by Eden Butler
She paused, tilting her head to look down at me, her slow, sweet smile teasing when I glanced at her. “Nizhóní?” she asked, that smile widening. “Alex called Evie that, but I never knew what it meant.”
“Beautiful.” There was no smile in my tone, no humor that made anything I said seem like a tease. “It means you’re beautiful.”
“Eddie…” She wanted to say more. I saw the emotion catch her off guard, like she spotted something in my expression that told her I meant what I said. But Piper got quiet, seeming to be left wordless.
And I finished what I started, caught up in the feel of her warm body under my mouth and the taste of her skin making me high. My tongue against that pink, peaked flesh had her shaking, had her nails biting into my neck, and I hissed against the sensation, loving how it ached, loving how she seemed to like my teeth teasing her skin. “Harder there.” Piper moved closer, deeper into my mouth and I gripped her free breast, lapping my tongue and thumb over each one, testing the weight, my body aching, heating as I moved against her. “God…that’s so good. Shit…look at you. So beautiful. Always so beautiful.”
The look she gave me then stunned me still. Piper stared at me as though she had never seen anything like me; like the way I leaned over her—my arms caging her head, my long hair draping her naked chest, was something intensely erotic to her, like she’d never be tired of seeing me like this. That look alone was enough to make my heart rattle against my lungs and my cock pinch along my zipper.
“I can’t take this.” I grabbed her thigh, pulling her leg over my hip, taking her mouth in a kiss so hard and deep Piper rose, rubbing to meet me. “I need to be inside you…now.”
“Yes…please…”
We moved fast, tugging and pulling, slipping out of our clothes, sliding awkwardly, but sufficiently until I yanked a condom out of my wallet and onto my cock, angling myself to Piper’s wet, sweet pussy, watching her face as I slipped inside of her in one fluid movement.
“Shit…” I grunted, the sensation of her overwhelming, tight and confining. “God, you fit me…”
“Ed…oh…”
I wasn’t slow. We weren’t gentle. What I gave her, she took greedily, widening her legs, stretching open for me, grabbing my neck, squeezing me from the inside as I moved.
I lifted up, my breath catching when she tightened around me, pumping and working my hips over and over. Sweat collected over my chest, ran down my back and dotted along Piper’s stomach as I moved.
“Yes…like that. Just like that…” she cried, clamping harder, lifting her legs around me, grabbing me everywhere as I continued to move.
So much expression shifted across her features, shock, pleasure, surprise, building urgency. Bending down, pulling her nipple into my mouth, suckling hard, I continued to work my hips, to take her deep and Piper arched a final time.
“There…yes! Oh, God!” she moaned, her pussy milking me as she climaxed, the sensation so intense I gripped her face, my body tightening as I rushed toward the edge, heart pounding as I followed her.
For several minutes we lay there, still locked together, not moving, our breathing slowing, returning to normal, wrapped around each other until I kissed her forehead, twisting to my side to pull her onto my chest.
The breeze returned, filling my sinuses with rosemary and mint, with sweat, with the lavender Piper had planted along the back of the porch.
“If this ends badly, it will wreck me.” She said it with a laugh, but I caught the warning and worry in her tone.
“It won’t.” I rubbed her arm. I never wanted to let her go. Nothing had ever felt so good. “Never gonna happen.”
At the time I meant it. With everything inside me.
And, I thought, she meant it too.
Eddie
Summer
Tasso always said dark spirits knew when we were happy. They could sniff out joy like a coyote on a bleeding jackrabbit. Me and Piper? We bled and pulsed that happiness like a snow-white bunny cut at the throat, so of course the coyotes caught the scent. But we were too hung up on each other to worry about anything else.
“You did. Swear to God, I remember it.”
I actually didn’t remember but liked the way my lady looked when I teased her about shit I promised she’d done as a kid mooning after me when she thought I wasn’t looking.
