Then stay. Let’s see where this can go for the long haul.
“So let me show you,” she whispered in his ear, sending gooseflesh rippling down his spine. “Let me worship your body tonight.”
“If you insist.”
She sank her teeth into the nape of his neck.
Instantly he arched into her and went hard as a fucking fencepost.
“Mmm. This is gonna be some fun.”
Torturous fun.
First she licked and sucked on the back of his neck as her fingers mapped the muscles in his arms, from the balls of his shoulders to the backs of his hands. Not quite a massage, but the pleasure of her touch was far from relaxing as she worked her mouth and the tips of her fingers and the long fall of her silken hair across his sensitized skin.
Then she followed his spine with her tongue, stopping at the top of the crack of his ass and brushing butterfly kisses over the dimples above his butt cheeks.
His entire body quaked.
And the response of the sexy, wicked temptress who was his lover?
She laughed.
Goddamn, he was so crazy about her.
She nuzzled his cheeks and moved to scrape her nails down the backs of his thighs and calves. Then she’d treat his legs to long, tender sweeping caresses that caused the hair on his legs to nearly stand straight up. He’d never had this kind of rapt attention to his body. Now he didn’t know how he’d ever lived without this intimacy, the give-and-take of power in the form of a simple touch.
Bailey avoided touching his feet, but she kissed his ankles.
Holy hell, how had he not known the thin flesh covering his ankle bones was an erogenous zone? He groaned and rolled his hips and basically had an orgasm without actually coming.
Before he’d realized she’d moved, he felt her teeth on his right ass cheek and then a powerful sucking on that spot as she gave him a hickey. And she gifted him with the same mark on his left side.
Pulling his feet closer together, she dragged her hard nipples up the length of his legs, where she’d brought every nerve ending to life, so he felt every breath, every soft sweep of her tongue. Every openmouthed kiss as she took her sweet time literally worshipping his body from his heels to the nape of his neck.
Streeter was a sweating, shaking, needy goddamned mess by the time those skilled lips touched his ear. “Streeter.”
“Uh.”
“Baby. I’m so fucking wet”—she licked his ear and he actually whimpered—“and so hot for you that I hafta rub one out right now.” Another flick of her tongue behind his ear. “Say yes.”
“Fuck yes. Anything you want.”
She emitted a soft purr that vibrated straight down to his balls.
A moment later, she shifted her lower body and he felt the warm, wet press of her pussy to the upper swell of his right ass cheek.
Christ. She hadn’t been kidding about being wet.
He turned his head and saw Bailey bracing herself on her arms, one strong leg stretched out over his lower back, her right knee next to his hip, which allowed her to rock her pelvis and grind on him.
Their eyes met.
Reaching back, he pushed her silken hair over her shoulder. “I want to watch.”
She nodded and began to move again.
Chin up. Eyes closed. Back arched. Skin damp. Breathing hard. Rolling her hips and expelling a soft moan every time her clit got direct friction. She was a fucking goddess. Beautiful. Free. Kinky. Sweet. Determined. Vulnerable. Sexy.
And mine. Completely fucking mine and no other man will ever see her like this.
Her eyes flew open, almost as if she’d heard him.
Streeter let her see his possessiveness.
She rode him faster and in that moment Streeter knew exactly what she needed.
He tightened his ass cheeks. “There you go. Work it. I feel it. Take it, baby, it’s right there.”
“Yes, yes.” Bailey gasped and threw her head back.
He felt the contractions of her orgasm against his skin. Each hard pulse. And it was a good thing he’d clenched his butt cheeks or he would’ve been coming right along with her.
Streeter couldn’t take his eyes off her.
When she came back from that subspace where nothing existed but pleasure, a place she’d taken him to many times, their gazes met again.
“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Her lips formed a smile. “Yeah?”
“Oh yeah.”
“And just think . . . we’re only getting started.” She backed up on her hands and knees. Keeping their eyes locked, she lowered herself down and licked the smear of her juices from his skin.
Correction. That might’ve been the hottest thing he’d ever seen.
Next thing he knew, Bailey had flipped him on his back and she was sharing her taste with him in a seductive soul kiss that sucked breath and reason right out of his body.
“Mmm. Back side down, front side to go.” She glided her lips across his. “You ready?”
Fuck no. “Uh. Yeah.”
The delicious torture began again.
But on the front side, she left more love bites on him, marking his pecs, his ribs, his hips and the middle of his quads. He had no idea why he loved seeing her purplish red marks on his skin.
Maybe because you groan loudly every single time she sets that sucking mouth in motion.
Bailey touched him everywhere—except his cock.
When she tongued the crease of his thigh, letting her hair drift over his groin, he said, “Stop. I can’t take any more unless you want me to come in your hair.”
Again, that devilish twinkle in her eyes appeared. “Another time, perhaps.”
She grabbed the lube from his bedside drawer and squirted a thick line of it from his cockhead to his balls.
He sucked in a breath at the jarring sensation of cold against hot.
