Stone: At Your Service (Carolina Bad Boys #1)

by Rie Warren

  I swaggered to her and pulled her into my arms. “This—you and me together—isn’t confusing. He’s gotta know where you fit in our lives.”

  “But you’ve never had anyone here before?”

  Hell no. I’d booted them out as soon as the sheets cooled. Jesus, I’d been a bastard. I’d never been like that with Leelee, never would be. “No, not while he was home.”

  “What if he hates me, Josh?”

  “Babe, the kid’s best friend is Nicky’s bitch pooch, a scary demon thing called Viper. He ain’t gonna hate sweet you.”

  Her eyes twinkled and her long eyelashes fluttered. “Are you sure?”

  I swatted her ass. “Yeah. Listen, I’m grubby as fuck so I’m gonna jump in the shower. You do your thing.” I glanced one last time at my spotless room. “And keep a watch out for my ma?”

  “Sure thing.” She pinched my butt in return.

  Ma hadn’t arrived by the time I’d done a cursory clean up. Neither had Leelee demolished the bedroom, yet. She unpacked, tossing whatever came to hand into various drawers with no rhyme or reason whatsoever while I lounged on the bed, grinning like a fool.

  I saw the smile flirting around her lips and the glances she sent me.

  Jesus, she was gorgeous.

  I kissed the side of her neck and headed downstairs when I heard Ma’s car. She sped off with a toot of her horn as soon as I collected JJ from the car seat and his stuff from the trunk, the soft top on her convertible sliding down at her push of a button.

  Suddenly my palms sweated. Shit, I was nervous. The two most important people in my life were about to meet.

  On the porch, I set down the kid’s knapsack and blankie, plus a bag of possible contraband sugary items. I crouched at his level. “Did Jamma say anything new to you today?”

  His face scrunched up. “Um, she said she got the burn in her heart after we ate us some chili dogs at Cosmic Dogs, and dat the traffic on seven’een so bad she might well crawl us home.” He scratched his tummy. “I think that it, Daddy.”

  I hugged him to me. Goddamn killed me every time. Bad grammar and all. “Well, we’ve got someone visiting for a while.” Maybe forever, hopefully forever. “Her name’s Leelee. I love her, son.”

  Fidgeting from my arms, he sat cross-legged in front of me, cheek in his hand, guileless green-gray eyes blinking. “I wuv everyone you wuv, Daddy.” He held up all five fingers of one hand. “Jamma, Wicky, Viper,” ha!, “I wuv Gerald and Way, Harvey . . .”

  I laughed every damn time he called Javier Harvey.

  He held up his other hand for more fingers to count. “I even wuv Momma. She didn’t wuv me back.”

  My chest heaved several times and my throat tightened. I mashed him against me because I didn’t want him to see me weaking again. “Momma loved you, kid. Your momma loved you, she loves you, okay? Sometimes people, they just don’t fit.” With my hand engulfing his entire head, I rocked him with me. “How could anyone not love you?”

  “Will Weewee wuv me?”

  Holy shit. If I hadn’t been crying, I’d have fallen over laughing. We needed to work on his enunciation. “I bet she already does, baby boy. Are you okay with this?”

  “Does she sing Disney songs too?” Wide-eyed, he wondered.

  Well, shit, I didn’t know. It hadn’t been on my to-do list when I’d thought about winning Leelee back into my life. “Maybe we oughtta go find out.”

  I walked him inside. He only came up to my knees and his fingers curled around mine, reminding me of the way he’d latched onto my thumb the first time I’d held him. Newborn, and sweet smelling, and the most fragile piece of bliss I’d ever known.

  Another slice of the promised land waited beyond the doors. Leelee was all smiles and a few tears she blinked away as we entered the house. I couldn’t speak. I opened my arm, inviting her into my family. I looked at Leelee pressed against one side of me, JJ on the other. They both peered up at me, and I had to swallow past the hard knot in my throat.

  “JJ, this is Leelee.” I patted her waist and squeezed his hand. Leelee’s fingers dug into my chest, all of our emotions centered there. “Leelee, this is my baby boy.” Love and hope so massive in that moment, they were etched in my soul and on my heart. “He wants to know if you sing Disney songs.”

