Lust Thy Neighbor (16 page)

Declan checked to make sure that Jacob was joking and when he saw the teasing glint in his brother’s hazel eyes, he relaxed. "If anyone's getting any kind of perks, it's me not you."

Violet flushed cherry red just as Jacob muttered, “You. Are. Foul.”

“Love you too,” he told his brother as they started to eat. He quickly discovered there was something very relaxing and easy about eating dinner with both Violet and his brother at the same table. There was no awkward tension between the three of them and Declan knew that whatever relationship he had with her would be anything but the norm for him.

T
he ringing of her phone jolted her awake. Violet fumbled for the offensive object on her nightstand and accepted the call. "Hello?"

"Hey, sweet stuff!"

A tired smile split her face. "Mom."

"What are you up to?"

Violet glanced over and saw that the blankets and pillows still held the large bodily impression of Declan. She heard the water running in the other room and figured he must be taking a shower. She smiled, reliving the vivid memories of the night before. “Nothing. Just woke up."

"Ohhh! I’m sorry, baby, I've had four cups of coffee this morning and just assumed you’d already be awake."

Laughing, Violet pushed herself into a sitting position. "You must be going out of your mind."

"I am! I've already been grocery shopping, I sorted my laundry, and I'm thinking of going to the gym because they have cardio theater now and I'm pretty sure they're showing
Armageddon
this month. Remember when we went to see that together?”

Violet groaned. Of course she remembered. Her mother’s broken sobs had cleared out half the theater. “First, bad choice for cardio, Mom. You'll cry on the treadmill belt and then face-plant. Second, why isn't someone regulating your coffee consumption?"

"Because they would run the risk of getting shanked,” her mother replied sweetly.

She laughed. Her mom could always be counted on to make her laugh. "Remind me not to screw with you and your Starbucks. So ... what's up? You know, besides you?"

"I wanted to make sure you were coming home for Thanksgiving. Don't worry, I told Mom and Dad we couldn't make it this year, so you don’t have to worry about Mom trying to fix you up with some creep! You can even add Beckett to the mix if he doesn't want to go home and deal with that entire circus."

"Well," Violet started but her voice died off when she saw her bathroom door open and Declan exited with a billow of steam floating all around him. He smiled at seeing her awake. His dark, unruly hair was damp and he was rubbing it furiously with a towel. A larger cheery yellow bath towel was wrapped around his lean hips and Violet bit her bottom lip at the sight of a few beads of water trailing down his cut abs.

Declan caught the look of desire that flashed in her eyes and tilted his head. "More
already?
" he mouthed.

She shook her head. No matter how many times she saw him naked, she still got hot and bothered just thinking about him. He had the ability to turn her stupid at the mere sight of him.

He narrowed his eyes and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. Without warning, he dropped both towels onto the carpeted floor and slid into bed beside her. She couldn't contain her small shriek when he pressed his wet head to her lower belly.

"Violet?" her mother sounded worried. "Are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah! Just dandy."

“Dandy?” he murmured against her flat stomach, the sound vibrating through her body. He squeezed her hips and parted her thighs slightly. “
Dandy
?” he repeated as she rushed to cover the speaker with her hand.

"So, what were you saying?" her mom spoke up.

"I'm not exactly sure about my plans for Thanksgiving yet," she squeaked as Declan kissed one of her hipbones. She wanted to ask what he was trying to accomplish but couldn't in front of her mother. “Can I call you back, Mom? I have another call."

"Okay," she agreed cheerfully. "But please don't bail on me. I haven't seen you in over a month and I miss you desperately. If you want me to come there, I can do that too. Just as long as we’re together.”

"Alright. Love you, Mom."

"Love you most.”

Declan looked up at her, trailing an uneven row of kisses from one hipbone to the other as she hung up the phone. "Another call, huh?" He reached up, his clever fingers tracing the curve of her breast and her breath caught painfully when he moved his mouth to her bellybutton.

"Declan?" She could barely speak, but she wanted to ask the question weighing down her thoughts before he distracted her fully.

"Hmm," he hummed against her skin.

