by Jessie Cooke
39
Doc still got warm inside just thinking about that day…thinking about being so close to her.
“Dallas! Open the door.”
“Go away, Doc. I don’t want to see anyone right now.”
“Open the door, you’re scaring me.”
She growled. He smiled. There was still some of that spirit left in her. Seconds later she ripped open the door with her eyes narrowed at him. Her face was red and her eyes were puffy. Her hair was a mess and she had on a pair of sweat pants and an old t-shirt. She was a hot mess, but Doc’s body still responded the second he saw her. “See, I’m fine.”
Doc had laughed and said, “You look like hell.” That set her off. She started swinging at him, at his chest. She packed a hell of a punch for having tiny little fists, but Doc didn’t try to stop her. Instead, he stepped inside the door and closed it behind him, letting her wail away until she wore herself out and collapsed in the floor in tears. Doc sat down next to her and said, “You feel better?”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
She punched him again, in the arm. “Don’t tell me how I feel.”
“Okay. You hate me. You feel better?”
“Stop asking me that!” She hit him in his other arm. He chuckled, and she growled at him again. “I’m glad my misery is so funny to you!”
“Aw, baby, it’s not,” he said softly.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t be nice. You’re not nice. I get by, telling myself what an asshole you are. That’s how I survived all that time…that, and because I had Dax. Now, he hates me!”
“Oh no, baby, he doesn’t hate you.”
“He does! He hates me.”
Doc wanted to take her in his arms and let her cry it out, but he was half afraid that she’d go for the face if he got too close. He sat and watched her shoulders shake for several minutes before he couldn’t stand it any longer. If she clawed at his face, so be it. He slipped an arm across her shoulders and at first, she stiffened up. It had been so long since he touched her…almost five years. She still smelled the same. He loved the way her hair smelled, and he was tempted to bury his face in it, but that might get him one of those little fists in the crotch. He just held her and let her be the one to relax into him, or pull away. She was shaking and every so often she’d let out a little sob. Her muscles began to relax under his arm and after a few minutes, she’d almost melted into him. He knew it was probably less about his touching her and more about her exhaustion, but it still felt good. He stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned into the door behind him and held her, rocking her softly back and forth and lightly brushing her hair with his lips. He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but ultimately, she pulled her head up and looked at his face. Their lips were so close and he wanted to kiss her so badly, but he waited to see what she would do first. She looked at his lips and then back up at his eyes and she said:
“I tried to love Chris the way I loved you.” Doc swallowed hard, but he stayed silent. There was a fire burning in his gut and he was concentrating on putting it out. It was hard, though, with her so close. And now, she was talking about loving him. “I tried so hard.” She sat up and pulled away instead of kissing him. He was disappointed, but he let go of her. She stood up and started pacing. Doc stayed where he was and waited. “I mean, I do love him, you know? He’s a good man. He treats me so good. He wanted Dax to like him, he really tried.” Doc had gotten a different story from Dax, but he knew that he and his son were both prejudiced against Chris for their own reasons, so again, he kept his mouth shut. She stopped pacing and looked down at him. “I just can’t love him the way I loved you. And you want to know the worst part?”
“Tell me.”
“He knows. He knows how I feel about you. He even told me…” She started to turn away and Doc reached up and grabbed her hand.
“He told you what, baby?”
“He told me I should go back to you because he knows I’m not happy.”
Doc pulled on her arm and she sat back down next to him and drew her knees up to her chest. “But you and I would never work again. We never worked the first time.”
Doc smiled. “It wasn’t all bad, though, right?”
“No. It wasn’t all bad. And look at the beautiful life we created together…” She got tears in her eyes again. “The life that hates me.”
