Sweet Sinful Nights

The full story had shocked him to the core.

His family was so... normal. His parents were still married. They were both retired now and played golf together a few days a week in a swank suburb on the outskirts of the city. He tried to see them once or twice a month, and always visited on holidays. He even baked a pumpkin pie every year for the Nichols family Thanksgiving. There was no drama, no dysfunction, and certainly no murder for hire.

Maybe that was why he’d been able to comfort her when they were younger. Maybe that was why they’d been drawn together on some subconscious level. He’d grown up unequivocally happy, and he had extra doses of it. He had a whole storage closet full of additional happiness, and he tried to bring that to her. Lean on me, he’d told her. He could handle it. He handled all her tears and sadness. He’d do it again if she needed him to. “And have you seen her recently?”

“I went at Christmas with Ryan. She asked if anyone had found the people who did it. Same thing she always says, even though she knows Stefano is behind bars.” Then she lowered her voice to a feathery whisper, her tone confessional. “I still check his inmate number every few months. To make sure he’s still in prison. It’s silly, I know, since he’s in for life. But I just like to know he’s where he belongs.”

Brent shook his head, reassuring her. “It’s not silly in the least to find some kind of comfort in knowing he’s locked up.”

“It’s not like it makes me happy,” she said, sadness washing over her eyes. “It just makes me feel as much peace as I guess I can feel.”

“You don’t have to be happy. You can just... be,” he said, and that was what he’d told her in college, too.

She met his eyes, a sliver of a smile forming on her beautiful lips. “I’m happy right now,” she said.

And hell if that didn’t add an extra gallon to all those stores he had.





CHAPTER TWELVE


After the plates were cleared, Shannon declared the meal a feast. “I knew I asked the right man to get me into this delicious restaurant. It was amazing, and everything I hoped it would be,” she said, then launched into a new topic. “I watched a funny video before I met you for dinner.”

He raised an eyebrow in question. “I thought you weren’t into Internet videos?”

“I’m not. I only watch videos of my dance rehearsals, and I shoot most of those myself. But my friend Ally showed me a video she saw on Facebook. It’s this clip of a girl who grinds on her boyfriend in public while his hand is under her skirt, and they don’t even try to hide that he’s fingering her and getting her off.”

“I like getting you off,” he said with a naughty glint in his brown eyes.

“You cannot resist segueing back to dirty talk when I’m telling you a story.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said, placing his palms together. “The story was about a guy making a girl come. Forgive me for thinking about making you come. It’s only my favorite thing in the entire world to do.”

She shot him a tell me more look.

“It’s a hobby I once practiced a few times a day,” he added. “One I’m very interested in taking up again.”

A ribbon of warmth spread through her chest, both from the suggestion of one of her favorite activities, too, but also from the way he was so quick on his toes, so fast with a joke. The man had always made her laugh. He was handsome as sin and funny as hell, and that combo had been all she’d ever needed. He had filled all the sad places inside her. He’d burrowed into her with his laughter and his wit, replacing her darkness with his light. Tonight, he was firing on all cylinders—his caring, tender side in full force, along with his clever one, not to mention that handsome side. In his jeans and long-sleeved Henley stretched tight across his chest, he was a sight to behold.

“Anyway, back to the video. So the funny part is they had no clue they’d been caught on camera, even though they were totally obvious. They thought they were being quiet and sneaky when he was trying to make her come.”

“I could make you come quietly,” he said with an easy shrug of his shoulder. “I can make you come loudly, too. I can make you come in pretty much any way.”

She scoffed. Not because it was untrue, but because he was so damn sure of himself. “Confident much?”

“Yeah, I am. I have the track record to prove it. You’re pretty much the only class I aced in college.”

She laughed, looking down at her lap. He was too much sometimes. “Straight As, Brent?”

“Hell no. Higher. I earned A-pluses across the board in your pleasure.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re relentless.”

He leaned forward across the table, flashing her that cocky grin she’d loved so much. “When it comes to delivering multiple orgasms for you, yes. Relentless is precisely what I am.”