With a deep breath, she took the plunge. "What are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

He looked up from his position against her belly and shrugged. "Probably making dinner for me and Jacob while he stands around and tells me that I'm not doing it like Mom."

Her chest tightened. "Oh."

"You want to join us?" He scooted up to rest on the pillow next to her, supporting himself on his elbow.

The disappointment she felt moments before burned out quickly as pleasure flowed through her veins. She struggled to keep a silly smile off her face. "I'd love to," she spoke softly and laid her palm against his shadowed jaw. She thought about how she could fit in two Thanksgiving dinners. Maybe she could have Thanksgiving with Declan and then rush to the outskirts of Philadelphia to have dinner with her mom. If she ate an early lunch with him, she could convince her mother that it'd be better for them to have a late Thanksgiving meal.

A hand threading through her tangled brown hair brought her out of her thoughts. "Where did you disappear to?" He smiled softly.

"Sorry." She stirred and slid forward to press her body against his, facing him with their faces almost touching. "It's just that ... well, I'm sort of obligated to go and have Thanksgiving with my mom. It's always been a tradition for us."

He kissed the tip of her nose. "Okay. No big deal."

Her heart sunk. "But I want to have Thanksgiving with you too."

"Oh, yeah?" A slow grin that made her heart race crept its way across his bronze features.

She wondered if it seemed too serious or girlfriend-y to admit that. Though they'd been together for a little over a month, she noticed that they were careful not to label their relationship. She never called him her boyfriend and tried to toe that 'casual relationship' line to the best of her ability.

"Well ... I don't
have
to make Thanksgiving dinner.” His fingers spread over her ass cheek, giving it a little squeeze as he brought their bodies so close she could feel his heart thumping beneath his skin.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Jacob's going to complain about whatever I make, no matter how I make it. It'll never be as good as our mother’s.” His dark brows pulled together over his brown eyes. "But I can't leave him alone."

"No!" She hurried to clear the air. "I mean, I want to invite the both of you! Of course I'd never ask you to leave Jacob at Thanksgiving. That's horrible."

"So, you’re asking us both to come with you?"

“I think so.”

One of his eyebrows shot up. "Is that okay with your mother?"

If it weren't, then she'd make it okay. "Of course it is."

He paused as if contemplating something, running the tip of his tongue over the center of his upper lip. "Does she know about me yet?"

She hesitated. Truthfully, she hadn't told her mom about Declan. The many times she'd spoken to Alice, she had wanted to tell her all about man she was seeing, but something held her back. In a way, she wanted to keep him to herself for the time being. If she told her mom, she'd have to tell her that the relationship with Declan was casual. Friends with benefits. And then if she admitted it to her mom, it would be true. In her heart, she didn't want it to be true.

She wanted something more with him even if she was terrified to admit that out loud.

"No, it's okay," he assured her. "It's not like we're serious." He paused, gently touching her chin to bring her blue eyes up to meet his chocolate brown gaze. "Right?"

She didn't know if he was asking her to confirm, deny, or admit. She simply nodded.

His shoulders tensed, and he was silent for what seemed like an eternity, until he finally held her face between his large hands. "No, we’re not ." It didn't sound like a statement. But it didn't sound like a question either.

"Right," she whispered.

*

D
eclan watched as Jacob scribbled in his notebook, glancing up at his textbook every once in a while. He flipped to the back again, erasing his answer and filling in something new.

"Why do you keep looking in the back?" Declan grabbed a tomato from the counter and began dicing it.

"The answers are there."

"Why?" He threw in the ingredients into the pan.

Jacob wrote something else, and Declan could see him rolling his eyes at the paper. "So you can check your work."

"But you're not checking your work. You're copying the answers."

His brother looked up and scowled. "What are you the homework police? Planning on ratting me out or something?"

Declan glanced up at the ceiling and said a silent prayer. His kid brother was so damn moody sometimes. Besides, what the hell was the point of homework when the answers were just a flip of a page away? "Well, one of your teachers
is
right next door."

