“I’d like to know you better than Eve,” he shot back. “I know you feel it. You feel this chemistry. No strings. I know you’re a little gun shy right now after the love of your life impregnating your sister, but if you want to blow off steam with a man you know is going to rock your world, then I’m your huckleberry.”
She bit her bottom lip and looked everywhere but into those brown eyes which were begging her to agree.
“I tell you what gorgeous,” he motioned back to the trio of women, “my mother wants to meet the artist. I will introduce you. I’m going to show her around and then I’m going to send her home with my driver. If by the time she is ready to leave, you have decided you want to go home to your brother’s place and stare at the ceiling in a lonely twin bed, no hard feelings.”
“How did you know it was a twin bed?” she gasped.
“I didn’t. I guessed,” he laughed at her. “However, if you want to come sleep in a giant king-sized bed with expensive thread count sheets, I’ll be giving you all kinds of hard things, none of them feelings. Well, maybe, some feelings.”
“You’re the devil.” She whispered as he lifted her fingers and kissed her knuckles. “You were on a date last weekend.”
“I was. First date. Last date. Didn’t even fuck her. Sent her home. She was whiny. It grated.”
“You don’t have a girlfriend?”
“No girlfriend, wife, or fiancé. My mama raised me right. I don’t cheat on partners or taxes. Everything else though is fair game.”
She laughed at his words, “terrible.”
“You keep saying it. Come home with me and see how bad I can be.” He took her hand in his large one and smiled, “come on, let’s go ask my mom if I’m trustworthy.”
She scoffed at his words as he pulled her across the room.
“Mom, this is Liesl. Tell her I’m a good boy and I’ll never do her wrong.” He winked at his mom, “Liesl, this is my mom, Apolonia Machado. She’s my favorite person in the world. She’ll tell you I’m a good boy.”
“He’s the devil. He once threw a party in my house with a hundred people and got so drunk he puked in my favorite potted plant.” His mother threw him under the bus. “Terrible child. Terrible.”
“I bought that house,” he rebutted with a grin ducking from his mother’s smack.
She giggled as she hugged Apolonia. “I remember you. You bought one of my paintings years ago.”
“I did and it still hangs in my den. I love it. I am going to add another to my collection tonight. Come, educate me on your paintings and I will educate you on the reasons why my son is a good man but a terrible son.”
As she tossed a wide grin over her shoulder at the man in question, Liesl’s stomach did a somersault at his wide grin. She was in a for a world of his trouble. She couldn’t wait.
She was lying in the twin bed in her brother’s guest bedroom and staring at the ceiling. Despite Janka and Elsie calling her all kinds of names about going home alone, she had done exactly that. She hadn’t been sure she was ready but as she lay there thinking of him, she was proverbially kicking herself in the butt.
It was after midnight on a Friday night, and she was in bed with her brother’s cat sleeping by her feet. She was supposed to be a divorcee with the world at her feet and instead she was a spinster sleeping with animals. For the hundredth time she kicked herself for not going home with him.
She rolled over and lifted her phone and stared at it. She cautiously typed a text message thanking him for coming to her show and making her laugh for the first time in a very long time. She jumped when the phone rang in her hand, and she immediately attempted to turn down the volume in case it woke her brother and his wife sleeping across the hall or her niece in the room next to her.
“Hello?”
“Hi. You’re still awake? Is it the excitement of the successful evening keeping you up or the regret of not being here with me in my huge bed? I’m betting it’s regret.”
She laughed at his bold questions. “You know, one would think you have an ego to match the giant bed.”
“I didn’t get where I am from lack of pride.”
“Yes, but, Mr. Machado, I’d like to remind you, as much as I am alone tonight, so are you.”
“Neither of us need be.”
“You used me to piss of my ex-in-laws,” she grunted as she stared at her ceiling. “I could be in your bed tonight and on the curb in the morning and the only reason you were doing any of it was to, what did you call it?” she paused, “get his goat?”
“I told you already. I want you for you, not for them.”
“I’m not the trusting sort. I don’t know if you know this but my husband of five years, together for eight, was having sex with my sister for the last year or so. My trust barometer is malfunctioning.”
“Then don’t trust me.” He said simply. “It will come in time. You are also using me, are you not? You bribed me.”
“I did and I am,” she admitted quietly. “Why are you so easy to talk to?”
“I don’t know but I said the same thing to my mother when I took her home earlier. I find myself far more comfortable with you than anyone I’ve ever met. I think it’s because I know what I’m getting. Your honesty is refreshing, and I don’t feel the need to look for ulterior motives.”
“What if the sex is bad?”
“There isn’t a man alive who has ever had bad sex, even alone. For men, an orgasm is an orgasm.”
She squealed and clamped her hand over her mouth worried she’d wake her family in the nearby rooms. She giggled as his husky laugh filled her ear.
“If you’re worried about your end of the bargain, I promise to let you finish first.”
“Why are you so naughty?”
“Why aren’t you?”
“I’m shy.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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