His Wicked Mouth

by Jessica Mills

  Her booty-shaking dance stopped cold as she spun to face me. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was frozen in a smile. “Morning,” she said in a high tone. “How much of that did you see?” She was clutching a wooden spatula to her chest like it would offer some protection.

  “Well, I am pretty sure when they said, ‘boots with the fur,’ they didn’t quite have monster slippers in mind.”

  She blushed and turned back around to the stove, poking at the eggs that were now frying in the bacon fat. Strips of cooked bacon sat beside it on a plate and paper towels, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten in many hours. I groaned at the sight, and Annabelle turned her eyes to me over her shoulders, and the vision of her looking at me that way and the scoop of her ass poking out underneath the long shirt were enough to make me do it again.

  “Is that for the food or for me?” she asked teasingly.

  “Both,” I said. “I think you look absolutely incredible.”

  “Thank you,” she said, turning back to the food. “Sit down. Breakfast is almost done.”

  I did as I was told and sat at the table but faced so I could watch her. She flitted around the kitchen, grabbing glasses and bringing them over and then filling them with orange juice. I took a big gulp, remembering for the first time in a while how much I liked orange juice, even when it didn’t have vodka in it. Then she went over to the stove and bent over dramatically. She was doing it on purpose.

  “You stay in that position and I cannot be held responsible for my actions,” I muttered.

  “Bad boy,” she said and stood up, grabbing an oven mitt. “Not while I am dealing with bacon grease, please.”

  The oven opened, and the smell of fresh hot biscuits hit my nose like a punch. My mouth began to salivate at the thought of all this delicious food. She glanced over at me as she brought the biscuits to the table and giggled. I wasn’t sure what was the sexiest part of the morning, her in the T-shirt or her in that T-shirt serving me those biscuits.

  Doling out some eggs and bacon to each of us, she sat down across from me at the tiny kitchen table and we ate in relative silence. Aside from the sound of me devouring the food, that was. We fell into an easy conversation as we finished our plates, and then Annabelle got a worried crease across her brow.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Do you think Sawyer will ever come around?” she asked. “Will he ever accept us being together?”

  I wiped the corner of my lips with my napkin and set it down, hoping it would give me enough time to come up with a response. It didn’t, so I went for taking a long sip of the orange juice too. When I was finished with that, I knew I had to say something, even if I was completely guessing.

  “Well, it’s funny with Sawyer,” I said. “You know him. He does have a temper, but it’s usually very quick, and then it’s over. He gets hopping mad and wants to fight. Then he does and then it’s over and he’s right back to being a bit goofy.”

  Annabelle laughed. “I wouldn’t call him goofy. I mean, he’s goofy with me, but with most other people, they see him as charming and dashing.”

  “Especially women,” I said. “That boy knows how to chat up the ladies.”

  “The same was said about you,” Annabelle said, and there was an edge to it. Almost like apprehension.

  “Maybe, but those days are done,” I said, and our eyes met for a long moment. “I’m rather done with that kind of life. It’s not as fun as,” I gestured toward her, “you.”

  Annabelle blushed and then turned her gaze back on me again. “There you go, being charming,” she said.

  “Don’t forget dashing,” I teased. Her laughter broke the tension that had suddenly built, and I poked at the remaining bits of eggs with my fork. “Seriously though, Sawyer doesn’t hold on to things. Anything really. He is fiercely loyal though, and that might actually work in your favor. As much as he might not like us being together, he will eventually get over being mad. Then he’s just left with being loyal to his brother and his best friend.”

  “As long as things stay okay,” she said, her voice trailing off.

  I put my fork down and stood up, going around to her. Putting one finger under her chin, I lifted it from the plate to look at me. “Things will stay okay. Be better than okay. I’m done running around, being the black sheep of my family. I never thought I would be, but then I met you in Vegas, all grown up. There is something about you, Annabelle Dixon. I want to be a better man. For you.”

  I leaned in to kiss her and she pulled me in for a deep one. When our lips parted, I walked back around to my side of the table and sat, pouring more juice into my glass.

  “Besides, it’s not like he has a choice in the matter,” I said. “He doesn’t control you, and he sure as hell doesn’t control me. I don’t ever want to come between you and Sawyer. You’ve been best friends since you were little, and that’s a precious, wonderful thing. Hell, I am jealous of friendship like that. I wouldn’t come between it if I could avoid it. But I think this is worth a shot at seeing if he can get over it, you know?”

  “Yeah,” she said, her face lifting to me again. “I don’t think this will ruin our friendship. It might be strained for a little while, but I think he will get over it. Like you said, it’s my choice who I date, and I chose you. Just like Daddy. He’s just going to have to find a way to deal with it.”

  I nodded and finished my eggs, then stood to do my dishes. Annabelle got up, presumably to move me out of the way, but I held up my hand.

  “Now, now, I had the best view in the house while you made me breakfast,” I said. “Least I can do is give you a moderate view while I do dishes.”

  “Oh, it’s better than a moderate view,” she said, coming up behind me and sliding her hands up my chest.

