Priceless (Forbidden Men 8)

“Get some sleep,” I said, awkwardly patting Caroline’s arm. “Maybe it won’t suck so bad in the morning.”

“As if.” She snorted, letting me know she totally didn’t believe my words any more than I did. But she climbed up onto the top bunk anyway. “‘Night, bubba.”

“‘Night.” I helped pull the blankets up over her and then I stood there a moment, watching both her and Colton on their respective mattresses—safe and sound, for now—before I turned away and slogged from the room.

To the couch it was for me.

I had no idea how Noel had lived for eighteen years, sleeping on that uncomfortable hunk of junk. It was too short and hard as a rock. I didn’t even like to sit on the ratted piece of furniture.

Realizing the front room was too cold to sleep in without some kind of blanket, I shivered and rubbed my arms before I backtracked to the second bedroom in our single-wide trailer. But I paused just outside the door, hesitating to push my way inside. Daisy wasn’t home, yet it still felt strange going inside her domain to fetch an extra blanket where they were stored in her closet.

All the sex and drugs she did took place in her room. Noel had made sure she’d kept all her shit behind this closed door, and for some reason she’d followed his edict even after he’d moved off to college...or maybe she wasn’t aware he no longer lived here. Whatever. This room was Daisy’s den of iniquity, and it smelled gross.

I wrinkled my nose as I crept inside. No idea why I was tiptoeing; no one was here. But I did anyway.

Wanting to get in and out as quickly as possible, I dashed to her closet, slid open the door and yanked the first blanket-feeling thing I found down as soon as my fingers sought one in the dark. On my race back to the exit, however, I miscalculated in the dark and cracked my shinbone on the baseboard of her bed.

“Motherfucker.” Dropping the blanket on the bed, I skipped in a circle on one foot as I bent my knee up to my chest and clutched my throbbing leg.

Unable to keep my balance, I plopped down on the edge of the mattress and hissed through my pain until I thought I could stand again.

Instead of pushing to my feet, though, I glanced back at the rest of the unmade bed behind me. All that expanse of available sleeping space...just going to waste. Most of the sheets were rumpled up in one corner and who knew what she’d been doing the last time she’d been here, but temptation seized me anyway. I didn’t even care how rank the place smelled of ass and stale alcohol. There was an empty, soft mattress right here, just waiting to be used.

The likelihood of Daisy returning home before morning had to be about one in, oh, a million. And the couch didn’t smell much better, anyway.

I was so tired, and my ass had already sunk into the lush softness. It would be easy to just stretch out and... Ahhh. Bliss. I tugged the fresh blanket I’d just fetched from the closet over me and closed my eyes, sighing as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Unconsciousness claimed me within moments.

It was a good sleep too. I wasn’t roused by coughing from Colton next to me or the squeak of Caroline’s bedsprings above me. It was just quiet.

Nice.

Peaceful.

My dreams turned toward pleasant things. Since I was waking up with morning wood pretty much every day now, a hazy vision of Jamey Hester, who sat next to me in English class, sprang up in my head. In real life, she wouldn’t give a trashy Gamble like me the time of day. I was too poor, cussed too much, got into too many fights. What the fuck ever. But in my dream, she liked me just fine.

Her hand wrapped around my junk, right through my boxers, and I gasped from the pleasure, arching my back off the bed. Fingers squeezed appreciatively and pumped, making my balls tingle in a way that let me know I was seconds away from coming.

“Damn, baby. You sure are a big one, aren’t you?” Jamey cooed, except she didn’t really sound like Jamey. She sounded more like—

My eyes flew open.

Daisy loomed above me, looking down at me until all her hair flooded around her face. The blanket no longer covered me, and her hand was...Jesus.

“What the fuck?” I lurched up and scrambled away from her, dislodging her grip on me with my haste.

When my back met the corner of the wall, I sucked in a breath and shook my head, unable to stop gaping at the woman who’d given birth to me. My shin ached from smacking it into her bed earlier, letting me know I was definitely no longer dreaming, and my mother was honest-to-God kneeling right there on the bed in front of me.

Still. No way had she just been giving me a hand job. That part must’ve been in my dream. It had to have been. I shook my head again, trying to wake fully.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked without thinking.

She let out a husky laugh. “Honey, this is my bed. You’re the interloper.” Then propping herself on her hands and knees, she began to crawl toward me. “But I don’t mind if you stay.”

“Holy shit,” I squawked, digging my back deeper into the wall.

It wasn’t quite morning, but the sun was beginning to rise outside the window. It let in just enough gray light to let me see how bloodshot her eyes were. The woman was probably high as a kite, doped up with who knew what mix of drugs.