  She slipped free of me, kneeling down to shrink herself to my son’s height. “I sure do. But I’m a girl so I like the princesses better. That Flynn Rider has a lot to answer for.”

  Breath exploded from my chest when JJ nodded so very seriously at her. In fact, my goddamn heart reached up to my throat and stayed there while I watched the two of them meet, eye-to-eye.

  Leelee gathered his free hand between hers. “Now, I do like me some Little Mermaid. What about you?”

  “Ursuwa the sea witch kinda scares me.” The kid shivered all over his body, and his hand slipped from mine.

  “Me too.” Leelee’s eyes popped wide. “No one likes a witch, do they?”

  “Nuh uh. Can I show you my new fairy stowybook? It’s in my woom. Daddy don’t care, do you?” He didn’t wait one way or the other. JJ pulled her hand and she scampered to her feet.

  “’Course you can, didn’t you know I love fairytales, darlin’?” She toed off her high heels and padded to the stairs.

  The kid hung back for a second, their hands connected, the both of them linked to me, to my heart.

  “Daddy, she wooks wike Ariel!” And he was a goner, toddling off beside her.

  My throat was dry, my eyes wet as I watched my son and my woman walk up the stairs, sharing secrets, hand-in-hand.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Stone: At Her Service

  A WEEK AND A half later, the kid and I took up residence in the kitchen, making a total mess of the place. We fried up fresh catfish and I tried my hand at making jalapeno hushpuppies because Leelee had ordered them when we went to Red’s Ice House. Friday night at home, I was happy to stay put instead of scoring on the bar scene. I laughed when the kid held up gooey, fish-battered fingers, trying to smear them on my face from where he perched on the counter.

  Leelee looked over at us, a smile on her lips with a pen pushed behind her ear. She was in the living room, writing, visible through the open archway, and still here. She liked to move around the house at different times of the day, following sunlight like a sunflower opening, blossoming. The porches, the kitchen, and if she was really on a roll, she lugged her laptop upstairs later at night to the cozy office we shared while I scratched through paperwork. The writer’s block was gone. The professional fears caused by LaForge and the anxiety to write faster and faster vanished. And just like her, the second story in her trilogy bloomed.

  Sometimes she read to me from her day’s work. The hot passages dripping from her low-toned voice made me harder than a plank, and made for good sex long into the night, but so did basically anything she did. Leelee laughing, her wet from a shower or pink from a bath, her tousled head pillowed on my shoulder as she woke in the morning. Lazy as a feline, stretching on top of me.

  The flirting, the occasional fighting because she would never be less than feisty as hell, this thing about making a life—a home—together, got me right in the gut. It pushed up to my heart and filled it until I thought it would explode with happiness.

  Fuck me. I’m turnin’ into a Hallmark card.

  I went back to helping JJ form misshapen balls that pretended to be hushpuppies. I kept sneaking glances at Leelee though. She stretched out on the floor, legs spread wide, leaning over onto her elbows as she tapped across the keyboard of her laptop. In faded sweats, her hair in a ponytail, wearing one of my threadbare T-shirts, she walked a fine line between relaxed innocence and getting her bones jumped. Jesus. I certainly couldn’t go after her, not with the kid around. Some things wouldn’t do even though he was used to our hand-holding, hugging, and even our kisses, because I wasn’t going to hide my love for her. Touching Leelee was as vital as breathing. And he’d taken to her like she was the next
best thing since chicken nuggets chased with a hot fudge sundae.

  Starting up the fryer with JJ coloring at the table and possibly all over it, I realized I was almost one hundred percent domesticated and loving every fucking minute of it.

  I pressed the timer on the range and sat across from the kid. “Whatcha drawing, baby boy?”

  He shoved the piece of paper at me and kept doodling, on his hand. “Guess!”

  Crap, I hated this game. I mean, how the hell was I supposed to know what a tentacle-mass of red waves and a tent-shape with purple flowers was supposed to be?

  I ran a fingertip over the scribbles. “Gimme a hint?”

  “Dat a pitcher of someone I like.”

  Squinting, I saw it then, in a surreal way. I dropped my voice. “Leelee?”

