Random Acts of Love (Random #5) Read online

  RANDOM ACTS OF LOVE

  BY JULIA KENT

  Copyright © 2015 by Julia Kent

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

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  RANDOM ACTS OF LOVE

  The last ever-loving thing I ever thought I’d become is a hypocrite.

  A big, fat one.

  Joe doesn’t even want me to meet his parents. Trevor’s fine with it, but only if they keep thinking I’m his girlfriend. And only his girlfriend. He doesn’t want that pesky little thing called truth to get in the way.

  Both of them are my boyfriends. Both.

  So then my mama goes and gets engaged—the woman rediscovered her hoohaw!—and I have to head back home to meet my new stepdaddy and attend her wedding.

  And she wants me to bring my boyfriend with me.

  Um... which one?

  This is where the hypocrisy thing comes in, because I’ve never told her what’s really going on with me and my boyfriends.

  Funny how making that word plural ends with a hiss.

  The easiest thing to do is to tell the truth, right? That’s what I’ve been telling Trevor and Joe for more than a year and a half, and now that the tables are turned on me, what do I do?

  Break up with them and run back home.

  I never dreamed they’d follow me from Boston back to my trailer park in Ohio.

  And claim me for their own.

  * * *

  Random Acts of Love is the fifth book in the series that started with Random Acts of Crazy, the New York Times bestselling book that introduced readers to Darla, Trevor and Joe. When Darla has to face her own demons (and hypocrisy) by going back home, she learns that love means admitting who you really are to everyone—including yourself.

  CHAPTER 1

  Darla

  It’s your day, I texted Joe. Trevor was off at some law school study group geek-o-rama, where the most exciting aspect was finding the perfect balance of Red Bull, crushed ADHD meds, espresso and muscle relaxants to get through the rush to finish exams.

  Sounded soooo not my cup of macchiato with two sugars—my new snotty drink, and boy did I love the fuck out of it. One thing I had to give to living in Boston, Massachusetts: the coffee made my old gas station’s brew taste like semen from a guy who’d eaten nothing but shelf-stable Chef Boyardee pizza kits his entire life.

  How did I know what that tasted like? Don’t ask.

  The day stretched out before me with such breathtaking ennui (new word I learned at Harvard!) that I was sorely tempted to go and try to add some Yerba Mate and Dong Quai to the law school study group’s formula just to have something to do. Sexting with Joe would be my saving grace if he would respond. These days, it was hit or miss. I figured it was a fifty-fifty chance that he’d play electronic sex games with me.

  An image of my friend Amy’s mishap with her phone and a very unfortunate use of a vibrator app flitted through my mind. Flitted might be one of the least appropriate words to describe how the image passed through my brain. More like it paraded through my mind like a 1980s After School Special complete with a bell-bottomed Helen Hunt flinging herself out a window, high on PCP and slumping to the ground.

  You know. A cautionary tale so over the top that all you can do is point and laugh.

  Two-handed games were more my speed, thank you. With the phone as a video chat tool, not something to hump.

  Speaking of humping, my mama had entered a bunch of online sweepstakes and won me a series of new hoodie sweatshirts from some eco-friendly sex toy company in the midwest (“Bump Uglies Without BPA” was the motto, with a logo of something that looked like a cross between Sasquatch and the recycling sign) and nineteen new romance novels featuring women who fall in love with animals. Or, at least, animals in their human form. It wasn’t bestiality but it wasn’t not bestiality. Like pretentious people—they weren’t pretentious, they were discerning. Pffft.

  I had made it through the romance novels about werewolves and bears who turn into humans and back like Transformers, only with enormous penises and a pack mentality that makes Taylor Lautner look like a guinea pig. I had to grudgingly admit that I found them way more captivating than I had any right to, and now had to contemplate that. Being attracted to the raw power of the men in werewolf and bear form I understood, but was I a sexual deviant for finding the shifter parts arousing?

  Hello, I reminded myself. You sleep with two men at the same time. Deviant? Yeah, that ship sailed a long time ago and you’re the ship’s cruise director. And sous chef. And pole dancer.

