by Jadyn Chase
“He’s going to be fine. The worst is over. What about the rest of them? Is anyone else injured?”
“There are a few broken bones up at the yard. They’ll all be down here in a little while. You might find yourself with more than you bargained for.” He passed his hand over his eyes. “Thank you. Thank you for taking care of Kylen.”
“I only wish I could do more,” I replied. “I’m not a real doctor. Maybe we should think about getting him to a real hospital to get checked out.”
“We’ll see about that.” He eyed me from the side. “You could still become a real doctor, you know. You don’t have to give up your dream just because you decided to stay with us.”
My eyes burst open. “I didn’t think of that. You’re right.”
“We could really use a doctor. We’ve never had one before. Hell, we’ve never had anyone as trained as you before.”
I blushed and lowered my eyes. “I’m just glad I could be of some use to you.”
“You’re more than that.” He eased closer to me and nodded farther down the corridor. “Come over to the cabin with me.”
“Cabin?” I asked. “What cabin?”
He led me away without answering. Farther along the corridor, he opened another door in the dense concrete wall. It revealed a tidy bedroom similar to a captain’s cabin on a ship. A bunk surrounded by shelves covered one wall. A small table and two chairs propped into the corner.
“We’ll stay here until we get the house rebuilt.” He circled his forefinger over his head. “This bunker contains dozens of these rooms. The whole Clan will all stay down here, too. This place will turn into a little city all its own. You’ll see.”
I looked around me in a daze. “What will the others say if we…. you know…start sharing a room? Your parents might not approve.”
His sharp eyes drilled into me for a moment. Then he bowed his head and chuckled. “Listen to you. They already know, girl. Believe me.”
I frowned. “They do?”
“Of course. Do you think they didn’t notice the way I’ve been acting around you this last week? Do you think they didn’t put two and two together when they saw us kissing out there after you killed Sam? You put your arm around me and announced to the whole world you were staying here for me. Believe me. They know.”
My cheeks flushed hot. “When you put it like that, I guess that does make it pretty obvious. I just don’t want to break any rules.”
He put his arms around me and enfolded me in his magnificent essence. “Honey, you break all the rules you want.”
I lifted my head to kiss him, and the blissful delirium of our night together came rushing back. Was it only just last night? It seemed like a lifetime ago since I fell asleep in his arms, in his bedroom that would never exist again.
The house was gone. The Lynches were gone. My old life—all gone. Yet here I was, more alive than I had ever felt before. I had nothing in the world to call my own but these people, this mountain, this man teasing my mouth open and my body to surrender to him.
All those things called me to be something so much greater than I could ever have been before. I thought I had to give up medicine for this wildlife in the middle of nowhere. Now I found I could still do it. Being a doctor for the Clan offered me a chance at more fulfillment than I ever found before.
The Kellys filled that hollow vacuum I sensed at the campground. My career and all my achievements meant nothing to me—until now. Smokey Ridge made it all worthwhile.
Ezra swung the door shut and eased over to the bunk. He pulled me down on top of him, and I succumbed to the intoxicating dream of his kiss, his body breathing under me. He knew about my back. I didn’t have to explain or remind him not to touch it.
My dad, my own father, never knew. He came to see me, he hugged me, he shook hands with all those men. He expressed his gratitude to them for saving my life. Then he drove away out of my life, and he never knew.
He didn’t need to know. I didn’t need to explain my innermost secrets to him or my mom or my friends or anybody else. The people who mattered most already knew. That was enough.
Ezra guided my head from side to side in the swirling pool of his lips and tongue mesmerizing me. My body came back to life at his touch. I undulated on top of him and felt that immaculate hardness inside his jeans. I wanted nothing more than to meet it with my softest parts, to feel him hard and masterful inside me.
He scooted my pajama pants down and pulled my shirt over my head. He kicked off his jeans, and when he peeled off his t-shirt, my breasts and stomach made contact with his iron chest.
