Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Fiona
If Fiona didn’t know any better, she would have thought Dixon had done it on purpose—especially since he was just sitting there with a grin on his face and observing the destruction that he’d wrought.
Everyone was talking at once, leading to Tyson thinking it was all a game and singing the Ice Knights theme song—as much as he could remember, which was half the chorus—over and over and over again.
Fiona and Dixon were the only two sitting in silence now that everyone had been thrown off the tell-us-how-you-met trail, which she knew for certain was code for, Let’s figure out how Fiona found the biggest creep to date this time. Old Fiona would have made the leap that this was Dixon’s way of getting her family to talk about something else. However, she knew better. Dixon had simply forgotten her warning.
Right?
Yes. Totally.
She just needed to ignore that warm, gooey feeling in her belly and stop thinking that he’d given her a conspiratorial wink instead of having an annoyed eye twitch. She knew better. If her instincts were leading her to one conclusion, the only possible response was to go the absolute opposite way. That was it. That was exactly it.
Still, even if he had just behaved like a doofus, leaving him at the mercy of her Ice Knights–obsessed family wasn’t really an option. She was learning to find her inner badass, not her inner asshole.
“Enough,” Fiona said, loud enough to be heard over the outrage filling her parents’ kitchen and to get everyone to take a breath and stop talking over one another. “Dixon has horrible taste in hockey teams; we all can agree on that.”
He straightened in his chair. “Well, actua—”
She shook her head and he stopped mid-word. Smart man.
“Yes, he has horrible taste in hockey.” She continued making eye contact with each of the unruly brood she called her family. “But he’s still a guest.”
“Excellent point, Fiona dear,” Nana said. “I know I raised you better than that, Frank, and I hope you raised your children better.”
“Mom,” Dad said with an exasperated huff. “You were yelling right along with us.”
“I got carried away. My apologies, Dixon.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “Now, how about the kids clean up this wonderful meal—Katie, you really outdid yourself—and I’ll take Fiona and Dixon into the living room and work my hockey magic on him to try to get him on the right path.”
As she and Dixon followed Nana out of the kitchen, there were grumbles about being in their thirties and still being referred to as “kids,” but that was about it. When Nana spoke, people listened. Fallon was a lot like her that way. Fiona? Not even a little. And who could blame them? She’d listened to herself, and Cheating Chad the Assbag was just the latest in a long line of why that was a bad idea.
Nana took the couch and waved Fiona and Dixon into the love seat, which felt much smaller than it had when she’d still lived at home and had spent Saturday afternoons lounging on it while scrolling through her phone. Sitting hip to hip with Dixon, his arm slung across the back so that if she relaxed even a little bit, she’d end up nestled against him, was a completely different experience. It made her skin all tingly and her chest tight with anticipation. Then his fingertips brushed her shoulder. Sure, she was wearing a fuzzy sweater and there was at least half an inch of wool between them, but it felt like nothing. Or a branding iron. Or sex personified. Or OH MY GOD WHY WAS IT SO DAMN HOT ALL OF A SUDDEN?
“Whew, that was something,” Nana said. “You’re either brave or stupid—which is it?”
If Dixon was offended, he didn’t show it. “A little of both.”
“Correct answer, young man.” Nana clapped. “I love someone with some spunk.”
Shut up, brain. Just shut up.
Desperate not to let her brain go down the path of euphemisms and dirty thoughts—oh, who was she kidding, she was already halfway to fantasy island—she locked her attention onto the giant Vera Bradley tote bag Nana always carried. There was a 99-percent chance she had some of her skincare line in there. The woman took it everywhere.
And thank God for that, because it was the entire reason why Fiona had invited Dixon to brunch. Not so she could rest her hand on his hard thigh at the table. Not so she could deeply inhale the scent of his cologne. Not so she could kick herself in the ass for not getting herself off this morning before he came and picked her up so she’d have a clear head.
This was about Nana, not orgasms.
Why had her brain put those two things even sorta close together like that? She was going to pay for that one in some way or another.
“My gracious, Fiona. Look at your hands,” Nana said with a gasp as she looked nowhere near Fiona’s hands but at Dixon instead. “You need my lotion. Did you run out and not tell me? You know I would have made you more. Lucky for you, I always carry a stash.”
Nana poked through her ginormous rainbow tote until she let out a little “aha” and pulled out a bottle of lotion.
“Here, put this on,” she said, handing it to Fiona. “Remember, you have to really massage it in if you want the secret ingredient to work best.”
Fiona did as she was told, still trying to work out how to get Dixon to give the lotion a try. Did she offer him some? Was that too overt? Maybe she just squirted some on his hand without asking first? What if he had some type of allergy? What in the—
“Oh, honey, you always have been the gentlest soul,” Nana said, grabbing Fiona by the wrist and holding Fiona’s arm out to Dixon. “Here you look like you have good, strong hands. Massage that in, would you?”
He took Fiona’s hand and, holding it with both of his and using both of his thumbs, he started working the lotion into her skin. The firm pressure he exerted in the middle of her palm had the tension seeping out of her right there on her parents’ couch. Then he moved his attention over to that spot between her thumb and fingers. Jay-sus. She couldn’t process all of the sensation that somehow managed to make her melt and wind her tight at the same time. He was so close, the touch so intimate that there was no way not to be surrounded by it, by him, by all of it. And when he moved on to circling her fingers and massaging the lotion into the skin between them, then gripping each one and moving from base to tip, she couldn’t hold back the moan of pleasure.
“Well then,” Nana said. “I’m going to go find some extras of that to send home with you.”
Fiona opened her eyes with a snap and a barely stifled “oh fuck.” Her grandma had just seen that. Yes, it was just a hand massage, but it had felt like a lot more.
“You don’t have to keep doing that.” Sure, she wanted him to and just might cry if he stopped, but he didn’t need to know that.
He didn’t stop. He just moved to the other hand. “Bridget doesn’t seem like the kind of person to cross.”
Fiona sighed—because he was right, not for any other reason. Really. Oh God, if he could do that grip-and-twist thing with her fingers again, she would have to bite back the urge to beg him not to stop. “If only she could bottle that. I’d buy it all.”
He let go of her hand, then rubbed his together really fast before taking her hand again and starting his massage all over again. The heat from him seeped into her as he kneaded her palms with firm pressure, taking his time, his gaze never leaving her eyes. By the time he moved on to the spot between her thumb and fingers, she was a human-shaped mountain of goo again.
“You’re a lot tougher than you seem to think,” he said before bringing her hand up to his mouth and kissing the center of her palm. “Your win-loss record is pretty damn good. I’ve been keeping stats.”
Her breath caught. “Not everything is a game.”
One side of his mouth curled up in a grin as he went back to work on her hands, giving the rest of her body ideas about where he could apply that technique next. Her back, her ass, the juncture of her thighs. Shit. She was so screwed because what she really wanted was to be screwed by Dixon Beckett, the man she shouldn’t want and couldn’t catch feelings for. Maybe one more time was all it would take? Then she’d be able to confirm that she was indeed the New Fiona who could have sex without it being anything more, without falling for the wrong man the way Old Fiona had.
This was a good plan.
The perfect plan.
“Do you want to get out of here, go back to my place?” she asked, needing him to say yes more than anything else at that moment.
But he didn’t—instead he scooped her up and carried her out of the house and to the car waiting outside for them. If she wasn’t so busy kissing him, she would have worried what his driver thought. However, kissing Dixon and thinking turned out to be completely incompatible, and she was more than okay with that.
