Chapter 3
I sucked in a breath as cool water poured over my head in the shower, balling my hand into a fist against the tile.
“ Fuck .”
Dipping my heavy head, I let the water roll down my back, cooling the sun heated flesh there.
Hardin left my ass in the back of the Bronco, parked in our driveway to sleep off the booze in my system.
The fresh air probably did me some good, but the reddened skin of my right arm and the side of my neck begged to fucking differ. I felt like a damn pot roast left too long on broil. My ass deserved it, but that didn’t dilute the sting.
My eyes unfocused, and I opened my mouth to gulp down some cool water before deciding cold showers were absolute bullshit. I cranked the lever and sighed as warmer water gushed down from the rain head.
There was a very good chance I was still drunk, but I could taste sobriety on the horizon.
…and the inevitable hangover that would no-doubt tag along with it like the ugly red-headed stepchild it was.
Already the drumbeat echo of my heart was starting to pound in my skull, mounting the pressure behind my eyes.
I leaned into the tile, reaching down to stroke the length of my cock, knowing that a good orgasm would stave off the inevitable at least long enough for me to get some coffee in my system.
Of course, I’d have rather been allowed to finish with the perky-titted brunette at the Crown.
What was her name? Persephone? No, maybe Percy?
I wondered if she gave me her number. If I’d been sober enough to ask for it.
I pressed my forehead to the tile as I worked my hand up and down my shaft, rubbing over the head.
I reached for the shower oil and dumped a load of it onto my swiftly hardening cock, shuddering at the slippery feel of my hand, remembering in fuzzy imagery the way perky-tits’ tongue had slid expertly on that little spot just… there…
Picking up speed, my muscles tightened, remembering the sound she made when my tip pushed past the dam at the back of her mouth, filling her throat.
I wondered what her pussy would’ve felt like. If she was just as skilled with that as she was with her dirty mouth.
My core tightened, and I grunted, chasing the sensation only to lose it.
“ Dammit .”
I racked my brain for a clearer image, but when the memory of the girl with the perky tits lifted her head, her lips popping free of my cock, she wasn’t little miss perky tits anymore.
She had haunted eyes with flecks of gold in their mahogany depths.
A long mane of shining dark hair and lips made for sinning.
She was the girl in the picture my cousins sent us last week.
I came hard, grunting into the stream of water as I poured out into the shower drain.
Holy fuck.
Outside the shower, a loud thud pounded against the door.
Hardin’s not so subtle warning to hurry the hell up.
“Hold your fucking panties,” I hollered over the spray of water, sighing into the steam as I rushed to finish showering.
“What the shit did you do with my clothes?” I shouted, stepping out a few minutes later to find the floor covered only in the Turkish bath mat Ma had replaced the old one with last week.
It wasn’t like I was going to put the cigar-scented shit back on, but still, what the fuck? I was showering . The least he could do was stay the fuck out of the bathroom for five goddamned minutes while I nursed my wounds after leaving me out to dry in the sun.
“Hardin!” I pushed when he didn’t reply, feeling that headache now.
I wrapped myself in one of the oversized towels that matched the bathmat and left the bathroom still dripping wet, uncaring that I was soaking the tile and hardwood.
A wad of black fabric smacked into my face the instant I exited the bathroom and I snarled, catching it in a fist before it could fall to the floor.
“You left that at Minty’s.”
So now we were speaking. Great.
I chucked the sweater into the hamper next to the bathroom door, finding all my other clothes there, the pockets turned out. “ Relax ,” I hissed. “I didn’t buy anything.”
I would’ve if Minty had let me, but that was besides the fucking point. His shit was trash anyway and I could’ve found what I was after in a hundred other places if I’d wanted to. No one would deny a King of Kilborn, let alone a Saint. I went to Minty because I knew he’d say no.
See? I still had a half a brain, even if my brother was looking at me like I’d chucked the whole damn thing out with Saturday’s trash. I’d long since accepted my role as the family fuck-up. Why couldn’t he just let it go?
“Relax?” He threw the word back at me with enough venom to give a snake charmer necrosis. “We’re supposed to be keeping a low profile, Kale. What fucking part of that is hard to understand?”
Sometimes I wished my brother didn’t talk to me either, but alas my parents and I were the only ones he was more than comfortable mouthing off to whenever the mood struck him.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to breathe through the skull piercing ache just behind the flesh and bone there.