He sighed in utter content when he lay back down on the bed. My hair got tangled in his beard, and I reveled in the satiny feeling rapture of his skin on mine. I trailed my fingers through his chest hair. Every male part of him entranced me to a state of mind-blowing intensity.
He slotted one knee between my legs, and I sat down on his tree trunk thigh. My insides melted at the pleasure seeping into me, and I sighed in matchless satisfaction. God, he felt so amazingly, incredibly good I couldn’t comprehend it all. I ground my aching flesh into his leg building up to an explosive climax.
He didn’t try to change position. He let me nudge myself to madness on his leg. I arched my back, and my breasts swung into his face. He acquiesced by taking one of them in his mouth, and his teeth closed on my sensitive nipple.
I shrieked in shock, but he didn’t let go. The exquisite combination of pain and pleasure shot through me, and I rocketed over the precipice on the greatest climax of my life. I bucked against his thigh and screamed myself hoarse, but he refused to release me.
Before I finished tossing on the tempestuous waves of glory cascading through me, he grabbed me and lifted me up. He brought me down on his stiff shaft, and his wicked meat slithered into me.
I didn’t know what to do with myself. One peak after another burst out of me. They overtook each other so fast I never had a chance to come down before the next blasted me into outer space.
My wetness gushed over his hardness. The blistering inferno between my legs clenched around his monstrous length in ever-pulsating waves.
He buried his face in my breasts. I couldn’t hear his roaring over my own screams. I wavered in a heavenly delirium. Would I ever come down from this? Would it just keep going on and on as long as he stayed inside me?
All at once, he pushed me up straight on his lap with him still buried to the hilt in my engorged cleft. The tempest subsided, and I swayed on a steady tide of endless pleasure. I could never come back from this. I could never be the same after this.
I gazed down at his face transformed beyond recognition. Who was this man? His beard, his cheekbones, his forehead, his ears—the softness in him couldn’t disguise the inner strength and the fine quality of who he really was. Not even his glowing green dragon form could hide it.
Not even the name Ezra could explain who he was or how much he meant to me. He was only himself, pure and unadulterated. He filled me with more happiness and more divine rapture than I ever knew existed in the world, much less in a single human heart.
How could he love me? How could a being so fine descend to Earth just for me? Even as those thoughts crossed my mind in the heady hypnotic reverie of making love to him, I realized he saw the same thing looking up at me.
Peaceful astonishment shone out of his eyes. His big hands followed my sinuous movements rocking on his lap. The blood flushed his cheeks and ears and neck, and his pupils dilated when he gazed up at me.
I stroked his chest with both hands and massaged his manhood with my inner muscles. Sweet waves of bliss translated through my body into him to carry him up to the clouds.
Every deep nudge of his shaft into my depths buoyed me on a fluffy pink zephyr of craven rapture. I couldn’t come down. I didn’t want to come down. I wanted to stay there in that fantasy forever. As long as he held my gaze, I could stay there.
He spasmed across his middle, and his hips bucked upward. I p
itched forward and collapsed on top of him. I draped my breasts across his chest, and his heat enveloped me.
The spell shattered. Volcanic lust poured back and forth from me to him and from him to me. He crushed me in his arms and drove his thickness into my most sensitive spots.
I hid my face in his neck and let the shattering blows rocket me into the void once again. One climactic inundation after another swallowed me down into a mindless abyss until nothing more existed but the hot, wet dark.
12
Epilogue
I trotted down the stairs to the kitchen. A dozen women packed the place all talking and shouting at once. Clouds of steam blocked my view. I had no choice but to wade into the mix.
I found my Ma up to her elbows in sink full sudsy water. I yelled in her ear. “Where’s Nora?”
She finished cackling at someone’s joke to lean toward me. “Huh?”
“Where’s Nora?” I bellowed.
“I’m right here. What’s up?”
I turned around to find her right behind me. I leaned near her ear so she could hear me. “I just got a call. The car is stuck in the snow down at the bottom of the driveway. Me and Liam are sending out a rescue party.”
“I told you she doesn’t know how to drive in the snow.”
