Page 6 of About That Night

I can still hear her soft moans of pleasure in my dark bedroom. She comes easily for me. Both times I was with her. I barely touch her, and she shatters like glass, arching her back into me. And her body…

Damn.

“It’s good to be home,” I tell Pops.

“You’re going to do whatever the hell you want, aren’t you?” Pops asks.

I shrug. “I can’t help it. It’s middle son syndrome. I crave attention.”

He snorts. “That’s a convenient excuse.”

That makes me grin. “Of course it is. You know full well I’m not even the middle son.” I’m the second son out of five. Cash is actually the middle son, and all he craves is pizza and being left alone on his ranch. Or he did, before he knocked up Sera, fell in love, married her, and took on a whole-ass family of kids. “I can’t just admit out loud that I do whatever I want for no reason, now can I?”

“You get that from me.”

“I know. Which is why you love me the most.”

Pops rolls his eyes. “No. I love you the most because you feed me.”

That makes me laugh. “Seriously, Pops. I will keep the kid in mind, I promise. I have no desire to muck up a child’s life, or whatever it is Chastity has going on in her life. I swear to you. I’m just curious about who she is now.”

Because she seems kind of amazing.

Chapter Two

Chastity

The second my shift ends, I bolt to my car like there’s a gator on my tail. I spent the last hour acutely aware of Hank Young in his grandfather’s room. I could hear his laugh occasionally, but that wasn’t what had me so damn jumpy. It’s just an awareness of his existence whenever I’m in close proximity to him. It’s like when you have arthritis and your knees ache, alerting you that rain is coming.

My pussy aches when Hank is around. Orgasm storm a-brewing.

I don’t want it to. But it does. Without fail, every single time I see him.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, I can forget that I’m a woman with needs, sexual or otherwise. I focus on being the best mother and nurse that I can be, wanting to raise my son up right and do my best to help my patients. Being a woman in need of physical satisfaction, or even affection, is the lowest on my list of priorities ninety-nine percent of the time.

But then Hank Young comes around, and that neglected one percent clamors for attention. I feel every inch a woman. My skin feels tight, my nipples are hard. My inner thighs ache. I swear, even the roots of my hair feel tingly. It’s immediate and uncomfortable and very, very warm.

It’s also highly inappropriate and inconvenient to be feeling some kind of horny way when you’re at work.

My co-worker, Walter, asked me three times if I was okay. He’s convinced I’m getting a fever.

Not a fever. Just a sudden, maddening desire to get railed. Not that I remember what getting railed feels like because it’s been so damn long.

It’s a warm night in November, so I don’t even have any cold air to snap me out of my sudden sexual fever. Instead, I just climb in my car and yank the door shut, immediately locking the doors as if that will protect me from my own urges.

Because the urges are strong.

I haven’t had sex in five years—since the first night I was with Hank. I haven’t had an orgasm in two years—since the second night I was with Hank.

With the exception of the three minutes it took for my son, Josiah, to be conceived in a dumpy motel room in Pensacola on spring break after way too many vodka cranberries, the sum total of my sexual experience has been with Hank. Aside from self-service. But anything that has ever happened with a man in the room has been with him.

My body has clearly been trained to associate Hank with sexual gratification. That’s all it is. But that still makes it a problem because I can’t seem to say no to him. He just smiles at me, and I have no willpower.

Not that he knows any of that. I didn’t tell him about my lack of experience five years ago. I didn’t tell him two years ago either, or about Josiah, because seeing Hank again felt like a gift from the universe, a risk-free way to enjoy myself for some brief, stolen naked moments.

With shaky hands, I drive to my new rental house. I’ve only been back in town for a month, and I still have mixed feelings about it. A few people in town weren’t exactly kind to me when I turned up single and pregnant at eighteen, my parents included. They also haven’t welcomed me home with open arms.

But I loved growing up in Porte French, with its strong sense of community. For every judgy busybody giving me side eye at the grocery, there are ten people who have been willing to help me out, from my next-door neighbor who keeps cutting my grass to the lady who owns the bakery who slips Josiah a free cookie every Saturday. I want to give my son that kind of life.

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