Southern Sinner (North Carolina Highlands 3)

Mama raises her arms and wiggles her hips. “Goodness, girl, you got it.”

I feel a swell of affection for my family at that moment.

There’s swelling of an entirely different variety between my legs for Stevie.

She gets to the chorus and opens her eyes, meeting mine. She smiles, nods, and I join her, the two of us singing about lovers and mountains and leather and lace. Our voices don’t sound amazing together, but they don’t sound awful, either, and after a few lines we find our groove, eyes locked as we do our best to harmonize.

It’s not half bad.

It’s a ton of fucking fun. Laughter rises along the sides of my torso, gathering in my belly as I sing the next verse solo and Stevie ducks her lips, spreading her arms before bringing them back together to bang the tambourine against the heel of her hand. It’s like she’s working a stadium crowd, urging them to clap with us. And because my family is my family—drunk and willing—they really do clap.

Everyone claps. Samuel. Emma. Mama. Bel is smiling so big at Stevie and me her face is about to split open. Milly jumps to her feet and starts dancing, pulling Rhett off the sofa to dance with her. Then Stevie is getting to her feet too. She’s shaking the tambourine above her head, shaking her hips, getting low in that slow, confident way of hers, ass carving the kind of clean turns Clyde tried to teach me on the slopes in Aspen.

When our joint chorus comes up, Stevie turns to me and shimmies her tits in my face as she sings. I can’t help it. I laugh, stumbling on the lyrics, my dick throbbing. I lean up and kiss the freckle on her neck.

Heat, real and raw, flashes across her eyes, and that ache inside my chest suddenly isn’t so tiny anymore.

“Aw yeah!” Rhett yells.

“Y’all,” Milly says with a smile. “Get a room, would you?”

Bel gets up to dance too. “Please don’t, because this. Is. Amazing.”

Because we’ve got the room dancing, and because the song is too fucking perfect for the circumstances, I dive right into “Sorry” by Justin Bieber.

Judging by the way Stevie bites her bottom lip, she very much approves.

Now the entire room is dancing, all of us singing about being sorry at the top of our lungs. Spinning Emma underneath his raised arm, Samuel catches my gaze. He grins.

Something inside me breaks free, and I close my eyes and lose myself in the music.

Lose myself in the knowledge that I am forgiven. For tonight, at least.

I open my eyes and Stevie’s ass is in my face. She’s bent at the waist, and she glances at me over her shoulder as she pops her hips. Desire surges through my core, gathering in a painfully sweet throb at the tip of my dick.

I take my hand off my guitar for half a heartbeat to give her ass a squeeze. But then Milly is pulling Stevie over to dance with her, and Rhett takes the tambourine so Milly and Stevie can make a bridge out of their arms for Mama to dance through. Samuel takes Stevie for a spin too. She moves effortlessly in his arms, the two of them giggling when she goes up on her tiptoes and tries to get him to spin underneath her arm.

Stevie doesn’t miss a single lyric all the while. Girl knows her blackjack, her classic rock, her toddler and Bieber hits.

And now she knows my family.

The ache in my chest won’t let me be. Neither will my half-hard dick. Wasn’t I just promising myself I wasn’t gonna repeat past mistakes?

But this—Stevie, tonight, the current between us—it feels so, so different from anything I’ve experienced before.

I’m just sober enough to realize if I’m not careful, I’m gonna catch real feelings for my fake girlfriend.

And I’m just drunk enough to wonder if that wouldn’t be an entirely bad thing.

Chapter Twelve

Stevie

I draw up short at the threshold of Hank’s enormous master bathroom.

All my lotions and potions are neatly laid out on one of the vanities beside a stack of pristine white towels. The door to the closet is open, and I see my clothes have been hung up, my shoes marching in a straight line directly beneath them.

A fluffy robe, embroidered with Blue Mountain’s insignia, hangs from a hook beside the vanity.

I turn when Hank presses a kiss to my nape, right where it slopes into my shoulder. “What’s this?”

“I had the butler unpack your things,” he replies, mouth still on my skin. “We do it for all our guests at Blue Mountain.”

I stare at my vanity. Stare at our reflection in the mirror above it.

My stomach dips. Hank is kissing my neck, tongue like velvet as he turns his handsome head to get a better angle. The muscles in his chest and shoulders strain against his shirt; the sharp line of his jaw gleams in the low light of the bathroom.