  The romance novel with the shark shifter and the hedgehog confused me, though. I was almost afraid to read it. How would a hedgehog carry a shark’s baby? And which one was male and which one female? Plus, could two completely different mammals actually breed?

  Hold on. Honey Boo Boo’s mama managed to get someone to make her pregnant.

  Suddenly the were-hedgehog and the were-shark breeding made more sense.

  My day for what?

  Joe’s text knocked me out of my reverie. I clapped with glee, jumping up to double check the lock on my bedroom door. It would do my hormones no good to be barged in on by Amy. Or Sam, for that matter. I’d moved out of my aunt’s apartment and in with Trevor some time ago. That made Joe even more jealous, but hey, I wasn’t the one who moved three hundred miles away. He was.

  And the threat of being walked in on by Josie’s fiancé was gone now.

  Shudder. He’d seen quite enough of my friend’s hoohaw when I’d taken Amy to the hospital for a little low-tech intervention for a very high-tech problem. I love Amy, so don’t get me wrong. She’s Sam’s fiancée now and studying to be a librarian, which is an admirable profession. Plus, you have to be pretty smart to be the keeper of the books, right?

  But common sense dictates that you don’t slide your phone’s power button anywhere near your pink parts down under. She must have a vagina with hidden magnets in it. Who gets their phone caught in their love tunnel?

  There were some places I just did not want to go, and having Alex walk in on me sexting with Joe was about on par with getting a root canal during an earthquake while having my eyelids pinned back and being forced to watch Kim Kardashian give a philosophical presentation at the Harvard Club.

  For your hand on your long, thick cock, I typed back.

  I may have balls, but a cock? GET OUT. Who knew? ::checks self:: Nope. No penis. Maybe Aunt Cathy can win me one.

  What the fuck? Why would Joe—

  This is Josie. Quit sexting me. Code your damn numbers differently. Joe and Josie are too close in your phone, pervert.

  Josie’s text made me cringe. Damn it! Nothing like sending my aunt—and ex-roommate—a directive to start masturbating with her non-existent male sex organs.

  Sorry, I typed back. I forgot you don’t have a penis.

  WTF, Darla? I know I’m not the lead singer and I don’t go to Harvard Law, but that’s pretty fucking low, Joe wrote.

  Fat, fumbling fingers struggled to text with my new glass screen, so this was not my fault. Not! Stupid smart phones. Give me an old dumb phone any day. It might take nine minutes to type a sentence but I never accidentally made a pass at my own aunt and told one of my boyfriends he was a eunuch when I had my trusty little clamshell phone.
r />   Not a good day.

  Not you, I wrote back. Joe definitely had a penis. A nice, bulging one, with a tight, hot, throbbing head that felt so good when it rubbed against my wet, warm—

  Who the fuck do you text about not having a cock? he asked.

  Josie, I wrote simply. Honesty was the best policy when lying made everything seem even stupider than it already was.

  Oh, he replied, as if that made sense. The scary part was that it did make sense.

  What had my life become? At least back home when people were fucked up I could point and laugh, because it was other people. Hell is other people.

  I wasn’t other people.

  Right now, though, I was. And what had started out as a sexy little electronic rub off had deteriorated into some sort of navel-gazing psychobabble that had me all blue and sad, like being told the person working the next shift back at the gas station had been delayed by a giant beer spill on the highway and the Hazmat dudes were overcome by redneck rubberneckers piling out of their rusty Fords F-10s to grab the intact bottles and cans and causing a traffic jam that sprawled across three states.

  In other words: ain’t no hope of getting off when you expected.

  What R U wearing? Joe texted.

  I perked up, nipples and all. A glimmer of hope. Having him hundreds of miles away had meant that me and Trevor were fucking like crazy, a little forlorn, like a dog that lost one leg and had to learn how to recalibrate life. Out of balance, we soldiered on, but it hadn’t become second nature yet to be just the two of us.

