Wicked Lust (The Wicked Horse #2) Read online

  And the problem is I actually feel too much for him. So much so that perhaps I need to consider a new job and just leave all this sordidness behind. Maybe I could just work at the leather store for the rest of my life and let Cain fuck me each night, hoping that something deeper would continue to develop.

  Shaking my head and trying to get back on track, I start a calculated conversation that I hope will lead to some fruition. “So what do you have planned today after breakfast?”

  Cain doesn’t take his eyes off the road but says, “Not much actually. I was hoping Walt would have some work for me. He owns a construction company, but he rarely has any part-time openings in the summer months. Want to do something?”

  I take a deep breath and spit out my lie. “I can’t actually. I have to be at work at noon, but I’m hoping to run by Governor Hayes’ local office here and see if I could talk to someone.”

  Cain actually jerks in his seat and looks at me briefly before turning back. “Governor Hayes?”

  I give a girlish laugh, tuck my hair behind my ear, and continue to build my story. “Yeah… I’ve been reading up on the local politics and saw he was throwing the weight of his office behind a bill that’s been introduced to put tougher controls on doctors prescribing pain medications.”

  His head now swivels completely my way, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “And you hope to do what by going to his office?”

  After another girlish laugh, I give him a sheepish look. “Oh, well, I want to volunteer in some way for his campaign. I’ve always had a big interest in politics, especially at the local level. Worked as a page in the Tennessee senate, volunteered for some election campaigns, stuff like that.”

  Cain silently digests that and before he can start poking holes in my story, I decide to lay a truth on him to help ease my conscience a bit. “And I’ve got a vested interest in that issue.”

  His head swivels to mine again, giving me a questioning look before turning back to the road. “What’s your interest in that?”

  I take in a breath, close my eyes momentarily, and ask my mom forgiveness for me using her this way. “My mom has struggled with addiction to pain medications. She overdosed once… intentionally.”

  “What?” Cain exclaims, his head now snapping my way with disbelief in his eyes.

  I hold his look. “Six years ago. She had so many drugs in the house. Prescribed by various doctors, not checking in with each other—pharmacies not communicating. It was just too easy for her to have the power to try to kill herself.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says softly, taking one hand off the wheel and reaching out to grab mine. He raises it to his mouth, presses a kiss to my wrist, and releases it. “I can’t even imagine.”

  “But you can,” I point out to him solemnly. “Rachel died of an overdose.”

  He nods in understanding but makes a better point. “Not the same. Those were illegal drugs, and she was just being stupid. It sounds like your mom may have been very lost.”

  Tears suddenly well up in my eyes because Cain just described my mother perfectly.

  Absolutely lost.

  One tear slips out and runs down my cheek in a warm river. I hastily wipe my hand over it, but Cain notices. His hand comes back to grab mine, and this time, he doesn’t let it go. He holds me securely, conveying a sadness he shares with me and giving me permission to continue to grieve if I want.

  I have the sudden and overwhelming urge to throw myself at him. Make him pull the truck over, crawl onto his lap, and snuggle into him. Demand he wrap his arms around me and tell me that he would forgive any stupidity on my part for the terrible lies I’ve been telling him, and more importantly, for using ugly truths to get a stupid fucking story.

  The sound of Cain’s cell phone ringing cuts the silence, and he releases my hand so he can grab it off the seat beside him. He takes a quick look at the screen, and a smile lights his face.

  “Hey Mom,” he says when he connects.

  He turns his head to me, gives me a smile, and turns back to the road. He listens to his mother on the other line, and finally says, “Yeah… I’m almost to Jackson now. I’ll swing by really quick and take a look, but I can’t stay long. I’ve got someone with me and we’re heading to breakfast.”

  He listens some more before shaking his head with amusement. “Yes, it’s a woman and yes you can meet her.”

  Cain gives a hearty laugh and says, “Bye, Mom.”

  I can still hear her talking on the other end when he disconnects.

  After he tosses the phone back on the seat again, my heart flops over like a puppy getting belly rubs when he takes my hand again, giving it a squeeze. “Hope you don’t mind stopping by my mom’s shop for a minute. The hot water heater isn’t working, and I’m betting the pilot light just needs relit.”

