exactly beat the crap out of a Pip. “I’m not going to hurt your kid.” He folded his arms and rocked back on his heels.
“Just so we’re clear, if you even think about hurting one hair on his head, I’ll kill you and not lose a wink of sleep over it.”
For some perverse reason, the threat made him like her. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know that you’re playing basketball with a ten-year-old at nine o’clock in the morning,” she said, her accent thick with warning. “It’s about thirty-two degrees, and you’re talking about your freezing nuts with my son. That’s not exactly normal behavior for an adult man.”
Since she obviously lived alone, he had to wonder if she knew anything about normal behavior for an adult man. “I’m playing basketball and freezing my nuts off so I can get some sleep. I just got off work and your kid’s basketball keeps me awake. I thought if I played a game of H-O-R-S-E, he’d cut me a break.” That was close enough to the truth.
She blinked. “Oh.” She tilted her head to one side and a wrinkle pulled her brows as if she were suddenly trying to place him in her memory. “You work the night shift at the meat packing plant? I worked there for a few weeks about five years ago.”
“No.” He dribbled the ball a few times and waited.
“Hmm.” Her brow smoothed and she turned to go. “I’ve got to see to Pip. It was nice to meet you, Mr. Matthews.”
“We met last night.”
She turned back and once again her brows were drawn.
“I pulled you over for inattentive driving.”
Her lips parted. “That was you?”
“Yeah.” He shook his head. “You’re a shitty driver, Lily.”
“You’re a sheriff?”
“Deputy.”
“That explains the tragic pants.”
He looked down at his dark brown trousers with the beige stipe up the outside legs. “You don’t think they’re hot.”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
He tossed her the ball and she caught it. “Tell Pippen that if he cuts me a break tomorrow morning, I’ll teach him how to slam dunk tomorrow afternoon around four.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“You’re not afraid I’m a pervert?”
“Pippen knows he can’t leave the yard without telling me or his grandma.” She shrugged. “And you already know I’m licensed to carry concealed. I’ve got a Beretta 9mm subcompact.” She stuck the ball under one arm. “Just so you know.”
“Nice.” He managed not to laugh. “But are you bragging or threatening a law officer?”
“Pippen’s daddy isn’t really in the picture. I’m all he’s got and it’s my job to make sure he’s safe and happy.”
“He’s lucky to have you.”
“I’m lucky to have him.”
Tucker watched her go, then turned and walked back to his house. Only one person in his entire life had made sure he was safe. His grandmother Betty. If he thought hard, he could recall the touch of her soft hand on his head and back. But Betty had died three days after Tucker turned five.
He moved into his kitchen and pulled his sweatshirt over his head. His mother had split when he was a baby and he had no memory of her. Just photographs. He didn’t know who his father was and doubted his mother had
He turned off the television on his way to his bedroom and kicked off his shoes. After Betty’s death, he’d been shipped off to aunts who didn’t want or care about him; and by the time he turned ten, he was turned over to the state of Michigan and shuffled through the foster care system.
He took off his pants and tossed them into the hamper he used for dry cleaning. No one had wanted to adopt a ten-year-old with his history and bad attitude. He’d spent most of the years between the ages of ten and sixteen in and out of foster homes and juvenile court, which finally landed him in a halfway house run by a retired Vietnam vet. Elias Peirce had been a no-bullshit hard-ass with strict rules. But he’d been fair. The first time Tucker had given him lip, he gave Tucker an old cane-back chair and a pack of sandpaper. “Make it as smooth as a baby’s backside,” he’d barked. It had taken him a week, but after his daily homework and chores were done, Tucker sanded until the chair felt like silk beneath his hands. Following the chair, he’d made a bookcase and a small table.
Tucker couldn’t say that he and Elias Peirce had been as close as father and son, but he changed Tucker’s life and never treated him like a throwaway kid. Elias made him work out the pent-up anger and aggression just below his skin in a constructive way.
Tucker didn’t like to talk about his past—didn’t really talk about his life. During the course of normal conversation, whenever anyone asked about his life, he just said he didn’t have much family and changed the subject.
He thought of Lily Darlington and the way she touched Pippen. The way she looked into his eyes and touched his cheek and told him she loved him bigger than the stars. Tucker was sure his grandmother had loved him, but he was equally sure she’d never threatened to kick ass on his behalf. He’d had to kick ass on his own behalf. He’d always had to take care of himself.
He was a man now—thirty years old—and he was the man he was because of the life he’d been dealt. He knew a lot of guys who’d come back from Iraq or Afghanistan and had a hard time adjusting to life outside of the military. Not Tucker. At least not as much. He’d learned long ago how to deal with shit thrown at him. How to cope with trauma and how to let it go. Oh, he had some really dark memories, but he didn’t live with them. He’d worked them out and moved on.
He stripped to his gray boxers and climbed into bed. Everything he had, he’d earned. No one had given him anything and he was a content man. He fell asleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow, and at some point, when he was warm and comfy and deep into REM, Lily Darlington entered his dreams. She wore red silk and her hands touched his face and neck. She looked into his eyes and smiled as she cupped his cheek. “You’re cold, Tucker,” she said. “You need to warm up.” The dream started nice and innocent but quickly turned hot and dirty. Her hands slid across his chest as she lowered her mouth to the side of his neck, and the things she whispered against his throat weren’t in the least innocent.
“I want you,” she whispered as her palm moved over his chest, down the side of his waist, then back up again. “Do you want me?” Her touch was soft and slow, frustrating, sliding back and forth and driving him mad.
“Yes. God, yes.” He ran his fingers through her hair, bunching it in his hands as she kissed his neck and inched her hot palm lower—lower, down his stomach and belly until her fingernails scraped his skin just above the elastic of his underwear.
Her fingers slide beneath the elastic waistband and she wrapped her soft warm hand around his extremely tight erection. “You’re a good boy with dirty hands.”
His heart pounded in his chest as he shoved her against the wall and into her. All caveman aggression and hunger. In his dream she loved every second of it. She met every hard plunge of his hard dick with insatiable greed, shoving her hips into his, begging for more and moaning his name. “Tucker!” she screamed in his head—and his eyes flew open. He sat up in bed, his lungs pulling oxygen into his chest and his pulse pounding in his ears.
A sliver of light sneaked beneath his blackout blinds and streaked across the dark room. The sound of his heavy breathing filled the space around him. He’d just had a wild sex dream about Lily Darlington. Obviously he’d gone without for too long, and he’d lost his mind. He didn’t know her. She was a single mother. He felt like a pervert.
A pervert who needed to get laid before he lost his mind again.
