Stone: At Your Service (Carolina Bad Boys #1) (8 page)

The biggest regret, the hardest sadness to swallow was he
’d never met JJ.

So they
’d always be close in one way or another, I kept a picture of Dad and me on my dresser alongside the first photograph I’d taken of JJ when he’d come out squalling his lungs off. With a wrinkly red face and unfocused eyes, he’d been a little shrimp I was too scared to handle in the beginning. But when he’d latched tiny fingers around my thumb and immediately stopped crying like he knew I was his daddy, I figured out pretty damn fast being a father was going to change my entire life. He was and always would be the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

The photo of Dad
and me was taken outside of Stone’s when I’d joined the team straight from high school. I was a healthy six-foot-three and broad-shouldered, but Dad—who used to call himself the old goat—never failed to rag on me about the extra two inches he had over me. Handsome, rugged, and an old crooner of Chet Baker songs when he got his sauce on, he’d been Ma’s silver fox.

She used to work the desk at Stone
’s back in the day, swishing around the place like it was Buckingham Palace and she the queen. Hell, she still did on Tuesday and Thursday mornings when the kid was at preschool. And she’d always had the smackdown ready for any dame making eyes at Dad—not that he had a tune for anyone but her.

I rolled over and shut my eyes. Behind them, I saw the dresser with his picture, him and me standing side-by-side, arms
slung around each other. That photo was right next to where I dropped my wallet, keys, and grease rag so I’d make sure I said goodnight to him each and every night, no matter how much it hurt.

There were other framed photographs around the house, too.
Mom and Dad’s wedding picture, every milestone moment and then some of the kid, shit and shenanigans at Stone’s . . . It was a good house, a good home I’d made for JJ. I’d bought it ten years ago as a bachelor during the bust, thinking of it as an investment. Later it became a place for my own family as it grew quickly with Claire and the kid. The two-story Victorian wasn’t a spread by any means, but it was a prime piece of real estate in the middle of the Old Village, which I’d bought for a penny compared to what it would cost now.

I
’d restored it that first year with Dad. Aside from the loose toilet handle in my bathroom, it was perfect. Neat as a tick just like the garage, the house was pretty as a picture from the white picket fence outside to the glossy finished floorboards inside. And it was nowhere any chick would expect to find Josh
bad boy
Stone. I intended to keep it that way.

But that jiggly toilet flush—we went way back, all the way to November 2, 2004, the day
Dad and I were finally going to fix it together. The day he died. He went hunting that morning before our noon fixer-upper date. I’d been waiting for him to show when I got the call. It had been a hunting accident. That was the day the project stopped, that time stopped, and a piece of my heart broke away.

I could fix that damned toilet handle if I wanted to. Could
’ve done it years ago. But I didn’t because doing so would mean truly letting Dad go, and I wasn’t ready.

That was
why we’d named JJ
Joshua James
. And that’s why I usually called him the kid, because most days I couldn’t stomach the thought of Dad’s early death.

I wiped my eyes then blinked them open at the same sterile hotel room ceiling. Yeah, it was time to get out of my head.

****

In the hotel gym half an hour later, I was in full work-it-out mode the old-fashioned way
. I grunted, groaned, and cursed my way through a circuit on the weight machines complemented with CrossFit training
designed to make me keel over. At least then I could stop thinking.

Having to pretend I was into Nicky while ignoring the fact I was
one hundred percent attracted to Leelee was gonna make me mentally unstable. Not to mention her last relationship broke off because Patrick was bi and lied to her about it. I didn’t stand a chance with Leelee even if I was on the up and up with her, not with her history and my Rom-Con con. Shit, her bad break-up story more than rivaled my own.

So my plan of the moment was sweating it—
her
—out of my system PD-fuckin’-Q. If that failed, I was going to masturbate over every single sex scene in her book until my dick was raw, even if I had to bust my nut in the shower with Nicky in the next room. Maybe then my bastard cock would learn to stand down in her presence.

Right
then, as luck would have it in some form of twisted fate or some other writerly term—like foreboding or foreshadowing or whatever—the door swung open . . . and Leelee swished inside. Wearing exercise gear: hip-huggin’, boob cuppin’, ass-lovin’ Lycra.

Her life might be worse than a bad romance novel, but mi
ne was beginning to resemble a
har har fucking har
romantic comedy, minus the romance part.

Trying to ig
nore her so I could get my workout done and get the hell out of Dodge, I continued to torture my body. Sweat dripped like bullets down my bare chest and into the low waistband of my nylon shorts. My muscles huge and heaving, I rolled up to a squat from another set of sit-ups and came face-to-tit with Leelee.

When I rose to my full height, topping her by a good nine inches now that she wore sneakers instead of
fuck-me heels, my gaze fell to her face. Her pouty bottom lip was tucked half between her teeth, and I wanted to use my mouth to tease it out. Her eyes were brighter than ever, her hair pulled into a high braid, all the better to wrap around my fist and draw her up for a long, deep kiss.

And the room just got a whole lot hotter.

I
rolled my neck, bouncing on my feet while I reached for my discarded tank top to mop up my face. Pushing the neck of my tank top into the waistband of my shorts, I was well aware the extra weight dragged my shorts even lower over the cut muscles of my pelvis, almost to the point where my pubes peeked out.

I grinned when Leelee peeked too.
“So, what brings you here?”

She took a
seat on one of the blue mats, averting her eyes. “The gym’s a great place to hide. I only started workin’ out when I began coming to these things. You know, me and crowds.”

“
Yeah, I’m hiding from those vicious writers too.”

