her for it.

Fortunately, thinking of my girls made me smile.

Didn’t even have the words to describe how much they meant to me. Somewhere along the way I’d reengaged with life, for their sake if not my own. Biggest fight of my life, not crawling down into that grave with my wife. London was fighting the same kind of battle, in her own way. When shit hit the fan, she’d charged life head-on, taken in Jessica and fought for her, despite the fact that she had an easy out. Nobody could have blamed her for passing Jess along to social services. I respected the way she threw down for her kid, even though Jess wasn’t technically hers. She understood loyalty, and that family isn’t always about blood.

Much as I hated to admit it, that was the kind of strength and loyalty it took to make a good old lady … Then I shook my head, because I sure as shit wasn’t going there. Claim her? Okay. But nobody could ever take Heather’s place, let alone wear her patch.

Maybe I could find a happy medium, though, and that’s where London came in. Screwing her tonight would complicate things in a way that could end with her hating me. I’m nothing if not decisive, and I don’t fuck around once I’ve made up my mind. I wanted London and I definitely planned to keep her for a while.

That meant I should start things off right.

First order of business—remove Deputy Dick from her life without scaring the hell out of her. If I had to suck it up for a while to make that happen, I had no doubt she’d make it up to me down the line. Thus I found myself lying on a couch watching some dumbass movie with a dick harder than a diamond and no happy ending in sight.

London stirred against me again, letting out a soft snore.