What We Know Is True, page 26
I squeezed in between my mom and Augusta on the couch to catch up. We were all so busy, Augusta and I with work and our families, my mom with her tailoring and dressmaking business, playing on the baby grand that Reid had bought for her almost immediately when we had decided to be a couple. The three of us ladies had to get in our talks whenever we could.
“The kids were on the roof,” I told Augusta, and she rolled her eyes heavenward.
“I’m sure my daughter was behind that. That child…Reid says she has too much of me in her. And he calls her Phebe, isn’t that awful? He really knows how to ruin a name! But I guess he’s a pretty good uncle.” She glanced significantly at my stomach. “And maybe a good father of two?” She knew me, also. I just grinned and shrugged. We’d confirm it at dinner.
I looked around for Reid, because no matter what, I always felt happiest when he was near. We still used our funny, two-person desk at work, because although the office had grown even more over the years with the closure of the California campus and a lot of the crew from PanyaCreates moving up north, Reid and I hadn’t felt the need to change. I still looked up during the day to find him smiling at me, just happy to see my face, he explained.
He came back in, Evan under his arm, a passel of Augusta’s kids trailing behind like ducks, and I got up, wanting to be close to him again, to touch him. “Everyone accounted for,” he told me, then put his other arm around me, and our son hung on both of us like a little limpet. He had Reid’s auburn hair, but he had my eyes. My dad’s eyes. He also already had a huge interest in ancient history.
Speaking of… “Oh, Jesus! Karis, did you see what she’s doing now?” Augusta asked, holding up her phone. “Hand-knit beanies for her cats.” I groaned while Augusta cracked up, and Reid reached over and clicked off her phone. After interest in her travel blog had basically dried up, Jerrica had tried to establish herself as a lifestyle guru, with not a lot of success. Augusta still followed her for laughs, but I had moved on.
Because now, I was much more interested in my own life, instead of reading about someone else’s. Maybe I didn’t change locations every 48 hours, or leap off buildings, but it was quite the journey. I kissed my son, then stood on my tiptoes to kiss my husband. I had let go of my control a little, to life, to love, to our son, to Reid.
And this was an adventure well worth any risk.
About the Author
Jamie Bennett is a reader turned writer (but still a reader). She enjoys writing about herself in the third person, and spends her spare time searching for obscure candy (Vanilla Laffy Taffy: the quest continues.)
Her nine (holy cow! nine!) other novels are available on Amazon. You can reach her via Facebook and Instagram @jamiebennettbooks (and join the FB Rocinante group for extra updates).
Thanks for reading!
And if you enjoyed this book, please leave a review!
Coming soon…
Sweet, Tart
His forked tongue licked down her body, stuttering over her rock-hard nipples.
No, forked tongue was too snake-y. I deleted.
His silver tongue licked down her body, stuttering over her rock-hard nipples. She moaned in ecstasy then hated herself. How could she be falling so hard for the beast who held her captive?
“Let me go!” she demanded angrily, tossing her fiery red hair. His 14 talons—no, fingers—his 14 fingers descended to her pouty breasts…
I couldn’t say that, even if it sounded good. I never understood it, like, how were boobs pouty? Did that mean sulky? Poorly behaved?
…to her luscious breasts, and he cruelly grasped them. “You’re mine, Princess…”
I didn’t have a good name for the heroine yet. I looked at the pile of candy wrappers next to my couch where I was typing.
“Princess Peanut Butter Cup.” He laughed harshly and despite my fear she felt her arousal rise even higher. She wanted him, all 20 inches of his alien…
I heard a noise outside and quickly shut my laptop, banishing the blue light of the screen. I had the porch light on, as always, with the extra-bright bulb I had screwed in myself. I peered around the edge of the blackout curtain.
There were two people in the parking lot and from my position on the second floor I could watch them. They were saying goodnight, laughing in the warm summer night’s air. The man leaned forward and quickly kissed the woman, then she reached and pulled him to her, and they kissed again, deeply, her hands sliding down his back and his arms locking around her. I watched them kiss and kiss, then speak softly, heads close together. She got into her car and waved out the window. As she drove away, he watched after her for a long time. I could see him smile as he turned and walked off to his building in our apartment complex (Unit B, third floor). It looked like he was almost dancing.
