Page 61 of Feast

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. He’s the villain.”

“Wild,” was his opinion of that.

“He’s funny,” she told him and looked at the pizza box. There was only one slice left. “Do you want that last piece?”.

“Go ahead and take it,” he said, nudging the box over.

“You sure?”

“Least I can do,” he said mildly.

“You’re paying me for sex with pizza?” she asked, amused at the idea.

“If I were paying you for sex, I’d owe you a hell of a lot more than pizza,” he said, and the look he sent her was so unabashedly lusty that she bobbled the slice.

Gripping the pizza firmly in one hand, she pointed a finger at him. “Don’t give me that look.”

His eyebrow quirked up. “What look?”

“That…come to Daddy look,” she decided and shook her finger for emphasis. “I am done, finished, tapped out. My pussy is closed for business.”

His eyebrow climbed a fraction higher. “Bet I could get it open again.”

“Stop doing that eyebrow thing. You know it makes me jealous,” she said, and for the sake of her pussy, scooted a few inches away. “And no, you cannot.”

His eyes lit at the challenge, and she thoughtoh, shit.But then he relaxed back against the cushions, his sexy smile sliding away. “Probably just as well.”.

“It is?”

“Since it’s complicated.”

“Right,” she said faintly, and tried to smother the surge of disappointment. “Complicated.”

“Right,” he said and with a last, long look, turned back to the television.

She didn’t staythe night. He offered, but she used the excuse of an early workday to beg off, and he didn’t argue. He stood in the doorway, watching until she was safely in her car. And as she drove home in the dark and the snow, she tried to get some perspective.

It didn’t look like she was going to be having any more sex with Spence, and that was more of a disappointment than she’d expected. Not only because she’d miss the orgasms—which she had to admit were some of the best she’d ever had with someone else in the room—but because she liked him even when he wasn’t making her come, resting grump face and all. She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, and it was just her bad fucking luck he ended up being her stepbrother.

Which wasn’t a problem for her. As she pointed out, they hadn’t grown up together and weren’t related by blood, so she really didn’t believe a sexual relationship between them rose to the level of incest. She didn’t think he did either, but he wasn’t wrong that it made things complicated. Especially since he seemed to think his mother wouldn’t see it so reasonably.

She pulled into the driveway of her small Cape Cod and switched off the engine, then sat there in the dark for a moment while the snow fell gently outside. Considering the circumstances, it was probably best to let what happened in Vegas stay in Vegas—tonight’s activities notwithstanding. Even if it did suck.

She sighed and got out of the car to trudge up the walk she was going to have to shovel in the morning. Bad fucking luck.

Maddie didn’t havemuch time to worry about Spence over the next week. Work was frantic, as the accountant she’d replaced had clearly been phoning it in long before he’d given his notice, and she put in extra hours so she could take Friday off to help Halley move without falling too far behind.

On Friday night, after what felt like the longest day of her life, Maddie scowled at the stack of boxes in her living room. “You said you didn’t have much stuff.”

“I don’t,” Halley said from the depths of the box she was unloading.

“Hal, there are…” She paused to count. “Fourteen boxes left. And we’ve been at this for two hours already.”

Halley emerged from the box with a stack of bath towels, her blonde ponytail swinging. “Don’t forget the ones in the bedroom.”

“I haven’t,” Maddie said and stayed exactly where she was, sprawled on the couch between a box marked No. 8 in Halley’s careful handwriting and another marked No. 7. “What’s in all these?”

“Towels,” Halley said, lifting the stack she held.

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