“Apparently I don’t since I make noises while sleeping.”
“Fuck,” he murmured.
“All right, all right. I’ll shut up and sleep.”
“’Preciate it, baby.”
I snuggled closer. Tack’s arm around my waist tightened while I did so and only relaxed after I did.
Then I studied the planes of his chest in the dark, the darker marks of his tats until my eyelids drooped and I fell asleep.
Tack woke me in the dead of night, hand between my legs, lips to mine and I could feel I was already wet. I knew this because I was totally turned on.
The second my eyes opened, he whispered, “Goin’ with my gut, baby.”
I smiled against his mouth.
Tack kissed the smile from my lips.
Then he f**ked me.
Then he let me go back to sleep tucked to his side.
He f**ked me again in his shower the next morning. Apparently, the shower drowned out my moans. It didn’t matter anyway, the kids weren’t up.
Then we got ready, he put me on the back of his bike and took me to work.
More soap opera from the boys at work before it was quitting time and I could go home and gussy up.
This brought me to now. Sitting in Club in a little haltertop dress that was clingy, had a short skirt, serious cle**age and was the color of aquamarines. I wore it with spike-heeled, strappy, silver sandals. I also wore it with lots of chunky, kickass silver jewelry, three times as much makeup than I normally wore on my face and my hair out to there.
And I was sitting with Gwen, Mara, Tess Lucas (Mitch’s partner’s wife) and Elvira. Our posse also included Gwen’s friends Camille and Tracy and Mara’s friend LaTanya. And last there was a woman with loads of strawberry blonde curls who looked like a fairy princess. Her name was Sadie Chavez. I drunkenly didn’t remember how she factored into the group but I did know she was semi-famous in Denver though I didn’t remember how.
I watched the women laugh, fuzzily noticed that Elvira wasn’t laughing but scowling and that Gwen was the first person to quit laughing and she did it with her eyes on me.
“So, Tack has kids?” she asked when the laughter died down.
“Yeah, two. Rush is seventeen, nearly eighteen. Tabby just turned sixteen,” I answered.
“I didn’t know Tack had kids,” she muttered and I lifted my cosmo to take a sip in order to hide my drunken elation that Gwen didn’t know Tack had kids. And I felt this elation as any woman would, sitting and drinking with a woman her man had feelings for with those feelings once including the fact he thought she had staying power.
Being hooked up with Hawk, Gwen wasn’t competition, this was true. What she was was a stunning, tall, curvy blonde wearing a fabulous little black dress, even more fabulous shoes and having a great sense of humor. Until I knew her better, she was going to be the stunning, tall, curvy blonde with excellent fashion sense for whom my man had feelings. Me not only knowing Tack had kids but meeting them and spending time with them meant I had one up on her.
“Seventeen and sixteen,” LaTanya said, surprised, then looked at me. “How old is he?”
“Forty-one,” Gwen answered and I instantly took a shot to the heart.
First, because she knew how old Tack was and I didn’t. That took away my one up.
Second, because Tack was forty-one.
Forty-one.
Ohmigod!
“Forty-one!” I shrieked, calculating it, the time it would take to make sure all was good, the length of an appropriate engagement, the time we’d want to have just him and me and coming up with a very bad figure while all eyes turned to me.
“Yeah, forty-one,” Gwen stated then asked, “How old are you?”