Page 69 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

HAPPILY HONEY AFTER

Bea

Euphoric is my new favorite word.

Simon murmured it as he was waking up midafternoon, and I’ve made him repeat it six times since.

After a leisurely and orgasm-filled shower, and then an early dinner of berries, bacon, and pancakes—my dad’s recipe, adapted with a milk substitute that won’t upset Simon’s stomach—Simon insists on giving me a full tour of his house.

We make it to the first guest bedroom and no further.

Both because I can’t stop laughing at the froggy wallpaper, and because me laughing apparently turns Simon on, and a turned-on Simon is absolutely irresistible.

And talented.

And dedicated to his craft.

And by his craft, clearly, I mean leaving me a satiated puddle of happiness.

But then he notices the time, and the setting sun, and the next thing I know, I’m being ordered to get dressed—Pinky made a run to my apartment and gathered a few things, and when I remembered Daph is gone, I didn’t ask questions about who picked my clothes and underwear.

“Doesn’t being the owner of the drive-in come with some perks?” I ask him as he tries to help me with my pants. “Like maybe we can watch this show another day?”

“No,” he tells me.

Very bossy.

Very un-Simon-like.

So I decide to trust him.

And then I laugh as we pull into the theater and see that tonight’s movie is once again free. “You know you can’t run a business by perpetually giving away the product, right?”

“The very astute lady that Lana insisted I hire to manage my finances for me last year was quite irritated with that, but it seems this town loves to donate more to a cause than they would have paid had I set a ticket price.”

I blink at him, and then I crack up again. “Are you serious?”

“Quite serious. I may have accidentally acquired a low-effort, high profit business.”

“Simon.”

“Yes, yes, the town’s initial excitement at the novelty of having their drive-in cinema open again is giving me false hopes. Thank heavens. Otherwise, I should have done something else my parents might be proud of.”

“Simon .”

He drapes an arm around me and kisses me soundly, and I don’t notice the car inching along with the other cars to find a parking spot.

Not when he’s kissing me in the back seat.

I do notice when we stop though.

Or possibly sometime after.

Because someone starts banging on the window. “Get out here,” Hudson calls. “They’re showing Rocky Horror . Bea! They’re showing Rocky Horror .”

I smooth my hair, then Simon’s. “Did you know that’s his favorite movie ever?”

“I may have sought out that information.”

Hudson and Ryker and Lana and the boys join Simon and me, and we spend the next one and a half hours enjoying Rocky Horror to its fullest. The cars aren’t jammed in as tight tonight, which clearly is so that we have room to dance in the late summer evening.

And after the show, when everyone else is leaving, Simon insists that all of us stay for a private showing of something else.

He breaks blankets and popcorn tins out of the back of the SUV, and once all of us are settled—Simon and me, my brothers, his twins, and Lana—he gives a signal to his security man in the booth, and then something that’s clearly not a professional production flickers to life on the screen.

I squint.

It’s a stage.

Like—like a community theater stage.

A woman strides onto the stage as if she owns it, and my gasp is echoed by Ryker.

“Sweetheart?” a very, very familiar voice echoes around the parking lot.

An achingly familiar voice that I haven’t heard in over ten years.

“Sweetheart, have you seen my bag?”

That’s my mom.

My mom, on the community theater’s stage.

The video is grainy—it was clearly never intended to be shown on a screen this size—but that’s my mom .

And if I’m not mistaken—that’s my mom in the only show of hers I never saw.

“Simon,” I whisper.

He scoots closer to me. “Lana found the recording. My role was simply in providing a venue.”

“Your mom’s last show was my mom’s first show,” Lana tells me. “She got into theater later in life.”

“Of course I never put it away the same place twice. What would the point in that be?” my mom says on screen to her costar, prompting laughs from the audience.

And one laugh in particular—that’s my dad’s laugh.

Ryker and Hudson suck in matching breaths.

They know it too.

“Thank you,” I whisper to Simon.

“As I said, merely provided a venue.”

“Look, boys,” Lana says as someone else joins my mom on stage. “That’s your grandmother in the pink pants.”

Eddie and Charlie crack up.

“ Pink pants ,” Charlie crows.

“Shush and watch the movie,” Hudson says. His voice is thick, and I’m not surprised when a box of tissues appears.

