Page 38 of Perfect Praise

“That’s okay, swee—” Her eyes fly above my head in a look of shock. She immediately shrinks. “Locke?”

“Hey, Mom,” he says harshly.

I can now feel his heart racing against my back in double-time. The plane of his body is one hard contraction of muscle.

Her eyes go even wider. “What’re you doing here?”

“We were just leaving.”

His voice makes me hold tight to his thighs, like I’m unsure what his mother is capable of.

Locke is brushing past her so quickly with me in his arms that he’s as close to carrying me as he can be without actually carrying me. I’m not sure my feet are technically touching the ground, and I’m fuming and squirming in his iron grip.

When we reach the car, he places me in the passenger seat like I weigh nothing and closes the door before I can say anything.

Locke leans his back against my door, his shoulders rising and falling sharply.

“Mom?Mom?!” I shriek as soon as he opens his own door and slides behind the wheel. “I thought your parents were dead!”

“I know you did,”I say after a minute. I still haven’t started the car, but my mother isn’t going to follow me, thank fuck.

“You lied to me,” Maren says angrily.

She’s cute when she’s mad; eyebrows pinched deeply, and a scowl that could rival mine. And I think I’ve finally seen that part of her, a part I almost feel lucky to be experiencing because she’s comfortable enough to show me.

I run my hands down my pants. “I did not lie to you. You assumed, and I never bothered to correct you.”

“Whatever,” she huffs. “You don’t owe me any explanations. We’re not friends. Can we go back and sign the papers now?”

I shake my head. “You’re not living here.”

Maren groans when I start the ignition. “What the hell do you mean? You said it was okay, and this was the last one I found in my price range. The alternatives are even shittier than this, and I’m sure your mega-mansion has warped your reality of other people’s realities.”

An idea pops into my brain, and I start to pull out of the parking space before she can sprint out of the car.

Her voice rises in confusion and irritation. “Your own mother lives here, Locke. It can’t be that bad.”

“She doesn’t live here,” I tell her. “Considering I pay her mortgage, I know where she lives.”

Maren sits back and crosses her arms like she’s daring me. “What does that mean?”

I go still, drive through a green light, merge onto the interstate, and head back north. It’s been at least five minutes since she asked me that question.

Nothing in me wants to elaborate, but I do, because over my dead body will Maren be living within a ten-mile radius of that.

“You’re not living next door to my mother’s drug dealer.”

I’ve rendered her talkative little mouth speechless. Fuck, how badly I’d like to render it speechless because she’s choking on my cock, but that ship has sailed. I pull my eyes off her lips.

In a split-second decision, without any further thought other than I need to protect her, I say, “You’re coming home with me.”

“What?” she splutters, recovering from her shock. “No, I’m not.”

“You are,” I insist. “I live in a ‘mega-mansion’ and have a guest house that no one has ever lived in. You will never see me. It’s separated from my house by a pool and a golf course.”

She laughs. “You’rethe insane one.”

“I am completely in my right mind when I say that I will not let you live in any of these places, and if you think I’ll lose this argument, you’ll quickly realize I’m not fucking around. My house doesn’t have black mold. It isn’t in a bad neighborhood. No one will try to grope you. And you won’t be living next door to daily drug deals.”

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