Page 100 of Killer Kiss

Mom

Ophelia, honestly, this is a job your brother could have handled in an afternoon, and you’ve had weeks. I don’t know why I expected more of you though. You have always been one endless disappointment after another. All my children are. I don’t know what I did wrong. Cora and Gordon have Jezabel and Riddick so well trained. They are the perfect children. Yet here I am, with one daughter too weak for her own good, a son who is a pussy-whipped fool, and you, my eldest, too damn useless to get a single job done. What did I do wrong?

I ground my molars, reading that last sentence. “Narcissistic bitch,” I muttered, my entire body tensing up with anger and resentment at the nagging feeling there was some truth to her words.

Augie rose from between my thighs and scowled at me. Without asking, he plucked the phone from my hands and hit the power button. “Changed my mind. We’re just going to switch this off and pretend it doesn’t exist, because you’re suddenly so tense it’s like going down on a stone.”

“Sorry,” I said unhappily, letting him turn the phone off and toss it across the room. “It’s my mother. She makes me crazy.”

He crawled up my body and laid himself out next to me, twisting onto his side and propping his head up with one hand. “Mothers are the worst.”

I nodded in agreement. “The absolute worst.”

He watched me carefully, then blew out a long, stuttering breath. “Hey, I was wondering something…”

I waited for him to say whatever was on his mind.

His gaze darted around anxiously, unable to fully rest on my face.

I poked him in the chest. “Are you nervous right now?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Why? You gonna ask me to marry you? You got a ring hidden in these sheets somewhere?”

His mouth pulled up in a half-grin. “No. But I did want to ask if you wanted to come to a dinner with me.”

I hesitated, knowing it would be dangerous to be seen with him in public.

He noticed and flopped onto his back. “Forget it. It was stupid of me to ask. I’ll just go alone.”

I hated the rejection in his expression and that it was me who’d put it there. I couldn’t take it.

Plus, I wanted to go with him.

I always wanted to be with him lately.

He was all I could freaking think about.

I straddled him, digging my knees into the mattress either side, and hovering over his hips. “No, tell me. Where’s the dinner? I want to come.”

His eyes lit up like a little kid on Christmas morning. “Really?” Then he cleared his throat, trying to play it cool. “I mean, okay, awesome. That would be great.”

I laughed at his poor job of being chill, and he grinned, too, happily flipping us over so I was on my back and he was between my widespread thighs.

“It’s just at my brother’s house. Nothing fancy, I don’t think. Though they do live in a big Providence mansion…” His eyes suddenly took on a look of despair. “Shit, do you think I need to get dressed up? I don’t own a suit or anything like that.”

I was still stuck on him inviting me to his brother’s house. “This is a family dinner?”

He stopped his freak out and gazed down at me. “Yeah.”

My head spun. “Just to be clear, you want to take me home to officially meet your family?”

He cocked his head to one side. “Well, yeah. If you want to? I mean, I know we aren’t anything…”

I hated hearing him say that.

Every cell in my body revolted at the very idea of not being his.

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