“Eddie Mescal, you’re a liar.” The words were hard, but she spoke them through a laugh. Her eyes sparkled against the dull diner light as we cut up in the back of Betty’s place, just outside of town but not far enough away from the attention of nosy assholes with their eyes on us.
“Would I lie to you, baby?” I didn’t care that two sheriff’s deputies hunkered down on the other side of the diner, hardly touching their burgers, more curious about how Piper kept laughing and tossing her balled up napkin at my head the more I teased her. “You know I don’t make up stories.”
“You do so! I’d never draw hearts and flowers around your name on a desk no matter what Stevie Woodward said.” She reached across the table, jabbing me with her finger when scrunched up my face, clearly expressing my disbelief. “You’re full of it and so is Stevie.”
“I can see you now, all doe-eyed and moony…”
“You wish.” The laugh caught in her throat when my cell chimed.
I reached inside my pocket, engaging the call when I spotted my grandfather’s name.
“Aoo’?” I said, straining when Tasso’s voice came at me low and broken by static and I shook my head, waving off the frown Piper gave me. “Tasso,” I mouthed. “The connection is bad. I’ll be right back.”
The diner was nearly empty as I moved through it, disregarding cool looks and cat-eyed stares from the deputies, listening to Tasso’s monologue about Evie and getting a new corral built for my kid sister as a gift for her upcoming birthday. But my attention didn’t stick on my grandfather. It was sharp and centered on the tall form leaning against the table twenty feet away, her thick blonde hair in a messy bun, each curl perfectly pinned to look effortless, I was sure. Her smile was easy, friendly, but if I remembered anything about Trina London it was how catty, how cruel she could be with the right rumor given to the wrong person. That seemed to be her agenda as she stood at our table, seeming oblivious to me on the other side of the diner, hidden behind a thin partition that blocked the bathroom doors and a row of old school pay phones from the main dining area. Piper, though, was no lightweight, and she’d never been cowed by bitchy girls looking to start shit.
I didn’t rush back to our table. My woman could manage without me at her side, and Trina, though she liked to play good buddy to Piper, always had, was a cougar easing into a pounce, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
“Carlie Richards went with her folks to the wedding,” Trina said, that velvet rich voice still as thick and forced as it had been three years back when I worked on her daddy’s horse farm, rebuilding a few fences and grooming, tacking, and training the horses. Every day for a month she’d follow me out to the barn when I smelled like shit and sweat, offering me anything I wanted just to piss off her rich daddy.
I’d never been stupid or desperate, but Trina had taken a long time to figure that one out.
“I did see Carlie,” Piper said, her smile relaxed as the other woman took an seat across from her. There was a shift to her gaze, moving above Trina’s head, like Piper wondered what was keeping me. She was too polite to tell the woman she couldn’t sit down. “She seems to be doing well at…”
“Yeah,” Trina said, disregarding the topic of their mutual friend, “but I wanna hear all about you and Ed Mescal. You two are all anybody talks about lately.”
Piper’s mouth twisted, like there was something she wanted to say but kept to herself. “Things are…great…”
“You and Ed.” The head shake was slow, the laugh tight, but Trina touched Piper’s hand, a friendly move to anyone looking. A pat of pity if you knew the woman at all. “I swear, you were always a little goofy o
ver that boy.”
“We’ve known each other a long time. Evie and I were friends, and well, now we’re sisters.”
“Of course, you are.” Trina squeezed Piper’s hand again, but this time my lady’s smile wasn’t as friendly. “I just worry, you know?”
“Well, you shouldn’t.”
“And why not?” Without invitation, Trina moved to Piper’s side, slipping around the table, her arm along the back of the booth. “It’s not any of my business, I know, but sweetie, you haven’t dated as much as I have…”
“Ain’t that the truth…”
Ignoring the jab, Trina clenched her jaw, then relaxed, continuing. “And everyone remembers how Ed just left you on your own the night he wrecked your granny’s office—”
“That was a long time ago,” she defended, curling her arms over her chest.
