Page 54 of Unwrapping Deviance

We arrive at the house at the same time. I pull into my spot as Daniel gets into his. Mira stays seated until I cut the engine and straighten my hands off the bars.

“That was amazing!” she breathes, chuckling softly.

I turn slightly to help her down. She wobbles getting to her feet, but I catch her. Instinct has me hooking her waist and pulling her to me. To my chest.

She’s in my arms. Her hands braced on my shoulders. Her eyes are bright with excitement. Her cheeks red from the wind. And her smile...

Fuck me, her smile is damning and inches from my visor.

“Sorry.” She chuckles. “My legs are wobbly.”

I groan at the thought of how else I could make her legs wobbly.

“A few more rides and you’ll be a pro,” I tell her.

Her smile widens. “You’ll let me ride with you again?”

Fuck.

“As often as you like.”

I regret fucking nothing when my little brat beams and I wish I didn’t have my helmet on so I could kiss that fucking mouth.

Instead, a scuffle has her glancing over her shoulder. Daniel is at the truck bed, unlatching the hatch to grab the groceries.

“Thank you for the ride,” she’s saying when I focus away from my brother.

I drag my helmet off and reach to unsnap the buckle on hers. Her hair falls in a wild tangle of curls around her shoulders. She’s still leaning against me. Her tiny hands practically half buried in the long sleeves of my jacket are bunched up in my t-shirt.

Barely twenty four hours and I’m ready to promise my soul to the devil for just a taste of her mouth. Nothing more. Just a fucking kiss.

“Hold on to it,” I tell her when she starts to take my jacket off.

She pauses. Her thick lashes lift, and she fixes her gaze on my face, searching. Assessing. Looking for something I’m not sure she’s going to find.

“Thank you for today,” she says at last, and I think for a second she means for the ride, but she continues, “For what you did back at the Sheriff’s office. For being there.”

Against my better judgement, I reach up and hook a dark strand of hair off her bottom lip. Let my finger graze the plump fold and watch it part.

“I would have killed all of them for you.”

I don’t know when her arms found their home around my shoulders, but I don’t give a shit as I pull her closer. Tighter. My heart is drumming wildly in my chest, a rampant, unfamiliar tempo I don’t recognize when the tiny creature in my arms closes the distance and presses her puffy lips to my cheek. The one she’d struck.

The spot burns like she’s stuck me with a lit match. It tingles and pulses and I almost touch it when she pulls back a notch and kills me with that mischievous smile of hers.

“I’m still angry with you for last night, but...” her grin broadens. “I’m really close to forgiving you.”

My eyebrow lifts at her teasing. “How close?”

Her button nose crinkles, but she’s grinning when replying slyly, “Seconds.”

Fuck!

I watch her pivot on her heels, sending her skirt flaring around her thighs before she hurries to where Daniel’s waiting for her. I can’t hear what she tells him but I hear his resigned, “Of course he did.”

We work together bringing the groceries up to the house. We load the cupboards and pantry. The fridge has to be emptied and scrubbed before anything new can be put away. Dad, the pig that he was, hadn’t cleaned anything out in six years — according to the expiration on a jar of liquid shit tucked behind a block of moldy cheese.

Somehow, that task broadens to wiping down the kitchen. Washing the tower of crusty dishes piled in the sink. Scrubbing the floors and vacuuming the rugs. All the bedding gets stripped and washed. The furniture is dusted, the stairs swept, and even the bathrooms get tackled. Mira pries open every window in the place while Daniel and I haul trash bag after trash bag from the house to the shed around back. They’re locked up to keep the animals away.

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