  “Wow,” I say with a chuckle. “Meeting your mom. This is just moving way too fast for me.”

  Cain laughs, squeezes my hand, and then makes an ache form between my legs when he says, “I don’t think so. Not after you made all my dirty dreams come true last night.”

  My face flushes red, and I know he’s teasing me. He’s not taking me to meet his mom. I just happen to be along for the ride.

  “Listen,” Cain says, his voice now serious again. “I know Governor Hayes’ daughter. We went to school together, and she’s involved with my friend Woolf that owns The Double J. I could arrange an introduction if you want. Callie’s going to be managing his campaign, and I’m sure she’d love you to volunteer.”

  And just like that, Cain gives me exactly what I was hoping to get when I brought up my interest in Governor Hayes.

  An introduction to his daughter.

  And I feel so terrible about it that I just want to throw up.

  “Word of warning,” Cain says just before he pulls open the glass storefront door of Molly’s Dream Nails. “My mom can be a bit intense, so try not take what she says too seriously, okay?”

  “Oh-kay,” I say slowly, not quite sure what to expect.

  Cain opens the door, motioning me in. I step into what looks to be a very fashionable and trendy nail salon with six tiny desks made of black and hot pink lacquer, and two cushy reclining chairs of cream leather with large foot basins at the bottom for pedicures. Three of the desks are occupied with technicians doing nails of what looks to be local women by the way they’re dressed, but I don’t recognize Cain’s mom as one of them.

  Cain strides by the technicians, who are all young and look at him with appraising looks, as does one of the customers who has to be approaching sixty years old. He tips his head, pops those dimples, and says, “Ladies.”

  They all giggle and smile, fluttering their eyelashes. I want to roll my eyes, but I hurry along behind Cain as he heads toward a closed door.

  Just before he opens it, I nudge his elbow and give him an amused smirk, “Do you always leave a wake of giggling women fanning themselves wherever you go?”

  Cain blinks at me in surprise and points to his face, “With this ugly mug? I don’t think so.”

  “Ugly?” I ask in confusion. “You have one of the most beautiful faces I’ve ever seen. Hell, I want to fan myself half the time I’m around you.”

  He blinks at me again, looking stunned and disbelieving. He even cocks his eyebrow and levels a skeptical smirk at me.

  “What?” I say in exasperation. “You surely know how hot you are? You don’t need me to say it to you, and your ego is plenty big enough without me needing to stroke it—”

  Cain’s mouth on mine effectively shuts me up. His tongue in my mouth and his hand on my ass causes me to moan. I think I hear a few of the women give dreamy sighs behind us. The kiss is all too brief, but he only wanted to make a point. He levels a metaphorical exclamation point on it when he pulls his mouth from my lips, tilts it toward my ear, and whispers, “If we didn’t have an audience, I’d go for much more than a kiss right now.”

  “Maybe there’s a bathroom,” I suggest breathily, because I
’m so down with going for more. To hell with breakfast and meeting his mom and the women gawking at us.

  Cain chuckles, but he whispers low. “Let’s stop talking about this right now. I don’t need to be sporting a boner in front of my mom, and she’s just on the other side of this door.”

  When he pulls his face back from me, his eyes are filled with laughter and amusement. It makes him even more stunning to me, and my tongue gets all tied. So I just mumble, “Okay,” and Cain nods, opening the door.

  He walks in first. I can’t see anything but his broad back for a minute, then he bends over and says, “Mom… get off the floor.”

  Extending his hand out, he squats a little and then stands back up. I move to the side to see him helping his mom up.

  “What were you doing?” Cain says in a loving but exasperated voice.

  “Seeing if I could tell if the pilot light is out,” she says as she brushes dust off her jeans.

  “But you don’t even know where—” Cain starts to point out, but then he’s ignored as she turns to me.

  Cain’s mom is small… maybe an inch shorter than me. She has his same dark hair and hazel eyes that she wears very short with wispy fringes around her face. If I had to guess her age, I’d say early fifties only because I know Cain is thirty, but she’d pass for way younger.