“Well, sure, but you know, honey, it’s not just that temper and leaving you to walk home in the middle of the night where anything at all could have happened to you, but, you know. His reputation…”
“If you mean the robbery…”
Trina shook her head, shrugging off my petty crime. “Oh, there’s that too, but I meant how he behaved when we were in school… how many girls ended up flat on their backs with Ed? Don’t you remember? And poor Issa Draven? Lord, she was crazy over him and he just strung her along for months and the whole time he was stepping out on her with her best friend.”
My stomach burned, twisted up like I’d been poked with a tire iron. Trina was a gossip, but on this point, she wasn’t wrong. I’d been a bastard to Issa when she’d been kind and good and way out of my league. It had happened after the break in. After I decided to become the asshole the town thought I was.
I had no excuse.
“Ed…was a different person back then,” Piper said, her voice tight, but low. “And you’re right, Trina, none of this is your business.”
On the other side of that wall, my woman was sticking up for me.
It should have made me feel good.
It should have at least made a smile inch over my mouth, but the only thing in my head at that moment was the guilt and shame that Piper had to stick up for me at all.
“Well,” Trina said, her voice moving, the seat squeaking, “I’m just trying to be a friend here. I sure would hate for you to get hurt.”
“I appreciate your concern, Trina, but it’s not necessary.”
“Piper…”
“You enjoy your lunch,” she told the woman, dismissing her.
Ten minutes passed before I pushed away from that partition and made a show of tucking my phone into my pocket. As expected, Piper covered the frown that had likely been on her face since Trina left her table, her attention moving from the window at her side, to me as I moved toward her.
“Tasso wants to build corrals,” I said, hating the way Piper controlled her expression, each reaction exaggerated. She did that when she was schooling what she felt and she was just a little too damn good at it.
“Oh? He wants a new horse?” She pulled her half-full soda toward her, leaning over the straw, eyes up and at my face when I shook my head.
“Nah. He wants to get Evie a new one. For her birthday. I think Alex is in on it.”
When Piper didn’t react, didn’t get the usual sparkle glint in her eyes that always appeared anytime a horse or riding was mentioned, I knew for sure the shit Trina peddled had gotten to her.
“Piper…” I tried, reaching across the table to take her hand.
“Hey,” she said, tossing her hair off her shoulder before she reached for her bag. “Why don’t we head out to Woodward and talk to Stevie? I need to talk to his dad about the lumber for the new courtyard. You can ask about material for Evie’s corrals.”
She was off and away from the table, her arms tight and crossed before I had a couple bills out of my wallet and on the table and as I moved through that diner, with my girl’s back straight, her smile forced and tight, I didn’t miss the stares that followed each step we made.
Eddie
Fall
The Victorian had never looked better. A month from the November opening, right in the middle of the Fall Festival, with Piper’s B&B as its centerpiece, my girl was flustered and tense.
“Did we get the lamps in? They were supposed to be here yesterday, but I haven’t seen—”
“They’re in your office.” Sam held up his hands when Piper started shaking her head. “And so are the light bulbs. Edison’s, like you asked. I told you twice this morning.”
The man looked at his phone, the third time I’d noticed him doing that since Piper led him to the front room as I finished the trim work around the windows, giving them a quick touch up of stain. I’d tried to keep myself and the crew as invisible to Piper in the weeks leading up to the opening as possible. When she was wound up, there was no bringing her down. Well, no bringing her down in a way that could be done in public.
“If you don’t need me, I’m gonna take an early lunch.”
“Lunch?”
Her shriek was uncalled for and on edge, something I guessed Sam must have thought too because the guy winced at the sound and slowly backed away from the front door, looking at Piper like she was a trip wire he tried to avoid stepping on.
“Piper…I told you I had plans with Erin…”
“Again?”
It must have killed the man to shoot me the look he gave me, but I took the small plea in his expression for what it was and got to Piper’s side before her shrieking went so high only dogs could make it out.