“What the fuck do you want me to say, Hardin?”
“It’s not what I want you to say,” he growled. “The Sons of O’Sullivan are?—”
“You’re right. Is that what you want? Can we be done with this conversation? I can’t do this shit right now.”
I turned on my heel and went to the kitchen, leaving wet footprints all over the dark hardwood and even darker tile.
It wasn’t like I fucking planned to be out all night, but when I woke up covered in sweat with the taste of ash and blood in the back of my throat, I just…
I grabbed the coffee pot, dumping the remaining dregs of old java into a mug to shove into the microwave.
A shuddering breath left my lungs as I braced myself on the counter. I was only going out for a couple drinks. The last party we had here cleaned us out of liquor and I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep without its sweet, sweet oblivion.
Hardin’s slow sure-footed footfalls entered the kitchen behind me. He didn’t speak.
“It won’t happen again.”
We both knew it was a lie.
I thought I was done with this shit. If anyone had the right to be angry about it, it was me. He suffered the worst of it when we were kids, why didn’t he still suffer like I did?
Why was his only scar the inability to talk to anyone he wasn’t bonded to through blood? And that shit wasn’t a fucking weakness at all, but a strength. Hardin had only to look at someone in that way he had and he could scare the literal shit out of them faster than anyone could with words.
He wielded his silence like a weapon, and whenever he did open his mouth to speak, everyone shut the fuck up and listened. A single word from him was like the drop of a guillotine blade. Final. Inarguable.
Like this conversation.
“We’re meeting Damien at the shop in an hour,” he grumbled, ignoring my false promise. “Clean yourself up and take some aspirin.”
I spied my phone next to the sink and lifted it, remembering I left it behind when I grabbed my bike keys and took off. Which meant that perky-titted brunette from the Crown had definitely not put her number in it. A waste.
“Hey, did Sam?—”
“Yeah. He nicked your keys.”
My bike would be around back in his garage then, safely away from anyone who might mess with it. At least Hardin wasn’t giving me a hard time about driving that shit less than fucking sober last night. Though I figured that was only because he had bigger issues swirling in that thick head of his.
I tapped my phone and messages lit up the screen like I’d been gone a damn week instead of a few hours. Missed calls and voicemails from Hardin filled a page of notifications, along with nudes from the two freshmen I’d shared my bed with last week. Nice.
There were some new messages in the group chat with our cousins, The Crows. I scrolled past all the other shit and tapped them, licking my desert dry lips.
“Hey, Hardin, you find the girl yet?”
The microwave beeped, and I jerked the door open to stop it from squawking again, putting the piping hot coffee to my lips.
My brother’s back stiffened, and he paused in the living room, turning so I could only see the side of his face. “She found me ,” he said in a low voice.
“What?”
“On the street outside The Crown. Watched me dump your ass into the back of the Bronco.”
I winced. Not the best first impression. But I could fix that.
“So, she’s here then?”
He heaved an annoyed sigh.
Okay, obviously she was here. I didn’t pretend to be the smartest motherfucker, but give me a break, there was a bottle’s worth of Aberfeldy still filtering its way through my abused kidneys.
Where , was what I meant to ask.
“What about the motel?” I thumbed back through the messages in the group chat as I continued to burn my tongue on the steaming coffee.
Hardin wiped a palm over his face and turned back to face me. “There are over fifty motels in Santa Clarita, Kale, the girl could be at any one of them.”
“Shouldn’t be hard to narrow down.”
“We have our own shit to deal with before we can take a goddamn babysitting shift.”
I cocked my head at him, taking note of the firm knot between his brows. The way his dark eyes shifted over the floor. He really didn’t want jack shit to do with this girl.
His loss.
My fucking gain.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll make some calls.”
No problem, big bro, I’d handle it, make sure we kept our word to our cousins. Hell, I might even enjoy it. I scrolled back up to the photo of the girl from earlier in the group chat.
“What’s that?” Hardin asked, stopping just shy of shutting himself into his room, which really would’ve been the best thing to happen all morning.
My brows pinched as I followed his sharp gaze to the front of the house, hearing what he heard. The echo of footfalls against the flagstone path leading to the front door.
Hardin drew his weapon, and I set my coffee down on the coffee table, my shaky fingers upturning the whole damn thing on the floor, scalding my bare feet.