  “Good, Daddy! She’s wearin’ dat dress from the day I met her!” He squealed, all semblance of being secretive off the table. Climbing off his chair and into my lap, he turned down the volume to whisper, “Can we keep her?”

  Oh my hell, like she was a pet. Leelee and I had discussed it. We’d made it barely a week before both our minds were made up. We worked, this worked, the three of us together. Spending more time apart meant unnecessary pain.

  She was staying. “I can write anywhere, but there’s only one Stone’s, Josh. This is your home, and I want it to be mine too,” she’d said.

  And it was. High heels, mountains of dresses, cosmetics, files, folders, books and all, strewn around our bedroom, bathroom, and the office. Fuck if I even wanted to change a thing. Leelee was a hurricane-level storm that upended my life, made it chaotic and crazy, and more complete than I’d ever thought possible.

  “Yeah, kid, we can keep her.” We fell into hair-ruffling, tummy-tickling awesomeness.

  Walking into the living room after tucking JJ in at the table with a full-body bib, I hunched before Leelee. She blinked up at me, pulling out of the writing daze that captured her for hours.

  I slid my fingers down her neck. “Hey, babe. Dinner’s on.”

  Curving her arms above her head as she stretched and did that feline thing I liked, she said, “You know, you two are so cute, Josh.”

  Cute. My grin grew dangerous. The atmosphere charged as her eyes strayed to my mouth and stayed there. Her breath deepened, her cheeks heated.

  She’d eat those words later, with my cock in her mouth.

  And she did. Not long after the kid had passed out cold for the night, she found me in the living room. “Still got that hat, Stone?”

  “Why? You got plans for me, babe?” My hard-on formed in anticipation as I sat on the couch.

  Leelee lifted off her T-shirt, slipped out of the sweats, and let her hair down. Completely utterly fuckably naked, she stood several steps away, moving her hips in a suggestive dance. “I think I wanna go for a ride.”

  “Hat’s in the hall closet,” I croaked.

  “Don’t move.”

  I watched her ass swish-sway away, in complete agony as my cock lengthened down the inseam of my jeans.

  On her return, she wore my fedora at a sexy angle. She leaned over me so I could take long hard draws on her nipples while she slowly pulled my erection out of my jeans.

  My aching length pumped in her enclosed fist. “Fuuuck, Leelee.”

  She put the hat on my head, lowering to her knees between my spread thighs. Her mouth engulfed me in one swift, wet move. All the muscles in my body screamed with pressure.

  Her mouth worked me to the breaking point, her fingers ripping at the buttons of my shirt and pulling it open. I shrugged it off, one hand guiding the back of her head up and down.

  Rigid, slick, shiny swollen, my cock slapped my stomach when she released it.

  I pulled her onto my lap and thrust into her hot sheath without warning. I swallowed her yell with my mouth and grunted, “Josh Stone. At your service, babe.”

  ****

  The following week, coming up on mid-July, Leelee and I headed out of town. We’d pick up a U-Haul in Shreveport, tow my car, and drive her belongings back to South Carolina. She planned to put the condo up for sale in hopes of making enough profit to cover the mortgage Patrick Fuckstick had saddled her with. It hurt like hell to leave the kid—only my second time—but we needed this time together. We craved it.

  He gave his blessing with a book he’d stapled together complete with hacked-off edges from safety scissors that didn’t even fit my fingers. The pages opened to gaudy, blobby drawings of castles and, well, I couldn’t make out much of the rest until the end. The final page showed a picture of three people holding hands. The red hair was a dead giveaway for Leelee. The bright blue cape on the smallest figure was his. And between them both was a giant—shit, had he made me a Cyclops?—linking them all together. A lopsided heart surrounding us.

  I tucked the book under the visor of my muscle car. Gripping Leelee’s hand, I drove away, trying not to look back or turn the car around.

  The ’69 Camaro, on the road, with my woman: life couldn’t get much better. She proved to be more entertaining company than Nicky’s waxed ass by far. We took our time, doing the tourist thing through Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, staying at inns instead of dime-a-dozen hotels. Every night was a new romantic pit stop.

  Romantic may have been stretching it. Once we left Mt. Pleasant, we were all over each other every chance we got. The domesticated animal gave way to pure male greed. Leelee was right there with me, as hungry for the clothes-tearing, hair-grabbing, wet, loud, horny sex as me.