After planting her right hand by his head, she curled the fingers of her left hand around his cock in a tight fist. “I’m gonna jack you slowly. So slowly you might think I’ll never let you come. But when you get off is up to you.”
“What’s the catch, hot stuff?”
“I want to look in your eyes as you come. I want to see what you feel when you let go.”
“Can I touch you?”
She shook her head. “But you can kiss me up until the very end.”
“Bring it on,” he said huskily and took her mouth in a ravenous kiss.
Bailey stayed true to her word. She moved her hand with deliberate sensuality. Twice she let her longest finger slip down between his balls and press against his asshole. Then the little minx smiled against his lips. “You like ass play. One of these days I’m gonna stroke you there as I blow you.”
He nipped her bottom lip. Hard. “You play with my ass, baby, you know I’m gonna want to be in yours.”
“Might be something we’ll have to work up to, given the size of this bad boy.”
Streeter let her build him to the tipping point and then back off. But by the third time his control had started to crack. “Bailey. I need—”
Those pretty hazel eyes were locked onto his. “Don’t look away.”
She jacked him with speed and force that left him gasping.
In the eternity between when his balls drew up and he started to come, a universe of trust opened up between them.
And he’d never come so hard in his life.
Even as he fought for breath, she stroked him, gently bringing him back down.
Sated, cock spent, emotionally and physically drained, he slumped back in the pillows.
But Bailey only retreated far enough to lap up the spots of come that had cooled on his skin before she kissed him.
He loved that she wanted them to know each other’s
taste in every way imaginable.
She rested her forehead to his. “Thank you.”
“I oughta be thankin’ you.” He twined his fingers in her hair that’d created a curtain around their faces. “Tonight was amazing. You’re amazing.”
“Back atcha.” She pushed back and stood. “I’ve gotta go.”
“I wish you could stay.”
But she had her clothes on and was already at the door. “Later days, cutie.”
Chapter Fifteen
Two days later Streeter’s cell phone rang at four a.m.
Never a good sign.
He fumbled for it on the nightstand, mumbling, “Hello?”
Bailey sat up next to him, wondering who he was talking to.
“How’d they find out?” Pause. “Very good thing.” Pause. “Yeah, I’ll be there in twenty.”
He hung up.
“What’s going on?”
“Our cattle got out. Tobin’s neighbor’s kid nearly hit a calf on his way home from the bar. So I gotta go help him round them up.” He flipped back the covers and turned to drop his feet on the floor. “Sorry. I hafta wake Olivia but you’re welcome to stay.”
“If I’m staying, you might as well let her sleep.”
He gave her an odd look. “You don’t mind?”
“Do you trust me with her?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then go.”
“I have no idea how long this will take. What time do you work?”
“Not until eight.” She yawned. “Don’t you have a babysitter coming?”
“She won’t be here until after eight thirty today.”
She shrugged. “I can stay with her until then and open the store late. No biggie.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.” She pulled the covers back over herself and stretched out in the middle of his king-sized bed. “Go. So I can go back to sleep.”
She vaguely remembered him kissing her forehead before she drifted off again.
Shrieking woke her.
And for a moment she thought it might’ve come from her.
Then she heard it again.
Shit. Olivia.
Her heart raced nearly as fast as her feet.
She burst into Olivia’s bedroom and found her sitting straight up in bed. Her eyes were unfocused—or scarier yet, focused completely on something in the corner of the room. The darkest corner.
Bailey was almost afraid to look in case it was a terrifying presence. But when she peered over the edge of the dresser, nothing was there.
And still Olivia shrieked.
These night terrors were something Streeter had mentioned but she had no idea how to deal with it.
Yes, you do. It’s an extreme version of a panic attack.
As she debated on whether she was supposed to try to wake her up or if that would make it worse, Olivia’s entire body trembled like she’d gone into convulsions.
Bailey grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Olivia. Wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”
Olivia stopped shaking.
Had she heard her?
“Olivia. Honey. It’s okay. Come on, girlie. Wake up.”
Then those eyes, so eerily like her father’s and yet . . . not, swung toward Bailey. “Where’s my daddy?”
“At the ranch with Uncle Tobin.”
“I want my daddy.”
“I know you do, sweetheart, but he’s not here.”
“I want my daddy now.”
“He’ll be back real soon.”
She started to cry. “But he is comin’ back?”
Oh, sweet girl. “Yes, honey, he is. I promise.”
She whispered, “Okay,” in such a broken voice that all Bailey wanted was to gather this broken child in her arms, hold her and chase her demons away.
But when Bailey reached for her, Olivia shrank back. Then she curled into a ball between the headboard and the wall.
Trying to hide.
Still crying.
Still breaking Bailey’s goddamned heart.
Bailey couldn’t leave her like this. She crawled on the bed next to her, making sure not to touch her as she pressed her back against the headboard.
A few moments passed before Bailey said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“NO!”
Okay, then.