“Hey, I’m starving. You think you can take a break and get a bite with me?”
Her expression relaxed, but not by much and she looked away from Sam long enough to nod once, waving the man off when he took her distraction as excuse enough to make a run for it.
Piper walked to the window, pulling back the thin, lace curtain. “Erin Davies,” she muttered, folding her arms. Idling in the drive was a sheriff’s department cruiser driven by one of the youngest deputies and the only woman I’d ever seen Sam Travis take any interest in aside from my girlfriend.
“You don’t like her?” I asked, standing next to her to watch her friend bend down to let Erin out of the car and take the kiss his new woman offered him.
The deputy was pretty enough with mid-length blonde hair and dark eyes, hippy, curves for days, but she was a bit too aggressive for my taste, something that seemed to make Sam nervous when she grabbed his ass and pulled his hips toward her right against the door to her cruiser.
“I don’t know much about her other than the fact that my father paid off the right folks to bury a flag on her record to get her into the academy.”
“Why?” I shot my eyebrows up when Sam grabbed Erin’s neck, deepening the kiss, and brought my gaze to Piper’s face. She scrunched her nose up, making the look on her face remind me of that time a few weeks ago when we’d hit a skunk on the way back from my grandparents’ place and couldn’t get the smell off my tires.
“Some stuff about her ex-boyfriend and her in high school. He roughed her up. She has a temper. Set his car on fire. That goes on record as a domestic charge. If it had stayed on her record, then she would have never gotten into the academy. Some stuff just isn’t overlooked no matter who you are. But my dad, well, he knows the right people.”
And has deep pockets, I thought, but kept that comment to myself.
Piper turned away from the window and I followed her into the office. “So your old man helped her out?” She moved one of the two boxes on her desk containing what I guessed were the lamps she’d gotten so worked up over. “Why’d he do it?”
She pulled out a box cutter and popped the tape free, working to open the seams, looking bored. “Her dad was a client of my father’s about twenty years back. Became one of his investigators.”
“A private investigator?” I asked, finding it weird that such a well-connected lawyer like Mr. Warren would use grunts to do his digging for him. He
didn’t seem the type.
“No, he wasn’t a P.I.” Piper pulled the lamp free, still distracted, but kept talking as though nothing she said mattered. “He was an informant.”
“Wait,” I said, taking the lamp out of her hand, finally getting her attention.
She blinked as though only realizing what she’d said. But the information was out there, and it was juicy gossip. When I stared at her, lifting my eyebrows to let her know I wanted details, Piper dropped her shoulders, looking past me into the lobby before she walked around the desk to close the door. “You’re like an old woman on the corner just hearing about the pastor and his new secretary.”
“Give me a break. I’ve been gone two years and something about the deputy and your friend has you bent out of shape.”
“I’m not…” She huffed out a sigh, not fighting me when I pulled her between my legs as I sat against the desk. Piper let me kiss her forehead, let me rub her arms and the tension tightening her shoulders seemed to relax. “I just know that she was always wild, just like her daddy. He was into drugs and ran around with those bikers out past the Grove, beyond your grandparents’ place.”
“By the Dunes?”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her neck, and a line formed between her eyebrows. “I have no idea why she wanted to be a cop with a father like that. I do know Daddy used him on a few of his cases and his clients got off. Then, around five years ago or so, her father comes back around asking that Daddy help get that flag buried so she could get into the academy. I overheard him telling my mom about it. When Sam told me he and Erin were dating, I thought it was…weird.”
“Because he’s so…”
“Picky?”
“I was gonna say prissy,” I told her, laughing when she rolled her eyes.
“He’s particular and she’s a little rough around the edges.” Piper shook her head and I noticed the worry cornering in her eyes. “I don’t want him to get hurt.”
“Baby, he’s a grown man and he’s not your man…” I pulled her closer, kissing her neck.
