We all shifted just far enough apart to view each other’s faces. The creases between their brows matched, and they blinked as if I’d spoken gibberish.

Thomas recovered first. “Where do you work?”

“At the inn.”

“Can you stay until your shift begins?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How about a chat on the patio and three iced coffees? You girls go on outside, I’ll be right out.” He looked at Mama then, and something passed between them. “It’s time to tell her, Esmeralda.”

Her eyes refilled with tears and she nodded as an ice-cold trickle of trepidation tore down my spine.

Chapter Twenty-one

Boyce

During our nightly meeting on the top step, there was something different about Pearl. She was quieter—no gossip about her shift at the inn. My stories about Sam’s red-faced reactions to the things customers sometimes left out in the open when they brought their cars in—polka-dotted panties in a backseat, a sealed box marked fecal matter resting on a dash (“There’s poop in that box! Poop!” Sam said), a strip of condoms curled in a cup holder like a roll of stamps—all produced the ghost of a smile instead of laughter. She leaned her head on my arm and I fell silent, smoking and leaving her to her thoughts.

Once my mother had closed herself into her room, Pearl and I went inside and took turns in the bathroom. I was bedded down on the sofa, lights out, when she came out wearing a thin-strapped blue tank and shorts. I nearly bit my lip in half to keep from moaning my appreciation of it, of her, of her in it. “Good night, Pearl,” I said, doing fuck-all to conceal the lust in my tone, but damn. Instead of answering, she walked toward me, silent. The light from the bedroom behind her glowed dimly, outlining the curves of her body as she walked up to me and held out her hand. I sat up, taking it, and she tugged softly.

No idiot, I allowed myself to be led to my bedroom. She closed the door behind me and switched off the light. The window was open wide, the fan oscillating in front of it like it meant to lift itself right off the dresser, but the night air remained sticky and hot. The only AC units were in the kitchen and the bedroom my mother occupied across the trailer. We were going to be sweat-covered in two minutes flat, but I didn’t give a single goddamn if she didn’t.

“You want me to lay you down, sweetheart?” I asked, pulling her close, hands sliding to cup her ass as she nodded. “Done.” I leaned down to kiss her full mouth, my dick springing to attention in my boxers, fully prepared to give her whatever she wanted, however she wanted it.

She opened that warm, pretty mouth wide and pressed her pliant body into mine, arms looping around my neck, fingers raking across my scalp and forking through my hair. I groaned right into her and she sucked my tongue hungrily, swallowing the garbled sounds that said my body meant to own hers. My dick surged jealously and I fought like hell to banish the vivid fantasy of her mouth taking me deep because I wouldn’t last five seconds if I let those images run loose in my head. And then she dropped to her knees.

“Holy shit,” I ground out as she pulled my boxers down my thighs, and then not one coherent word left my mouth.

I paid no heed to the urge to guide her because she didn’t need any goddamn directions. My fingers sank into the silky, dark waves of her hair and I just held on, watching as the sway of her head followed the warm stroke of her tongue and the constriction of her throat. Three seconds from exploding, I tugged at a handful of her hair, almost relenting when she shook her head no. “Next time,” I panted, half-sure I would drown her with the force of my release because my body wasn’t used to the amount of self-denial I’d been requiring of it lately.

The suctioned pop as her lips left that swollen, greedy head was my breaking point. I fell to my knees and turned her onto her hands and knees, yanking her shorts over her hips and pulling her bare backside into the saddle of my lap while choking out, “Okay?”

“Yes,” she groaned and I plunged deep, one hand braced on the floor, my opposite arm locked around her middle, palm pressed to her belly and fingers slanting low to stroke her as we shuddered into waves of climax from that solitary thrust.

Nuzzling her hair aside, I kissed the back of her neck, tongue lapping down the soft arc of her salty skin, and she trembled and convulsed again with a soft moan. I hummed my approval, placing soft, sucking kisses across the beautiful jut of her shoulder blade and still shaking from the intensity of my release—I’d never experienced anything like it. I’d never come that close to losing control.

Oh. Shit. No condom. No condom. Fuck. My grip around her slackened, but I didn’t release her because her arms were quivering visibly. I was still supporting most of her weight.

“Oh…,” she said, angling away from my lap and tucking her chin to glance at me over her shoulder. “We forgot—”

“I’ve never had sex without a condom, and I’ve never had any, um… infection issues.”

She slipped her shorts back up and I did the same, processing the fact that in a decade of sex with too many girls and women to recall, this was the first time I’d outright fucking forgotten to grab a rubber first.

“I… I had my yearly check after… I’m clean, too. But…” But pregnancy, she didn’t say aloud.

I heard it anyway.

My dumbass brain went straight for a vision of Pearl pregnant with my child, and God help me, I wanted it. Wanted it so bad I had a hankering to pick her up, carry her the ten steps across the room to my bed and fuck her again to double my chances. What in hell was wrong with me?