Who's the Daddy (Crescent Cove 3)

“We were having such a nice dance until you ruined it by speaking.”

I stiffened.

“No, don’t do that.” She played with my hair. “I was joking. Obviously, not well. I kinda suck at flirting.”

“I’ve never been good at it either.”

I settled her back against my chest and tried not to groan at the way my knee instinctively went between her thighs. Nothing about her fit the crude scenarios in my head. She was the sweet girl next door, not a chick in a bar looking for a good time. I had to remember that.

To accept that all I was going to get was a little more time with her scent filling my brain.

She reached back to toy with the hair at the nape of my neck. Her long fingers made little swirls against my freshly shorn hair. “You cut it.”

I’d taken Wes to the barber for school, but I couldn’t seem to spit out that I had a kid. It either ruined the moment or made things awkward and then also ruined the moment. “Gets hot in the shop.”

Her long hair swirled around my forearm. A waterfall of silk against my rough arms and hands. Just like the rest of her.

“Yeah, I keep thinking I should chop mine off. It’s so heavy.”

“No.” I growled it out way more intensely than I should have, but all that hair was… “Fuck no.”

“Just like a guy. Always want us to have super long hair. But it’s stick straight and flat half the time.”

I moved my hand from the small of her waist up to the heavy tangle of gold and red strands. “All I can see is you on that floor with your hair tangled while I made you come.”

She shivered and I held her tighter as the song blended into another slow one. There were people crowding in on us as the dance floor filled.

“I’m not good at this,” she said quietly.

“You were just fine the other night.”

She tucked her chin in where my shoulder met my neck. “That was probably a fluke.”

I tugged a handful of red-gold silk so she had to look at me. “Then it was a fluke for us both. I can’t promise you a fucking thing, but God, I want to be inside you again. On a fucking bed this time.”

“I don’t have one yet.”

Well, I’d just have to fix that, now wouldn’t I? My buddy at the furniture shop owed me a favor for towing his car from Rochester back home. It was time to collect.

She stumbled against me a little as she swayed. I couldn’t take her home tonight anyway. One, she was far too tipsy. I wasn’t a complete asshole. And two, Wes was at Sage’s house playing with the kids, but he had a shopping day with my parents tomorrow.

They loved to take my kid out for school shopping. It was the only time they really spoiled him, so I’d stopped being an asshole about it. I could take care of my kid—and they knew that—but I couldn’t deny the help was appreciated. Not when I had to pay off a new furnace for the sinkhole that was my house.

I locked down all the crap that lived in my head—kid, house, job—and spun her out in a quick twirl. Her surprised laugh filled my chest way more than it should. She was a little weird, and she said whatever came into her head. We didn’t seem to have much in common.

Right now, it was just my dick talking. Had to be. And as much as I wanted to lose myself in Kelsey, it was time to go back to the real world.

I dragged her back in, deliberately crowding close. “Guess I’ll see you around, Kels,” I said against her mouth.

The urge to brand her was a little too intense for my comfort. That and I couldn’t kiss her to a fucking Ariana Grande song. There were some lines I just couldn’t cross.

“Kels, we gotta go.”

She turned toward Ally?

?s voice. The indecisive look on Kelsey’s face made me want to tell her to say the hell with them. I’d find some way to get her in my arms for the night.

But then she was gone. And I was left standing in the middle of the dance floor with my dick throbbing and my head full of too much bullshit.