  “Miss Dixon, you sure are good looking in that T-shirt,” I said. “Be a shame if it suddenly wasn’t on you anymore.”

  “You’d have to catch me first,” she said and took off for the archway. I slammed the water off in the sink and took off after her. She ran around the couch and circled a table, but I cut her off. Annabelle yelped and turned the other way, bounding toward the side of the room. I got my fingers on her for just a second, but she slipped away.

  Turning back around, the giggling Annabelle Dixon was right by the couch, and I sidestepped toward her, grabbing her and lifting her in the air before laying her down on the couch. She playfully fought me, so I wrapped her wrists in my hands and pinned her down. The heat between us was intense as I hovered over her prone form.

  “You know,” I said, eyeing her as she lay below me, “I think I might have a better idea than just ripping this shirt off of you.”

  “Oh really,” she said, her voice purring at me and her eyes giving me all sorts of ideas. “Please tell me what it is you want.”

  Something about the way she asked me what I wanted made a dozen different plans jump to the front of the line, but I tried to concentrate. There was one specific one that had been on my mind since I first saw her from the hallway, dancing in the kitchen in front of the stove. I grinned and tightened my grip on her, leaning in to kiss her neck. When I made it up to her earlobe, I pulled it in with my teeth before whispering right beside it.

  “I think you’d look awful cute in this T-shirt, a pair of cowboy boots, and not a damn thing else,” I said.

  She made a moaning, laughing sound as I kissed down her neck again and then planted one on her lips. Our tongues played with each other for a moment, and then I rose myself up, settling my knee down in the couch and my hips down into hers. My bulging cock was pressing against the zipper of my pants as I could feel the heat from her core against me.

  “That,” she purred again, “could be arranged.”

  A groan came from deep inside my chest and I took a part of her neck into my mouth, biting her gently as my hips ground into her. I let go of her hands and slid my fingertips up the bottom of her shirt, and she sat up. One of her hands was sliding down my stomach and I felt her thumb f
iddle with the zipper. The sound it made unzipping was the only one in the room aside from our increasingly panting breath.

  Chapter 34

  Annabelle

  “Do you really think this is necessary?” Garrett asked as he tried to maneuver my father’s mattress from the top of the steps down.

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation. “It is absolutely necessary. They are two completely different types of mattresses. He’s going to know the difference if we don’t put his actual bed down there.”

  “But everything else is the same,” Garrett said.

  “If somebody had taken your blanket and pillow case from your bed on the ranch and put it on the bed in that Vegas hotel, would it have felt exactly like you were sleeping in your own bedroom at home?” I asked.

  He stared at me for a few seconds like he was trying to come up with some sort of argument but couldn’t. “Fine, you have me there.”

  “Okay, that’s good,” I said, shifting back and forth behind him to try to spot him as if somehow I would be able to change the direction of the mattress if he lost its grip. “But do you think you have that mattress?”

  “When you said we were going to be moving a couple of things around the house, I wasn’t exactly expecting to manage an entire queen-size mattress by myself,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I tried to call Sawyer, but he must be off in the middle of the ranch somewhere doing his dude experience.”

  Garrett laughed. “Dude-ranch experience. A dude experience would be a completely different thing. It would be fine if this stairwell wasn’t so tight. I just can’t figure out how to get myself and the mattress down it together at the same time.”

  I stood to the side so I could look around him at the mattress and the way the walls pressed in close around him for the first half of the stairwell.

  “Okay, I have an idea,” I said. “Back up for a second.”

  “You can’t hang onto this mattress by yourself,” he said.

  I glared at him. “Don’t underestimate me. I’ve been working that farm out there handling the work of a much bigger man and I’ve been doing just fine. But incidentally, I’m not expecting to be able to hang on to the mattress by myself. But I am going to move it.”

  “How are you going to do that?” he asked.

  “Move out of the way and I’ll be able to tell you,” I said.

  He pulled the mattress up a few inches so it came up over the landing again. When he let go so he could step to the side, it slipped down a couple of steps but was wedged in between the walls so it didn’t go any farther. By all rights, we were stuck. Neither one of us would fit on either side of the mattress to go down the steps to catch it at the bottom, but we also couldn’t get it back up because there was too much weight pulling down toward the bottom of the steps.

  Which left me with only one option. I tugged on the waistband of my pants to make sure they were up at my waist. I did a couple of quick stretches. Then I slid forward onto my belly on the mattress. The edges curled around me on either side and I grabbed them in my fists, yanking them just close enough to me to release them from the pressure of the walls.

  Garrett seemed to realize what I was doing. “Annabelle, stop!”

  But it was too late. As soon as the sides of the mattress were no longer up against the walls, it pulled loose and the whole thing, me included, went sailing down the steps. At first, it was fun. Then I realized I hadn’t thought it all the way through. I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen when we reached the bottom.

