He felt her smile against his skin before she said, “Samesies.”
Samesies?
At that, all thoughts fell away, something with which Mabel had a knack, and his lips tipped up.
This happened not only because she could be an adorable dork, but because it wasn’t lost on him she’d come hard into his mouth earlier.
He moved his hand on her back, and it stuttered when it hit a scar.
He ignored it verbally, but he felt the muscle dance in his cheek.
She tensed.
“I hate to tarnish my reputation,” he said to move them past it, something, at one point or another, he had to do any time they were together like this because her scars were hard to avoid.“But I’m wiped, baby.And what I had left, that blowjob took out of me.I need sleep, and tomorrow we need a chill Sunday.”
She angled up to look down at him, shifting further so she could use her hands to smooth his hair back while she watched them move.
He should have seen this as the warning it was.
He didn’t.
Her gaze came to his.
“My mom was messed up,” she whispered.
Oh fuck.
“Baby,” he whispered back.
“She got sent to prison.Drugs.She got hooked up with this shifty guy, who turned out to be my father, but I didn’t know that until I was twenty-seven.”
“May—”
“Anyway, no one knew it, so when she went to prison, they sent me to go live with Mom’s brother.”
She had to get it out?
And with the way she was talking, he knew she did.
Hutch would shut up.
So that was what he did.
“He had ideas about disciplining children.”
He closed his eyes.
He opened them when she continued talking.
“Now, I can’t say I didn’t need discipline.I did.I didn’t have any growing up.I was a mess.Behind in school.A lot of stuff.”She threw out a hand then put it right back on him.“Long story.”
She had many “long stories.”
“But he was…”—her eyes drifted over his head—“possessed?Damaged?Deranged?”She shook her head and came back to him.“I don’t really know what makes someone beat a child with a belt.”
He knew it was coming.
He still couldn’t stop himself when he clamped a hand on the back of her neck and his arm around her waist after hearing it from her lips.