But she understood. She hated when people pushed her to talk. So she stayed quiet in the hellish silence of a child’s tears.
Olivia’s cries quieted. Her snuffles tapered off.
A whispered “I don’t remember” floated to her, the tone more bewildered than frightened.
That was progress.
Still, Bailey didn’t jump right in with questions.
“He always asks about what scared me in my sleep, and I don’t remember.”
“Who asks?”
“My daddy.”
“He asks because he worries about you.”
A few beats passed. “Sometimes he cries too.”
I imagine he cries more often than you know.
This poor, damaged family.
“It makes him sad.”
“What makes him sad?”
“That I wake up scared. And I can’t remember why I was scared. I just am.”
“My sister Liberty had bad nights.”
Olivia was quiet so long, Bailey thought she’d gone too far. But Olivia finally said, “When she was a little girl?”
“No, honey. Since she’s been a big girl.”
“Oh.”
“And she never wants to talk about them either. So it’s okay that you don’t.”
The bed jiggled as Olivia left her safe little corner.
Bailey held her breath as Olivia curled up next to her. Not touching her, but closer than she had been.
“I wanna know when my daddy comes home.”
“I’ll wake you up. I promise.”
Olivia didn’t ask her to stay, but she didn’t tell her to go.
So Bailey stayed.
Despite her concern she wouldn’t fall back asleep, apparently she did. She woke to a little finger jabbing her in the side.
“Okay. I’m awake.”
Olivia blinked her big blue eyes at her.
“What?”
“Can I please have my drums back today?”
Such a cheeky little thing. “No, but I’ll tell you what. How about if we go to my house and you can play your drums while I’m making us breakfast?”
Olivia hopped to her feet and started jumping on the bed. “Yay!”
That was where Streeter found them an hour later, Bailey sitting at the table, working on her laptop while Olivia entertained her with a postbreakfast drum concert.
“Daddy! Look what Bailey showed me.” Olivia took two metal pan lids and slammed them together over and over. “See? They’re cymbals. Isn’t that so cool?”
“And loud.” Streeter looked at Bailey. “Very loud.”
“It could be worse. I could’ve given her metal trash can lids.” She smiled at him over the rim of her coffee cup. “You’re welcome.”
* * *
Bailey didn’t get a chance to talk to Streeter about the night terrors until later that evening.
After Olivia had gone to bed, they’d snuggled into the couch to watch Modern Family and Bailey said, “Does Olivia have nightmares often?”
“She hasn’t had night terrors for a few weeks. I hoped she’d finally outgrown them.”
“Does her counselor say that’s a possibility?”
“Yeah.”
“Are they related to her mother’s suicide?”
Streeter shifted away from her and reached for his glass of ice water. “We’re not sure. Olivia never
remembers specifics. I guess that’s not unusual. The clinic has talked about hypnotizing her when she’s older, when she has more life skills to verbalize what she’s seein’, but that’s no guarantee either. It’s something I’ll have to play by ear when the time comes.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “Thank you for stayin’ with her and not panicking.”
“Oh, I panicked plenty. Especially at first when it was dark and I worried there might actually be someone—or something—in her room.”
He groaned. “It’s scary as fuck, isn’t it? Seein’ her terrified eyes as she’s starin’ at nothin’. The first time I let her stay alone overnight at her Gramma Deenie’s, she had an ‘episode.’” Streeter made air quotes. “That’s what Deenie calls them. Anyway, Deenie called me, freaked-out, and I had to go get Olivia in the middle of the night. That part didn’t bother me. But when Deenie said Olivia was seein’ the ghost of her mother, I lost my shit. Why would she say that to a three-year-old?”
Her mouth fell open. “No. She did not.”
“Yes, she did. Tellin’ Olivia that her mommy was always watchin’ over her like a ghost in a corner. I ended the sleepovers as soon as I heard that. And after Deenie told me she’d been going to a medium to try to communicate with Danica’s spirit.”
Bailey couldn’t keep the horror from her face.
“I don’t believe in that stuff. And during that time, I was still really bitter about everything. I told Deenie if I would’ve come in contact with Danica’s spirit, I’d tell her to fuck off and stay away. She wasn’t there for us when she was alive; she sure didn’t get to hang around after she was dead.” He looked away. “You can imagine how well that went over.”
“Streeter. I’m sorry.”
“Deenie’s not the same. None of us are. But she . . . can’t move on. She’s lookin’ for answers she’ll never find. It’s exhausting bein’ around her, and that’s why Steve left her. I don’t know if the quest gives her a purpose or what. Steve said that Deenie won’t ever accept the fact Danica chose to end her own life. For a few really ugly months, she insinuated I’d killed her. Even if I hadn’t pulled the trigger, I’d somehow neglected her, or belittled her or mentally abused her to the point she didn’t care to live like that any longer. And the brutal way she’d done it was to punish me. That scenario would’ve been better, in Deenie’s mind anyway, than the reality that she didn’t know her daughter at all.”
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