A One Man Job

Chapter 10

10

Joe

I sit in the driver’s side of my car, staring at the flashing lights of an ambulance. The car wreck—a three-car collision—was particularly brutal. Lives were lost. As I stare out at the scene, feeling like I’ve been punched through with holes, all I want to do is go home.

To the girls.

I want their presence, their comfort, their soothing voices in my neck.

I want to lose myself in the softness of them.

This urge to seek refuge in Bella and Charlie is what alerts me to the fact that I’m about to fall through some thin ice. It’s no longer a case of lust, as badly as I want to rock my cock into their bodies and listen to them moan. I’m emotionally bonded with them. In a way a man connects with his partner. His other half. But in my case, I have two of them.

And they both have my heart.

Me and Bella don’t want to go to college.

We want to stay with you, Joe. We belong with you.

Man, it would be so easy to keep them. Well. Not easy. They would drive me out of my mind, day in and day out. They already have me wrapped around their pinkie fingers. I can’t even imagine how much I would dote on my girls once I’m coming in their pussies every night.

Once I’m waking up between them. To their beautiful smiles across the pillows.

I realize my heart is booming in my chest and punch the steering wheel, full force.

Christ. It happened. I let myself fall in love with Bella and Charlie.

But I can’t let them know I’ve fallen or they’ll give up college to stay with me. They’ll waste the best years of their life on a man past his prime. By the time they realize there are better men out there that can give them a life of adventure, they’ll have lost so much time. So many chances. As much as I want to keep the girls to myself and never let them go, I can’t be the reason they deprive themselves of experiences.

My deputy’s advice comes back to me, unbidden.

Just tell her you’re interested in someone else, sheriff.

That ought to help her take the hint.

My phone is ringing in my lap. It’s Bella. Probably calling to ask if I’m coming home.

The advice my deputy gave me might be terrible, but I’m desperate. Staying away from Bella and Charlie is only making them try harder to bring me under their spell. I need to make them realize a relationship with me isn’t in the cards. I need to snap this growing bond between us in half, before it can no longer be broken and they insist on giving up college.

Not giving myself time to second-guess my decision, even though it feels deceitful and wrong, I answer the phone.

“Bella.”

“Joe! You’re at that terrible accident, aren’t you? It’s on the news.”

“Yeah, I’m here. Getting ready to leave, though.”

“Oh, good.” Her voice drops to a purr. “Are you coming home now?”

Her sweet, eager voice in my ear alone is giving me an ungodly cockstand, even after the tragedy I’ve witnessed tonight. My hands ache to be on their skin or cradling their faces. If I had all the freedom in the world, I would lay them down, side by side on the bed, stripped bare and I would kneel between them, playing with their clits at the same time. Stroking those little things with my thumbs, watch their skin grow pinker and more flushed, their eyes unseeing as they gasp and whine up at the ceiling.

I’m sweating now.

I’m losing it.

The need to fuck them is so severe, I’m shaking.

I’ve got to put an end to this before my obsession becomes unmanageable.

If it hasn’t already.

“No, I’m not coming home,” I force out. “I’ve got a date.”

The silence from Bella is deafening. I hang up before I can take back the lie, throwing my car into drive and burning rubber toward a sports bar I know at the edge of town where I can kill some time. And nurse my injured heart.

Bella

I stare down at the phone in my hand, the world around me bubbling like hot lava.

That did not just happen. No way.

I’m being strangled by an invisible rope, hellish heat engulfing my body.

Jealousy like I’ve never experienced in my life boomerangs around my skull, leaving righteous anger in its path.

“What’s wrong?” Charlie yawns from her sprawl on the couch. “Is Joe coming home?”

“No,” I choke out.

Obviously sensing my distress, Charlie sits up, the strap of her frilly nightgown slipping down one shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“He…he said…” A screech shoots upward from my belly, straight from the devil himself and I throw my phone a hundred miles an hour across the room, putting a hole in the drywall. “He has a date.”

Charlie goes eerily still, but even from a distance, I can see the pulse going wild at the bottom of her neck. “Um. Excuse me?”

“That’s what he said!”

My sister stumbles to her feet, twin splotches appearing on her cheeks. “Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand him?”

“I didn’t!”

Charlie’s eyes flood with tears. “Even after I gave him a blow job this afternoon?”

I nearly double over in shock. “You did what? ”

“Bitch, you tried to seduce him in a bikini while I was getting my nails done!”

“Yes, but I thought we were past this competition stuff. I thought we moved on once Joe figured out our game!”

Charlie winces. “Maybe there was still in a tiny part of me that wanted to win.”

I march closer to my sister, shoving her off balance. “Judas!”

“If it makes you feel better, he wouldn’t have sex with me. And believe me, I tried.”

A sob wrenches from my lips. “Nothing is going to make me feel better right now. Joe is on a date.”

“Not for long,” Charlie responds, ominously. “We’re going to go break it up.”

A sense of purpose begins to swell inside of me, but it’s tempered by common sense. “We don’t even know where the date is happening.”

“Amateur,” snorts Charlie. “You don’t track Joe’s phone?”

“What? No. Do you?”

“Hell yes, I do.” She scrambles for her phone on the coffee table. Mine is inside the wall. After a few seconds, she waves the glowing screen at me. “They’re at Mongo’s.”

“A bar?” Tears are tracking down my face. “What if they get drunk and go home together?”

“We’re not going to let that happen. Go put on your white leather dress and some heels. I’m wearing black, because it’s going to be this bitch’s funeral.” As my sister drags my numb body toward the bedrooms, I thank God she has the ability to operate under stress, because I would be lost without her. “She’s about to find out that Joe is ours.”

“Yeah!” I cry out, finally gathering the wherewithal to rifle through my closet. “But Charlie,” I say, before she can leave my room and enter her own.

She stops in the doorway and looks back. “What?”

“No more going behind each other’s backs. If we’re going to make this work, if we’re going to win over Joe, we have to be a team. Not opponents.”

Charlie’s expression warms. “Deal.”