I kissed her on the forehead. “Stay warm. We’ll be back in a sec.”
Nora caught my Ma listening in. She cracked a grin and snorted. “Yeah. A sec. I’ve heard that before.”
I grabbed my sheepskin coat from the hook behind the front door, and I ran out into the snow. A blanket of white covered Smokey Ridge. The frosty stars lit up the inky sky above the house. Wood smoke curled out of the chimney to fade into the night. The whole scene reminded me of a snow globe.
A truck rolled up to me and stopped long enough for me to slide into the passenger seat. Liam nodded to me from behind the wheel. “Ready?”
I slammed the door. “Ready.”
He inched down the driveway in four-wheel drive. The headlights illuminated a small circle right in front of the truck. Other than that, I couldn’t see a thing in the dense dark.
He swiveled out of the driveway onto the road. Sure enough, a cream-colored sedan stuck its rear end out of the ditch ten yards away. A bumper sticker read, Thrifty Rental Cars.
I bit back a grin, and Liam smacked his lips. “Typical.”
He parked near it on the road, and I hopped out. I bent close to the driver’s window and rapped on it with my knuckle. It powered down and I peered inside at a round-faced older lady. The heater blasted through the window.
She broke into a beaming smile. “Oh, Ezra! You don’t know how happy I am to see you.”
“Come on, Janine. Get in the truck and we’ll drive you up the hill.”
She switched off the motor, but she forgot to roll up the window. I opened the door for her. “You might want to roll up the window first.”
“Oh! Of course.”
I had to struggle not to laugh at her. She always made me laugh. When she finally got out of the car, I saw she was wearing tiny white ballet flats that sank into the snow. “You better get in the truck. Here. Give me your keys and I’ll get your suitcase out of the trunk.”
I held the door open for her and she slipped into the cab next to Liam. She rubbed her hands together while the heater heated the compartment to the temperature of an oven.
I popped the trunk and heaved her enormous suitcase into the truck bed. Then I sandwiched into the cab. Janine hummed and hawed getting squashed between two big Kellys, but that’s the price you pay for getting stuck in the snow on Christmas Eve in the middle of the Appalachians.
Liam put the truck into gear and started the long, arduous climb up Smokey Ridge. He parked in front of the house, and I helped Janine out. I kept hold of her hand climbing the slippery porch steps and opened the door for her.
Nora met us at the threshold. The scent of cinnamon and caramel blew out of the house along with her. Janine flew into her arms. “Honey! I’m so glad to see you. You don’t know what a night it’s been.”
Nora patted her on the back. “Hi, Mom. Come on in and shut the door.”
I started to turn away and discovered Liam right behind me. He set her suitcase on the porch at my side and nodded toward the house. “You go on in. I’ll put the truck away.”
He disappeared into the dark leaving me no choice but to go socialize with my wife and my mother-in-law. Nora led her mother to the living room where ten men sat around shooting the bull about nothing in particular.
Janine sat down on one end of the couch, and Nora lowered herself down next to her. Her distended belly protruded into the air with her inverted navel making a final peak like a cherry on top of a cake.
“Please tell me you haven’t been on your feet all day again,” Janine chided. “I keep telling you to get your rest.”
“I need to move around,” Nora told her. “I can’t just sit in bed all day. I have work to do, not to mention taking care of Brody.”
In answer to her words, a little brown-haired boy came tumbling down the stairs. He hit the floor and bowled several feet to land on his stumpy little legs. He took a look around the living room and made a beeline for Nora.
He raced up to her and took a flying leap to land on top of her, “Mama!”
She groaned from the impact. “Oof! Easy, champ.”
“You get off your mother, Brody,” Janine told him. “Can’t you see you’re hurting her?”
He nuzzled into her neck. He laid his little body against hers and rested his cheek on her breast. “I want Mama.”
“That’s all right.” Nora kissed his curly head. “I love you, too, munchkin.”
My Pop spoke up from the other side of the living room. “Hey, Brody, look what I’ve got.”