“Oh, baby, really, Dax does not hate you. He’s a teenager. His hormones are going crazy. Plus, he’s got this incredibly busy mind. He blows me away sometimes with the ideas he comes up with at the club. I mean, he’s just a kid…but he thinks like a man. I think sometimes he’s so at war between his thoughts and his emotions that he doesn’t know how to express himself. And I’m telling you this as an authority on the subject. Not on our son…but on what it feels like to be a teenager with teenage hormones and emotions and a brain that never shuts off. I loved my mother, Dal. I worshiped her. To this day I can’t think of a bad thing to say about her…but I left. I let her cry over me every night for years. I hate myself for that now, but at the time I found ways to rationalize it. He loves you. He’ll come around.”
“Doc,” she said, in a deep whisper.
“What, baby?”
She leaned forward and pressed her forehead into his. “Oh, Doc…every time I think you’re a lost cause, you change the game on me.”
He chuckled. “So, is that good or bad?”
She brought her hands up and put them on either side of his face. “It’s…so…bad…” A flash of heat that threatened to reduce Doc to ashes suddenly covered his body as her lips covered his. She kissed him with an intensity that he hadn’t been kissed with since…the last time he kissed her. She was suddenly sitting up on his lap with her knees on either side of his thighs and her hands still on his face, like she was afraid that he’d get away. She licked in and out of his mouth, every so often catching his lips in her teeth. Her hands ran down the sides of his face to his shoulders and she reached back with one hand and tangled his long hair around her fingers. She pulled at it as she deepened the kiss and Doc reached up for a handful of hers as well.
She came up for a ragged breath every so often and then she’d move back in for another kiss. She’d started grinding down against him and his cock was already rock hard. He wanted to rip off her clothes and fuck her right there, but he was still afraid that she was going to change her mind and suddenly send him away. He felt torn between his desire and wondering if they did this, if she would feel so guilty about it that it would only add to her problems. Dallas wasn’t like him. She wasn’t a cheater. Yet here she was in his lap…and God help him he was going to fuck her…unless she was the one to stop.
She broke the kiss for another breath and then she went for his neck. While she kissed his neck, her hands were busy pulling up his t-shirt. She got it up underneath his arms and then she lowered her mouth to his chest while he pulled it off over his head. He had to suck in a hard breath when her mouth made it to his stomach. The tip of his cock was already peeking out the top of his jeans and all of a sudden her warm, wet tongue licked across it.
“Oh, Dallas…fuck…” Her hands were clawing at his belt then. She was like a wildcat in heat. He took her wrists in his hands to get her to stop for a second and take a breath, but she pulled away and used her hands to pull off her own shirt. Doc groaned when he saw her in a lacy bra with her hard nipples pressing into it. The swell of her breasts looked so inviting. He dipped his head and licked across the top of them and down into her cleavage. Then he licked deeper, letting his tongue go underneath the lace and coming into contact with her nipples. Each time he touched one, she’d shudder and moan. He loved that she was still responsive to him. He kept kissing while reaching around behind her and unhooking the bra, at last letting those gorgeous breasts spill out into his face.
He opened his mouth wide and sucked one of them in. Dallas held his head to her breast and
continued rocking down against his hard cock. Her hands were still pulling at his hair. He felt like he was losing his mind. “Fuck, baby, take off those pants,” he said. Dallas popped up to her feet and started shedding the rest of her clothes. Doc took off his boots and then stood up and got rid of the pants and boxers. Dallas was on her knees in front of him as soon as his cock was out and when she touched it with her tongue again, a sliver of electricity went from that exact spot all the way up and down his spine. She wrapped her hand around his shaft and started stroking it into her open mouth. Doc was torn between how good she looked and wanting to close his eyes and just savor the feelings. She was so fucking good. All of a sudden, she opened her mouth wide, tipped back her head, and took his entire length into her mouth. “Oh, fuck!” She smiled around his cock and then let her lips slide back up the shaft to his head, and then she swallowed him whole again. “Oh, fuck, baby. I need to be inside of you.” He pulled her up to her feet and spun her around so that her back was against the door. He held her up with one hand and took his cock into the other. He slid it up and down along her wet slit a few times before finally pressing into her entrance. She arched her back and whispered:
“Yes, Doc…Oh, yes.” She put her hands on his shoulders as he slid into her. She was soaked, and he was like a steel rod, and the feeling of being inside her after all these years was explosive. He felt her fingernails clawing at his shoulders as he slid one of his arms underneath her butt to hold her up. He used his body to keep her pressed into the door and while he pumped his hard cock in and out of her gloriously tight pussy, he covered her mouth with his again, and he kissed her, hard. Dallas once again sucked and bit at his lips and she bounced up and down on his cock. Doc moved his mouth down to take one of her nipples into his mouth, and he bit down on it. She cried out in ecstasy and he moved over and bit down on the other one. “Mm, yes, Doc. Bed, please.”