  I liked it, though. A lot. Being with Trevor was like making love in the field back in Ohio, the soft moss beneath us, the blue sky a gentle blanket of knowing. Sex together, in a regular bed, in the apartment we now shared with Sam and Amy was more like being used to eating a double-banana split with all the works, but then being told you could only have vanilla ice cream, one banana and the whipped cream. Good, rich, thick vanilla ice cream made with organic, grass-fed cream and bourbon-soaked Madagascar vanilla.

  But still.

  No chocolate sauce and second banana made it all a little less intense.

  Losing a banana was never good.

  I’m wearing a smile, I texted back. This was getting good. Oh, yeah.

  That’s all? he wrote. I want you to touch your {()}

  My what? I texted back, wondering if his keyboard had malfunctioned.

  Your {()}, he texted back. Nope. No error.

  What’s a {()}? I wrote. It took a long time to fiddle with the buttons.

  Your hoohaw, he wrote back. I want you to touch your hoohaw.

  Why aren’t you calling it a vagina? As I hit Send I knew the answer—because that’s what I called it.

  Because it’s a pussy and we can argue about which anatomical term to use or you can start stroking yourself...

  Ack! My fingers slipped under the waistband of my sweatpants. Should I dress better when it came to sexting? Sure. Was I going to? Hell, no. One of the few side benefits of using electronic devices to play dirty sex games with one of your boyfriends was the joy of not shaving, not preparing the landing strip for arrivals, and not worrying about your hair. My crotch looked like a wilted bouquet of deranged, bedraggled old dandelions.

  But this was one step above using a vibrator and a few episodes of Sons of Anarchy to rub one out.

  Joe, though, was so much cuter than Charlie Hunnam. In fact, Joe would have made an outstanding Christian Grey, thank you very much, although the sheriff from Once Upon a Time was pretty fucking hot. Trevor and Joe refused to watch the Fifty Shades movie and Josie just cackled with maniacal laughter and sputtered something about drinking Slushies in hell while having sex with the entire cast of Duck Dynasty before she’d see that movie or read the books.

  Anyhow.

  You’re touching yourself, Joe wrote, then added a pic of himself, cock in hand, the tip wet. I drooled like Pavlov’s dog. Yeah, I’m simple like that. Show me a nice piece of meat and all I want is to put it in my mouth.

  Pictures? He was sending pictures? So unfair, him in Philly and me stuck here in Boston. Damn it. Closing my eyes, I brought forth an image of him, body stretching on in that perfectly-toned skin, olive-kissed and the same sun-touched shade all around, even where he should have tan lines. How he managed that I would never understand but would always admire, his sleek, muscled form equally happy playing frisbee in the sun, playing bass with the band in dank basement bars, or huddled inside over a computer, trading Bitcoin and grumbling about Mount Vox, Coinbase, and using other words that made no sense.

  It was Joe’s perfection that made me lust after him. But it was his imperfections that made me love him.

  Mmmmm, I like that, I texted back, my hand wandering and spreading, ring finger sliding over my clit, then down to catch some wetness and bring it back to lube up my swollen, tender nub, pretending it was him. When we’d started texting Joe had been excited but Trevor had seemed...displeased. The fool wouldn’t open his mouth and say what he was feeling or thinking—in that respect he and Joe were stubbornly similar, while I was like an emotional spigot with a washer worn all to hell.

  You never knew exactly when I was going to squirt.

  Finally, Trevor had blurted out, “Why do you need to do that nasty shit when you could just sleep with me?” Unbeknownst to Trev, my speaker phone had been on and Joe had heard the complaint, his voice barreling out of the tiny little device.

  “Because she likes it and so do I and fuck you.”

  Trevor’s eyes had gone very wide, his fists balled up, and he’d turned around and walked out.

  At that moment, my pussy had dried up like a slice of strawberry in an infomercial food dehydrator. And Mama had called, forcing me to flip over to her other line, only to be informed that I had won an S&M party pack filled with $300 worth of leather sex items, finger cuffs, nipple clamps, candles, and assorted sex manuals to teach the basics of BDSM.

