“Does that mean I can clock out for the night?” Mercy asked.
Ghost rolled his eyes, making a face that indicated he knew exactly what he had on his mind. “Yeah. You’re done.”
“Sweet.” Mercy shoved away from the post with a quick palm-to-palm bro handshake for Candy.
“Don’t break my daughter,” Ghost warned.
“Never do.”
Inside, the party was beginning to wind down a little, brothers ensconced in corners with girls and drinks, the raucous early energy dimming. He spotted Emmie perched sideways on Walsh’s lap, both of them talking to Shane. Maggie was keeping Nell company at the bar. But a quick scan proved Ava wasn’t around.
She knew, his sharpfillette.
He went to the bar, snagged a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, and headed down the hall to his favorite dorm.
The lights were on low, and he took a moment, after the door was shut, to lean back against it and drink the scene in with his eyes.
Ava was wearing lingerie he’d never seen before, black and lacey. She sat leaned back against the headboard, one knee pulled up, the other long leg extended at an alluring angle. She was reading a book, a tattered paperback, chewing unconsciously at her lower lip. She was two dueling portraits, one of sex, the other of total innocence. She’d waited up for him…and she’d gotten bored waiting and decided to read.
He chuckled and that caught her attention. Her eyes widened and she snapped the book shut, tossed it onto the nightstand. “Hi.” Her smile fell short of suggestive…was brilliant and sweet instead.
He wanted to tackle her. Instead, he said, “Where are the boys?”
“Sleeping next door, I just checked on them. Out like little lights.” Her eyes tracked up and down his body, glittering with want.
He loved the burn of waiting, the way holding back turned his blood to molten metal. He unscrewed the cap on the Johnnie Walker, took a generous sip and prowled slowly toward the bed. “Is that a new getup?”
She nodded and moved up onto her knees. “Do you like it?”
“Uh-huh.”
She came closer, until she was at the end of the bed, right in front of him. Close enough for him to see the hard points of her nipples through the lace.
Mercy offered her the bottle and she took a small swallow before bending down to set it on the floor. When she straightened, she said, “You know it’s killing you to just stand there.”
“I like a little delayed gratification now and then.”
“Hmm. Okay.” She reached behind her for the clasp of her bra…
And laughed when he pounced on her.
~*~
Even if he hated her mother, and hadn’t put much effort into supporting the life she’d led before him, Ghost always held a secret kind of pride that he’d married a classy girl. Even at sixteen, Maggie had been laced with manners and Southern grace. He’d known right away that his mother would have loved her.
That classy girl had grown into a classy woman, and she liked wine; champagne with raspberries. But when she was pissed off, or feeling like a biker’s wife, she hit the Jack.
Ghost approached his old lady’s stool at the bar, watched the pretty line of her throat ripple as she swallowed down the last amber drops in her tumbler. He braced a hand on the bar top and leaned in close to her. “Can I buy you another, beautiful?” he asked, a little surprised by the playful note in his voice. He hadn’t been much of a romantic in…ever.
She set her glass down slowly, and turned to him, hazel eyes bright with repressed anger. “I don’t know. My husband might not like that. He’s kind of an asshole.”
Oh hell. He sighed. “Baby, that was just goofing off.”
“Excuse me?” Her voice stayed level and calm, but her eyes flashed. “No. You instigated and then won a fistfight with your son with an intent to humiliate him. You don’t knowhowto goof off, Kenny. And this feud you’re maintaining with Aidan is selfish and stupid.”
“Selfish?I’mbeing selfish?”
“Completely.” She pushed her glass away, slid off her stool, and marched down the back hallway, boot heels clicking.