I sighed. That little interaction was way better than what I had just written about stupid Princess What’s-her-name and her alien captor. I thought that maybe I would change him to a dragon. People seemed to go for my dragons lately. I was going to have to switch back to the forked tongue, then.
His rough scales dragged against her skin, chafing…no. I was tired of dragons.
His velvet-smooth skin rubbed along hers, exciting her, but even so she fought against the bonds that encircled her wrists and ankles, spreading her, opening her to him. His merciless laughter chilled her even more than the icy, purified air of his space cruiser. “Fight all you want, Princess Gummy Bear, but you’re mine. I will breed you…”
I coughed and bits of the candy I had been chewing spewed out of my mouth and onto to the keyboard, gross. I wasn’t getting anywhere with the writing anyway, but it was late at night, my witching hour. If I wasn’t asleep by now, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get there. So I kept pounding away at my now-sticky keyboard until I had another thousand or so words in the latest alien/captive saga. I needed to email this in to my publisher tomorrow to use as a social media tease (after I thought of a good name for the captured princess) and then I had the chapters due for the Duchess and the Dairymaid Regency books I was working on.
That whole series was just the age-old trope of the two women switching places, and followed all the confusion, hilarity, and (of course) hot and dirty action that ensued. In every book, both of them were nearly trapped and outed as imposters by different guys. The duchess and the dairymaid would then convince the men not to tattle by revealing some heaving bosom or glimpses of creamy white thigh, which led to, well, sex. The dairymaid did it with noblemen from one end of London to the other, while the duchess was hot and heavy with the stablemaster, the butler, and a variety of footmen.
Each story was pretty much the same as the last one. I was running out of ways for men to stumble onto the truth and then for them to all tumble into the sack (or the hay, as the case might have been). Why were those women always so stupid? Why didn’t they just say, “Well, you got me! I’m not really a dairymaid, as you might have been able to tell since I don’t know one end of a cow from another, so I’ll head back to the castle now,” or, “Duchess I ain’t, because, of course, I just said ‘ain’t.’ See ya, suckers.” Instead, both of them just kept throwing up their skirts. It was getting boring.
But they paid. I had hit the jackpot when the duchess went into the stable and met all the sweaty men and their riding crops and when the dairymaid started getting tied up in drawing rooms with silken cravats. That had led to the contracts for the five Aliens in Heat books, the Knights of the Hardbody trilogy, the DragonMasters: Seeking Human Mates series, and the mail order tie-me-up brides who liked to get spanked all across the American frontier (those went from A to Z and but I was stuck at Q because I couldn’t think of a catchy title—Quiet Queneta Quests? It just didn’t have the same zing as Filthy Franny F-cks, for example). I was at the top of the charts in several genres. Several erotic genres.
I heard some more noises in the parking lot and watched raccoons play in the trashcans, making a mess. That meant that I would watch the janitor pick it all up in the morning, after the newspaper man threw six papers at the three buildings in our complex, and before the first bus came by on the main road outside our driveway. I had the whole morning routine down pat. My entire day was divided up neatly into routines, my own, but mostly the ones I observed.
I padded back across the floor to my bedroom and Mr. Joyce downstairs thumped on his ceiling with his cane. Honestly, I could have been wearing pillows on my feet and he would have thumped, the asshole. I had the urge to start jumping up and down and screaming, but it was close to four in the morning, and Mrs. Cruz upstairs from me needed her sleep. I’d watched her get in from work at midnight, closing her car door and trudging, exhausted, to our building. I knew she would need to get up soon with her kids, and I didn’t want to disturb her as much as I wanted to bring down some plaster on the head of the jackass downstairs.
My bedroom had a window because we were the corner units. I opened the curtains and watched the sky get lighter and lighter. If I pressed my forehead against the glass, I could almost peer around the edge of the building to see the sunrise. It meant the beginning of a new day, another day in my tiny, bare apartment, in a small town I didn’t know very well, away from all the people I had counted as friends.
It meant another day in heaven.
Now available on Amazon
I Love You Better
It was like a fairyland.