  Whatever was going to happen, though, was going to happen whether I liked it or not. I closed my eyes and waited. It only took a second to get to the bottom, and fortunately, I hadn’t slid all the way to the very end of the mattress. The edge hit the wall at the bottom of the steps, but my head was safely farther in.

  I waited for a second just to make sure there was nothing injured, then scrambled up to my knees and turned around to look at Garrett. He was shaking his head and laughing.

  “It worked,” I said matter-of-factly.

  That only made him laugh harder. He ended up sitting on the top step, shaking his head in his hands.

  When he composed himself, he walked down the steps and I helped him carry the mattress into what used to be the guest room. I had already moved everything but the furniture out and left it in a pile in the living room. I replaced it with the curtains, lamp, and other decorative items from my father’s bedroom. Bringing the mattress down and adding his bedding were the finishing touches.

  Moving his bedroom downstairs with me meant he wouldn’t have to climb up and down the steps to go to bed. That would make it easier for him and not put so much strain on his heart.

  It was the first thing I showed him a few hours later when Garrett and I brought him home from the hospital. Garrett went in first, carrying the bags of my father’s belongings, including what he had with him when he first went into the hospital as well as the clean clothes and other items I had brought him. Garrett headed straight for the downstairs bedroom so he could get the bags out of the way.

  I stayed behind to help my father make his way into the house and to the bedroom. He was pretty slow moving, but the doctor said that was to be expected. More importantly was how happy my father was to be home.

  “This place looks great,” he said, looking around.

  I chuckled. “You haven’t been gone for months. And I do know how to keep the house clean.”

  “I just meant in general,” he said. “You don’t have to be sassy about it.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. It was nice to have him back to scold me again.

  “All right,” I said. “I won’t be sassy. Come on. I want to show you something.”

  “I’d really like to get to my room and put on some more comfortable clothes,” he said. “The doctor said I have to take it kind of easy and can’t get out in the fields for the next few days, so I might as well keep good company with my lounge pants while I can.”

  I didn’t mention to him that the doctor hadn’t said a few days. Even thinking that was extremely optimistic. It would probably take him far longer to fully recover from his heart attack and be ready to get back out doing his work again. In all honesty, he might never be able to work like he did again.

  “Well, that’s kind of what I want to show you,” I said. “Come on.”

  “Annabelle, my room is upstairs,” he said. “Are you the one who ended up with that delirium thing they were talking about in the hospital?”

  I rolled my eyes and shook my head at him. “No. And that’s a real thing by the way. I know where I’m going. Come on.”

  It was the third time I had told him to come on, and it finally worked. He walked along beside me to what used to be the guest room and was now his room. Garrett was standing inside when I opened the door, and he threw his arms out dramatically as if to encompass the entire room.

  “What’s all this?” Dad asked.

  “It’s your room,” I said. “I figured it would be really hard on you to go up and down the steps while you’re recovering. So Garrett and I moved your bedroom down here. That way you can get to it more easily and don’t put too much strain on your body. We can move you back upstairs when you’re fully recovered, but this will make things easier for you now.”

  I watched him carefully. I was worried I was hurting his pride, but he didn’t bristle the way I expected him to. Instead, he nodded and took a few steps farther into the room.

  “This looks good, too,” he said. “Thank you. Both of you.”

  I was surprised at how gracefully he took the change, but it was nice to not have to fight him on it.

  “There are a few other little modifications around the house that we’re going to make and some things out on the farm that might make life easier for you,” I said. “I think one of your favorites will be the new showerhead in your bathroom down here.”

  He looked at me quizzically. “Do I look like the kind of
man who needs a fancy showerhead?”

  It was hard to determine if he was being serious with the question or not.

  “Considering I know for a fact the last time you were in a hotel you spent an hour in the shower just because you liked the water pressure, I’m going to go with yes,” I said.

  He shrugged. “A guy’s got to take care of himself.”

  Garrett laughed and walked out of the room. I watched him, then turned back to Dad.

  “I’ll leave you alone for a few minutes to get yourself settled in,” I said. “Do you need anything?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the living room in a few minutes.”

  I nodded and left the room, pulling the door closed behind me. Garrett greeted me with a hug when I got into the living room. He kissed me on the top of my head and I sighed, resting my head forward onto his chest.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Garrett said. “He might not be the easiest patient in the world, but he’s going to be okay.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate you being here to help with these things.”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “Anything you need, you just tell me. Are you going to be okay?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I told him.

  He needed to go back to the Montgomery Ranch and help with work there, so he couldn’t stay with me for the rest of the day. He gave me another hug and I walked him to the door before kissing him goodbye. When I got back into the living room, Dad was shuffling his way slowly into the room. We sat down on the couch together and he reached for my hand.

  “Annabelle, I want to talk to you,” he said.

  “What’s on your mind?” I asked.

  “When your mother left us, things were hard,” he said. “Much harder than I tried to let on. I never thought I had what it would take to be a good single parent. I love you so much and wanted everything for you. I knew I had to try as hard as I could to be the best I possibly could for you. But I woke up full of fear every morning worrying about what I would mess up and what damage I would cause.”