Chasing Serenity (River Rain 1)

She left that a moment, her face soft, her eyes gorgeous, but she said, “I really do need to open tomorrow, and I am not a morning person. Further, my toilette is not swift. I’d have to be out the door by five and I don’t fancy that.”

Only Chloe would describe getting ready as her “toilette.”

“Are you overrun with customers on a Monday morning?” he asked.

She looked like she was assessing that.

Then she said, “No.”

“Can you open a few hours late and it not detrimentally hit your bottom line?”

She didn’t have to assess that. “Yes.”

“Is there anything scheduled, a meeting, deliveries, that you have to be there for?”

“No.”

“So are you spending the night with me?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

“Come here, baby,” he murmured.

She came to him.

He rounded her with an arm, and she kept her face tipped to him so he could take her mouth.

He did that, the beef sizzling, and he kept doing it, because the beef could burn for all he cared.

If it did, he had more in the fridge.

But now, he finally had her there, at his side, in his home, after she let it all hang out.

He needed to see to his woman.

When she was fully melted into him, he released her mouth and paid attention to their dinner.

But he didn’t let her go.

It was possible they looked ludicrous, but he didn’t care about that either as they shuffled around the kitchen attached, Judge making taco meet and getting stuff they’d need out of the fridge, whooshes coming from Chloe’s phone as she dealt with the fallout of her sister’s nasty.

He knew when she gave him more of her weight that he had her attention back.

And that was when he asked, “How much research did you do on me?”

She stilled.

He laughed and looked down at her.

“It’s okay. It’s cute. It proves how totally into me you are.”

It took her a beat, but she wisely decided to let that slide.

Unfortunately, she did it to say carefully, “Your grandfather seems like quite the character.”

He didn’t break their gaze when he shared straight out, “He’s a dick. I detest him. Even though I’ve said this to his face more than once, he considers it indication I’m a ‘real man’ who ‘knows his own mind and has the balls to speak it,’ instead of the reaction I’d like it to have. Him getting out of my life for-fucking-ever.”

“I sensed this would be the way you felt about him,” she murmured.

But he did not miss her pressing closer.

She then said to the simmering taco meat, “As much as I, too, want to know everything about you, I think you should not only share all of this in your own time, but also, we’ve had enough excitement for one night.”

“My mom’s a functioning addict with the ‘functioning’ part of that being pretty dicey.”

Her head jerked back, and her eyes locked with his.

“No time like the present,” he said.

“Judge—”

“Let’s get it out of the way, yeah?”

A brief hesitation, then she nodded.

Yeah.

“I do my absolute best to steer clear of her because she’s a fucking mess,” he said dispassionately. “I’ve learned not to get dragged in, but it’s still hard, because she’s my mom. Though, only because of that. Anything else I might have felt for her has been leached out through years of cleaning up her puke, putting up with her ranting about my father, when she was the one who cheated on him first, and generally our home being devoid of any parental guidance at all. The only thing she put her absolute all into, outside of making certain there was always booze, pot, pills and coke in the house, is keeping me from Dad.”

“She cheated first?”

He nodded. “Apparently, Dad had repeatedly called her on her consumption, not only of booze, but blow and other pharmaceuticals. When she refused to admit she had a problem, something she’s committed to, to this day, he attempted a tough love route. He cleared the house of all of that and cut her off financially. She couldn’t access cash at all, which wasn’t a problem. He paid for everything, and she didn’t need for a thing. Or want for one. Except the thing she needed most. Which she got by fucking her dealer.”

“Judge,” she breathed, full-on pressing into him now, her hand coming to his stomach to flatten tight to the muscles there.

He shrugged, set the spoon aside and reduced the heat on the meat.

“Judge,” she called.

He looked down at her again.

“How do you know this?” she asked.

“She got drunk and told me. Then I called Dad, and he’d been protecting me from it, so he was pretty pissed she let it slip. But he confirmed. By the way, when I learned this, I was fourteen.”

“Mon dieu,” she whispered.

He shrugged again.

Her eyes narrowed on him.

He gave her a squeeze.