  By the time we arrived at her apartment to pack it up in the four days we’d allotted, my Camaro resembled the cracked-up state of her hotel room in Atlanta. It’d all started with one innocent straw wrapper from a Sonic Cherry Limeade and had grown to out-of-control proportions. I swore, she had a hundred changes of clothes stowed beneath the seats alone.

  It was one thing to mess up my house. I could always hire a maid. It was another to annihilate the Camaro. On that last day of driving, I’d had to change a flat—no biggie—but that was work shit I didn’t want to drag into our vacation. I hadn’t been able to reach the kid all day, and I was in a fine snit when I finally parked outside her place.

  It was sweltering outside, late at night. We had a couple hours to start clearing before falling asleep exhausted and meeting her folks for brunch the next morning. I needed a shower for myself as well as an excavator for the car to be able to see the floor mats again.

  I slammed my door, stomping over to open Leelee’s before she found the handle, probably because it was hidden under her usual debris.

  My shoulders stiff, I formally bowed. “At your service, it seems.”

  Her long legs flashed out of the car. “You got a problem all of a sudden, Stone?”

  She did not wanna pick that fight with me.

  I pressed her against the hood, hot as the surface of the sun after driving four hours straight. “Yeah, maybe I do. When are you gonna start pickin’ up after yourself?”

  “You weren’t complaining about how sloppy I was last night when I sucked your balls until you shouted my name so loud the manager called our room.”

  Her reminder made my anger over stupid shit morph straight into lust. Zero to sixty, three seconds flat.

  “Maybe what you need is a homemaker à la Father Knows Best instead of me. That would suit your old school, macho image.” She sneered.

  Parting her thighs, I stood inside them, rigid against her. “You’re asking for it, Leelee.”

  “Look, I don’t know what crawled up your ass, Mr. Pissy Pants, but you’re not the boss of—”

  “You might wanna rethink saying you’re not the boss of me, babe.” I pushed in tight. “I ain’t your boss, don’t wanna be. But I am your man.”

  “You arrogant pig!”

  “Wrong words, woman.” I lunged inside her mouth with a kiss so full of force and passion, I groaned with the way she gave it up, clinging to me, pulling me down.

  She held me with one hand aroun
d my neck. She tried to drive me back with a palm to my chest. I smirked before attaching my mouth to the shivery point on her collarbone.

  “Oh God, Josh, you’re not gonna—” She gasped when I slipped two fingers under her panties, finding the warm, silky opening and her clit.

  “I’m gonna fuck you right here, on top of my car.” One handed, I unzipped. I stroked my cock, watching the way she draped on the hood, one knee raised. Sure she wanted it, positive she was ready, I slammed inside. “We’re about to wake the neighbors.”

  Frustration, fury, fatigue boiled down to this hardcore, raw fucking. I powered inside of her. I wanted to be in her skin. The next best thing was Leelee supporting herself on one hand, her head dropped back, her hips pumping up.

  Her pussy rippled around me, blanking everything from my mind but the pure ecstasy that burst inside of me—mind, body, sight, muscles tautened until I roared.

  She burned against me, around me, shaking from her legs to her tits. I held the back of her head, protecting her from the unforgivable metal of the car.

  When she slumped, I did too. Her fingers combed through my hair. “You been thinkin’ about doing that for a while?”

  “Maybe.” I could fall asleep right there, her satisfied purr better than any engine I’d ever worked on.

  “It’s probably a good thing I’m moving out.” Leelee dragged herself back together as lights came on from inside a couple apartments.

  I lifted her against me, one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back. “I reckon.”

  A messy car to deal with in exchange for one incredible woman who turned my world upside down, inside out, and perfectly right? Worth it.

  The next morning the prospect of meeting her folks shot my nerves to shit. I compounded the frazzled edge by downing two cups of black coffee. On the drive over, I couldn’t sit still. I was turning into the kid.

  “What if I say fuck in front of them?”

  Leelee’s hand on my leg calmed the jumpiness. “They’re not gonna hate you, Josh. They’re just good, salt-of-the-earth people, and they want me to be happy. Besides, I don’t think they ever approved of Patrick, and you’re night and day from him.”