  “Oh, my word,” his mom says as she steps forward, arms outstretched and to the side. Her eyes rake me up and down, and I’m wearing the same outfit that I wore to my very first and probably only gang bang. Luckily, it wasn’t too rumpled and was at least stylish and chic. Her arms come to my shoulders and she beams at me. “You are just gorgeous.”

  I blush prettily and watch as Cain’s mom turns to him, still holding me firm in her grasp.

  “Isn’t she gorgeous, Cain?” his mom asks him with the same sparkling smile of pure joy that her son has brought a woman to see her.

  Cain shakes his head in amusement and slides his eyes to me. His gaze pins me in place and my stomach flip-flops when he says, “Totally gorgeous.”

  His mom’s smile burns brighter, and she actually sighs. I hold my own sigh in, but it’s hard because damn… that was swoon worthy.

  Turning to me, she gives a push and guides me back toward the door we just came through. She loops an arm through mine and starts to usher me that way. “I’m Molly Bonham, Cain’s mother, but you probably already figured that out.”

  “I’m Sloane Meyers,” I tell her as we go through the door, leaving Cain behind. I’ve known Cain’s mom for all of thirty seconds, and I’ve already lied to her the minute I told her my fake last name.

  Molly leads me over to her technician table, and the other women all look at me with avid interest. Molly indicates a chair on the opposite side, and I sit. She takes her own chair and then reaches her hands out, snapping her fingers in an indication she wants my hands.

  I hold them out to her uncertainly. She grasps them and studies, turning them left and right. “You have beautiful hands. You come back and I’ll give you a manicure, but for now, I’ll just give you a massage while we talk.”

  Molly pumps some lotion in her hand from a bottle on her desk and starts rubbing it into one hand, her fingers digging down into the muscles of my palm, and damn… that feels good.

  “So, how long have you and Cain been dating?” Molly asks with a cheery smile. “And don’t leave out any details. This is practically unheard of. Well, not since—”

  “Rachel?” I blurt out.

  Molly blinks at me in surprise, and then shakes her head with disgusted look on her face. “Lord, no. He never brought Rachel to meet me when they were dating. I was thinking of his high school sweetheart… oh, what was her name? At any rate, he was crazy about her, but she was a heartbreaker. Broke all the boys’ hearts if I remember, but that was high school crush-type stuff. Well, and then, of course, he was gone in the Marines and hardly had time to come home and visit, and since Rachel, well… he’s not had much interest…”

  Molly goes on and on about Cain, and my head spins trying to keep up with her. This little dynamo of a woman who is vigorously massaging my hands and laying out her son’s entire dating history to me is absolutely charming. I listen… absorbing everything I can about this mysterious man.

  A man who takes his job seriously.

  Fucks women in parking lots.

  Has kinky group sex with his friends.

  Puts butt plugs up my ass at my workplace.

  Hell… Molly is so damn normal and “mom-like” that it starts to give me new perspective on Cain. It’s almost as if I can envision him as a normal guy.

  “…and then he just works so hard between his job at The Wicked Horse, then working part time at the Double J, and for my Walt. I worry about him, and he needs a girl to keep him straight. He has to know there’s more to life than working to pay off all that debt Rachel left him.”

  “She sounded like a bad piece of work,” I comment softly.

  “She was the worst,” Molly says in a low voice as she leans in on me. “She cheated on Cain… ran around with all sorts of bad folks, high on drugs. Ran up all those credit cards. Honestly, while I hate for anyone to die, I couldn’t help but be relieved she was out of his life. And now here you are… the first girl he’s seemed interested in since her.”

  I find it interesting Molly didn’t mention the abortion Rachel had. It could be she just didn’t think it was couth to mention it to me as a stranger, but I’m betting she doesn’t know. Knowing what I do about Cain, I’d put money on the fact he didn’t share with his mother because he didn’t want to cause her pain.

  “So how did you two meet?” Molly asks as she pumps more lotion and starts to massage my other hand.