Still attached, he carried her over to the bed. His only regret was that he had to let her go long enough to lay her down. As soon as she was on her back, she rolled over and pulled her knees up underneath her. She wanted him to fuck her from behind…and he was happy to oblige. He pushed his cock back into her and held onto her hips while he fucked her. She was making sexy noises and moaning out his name and he could feel his orgasm building fast. He reached up and grabbed her hair and he held onto it while he kept drilling into her. In raspy whispers she said, “Faster, Doc. Harder.” Doc gave her whatever she wanted and then he reached around in front and found her clit with his fingers. She cried out when he pinched it between them and then he held it and rolled it and pressed down on it…and then she suddenly opened her mouth and bit down on the pillow in front of her. He could hear her muffled screams as she pushed her butt back into him and had an orgasm that he almost felt to his toes. She kept rocking against him, in a rhythm that made him want to have an orgasm of his own. He used one arm to press her head down into the pillow, and the one that was rubbing her clit came up and found her breasts. He put his palm up between her nipples and the bed and then he pounded her so hard that the people down the hallway could probably hear the slapping together of their skin. It was only seconds later that he couldn’t control it any longer and his orgasm slammed into him, rocking him to his very core.
They lay tangled together for a while afterwards, but then the inevitable happened. It dawned on Dallas what she’d just done, and Doc could see the horror in her eyes as she realized it. “I won’t tell, baby. It’s going to be okay.”
And he didn’t tell…even when it looked like he was about to go to prison. In the end it was Dallas who told, and it was only to save him. Dallas confessed what she had done to her husband right away, and they were in the midst of working things out when she found out about Doc’s arrest. She went to the police and told them that Doc was with her that day, where they were and what they were doing. Doc’s attorney was able to get security footage from the hotel that showed Doc in the elevator, footage with a time stamp. Dallas told him later that Chris encouraged her to tell the truth to the police. Today, at her funeral, would be the first time that Doc had to look the man in his eyes. He owed him both an apology and a thank you. Doc doubted, however, that today of all days either one would mean anything to him.
40
Doc’s sweet memories of Dallas faded and his mind turned back to Hawk. He didn’t want to think about that, but he knew that he had to. There were rumors on the ranch and on the streets that Hawk was the one that had set up the buy, and he was also the one that arranged the hit on the VP. Doc had dismissed it all as ridiculous at first…but then after the police let Hawk go, he just seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Doc was more worried that something had happened to him than he was that Hawk had betrayed him. He was sure…almost completely sure…that couldn’t be the case. So, he had sent men out looking for Hawk and, in the meantime, he had been calling everyone he knew that might know where his VP was, or at least know someone who did. He was in the midst of making phone calls when he got the news about Dallas. He stood staring at the wall almost in a trance until his legs threatened to collapse underneath him. Dallas was dead…and he had to tell Dax.
“Hey, there you are.” He found his son out in the old barn on the ranch. Dax had been spending his free time out there lately, working on a bike for some crazy little teenager that had stolen his. Dallas always said he was his father’s son because Dax looked so much like Doc and thought so much like him. But things like what he was doing for the little ragamuffin with the thick southern accent and the hair-trigger temper…those were the things he got from Dallas. He had more compassion and heart in his little finger than Doc had in his entire body…and Doc knew that was going to take him far. But it was also going to make it even harder for him to get past what Doc had to tell him.