He held up a piece of wood he was whittling with a jackknife. The stick formed the shape of a man with a long Pinocchio nose, but the doll’s legs still remained attached to the length of wood in Pop’s hand.
Brody leaped clear and scrambled across the room. He climbed into Pop’s lap and started chattering about the doll. Nora cast a grateful smile at Pop before she turned her attention back to her mother. “How’s Daddy? Any change?”
Janine’s face fell. “I’m afraid not. The oncologist wasn’t very encouraging, either. I sure wish you’d come and see him, darling. He misses you, and it sure would be a help having someone around with some medical training to deal with all those doctors. I don’t understand half the stuff they say.”
“I’ll come see him as soon as I can, but you can see I can’t get away now. There’s an outbreak of Lyme disease down the Ridge, I have Brody to take care of, and I’m due in two weeks. It wouldn’t make sense for me to drive all the way to Memphis now.”
“I know that honey,” Janine replied. “I just wish you didn’t live so far away.”
“It’s not that far away, Mom,” Nora told her. “We see each other all the time, and my whole life is here. I can’t go dragging Brody and the baby and everything across Tennessee all the time. I have responsibilities.”
Janine flapped her hands. “I know! Can’t a mother at least complain about it sometimes, though? It was bad enough when you were in Chattanooga, and now you’re living in this wasteland.”
Nora gave her an indulgent smile, but I noticed more than one person around the room listening in. We went through this every Christmas, but lately, it started getting worse. Ever since Brody was born, and now with another baby on the way, Janine got all helpless and emotional over Nora living in “this wasteland,” as she called it. Nora’s dad getting sick didn’t help at all.
Nora braced one arm against the couch and heaved herself to her feet. “Come on, Mom. I’ll show you to your room.”
She took hold of the suitcase and wheeled it to the stairs, but when she tried to lift it, I jumped to her side and took hold of it. “I’ll take that.”
She kissed me and led her mother upstairs. I lifted the suitcase onto my s
houlder and trundled it to the bedroom assigned to Janine. I set it next to the bed and left them alone without saying a word. Janine was pretty solid as mothers-in-law go. She was always kind to me, but she liked to spend most of her time with Nora and Brody.
I headed back downstairs, and just in time. Ma and Lucy put a big bowl of homemade toffee on the coffee table, and all the guys piled into it at once. Pop put his jackknife down. “Hey, Brody, how about you go get us a few pieces of that?”
Brody fetched two big slabs and retreated to Pop’s lap. They carried on their conversation and everybody munched and sucked their toffee. Liam came in and hung his coat on the hook. He headed for the living room.
At the same time, Brody got up and approached the bowl for round two. He put out his hand for the last piece of toffee just as Liam did the same thing. Their hands came to rest on the slab at the same moment. The two eyed each other over the prize with matching blue eyes sparking fire. Neither let it go.
Brody gave the toffee a pull. “That’s mine.”
“Dream on, squirt,” Liam snapped. “You already had a piece and I haven’t had any.”
A thundercloud gathered in Brody’s face. “Let go. It’s mine.”
Pop put down his stick man. “Let it go, Brody. You had yours.”
I moved to intervene. I took hold of Brody from behind and lifted him off the floor. “Come on, boy. You’ve had enough. That piece is for Liam.”
Seeing me and Pop back him up, Liam yanked the toffee out of Brody’s hand. He drove the knife in hard by biting off a piece and chewing it right in Brody’s face.
Brody kicked and squirmed in my arms. “It’s mine! That’s mine!”
I tightened my grip on the wriggling mass of energy. “Come on, kid. It’s time you went to your room.”
Pop held out his arms. “He’s welcome to come back to me if he wants to play nice. Come over here, Brody. We didn’t finish the man.”
Brody didn’t hear him. He flailed and roared in infantile rage. He took all my strength to restrain him. I spun around to carry him out of the room when, without warning, he exploded in my arms. Before I could stop him, he shifted in mid-air and landed in full dragon mode on the coffee table in plain view of everyone.