She
laughed, and then her gaze flickered over me, not with a quick glance but with the attention of a woman who liked what she saw. I held still, held my breath and felt like she electrocuted every one of my nerve endings until my muscles jerked in excitement rather than exertion.

And that was all before she even stretched her legs to either side of her in a near
split and began limbering up.

What had I thought this morning about wearing a hard
cup jockstrap? Yeah, that. I needed one now. My cock rose and the thin material of my shorts was not gonna hide a single goddamn inch of thick erection for very long.

I covertly slipped the tank top over so it fell on top
of my crotch. Resuming my workout on the pull-up bar, I watched Leelee as she watched me. I pumped up and down at a strong, measured pace. She performed some yoga-type moves that immediately put me in mind of inventive sexual positions. I hopped down and moved on to weighted squats, and she bent over from the waist, walking forward on her fingertips, round ass in the air.

The tank top wasn
’t gonna last very long concealing my raging erection at this rate either. And it was pretty damn hard to do squats with my dick as iron-hard as the barbell in my hands. I was so revved up, my only hope was to outlast her. My very, very best dreams come true . . . and my worst nightmare of the moment right in front of me:

Soft, voluptuous Leelee

Who writes fuck-hot, steamy sex

And works out

In tight ass Lycra and boob-hugging spandex

Long wavy red hair

Beautiful southern drawl

Hard as nails and sharp as a tack underneath it all

The kind of girl I could take home to Ma . . . and the kid.
Fuck fuck fuck.

“
Spot me?”

I almost fell on my ass when I heard her request. I brought the barbell slowly to my shoulders
and then lowered it to the floor. “What?”

“
Could you spot me?” Her face was flushed from all the yoga
cum
Kama Sutra contortions.

I groaned and pretended to massage a hamstring to cover the quick jerk in my shorts.
Jesus.
I’d spot her all right, all the way down to the mats. “Sure.”

She lay back on the bench after calibrating the weights
. I stood behind her, thighs opened on either side of her head. This was a very bad position for me to be in. If things went south, my cock was gonna end up in her mouth.

Through deep and determined inhales and exhales while she pumped iron, she asked,
“Did you get a chance to check out
Ride
?”

I tried real hard not to think about where I
’d left off reading: Jase and Avery desperate to fuck, yet deliriously as cockblocked as me. Every hot word written by Leelee. I definitely couldn’t admit I’d been about to tug my tackle over it either.

“
Yeah, a little. Not bad.”

Leelee nodded her chin, signaling me to put the
weight back on the rack. As soon as she was clear, she swiveled up and around. “Not bad?” She playfully punched me in the ribs.

I couldn
’t tell her what I really thought, so I shrugged. “The guy-girl thing doesn’t cut it for me, ya know?”

“
Hmm
.” Leelee reserved her opinion on my opinion.

After that, we went around the machines together. Sexual tension hovered on the sidelines, but it was broken down with talking, teasing
. . . and sweating goddamn buckets.

An hour later, we
sat
against the wall, arms hanging over our knees.

“
You remind me of my ’69 Camaro.” I had an oilgasm every time I thought about the muscle car I kept babied in the garage beside my house. Sleek, bright red, and just gritty enough, the car was an American classic, like Leelee. Not like the fancy foreign made motors I was making a fake career over.

I braced myself for the backlash. The last time I
’d said something similar was to Claire about her resemblance to my full-sized Bronco. I meant she could handle anything, not her post-baby weight. Shit got ugly after that.

“
That was supposed to be a compliment,” I added when Leelee made no comment.

Her smile was slow in coming
but it lit me up like the rays of the sun when it hit me. “I know. My daddy’s a gear-head. He always wanted to get his hands on one of those. I grew up with my head under the hood.”

Lovely
Leelee, a tomboy in grease-stained coveralls?
Va va vroom and va va voom.
Damn if she wasn’t the woman of my dreams.

“
You’re not the tough guy I first took you for, Stone.” She patted my leg.

Begging to differ, I scowled in response.

She poked a finger at my biceps that didn’t dent a centimeter. “Frown all you want, I’m still not convinced.”

“
It wasn’t a frown, babe, it was a glower.” I jumped to my feet and hauled her up with me, catching her when she stumbled.

Leelee
’s lips brushed my shoulder, her breasts skimming against my midsection. Her thighs hit mine as I clasped her waist. “Steady now.”

Heat flared between us but I couldn
’t act on it. I couldn’t swing her thigh up to my hip, grip her neck, grind against her. I couldn’t do any of the wild and nasty things I wanted to.

I released
her. Slinging a towel around my neck, I held onto its edges, shaking my head at the floor. I looked up just in time to see her pitch a fresh bottle of water at me. As soon as I caught it, I twisted off the cap and spilled it over my head. I shook my wet hair all over her, just like Viper gnashing my favorite, scuffed-up work boots.
Maybe that pup liked me after all.
Not to be outdone, Leelee tossed the contents of her bottle down my neck too, laughing as I rained more water on her.

When I stopped, she looked at her top, which was almost as drenched as my hair.
“You will pay for this, Stone.”

“
Lookin’ forward to it, Leelee.”

Walking out of the gym, we both grinned from ear-to-ear. Smelly,
sweaty, and wet, we waited for the elevator to arrive once again. Other convention-goers gave of us wide birth, packing into the first elevator like sardines.

When the next one arrived, I bowed formally, bare-chested, wet body and all.
“Going up, Miss Songchild?”

S
he started into the car, beaming at me. Two steps inside, she pulled up short, her face blanching. Against the back corner of the elevator, the creeper agent slouched, a slimy smile on his mouth.