“Hey, old man, what’s up?” Doc had been holding back his tears, but it was when he looked at his son’s face that the reality of what happened set in. He started to shake all over, and he must have gone pale because Dax put down the tool he was holding and came over to him. “Dad, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”
Doc lost his battle with the tears, only he didn’t just cry…he sobbed, uncontrollably. He had gone out looking for Dax with the intentions of being strong for him. Now Dax was the one with his strong arms around his father trying to figure out what was going on. He let Doc cry it out, though, and he didn’t say a word. When Doc could finally speak he said, “Fuck…I’m so sorry.”
Dax led him over to a stool in the corner and said, “Dad, sit down. What happened?”
“Dax, it’s your mother.”
It was his son’s turn to go pale. Doc felt like shit. He was a horrible father. “Mom? What’s wrong with Mom?” Doc stood up and said:
“Sit down, son.”
“No. Dad, tell me what happened to Mom.”
“She’s gone, son. She was killed today in a car accident. I just talked to Chris.”
Dax’s blue eyes were wide and his face was as white as a ghost. He had his hands in fists at his side and he looked like he was having trouble taking a deep breath. Dax and Dallas had finally met up for dinner and they’d gone on a ferry ride to Salem together the week that she came to talk to the DA about Doc. Just when Dax was finally getting to an age where he could see outside of himself…Doc almost lost it again. He told himself he had to be strong for his boy. “You’re sure?” Dax said. “Chris was sure?”
Doc had asked the same thing, more than once. “Yeah, son, he was sure. He…” Doc wasn’t sure how to say “identified the body” about Dallas, so he said, “He saw her.”
“Oh, fuck!” Dax grabbed his stomach and doubled over. Doc put his hand on his son’s back. He wished he knew what to do to make it easier, but he felt like his own insides were being ripped apart. Dax straightened up slightly and sat down on the stool. Still holding his stomach, he rocked back and forth slightly and his blue eyes swam with tears. He finally looked at Doc and said, “I was…fuck, Dad, I
was such an ass to her.”
Doc put a hand on his son’s shoulder. He thought about the last private conversation he’d had with Dallas. “She loved you so much. You were the light of her life, son. She knew that you were just going through some things…”
“My whole life. I was an ass to her my whole life.”
“No, Dax. Don’t do that. I’m fucking pissed off, and sick, and sad as fuck that she’s gone. But I’m going to hold on to the last time I saw her. We reconnected…and I know that was kind of a mess afterwards, but maybe God gave me that day, so when she was gone I’d have that memory. Maybe he gave you the day you two went out to Salem as yours.”
A lonesome tear rolled down Dax’s face and he said, “We should have had so many more.”
Doc put his arms around his son and Dax hugged him back. For the first, and probably the last time in their lives, they cried on each other’s shoulders.
Both of their worlds were going to be darker without her. The whole world was going to be darker without her, and they were going to need to lean on each other to make it through. That was a week ago…and now they had to get through the memorial. Doc shuddered at the thought of his beautiful Dallas being reduced to ashes and immediately Dax said, “You okay?” Doc chuckled. His son hadn’t asked if he was okay so many times over his entire life.
“I’m good, son.” Doc looked at little Cody. He was sitting next to Dax in his little suit, looking like a miniature man. But if you looked closely he could see one of Cody’s little hands was clutching at Dax’s jacket and the other one was wrapped up tightly in his brother Keller’s hand. It was things like that Doc had missed about his own son, and Landon had missed about his. Doc was always more mature than kids his own age, and his IQ was so high…maybe it had just been hard for Landon to remember he was a kid. Landon didn’t look at the little things. He looked at Doc and saw that miniature man and he didn’t know how to find that balance. Doc, in turn, had done the same thing to his own son. At first he’d been overbearing just like Landon. And then when Dallas pointed that out to him, he’d tried hard to change. But he’d gone from overbearing to treating the boy like he was a friend. Dax didn’t need a friend, he needed a parent. Had Doc done a better job, the day the boy spent with his mother in Salem wouldn’t be the only good, recent memory Dax had.
