The One

This is crazy shit. One fucking photograph and I’m seeing a lifetime. I need to get a grip, but it doesn’t look like that’s about to happen.

Before I even realize it, I’m back out of the shack and down the stairs into my truck, pulling up flights to Detroit Metro Airport as I start the engine and feel something…something I haven’t felt in longer than I can remember.

“Looks like you’re going to be off the road for a few days.” I look at George who nibbles my chin.

The sight of the girl in the photo has my dick raging hard. My heart is thumping around against my sternum, and when I press my fingers to the phone screen and enlarge the photo of her face, I just know. The way her lips are slightly parted, the way her tongue is just glancing the bottom.

I know it’s impossible, but her eyes connect to mine. Her eyes look right into my cold heart.

I swallow hard.

And cum in my fucking pants.

Two

Issi

“ISSI, JESUS, YOUR CLOSET is bigger than my living room.” My mom sits cross-legged on the center of my bed, alternating looking at a Modern Bride magazine and me where I stand inside my closet. “Why did you need such a big house?”

“It was a good investment,” I answer, not for the first time.

And it’s true. I have an eye for real estate, and this place was a divorce situation. They wanted out fast, I had cash to pay, and they took my offer which was a good twenty-percent below market. Win-win.

“I’m happy you’re back.” Mom smiles and I know she’s sincere. “I missed you.” She reaches into the jumbo-sized bag of M&M’s sitting next to her and tosses a handful into her mouth. M&M’s were one of our main food groups when I was growing up. “I really think Hamilton is the one.” She adds, crunching the candy. Her dark hair is piled in a messy bun on top of her head, and she’s wearing an oversized Lucky Charms t-shirt—another food staple in our house growing up—and a pair of lacy Victoria’s Secret underwear. “Lucky number six, right?”

“I hope so, Mom.” We’re only sixteen years apart, so in a lot of ways, we are more like sisters than mother and daughter. “You deserve it.”

We don’t look much alike. Mom is exotic: dark hair, deep brown eyes, olive skin. Her mother was from Honduras and her father from Greece. They divorced when she was just a baby, and she has no memory of her father at all—exactly the same as me. My grandmother died before I was born, so it’s just been me and mom facing the world together.

She’s not just beautiful, she’s stunning. My entire life I watched men fall at her feet and saw the power she held over them. If only she had figured out how to use that power for good.

At least her own good and mine.

I, on the other hand, took after my absent father. He was from Alaska but had Nordic roots, so I’m Denarius Targaryen, and my mother is Sophia Lauren. He was passing through and met Mom when she was just sixteen, and they spent a whirlwind week together after which, one morning, she woke up and never heard from him again.

Two weeks later, she missed her period, and the rest is mother/daughter history.

“I mean, don’t you think it’s fate that you get your dream job, dream house, dream life and it’s right back here?” Mom licks a finger and turns the page of the magazine. “It’s so good to have you back so close to home. New York is so expensive, and it smells. And, you were having such a struggle with your asthma from living in the city. All that smog.”

That’s another stark difference between us. My career is my life. Her life was her men. Many men.

Five previous marriages and who knows how many engagements and boyfriends she went through. I lost count over the years. From the time I was seven, I was the one making sure the bills got paid, dinner was on the table, and we had clean clothes to wear.

One thing Mom did do for me, was ensure my education. When I was already reading Shakespeare at six, she did what she could and got me a scholarship to Cranbrook Academy. It’s a prestigious private school not far from where we lived, and I attended there through high school, graduating Summa Cum Laude and Valedictorian at sixteen.

From there, it was three years at Yale where I graduated early, got my MBA in record time and then I was off to New York to my first venture capital associate position where I quickly became one of the top producers.

Which all just means I love my mom to the end of the Earth and back. She did what she had to do to give me the best, we had lots of fun together, and in her, I have a combination best friend and parent. But responsibility is not her strong suit.