“Oh phew.” She puts a hand over her heart and chugs the last of her wine. “You almost…” she lets out a breath. “Okay, yes, you and I can go if you must. I don’t even know where there is one, to be honest though. We might have to go to Portland.”
“Road trip!” I do a little shimmy and she rolls her eyes.
“Attitude. In check.” She points at me. “I mean it, Mads. You’re a sweet girl, I’m just asking that you give her a chance.”
“Fine, can I have some wine at least?”
“One glass.” She holds up her index finger and points at me.
“One? Well screw that, can I have something harder if I’m limited to one?”
“Yes, that’s probably better anyway, at least you can pretend there’s no alcohol in it. Mix it with something dark.”
“Cal knows I drink, Aria.”
“Doesn’t mean either of us are too happy about it. Do you just not give a shit that you live with a cop?”
“What’s he going to do, arrest me?” I cock my head, ignoring the thoughts of him using his cuffs on me to secure me to his bed like I’m in one of those sexy BDSM novels Sasha and I read.
We make our way downstairs just as Margie pulls the rolls out of the oven. “I was wondering where you two went off to.”
“Just some girl talk.” Aria grabs my jaw and squeezes before planting a kiss on my cheek.
“And I wasn’t invited?” Margie pushes her glasses to her head and narrows her eyes at us.
“I was getting yelled at,” I whisper before I grab a bottle of vodka out of Cal’s liquor cabinet.
“Oh perfect, make me one, will you?” Margie hands me her glass and Aria puts her hand over mine stopping me. “And why are you yelling at my girl?” She looks at Aria the way grandparents look at parents for scolding their own children.
“Mom…Maddie is not making you a drink.”
“Why not! Last I checked, I’m actually old enough to drink.” She points at me as I stir the ginger ale into the healthy pour of vodka with a spoon.
Aria rolls her eyes and pats my butt to send me out of the kitchen with the drink I made myself. “I’ll make you one, you go back in there,” she tells us. I could hear the implication. This drink is going to be weak as fuck.
I move back down the hallway and into the dining room to see Penelope laughing with Cal about something. She’d claimed the seat next to him and I sat across from them, forced to watch her stare at him with stars in her eyes.
“Everything okay?” Henry asks as I sit back down in my seat.
“Yup.” I take a long sip of my drink, and I can already feel Cal’s penetrating gaze on me.
“Madeline.” He grunts and my eyes flash to his.
“Mmmhmm?” Yes, Daddy? My mind automatically thinks and I can’t even stop the flush from moving up my body.
I wonder if he can read my mind because something crosses his face that could possibly be construed as lust from my vantage point.” What’s in that?”
I shrug. “Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“It’s ginger ale, calm down.”
He reaches his hand across the table towards me. “Let me smell it.”
“No, I think I’m good.”
“Excuse me?” He gives me that look he’s given me on a few occasions when I am testing him, and I shiver with delight at the thought of what he might do to me later. He’d never laid a hand on me, but suddenly the idea of being over his lap while he spanks my bare ass has me clenching my thighs together under the table.