  Which made my entire series of sex organs desiccate on the spot and float off into the wind by my own sputtering exhale of disbelief and horror.

  To be fair, though, the sound of Mama describing all the sex toys had made Trevor come back into the room. And then we’d both forgotten poor Joe, left on call waiting forever after I had pretended to lose the call and get rid of my mother while Trevor showed me exactly what he would do to my body with those nipple clamps...

  That memory got me all fired up, my breath catching in my throat, the cloth of my sweater brushing with an aching sensitivity against my nipples, making me want Joe’s mouth on them, sucking and teasing.

  Post a pic, he insisted, sending his own picture of his hand on his thick rod. The first time he’d sent me a photo of his naked self I’d burst out laughing, the absurdity so over the top, like kissing a chicken. Who needed naked pictures of the person they got to sleep with whenever they wanted? It felt like taking a picture of the donut you were about to eat.

  And then I’d realized that’s exactly what millions of people do every day. Except it’s called Facebook. Only you can’t post a picture of your dick on there (or, at least, you’re not supposed to).

  Suddenly shy, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to send a picture of. My boobs? My fingers on my belly? Hand on my breast? Tweaking a nipple? My tongue? Not the surly dandelion muff, though. No need to give Joe a glimpse of that untamed jungle, and for an image of my hurly-burly curlies to be stored by the NSA in some file that would be used against me thirty years from now when I was respectable and running for the Senate.

  What do U want 2 C? I typed back.

  I got one response:

  {()}

  And then my phone rang, playing Cee Lo’s “Fuck You” ringtone.

  Joe.

  Hey, he picked it.

  “Yes?’ I said in my best breathy, Marilyn Monroe voice. Sounded more like Marilyn Manson, but whatever...

  “I’m right there with you, my mouth moving slowly across your neck, leaving wet kisses exactly where you li
ke them,” said Joe, his voice hushed and horny. Closing my eyes, I imagined him in front of his computer, cock-deep in law school books but thinking only about me me me right now.

  “Yes, you are.” My finger reached back down to find my clit, peeling off the interminable butt floss undies Trevor liked so much and pitching them straight in the trash. If I want my nether regions in a constant state of irritation and for my ass to feel like someone just rubbed a washboard against it for seventeen hours straight, I’ll give Trevor and Joe some E and Red Bull and let them tie me up. Some fool pair of panties wasn’t worth all that suffering for nothing in return.

  “No, no, no,” he chided. “Naughty lady. You don’t get to touch yourself just yet.”

  My hand froze. “Lady? Joe, honey, this is Darla. You sure you called the right number? Maybe you meant to call a 1-900 line?”

  “I called exactly who I wanted, to get exactly what I need.” His answer made my throat—and pussy—swell with joy. Although he had shocked me by moving to Philly and actually doing it—ditching me and Trevor for Penn law school—as the weeks had turned into months and now, finishing his second year, his willingness to use the train, texting, phones, email, and Candy Crush games to forge and maintain a bond had quelled so much of the worry in me.

  Horny little fucker.

  (Me. Not him.)

  Right now, though, worry was vanquished and raw, hard hunger for his cock was all I wanted to focus on. If the fingers I used now to tease my clit out weren’t his, by God they’d be his instrument.

  “Whatcha gonna do to me?” I murmured, already halfway home, needing release as his voice made love to me through the phone. Regretfully, I put it low, on speakerphone, hating to put myself at risk of being caught with my hand in the cookie jar—er, my pants—but the neck cramp that lasted two days from our last phone sex session wasn’t worth it.

  “My mouth is making its way down your neck to your breasts, and as I stroke myself right now, your mouth is on me, giving me just enough lube to make me wet, the strokes—” his breath hitched, all his own undoing coming from him. Dammit! I wanted a train ticket, right now. This would have to do. Joe wouldn’t be back for another week, after finals were done and his fourth of six semesters completed. What the next two brought I couldn’t fathom, because this very minute I didn’t count time in semesters.