Strings of light dipped over the parquet floor, little shining stars above the dancers, and above them the real moon and stars glowed in the night sky. It wasn’t cold and foggy in July like it was where I lived in San Francisco; here, it was warm and the air smelled good. There were flowers everywhere, purple and pink and white, like a garden, and everyone was so fancy. Sparkly and poofy dresses floated around the dance floor. Every table was heavy with plates of white frosted cake, and jars of candy, and trays of cookies, and heavy glasses full of bubbly, sweet soda. Plus, there was a cotton candy machine that spun sugar fluff onto paper cones, as much as you wanted. My face was still sticky with it, and my tongue, when I had looked at my reflection in the back of a spoon, was a lovely shade of bright pink. I filled my mouth every time I got a chance to. You never knew when an opportunity like this would come again!
I heard my mom’s laugh, high and loud above the music. I didn’t like it. A laugh like that meant she would have a headache the next day and I would have to be quiet and get my own breakfast. And lunch, and maybe dinner. It also meant I would get carsick when we drove home, because when she drove after she had a lot of the nasty tasting drinks she liked, the car was all fast and wiggly. I preferred the orange and red and brown soda in the fancy glasses on the tables. I picked one up and chugged. Mmm. Yummy!
A hand shot out from under the billowing pink tablecloth. It grabbed my ankle and I squealed, then I kicked at the arm attached to it with my free foot. “Ow!” a voice yelled, and a boy’s head came out. “You could have broken my arm. That’s my right one, too! I’m a tennis player!”
“Sorry.” I squatted down and looked under the table. He had spread napkins around and set up his own feast of cake and candy and those delicious pastry things with the chocolate on the top and some kind of cream in the middle, and the little pink sandwich cookies that melted away on my tongue. “Can I come under?”
He considered me, then nodded. I crawled, forgetting for a moment that I wasn’t supposed to get my pretty dress dirty.
“You have something pink in your hair,” the boy said. He touched it and quickly drew back. “It’s sticky!”
“Cotton candy,” I said, nodding.
“It’s on your face, too. You have chocolate on your dress.”
I looked down, where I had wiped my hand across the top of my dress and left streaks of brown finger marks. It was much too late to worry about crawling, then. “This is a good party,” I commented. I compared it to my last birthday. We were supposed to go to a movie, my mom and I, but she had fallen asleep for most of the day. When she had woken up, she had remembered, and we had gone for a fancy dinner with slimy fish that still had eyes and little cakes with bitter chocolate inside that oozed out like gross goop when you cut into them. My mom had gotten really mad and said I didn’t appreciate the finer things when I said I liked burgers and cupcakes better.
“You’re a very messy, sloppy little girl,” the boy said to me, eyeing my dress.
“I’m not little! I’m five.”
“Well, you’re much smaller than I am. I’m nearly eleven. I will be in ten months.” He stared at me. “I know who you are. You’re Evie. You’re my dad’s old wife’s daughter.”
“We’re related,” I concluded, licking my sticky fingers.
The boy made a face, pursing his lips and wrinkling his nose. “No, we’re not. We have different moms and dads. But my dad, Graham, used to be married to your mom, Annora, until he divorced her.” He got very businesslike. “You and I are at Lara’s birthday party because Annora is her mom and Graham is her dad. First Graham was married to Annora, and they had Lara, then he married my mom, and I was born. Then Annora had you later.” He made another face at me, like he had taken a sip of bitter, nasty coffee. “We’re both half-siblings with Lara, but we’re not related to each other. My dad explained it all to me a few times.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I had stopped listening a while ago, because I was more focused on breaking open pink fortune cookies. They each had a little note with writing inside but I wasn’t a reader yet. I pointed out some letters I knew, the E for Evie, me, the A for Annora, my mom.
The boy grabbed it from me. “You can’t read it? It says, ‘Happy Sweet Sixteen, Lara!’ You’re not very smart and you’re a very dirty little girl.”
So I hit him in the nose. Oops, he was a bleeder. It dripped all over his fancy shirt and his fancy tie. His face turned white when he saw the splattered red drops, his eyeballs rolled back in his head, and he was out like a light. I recognized this state; I’d seen my mom the same way. Uh oh.
I crawled out from under the table and went for help. I may have stopped for some more cake along the way.
Read it NOW
Jamie Bennett, What We Know Is True