  “Um… actually at The Wicked Horse,” I tell her with a mischievous grin. “I ended up kicking a guy in the balls who tried to touch me on the dance floor and Cain had to escort me out.”

  “And you’ve been dating ever since,” Molly says with a romantic sigh.

  Yeah, well… not dating.

  We’re fucking, Molly. Just fucking.

  In fact, your son brought me to a strange house last night and fucked me with three of his buddies.

  It’s hard for me to even reconcile that notion… that it just happened last night, and here I am having a conversation with Cain’s mom. It’s just surreal to me.

  The door to the back room opens, and I turn my head to see Cain coming out. He gives me a quick smile, rolling his eyes when he sees his mom rubbing my hands.

  “Okay, Mom… let Sloane go now. We’ve got to go,” Cain says as he walks up to us. “Pilot light was out. I relit it for you.”

  Molly pats the hand she was massaging and looks at me. “It was lovely to meet you, Sloane, and I hope to see you again.”

  I give her hand a squeeze as I stand from the chair. “It was really nice to meet you too, Molly. Hope to see you again soon.”

  “Well, let’s make it this Sunday,” Molly says with a devious smile leveled at her son. “Cain usually comes to eat Sunday lunch with us. His sister and her family will be there too. You come with Cain, okay?”

  My head swivels to Cain, who I imagine might be gritting his teeth over his mom’s offer, but instead, he just leans over and kisses her cheek. “We’ll be there around one.”

  I’m stunned he wants me to go to a family dinner with him. We just had wild monkey group sex last night, and now he’s taking me to the family homestead?

  But I recover quickly and turn to Molly. “Can I bring anything?”

  “Just yourself, dear,” she says and then winks at Cain. “I like this girl, Cain. She’s a keeper.”

  This time, Cain doesn’t humor his mom but instead gets a tight lock to his jaw. He just nods and says, “We’ll see you Sunday, Mom.”

  I follow Cain out of the shop, no doubt what I just saw on his face. He may have been sweet and doting in there just now in front of his mom, but Cain Bonham has no plans to keep me around for very long.

>   That was very, very clear on his face.

  Chapter 19

  Cain

  Cain Bonham out on a date.

  A double date at that.

  Bet no one saw that coming.

  I have to say, it’s not as awful as I thought it would be. I’m trying to remember the last date I went on, and I guess it was when Rachel and I first hooked up. We didn’t start out with a date but with some wild sex in the back of my truck, and I think we eventually ended up going to dinner after. But with her, it was only sex and more sex, and I got sex and love confused back then.

  Not so now.

  I’m clear and levelheaded on what the stakes are, and I also know Sloane Meyers doesn’t belong in my life long term. In fact, this time next week, I’ll be fucking Amy Mason and Sloane will be a memory.

  My gut twists at the thought, but I ignore it. Instead, I look at Sloane and Callie talking.

  The women hit it off, and I mean hit it off. They haven’t stopped fucking talking since we got to the restaurant, and Woolf and I have been stuck having to entertain each other.

  At least we always have sports to talk about.

  Sloane wasn’t making light of her interest in politics. I was amazed at her knowledge and involvement at the state level back in Tennessee, and she worked on two campaigns, one of which was a US senator. Frankly, that shit was boring to me, but early on in the conversation, my interest was caught when Sloane told Callie more about her mother.

  “So why do you want to help with my father’s campaign?” Callie had asked her as they sipped on glasses of wine and we all picked at the overpriced shrimp cocktails.

  “He’s supporting House Bill 137,” Sloane said.

  Callie nodded in recognition. “Requiring doctors to check a database before prescribing highly addictive drugs.”

  “Among other things,” Sloane said. “But yes… that’s the most important part of the bill.”

  “Cain said you’re new to the area. Why the desire to get involved in local politics?”

  Sloane told Callie about her experience, going into some mind-numbing detail that caused Woolf and me to have a spirited discussion about baseball, but then my attention was dragged back when Sloane said, “It’s personal to me. And since I’m making this my home for the immediate future, I’d love to get back involved in the political scene.”