Several boxes, in fact.

“Griff should be here,” Ryker says during an extra-long laugh from the audience that has the show pausing.

“We can show this—or any of her recorded shows—again anytime,” Simon tells him.

Ryker stares at him. “If you hurt Bea, they’ll never find your body.”

“I should hope not. You’ve the land and the tools to dispose of me correctly. It would be a pity to cost Bea both her heart and her brother to prison.”

“Oh my god, Simon.” I tip my head back and laugh.

Ryker cracks a smile. A real one. “I’m pissed that I might actually like you.”

Simon merely beams.

The show continues on the screen, and after it’s over, when Lana’s packed the boys off and taken them home, Hudson calls Griff, whose game is over for the night too, and we sit in the field in front of the screen sharing stories about our parents until long after midnight, with Simon wrapped around me from behind.

Eventually, Ryker grumbles about the chickens waking him too early, and he takes off.

Hudson pauses long enough to give Simon a hug. I hear a thank you , but I don’t make out whatever else my brother whispers to my boyfriend.

And then it’s just Simon and me and the night air and the crickets and the fading moon.

Tank and Pinky have made themselves scarce, though I know they’re somewhere close by.

I loop my arms around Simon’s neck. “Is that projection shack empty?”

He runs his hands down my side. “If it’s not, I’m acquainted with the management, and I do believe they’ve succumbed to my charms.”

“We should go check.”

His smile is brighter than a full moon. “Should we? Whyever should we do that?”

“Because I stole the honey from your kitchen.”

I don’t know which of us pulls the other faster to the little shack, but as soon as the door is closed behind us, all of our clothes go flying.

I pull the honey bear from my bag.

Simon slaps a strip of condoms on the projection table.

And then he’s squeezing the life out of that honey bear while he attempts to drizzle honey onto my chest.

Attempts being the key word.

He squeezes.

And he squeezes.

And my breasts stand there, perky in the half-moon light, waiting to be covered in honey so he can lick it off.

But the honey isn’t coming.

“Why do I have to squeeze so hard?” he murmurs.

I’m giggling so hard I almost can’t answer. “Old honey. Crystallized.”

He screws the lid off, dips his finger into the bear’s head, and smears the grainy substance all over one of my nipples. “This shall do. I’ll purchase fresh honey first thing in the morning.”

I’m still giggling.

At least until he lowers his mouth to my breast, and then I’m not giggling anymore.

I’m gasping.

Because Simon’s mouth is magic.

His tongue knows more tricks than a circus dog.

And his hands are sticky with honey that he’s smearing down my belly too, following it with that mouth and that tongue, until he’s sticking his face between my legs and making me absolutely fall apart against the projection window.

“Mmm, better than honey,” he murmurs against my pussy, which pushes me over the edge into a full-fireworks orgasm that has me gasping his name.

This man.

He’s had me arrested.

He was my partner in revenge.

My biggest burger bus fan.

Sometimes a hot mess.

Always kind.

So kind.

And now he’s staring into my eyes as he pushes his thick, hard cock inside of me while I balance on the table against the window of the projection room of the drive-in theater that he bought for me.

“I love you far more than I ever thought I could love a person,” he whispers.

I grip his hair and hold on while I meet his thrusts. “You are all of the goodness and happiness and perfection that I never thought could possibly exist in this world.”

“Only because you’ve shown me that I can be.”

“ Simon .”

That smile flashes again, and he thrusts into me harder. “Chide me again, love.”

It’s impossible to not smile back at him, even while my body is warning me that I’m on the edge again. “I love you so much.”

“I never knew those words could heal a person’s soul.”

“Only when they’re true.”

“Indeed, my love.”

He kisses me, thrusting deeper and deeper inside me while I rock my hips to meet him, and I shatter into a million rainbows of orgasmic bliss as he comes too, straining into me and staring deep into my eyes and murmuring all of the I love you s.

I blamed him for putting me in jail.

But I think I’d been in my own mental jail cell long before I met him.

And now he’s helped set me free.

He’s my future and my hopes and my dreams and the man that I intend to love every day for the rest of my life, no matter what else I find to do with my life in the meantime.

He deserves that and so much more.