"Don’t be lame. And in any case, Violet makes up her own homework. She doesn't use the textbook. Her assignments are all original and
insightful
," Jacob grumbled.

"That’s because Violet is a smart girl."
And a very naughty one,
he silently added. He paused and pushed around the stir-fry with a wooden spoon. "Speaking of Violet...." He didn't know exactly how Jacob was going to take the idea of going with her to her mother’s place for Thanksgiving dinner. "You have break coming up, right?"

"Yeah, in like a week. I can't wait." Jacob got up and went to the fridge, pulled back the carton of milk and brought it to his lips.

Without looking, Declan grabbed a glass from the cabinet and handed it to Jacob. "Don’t be an animal, kid.”

"You do it."

It seemed like that was Jacob’s response to everything recently, and Declan tensed his broad shoulders. "Only when I can finish whatever is left in the carton and throw it away after I’m done."

"How did you know I wasn't doing that?"

"There's half a carton left!" He shot his brother a dark look. “I know because I just picked it up yesterday.”

"What if I were really thirsty?"

I'm not having this conversation
. "Whatever you say. Listen, we need to talk about Thanksgiving."

"What about it?"

Declan paused, considering his words. "Violet's invited us."

"You mean she invited
you
."

"No. She invited us. We’re a family, Jake. Where I go, you go—you know that already."

Jacob sat back down at the table. "I thought she couldn't cook. She's always over here for dinner."

"Because I invite her." Declan paused. "What? You don't like having her over here?"

"No, she’s fine. I like having her over just fine." Jacob quirked a smile. "She brought some papers with her the other day, and I accidentally snuck a peek when I was moving them out of the way as I was setting the table, and I caught some of the answers that were on a pop quiz the next day."

"Sneaky bastard." Declan fought the urge to grin, feeling inexplicably proud of his brother even as he scolded him. Although he had been a good student, he would've done the same if he were still a freshman in Jacob's shoes. "So what do you think? Thanksgiving with Violet? And I don't think she's cooking. She's invited us to go home with her to eat with her mom."

Jacob scribbled on the corner of his paper. "So you’re not cooking this year?"

"I didn't think you'd mind. You always complain that I do it wrong." He plated the stir-fry and sat down, plunking a dish in front of Jacob.

"Still." Jacob continued to doodle in his notebook. "We always have Thanksgiving."

"I'm not canceling our Thanksgiving if you don't want to." He hesitated and tried to consider things from his brother’s perspective. "It's okay if you don't want to go. It's not a big deal. It's just that Violet invited us and I thought it sounded nice."

"What if ... they make it differently?"

Declan forked in a mouthful of stir-fry, crunching on the veggies. "What do you mean?"

"We've always had scalloped potatoes instead of mashed. That’s the way Mom made them."

"We can bring our own potatoes."

"Yeah?" For the first time since bringing up the topic, his brother looked genuinely interested. Sometimes Jake hit Declan's heart hard. He was a pain in the ass a lot of times, and Declan knew without a doubt that he had fumbled several times in the past, but he couldn't imagine life without his brother anymore.

"Anything else?"

"Maybe you can make that cranberry sauce too. Just in case they use the nasty ass canned kind."

He slanted his brother a confused look. "Are you sure?" Last year, Jacob had done nothing but complain that the cranberries were too runny and that Mom's never tasted so sour.

"Yeah."

"Then we'll go with Violet's to her mom's for Thanksgiving?"

Jacob shrugged and tucked into his dinner, not looking up from his plate. "Yeah, I guess that’ll be okay."

*

V
iolet said her goodbyes to Bear, assuring the yorkie that she'd be back by nighttime and locked the front door behind her. She stopped when she felt Declan’s strong arms circle her waist from behind and he lowered his mouth to skim that sensitive spot behind her ear. "What are you doing?" she moaned, arching into him.

"Taking my opportunity to touch you before I jump into a vehicle with you
and
my brother for a long drive where we’ll end up at your mother’s place and it will be
impossible
to touch you. Well, unless we went for a quickie in her bathroom, but I don’t really think that’s the best way to make a good first impression. So I'll just have to touch you now.”