A sweet one.

I melted into him.

“Clara,” I said softly. “You.”

“Amity. Now boy.”

“Boone. You.”

“Rhodes. So, how many?”

“Two.”

“Two.”

God.

We so worked.

And Rhodes was a cool name.

Not as cool as Kane.

Still.

He fell to his back, pulling me on top of him.

I settled in.

He slid my hair back and held it in both hands.

“Winter or summer,” he whispered.

“Essence’s garden is pretty in the winter, but only if there’s snow. It’s magical in summer. So summer. You.”

“Can’t ride a bike every day in the winter.”

“Yeah,” I replied.

He kept my hair held back in one hand and moved his other so he could wrap his arm around and hold me at the waist.

“Never cut your hair,” he murmured.

“Never cut yours,” I murmured back.

His face got soft, he used my hair to guide my mouth to his and then he kissed me.

I just lay on top of him and kissed him back.

“She wanted to be a therapist.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Physical therapy, she thought.”

His hands moved on me, light, soothing, but he said nothing.

I burrowed closer.

“We’d have binge nights. Buy a bunch of junk food. Watch entire movie series. Star Wars, Empire, Return. Godfather one, two and three. Kill Bill. Lord of the Rings. Harry Potter was a whole weekend gluttony sort of thing.”

Rush remained silent.

“She liked Whoppers and Doritos. I’m a Milk Duds and Fritos Honey Barbeque girl.”

Rush started playing with the ends of my hair.

“I sprained my ankle once, the day before one of her charity runs. She showed that morning with a wheelchair. To this day, I have no idea where she got it. But that was Diane. She came up with the wildest ideas and had it in her to see them through. She pushed me in that chair through the whole race. She came in last. Everyone thought there was something wrong with me and we got this huge ovation when we came over the finish line. We didn’t know how to tell hundreds of people I’d just sprained my ankle, so we went with it. Did it up big. Diane took bows. I blew kisses. We made a big show. Amy stood on the sidelines laughing herself sick. It might not have been nice, but it was funny, and I don’t think I ever laughed that hard or that long in my life.”

Rush kissed the top of my head.

I closed my eyes.

“I miss her,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he whispered back.

“And what sucks more is, I started missing her way before she died.”

Rush quit playing with my hair and just held me close.

“Yeah,” he repeated.

I pushed my face in his throat and thought of Whoppers, Fritos, Han Solo, Uma Thurman, Legolas and how good it felt when your sides hurt because you were laughing so hard.

Then in Rush’s arms, after nine months of holding on way too tight, I let the bad of Diane go.

But I held on to the good.

“She sold you?”

My voice was rising.

“Babe, I told you she wasn’t a great mom.”

Not a great mom?

“She sold you.”

“Her man had some money troubles.”

“I don’t care.”

“These troubles involved the Russian mob.”

Holy shit.

The Allen Circles of Hell.

Yikes.

But even so . . .

“I don’t care.”

“It was good, baby,” he murmured. “We wanted the break from her. Tab needed it. Dad paid for it. He didn’t mind.”

“But . . . your mother sold custody of her children to their father.”

“I don’t remember how it went,” he muttered. “But I think Dad ended up not havin’ to pay seein’ as Mom’s old man got dead . . . or something.”

Apparently, there were so many of them, he couldn’t even fully remember one of his Circles of Hell.

“Oh my God.”

“Before that went down, Tyra beat the snot out of her in the forecourt.”

I stared down at him and caught his grin in the moonlight when I did.

“Wearing her heels and one of her tight skirts,” he added.

A mental image immediately formed, and I didn’t even know what his mother looked like.

Still, the image was priceless.

“No shit?” I breathed.

“I wasn’t there, but think the story goes that it took two, three brothers to pull her off.”

I smiled. “Go, Tyra.”

He fell silent.

It didn’t feel good.

My smile died.

“Rush?” I called, even though I was mostly laying on him, my hips to the side, my chest to his.

“I hope she calls me.”

I rubbed his stubbled jaw with the backs of my fingers. “I hope she does too.”

“You know, it’s been a wild ride, especially the last decade, but before that too. Big ups. Serious downs. Tyra getting stuck not counting, considering that’s in a league all its own, the worst for me was givin’ up on my mom ever bein’ a real mom.”

I hated that for him.

Really hated it.

If there was ever a son who deserved a fantastic mother, it was Rush.

Well, and Diesel.

But also totally Rush.

“Yeah,” I whispered, ducking in to touch my lips to his throat.

He kept my head there by turning it and tucking it under his chin, my cheek to his collarbone.

“I was seventeen when I met Ty-Ty. Wish she’d have come earlier,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” I whispered again, shoving my arm under him to hold him to me.

“At least we got her.”

“She loves you as if you were her own, you know,” I told him.

He said nothing for a second.

Then he said, “Yeah.”

I lifted my head to look down at him. “You’re a good son, honey, with all that, still trying to look out for your mom.”

He slid his knuckles across my cheekbone, watching them go.

Then his eyes came to mine and he repeated without much believability, “Yeah.”

“You can only do what you can do. You reached out. Now it’s her choice.”

“Swallow my own medicine?” he asked.

“Sorry,” I said softly.

“But you’re right.”

I didn’t reply.

“Still, call her again, she doesn’t get in touch, go up to Boulder and haul her ass down here kicking and screaming if I have to.”

And he’d totally do that. I knew it.

“A good son,” I told him. “Even if being that requires kidnapping.”

He smiled up at me and it appeared genuine.

And he again said, “Yeah.”

Rush held my hair back in both hands, and even if he only had moonlight, I suspected he was watching my mouth take his cock as he fucked my face.

He was standing at the side of the bed.

I was on all fours on it.

He pulled out, growled, “Pussy,” and slid his hands out of my hair, along my jaw before they fell away.

I switched positions, knees at the edge of the bed, hands in it.

While I was doing this, I heard foil tear.

A couple seconds later, he was inside.

God, I loved having his big dick inside.

My head went back.

He reached out and caught my hair in a gentle grip.

Totally never cutting my hair.

Ever.

He fucked me and he kept fucking me, and then more, and I took it and I loved it until he jerked back on my hair, curled over me, went at my clit and I came for him.

And I loved that more.

He let my hair go, pressed between my shoulders until I went down off my hands and he kept at me until he came for me.

I loved that too.

He glided inside, running his fingertips over my ass until he pulled out.

He pressed me to my side, righted me in bed, tossed the sheet over me and went to the bathroom.

He came back, got under the sheet with me, curled into my back and rounded me with an arm, pulling me close.

“Clara,” he murmured.