The front door crashed open, and I whirled around, my towel falling into the coffee on the floor.
“Fuck, Ma!” I grumbled as Hardin put his gun away, opening his mouth to speak before he saw who was following our mother into the house. Gillian fucking DeLuca.
She made no secret of her obvious approval as her beady brown eyes zeroed in on my member. Ma on the other hand.
“Ugh, Kaleb,” she cried, rolling her eyes as she hefted three Costco bags into the house. “Put some clothes on.”
“Then I wouldn’t be the heathen you raised.”
She scoffed in disgust, and I didn’t move to lift the coffee soaked towel, wondering if Gillian was going to move from the door any time this week or if she truly planned to stand there gawking like a mutt before a feast of bones.
Hardin tossed me a pair of dirty gym shorts from the hamper, and I grudgingly put them on if only to stop Gill from soaking the welcome mat with drool.
“Better,” Ma said with an approving smirk as she made her way into the living room to draw me into a hug, her long graying black hair brushing over my shoulder. She pulled away, getting a better look at me. “You look like shit.”
“You know you can pick up the phone and call before you just show up? That way you might not get a show you didn’t want a ticket to.”
Her eyes crinkled and she gripped my chin, giving it a shake. “I like to keep you on your toes.”
I jerked my chin out of her grasp. “The fuck is all that?”
Hardin was already in the kitchen, studiously ignoring Gill as he went rifling through all the bags. She regarded him with a wary eye, keeping a constant minimum of three feet between them at all times. If only I commanded the same fear, maybe she’d leave me alone, too.
As it was, Gillian DeLuca was what my father liked to affectionately call a Saint’s Sinner. One in a chain of many women who venerated us not with prayers or tribute, but with hands and tits and lips of both varieties. All in the pursuit of becoming a permanent fixture. The wife of a Saint.
Gillian made it clear who her target was, but to be fucking frank, I’d rather fuck a goat. And it wasn’t her dull brown eyes, small and spaced too far apart, or her nonexistent ass. Hell, it wasn’t even the fact that I was pretty sure she’d sound like Miss Piggy if I ever porked her. No.
Her relentless, at times almost stalkerish pursuit of me was what kept her firmly in do-not-fuck territory. I’d play nice, though, because for some incomprehensible fucking reason, Ma’d taken a liking to her.
Probably all part of her master plan. Get close enough to Ma, you could also have Dad’s ear, and I knew for a fact Dad would heartily condone the idea of me settling down with a steady lay.
The idea made my skin itch.
One pussy for life?
Might as well get me a prescription for limp dick meds at twenty-three because there was no way the same pussy could tempt me on the daily.
Monogamy was overrated.
Marriage, not even a word in my fucking vocabulary.
“Last time I was here there was exactly one slice of moldy bread and two empty mustard bottles in your fridge.”
“Not true,” I corrected her. “There was also beer.”
She fixed me a hard look, going to help Gillian fill our cupboards and fridge with so much goddamn food I wouldn’t be able to squeeze a beer in there if I tried.
“We picked up some more of those Turkish towels, too,” Gillian said, her nasally voice grating against my nerves and still-tender brain tissue.
Her eyes fell to the still semi-swollen ridge of my cock clearly visible beneath the gym shorts and then to the towel by my feet.
“Good thing since it looks like you already ruined one.”
Ma scowled at the towel and I picked it up, glad for any excuse to leave the room. “The coffee’ll come out,” I said on a sigh, making for the laundry room. “Since you’re here, make yourself useful and put on another pot, would you?”
“Kaleb St. Vince?—”
Ma started but Gillian was quick to cut her off. “I’ll do it, Sloane.”
“Don’t pander to him. That boy needs to–”
I shut myself into the laundry room, chucking the towel into the wash basin before exiting out the door on the other end into my bedroom. I flopped onto my bed, smelling my own sweat, dried on the sheets now. Ignoring it.
The maid would be here in a few hours, hopefully after Ma left since she had no idea we hired one the instant she stopped coming around to bitch and moan and ultimately clean everything we didn’t want to.
Propping my head up, I brought up a new browser window, needing to distract myself from the onslaught of imagery from last night’s unconscious brain dump. In the search bar I typed in Rebecca Hart , and settled in to spend the next hour learning who exactly I would be ‘ babysitting.’