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“No,” he growls. “It’s not.”
“Oh.”
“You’re lucky it was the mayor’s wife who caught you and not the mayor himself.”
“Why?” I ask.
“I’d be a lot more pissed if he’d seen you—” Joe cuts himself off, scrubbing at the stubbled lower half of his face. “Never mind.”
Sure. As if we’re going to let that go. “You wouldn’t have liked him seeing us naked?” Bella asks—and I can see goosebumps have lifted on her arms, her nipples clearly outlined against the front of her tank top. “Why, Joe?”
“He’s a man,” he says, as if that should have been obvious. “And you’re…beautiful young girls. Last thing I need is someone getting ideas.”
I trace the lacy edge of my bralette with my middle finger, down into the space between my breasts, taking Joe’s attention along with it. “What kind of ideas?” I ask, softly.
Bella gasps gently. “Do you think he’d want to fuck us if he saw us naked, Joe?”
I try my best to look purely curious. “Both of us at the same time?”
His chest is puffing up and down, redness creeping up the sides of his neck toward his face. “You’re making the conversation inappropriate when it doesn’t need to be. All in the name of distracting me from my lecture.”
“We wouldn’t do that,” Bella insists, looking wounded.
“Joe…” I call forth an army of tears into my eyes. “Sometimes I think you assume the worst in us. Do you think we’re bad people?”
His hulking shoulders deflate slightly. “Now, sweetheart, you know that isn’t true.”
We’ve got a “sweetheart,” ladies and gentlemen. He’s right where we want him. “All we ever wanted was for you to love us,” Bella says in a wobbly voice.
“I do.” Joe takes a quick step toward the couch. Halts. His hands flex at his sides. “You know I love you, girls.”
So close. “B-buthowdo we know?”
Exasperation streaks across Joe’s features. “I feed you. I put a roof over your heads, don’t I? I’m helping pay for college.”
Bella bows her head, chastised. “You’re right. You doeverythingfor us.”
“We can’t even cook, let alone stay out of trouble.”
“We’re useless,” Bella chokes out.
All right, we’re laying it on a little thick. I nudge my sister with my elbow to signal a retreat. Joe might be weak in the face of female tears, but he’s not clueless.
Thankfully, the tears have won.
Joe lifts his hands toward us, pausing for two breaths, before he cups the sides of our faces. “You are the opposite of useless. You’re good girls. You…” He swallows. “I don’t know what I’d do without you brightening up this house. Maybe…I don’t know.”
“Maybe what?” I ask, turning my face into his palm and rubbing my cheek there.
Joe watches as Bella performs the same action, each of us reveling in his touch. Like two felines being stroked by their owner after he returns from a long day at work.
On the heels of a long pause, Joe continues, his voice deeper than before. “Maybe it’s a good thing you girls stir up so much trouble. Maybe keeping you in line was the exact distraction I needed this year.” I’m not expecting it when his fingers slip into our hair, his calloused thumb sifting through the strands, as if he’s luxuriating in the feel of us. “Two perfect distractions sent by God himself. Angels.”
I purr into his hand, sort of wishing he would wrap it around my throat and choke me, but hey, that’s a problem for a different day. Right now, we just want to succeed in making Joe stay. That’s always the object of the game. To stop him from blowing out the door like Portsmith’s one and only superhero.
“Joe, will you watch our show with us?” Bella asks, her eyes half closed in the bliss of his touch. “Pretty please?”
“We can’t make any trouble if you’re with us, right?” I add.
