He nodded, and accepted the bottle of lotion from her. Milo wanted to say something. To tell her the three of them weren’t nice guys. That given half a chance they would use her and move right the fuck on, because that was what they did.
But he didn’t. In the end, Milo told her to lift her feet up onto his lap, and he hated himself for it a tiny bit, but he was under no illusion that Emilia Candless was innocent in all this either. She could make her own decisions. No one was going to force her to do anything she didn’t want to do — or beg them to do.
And at the end of the summer, when they left for school again and if they’d fucked her brains out — and he had no doubt now they were going to — Emilia Candless would be left physically satisfied with her life in absolute ruins. Because that was what they did too.
They used women. They made no apologies. And Milo made none now.
He squeezed out a generous amount of lotion into his hands and warmed it up while Emilia grabbed the remote for the TV and snuggled up onto her side. Her feet rested along his thigh. She was too curled up for him to get a peek up her skirt, but that was all right for now. He was touching her. It was a start.
“I’m very ticklish,” Emilia murmured. She still held the remote, but hadn’t turned the TV on yet. Instead, her eyes were on him as she rested on her side, head on a couch pillow.
“There’s a trick to that,” Milo said. “Most of the time it works.”
She watched as he rubbed not her feet, but the base of her calves and the ankle on one foot. The lotion was warm by that point and she gave no reaction. So much tension to her, but he knew he was tense too. His dream woman was about to open up to him like a flower.
He took his sweet time. Jim worked a double that day and wouldn’t be home until the early hours of the morning, so there was no rush. Milo worked Emilia’s calf and her ankle with both hands, making slow swoops and easy half circles. Slowly her tension eased and he kept the pressure up down to the sides of her foot, twisting it side to side to relax it further.
“Mm, you’re very good at this,” Emilia murmured. “Should have gone pro.”
“Hey, not a bad idea,” Milo said. “So long as you promise to tell all the other hot moms.”
“Lord, there’d be a line a mile long if I didn’t keep you all to myself.”
He snickered. “None of us except Landon are one-woman guys, Mrs. Candless.”
“Says the boy who had a girlfriend this last year.”
Milo grinned. “And why do you think we split up?”
“Milo! No! You?” She twisted and sat up just far enough to smack his shoulder. “I would have never thought.”
She didn’t twist back onto her side this time as she settled down. Her skirt was pulled too far down to see anything, but it was definitely an intriguing move, and at this point in the game, Milo doubted anything that happened was going to be unintentional.
“Says the married woman who has three young guys dreaming night after night about her,” Milo said. His tone was serious, and her smile faltered. She stared up at him, both silent for a while as he began to work her toes.