by A. J. Downey
I dropped my chisel and carving knife and came around the door that was laying flat on its saw horses so I could work on it. She nodded a bit tiredly and slipped off the stool, her arms coming up. I folded her into my chest and held on tight. Her arms went around my waist and she shook with these broken little sobs as she broke down all over again.
Too much. I thought to myself. The meeting had been too much, way too soon. The poor woman was in emotional overload, and I couldn’t say I blamed her. Dad recently dead, brother in jail, trusted family friend found stealing from her, mother pulling a complete one-eighty on the beliefs she’d held Bailey’s entire life due to her own grief… House burning down, getting shot at – fuck. It wasn’t exactly the lifestyles of the rich and famous shit that she was used to. It was my life, the one I wished like hell I could leave behind but when it turned back up like a bad penny, there I was in the thick of it again.
I wish I could say that I regretted it, but I couldn’t. It’d brought Bailey right back to me when I thought I’d never see her again. It’d brought me right into her life to fix it for her the only way that I could, although I found myself wishing we ran like we used to. Had we operated like the old one percent club we’d been there would be a lot more bodies on the floor, sure, but Bailey’s life may have ended up more intact than it was now.
Maybe it wasn’t meant to be intact… the fucking voice of reason whispered out of a corner of my mind. The knife goes through the fire so that it can become hardened steel.
“Shh, I got yah,” I soothed and waited out the storm, because what else could you do?
“I don’t understand why anyone would want to do so much for me,” she sobbed and I chuckled and kissed the top of her hair.
“It’s how we are, baby. We love fierce and we aren’t afraid to live. People like us? We band together. We help each other. That’s the way the world is supposed to work, isn’t it?”
“It’s the way it’s supposed to work, but that doesn’t mean that’s the way it works, does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it does, but I guess that’s part of what makes us rebels, isn’t it?” she laughed, a choked broken sound and I smiled rocking her gently back and forth.
“I’m just so out of sorts,” she said, adding, “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to apologize for, babe. Everybody gets overwhelmed sometime.”
“You don’t.”
I laughed, “Oh, trust me. I do. You should have seen the bitch fit I pitched when Nox hooked up with his girl and made her his ol’ lady. Woo boy, not one of my finer moments.” I smiled and said, “But you know what was?”
“What?”
I tipped her head back so I could look at her, “Falling in love with this beautiful woman right here.” I bent my head and kissed her then, and her breath hitched.
Her lips were soft, and she’d replaced that lip balm that drove me crazy. The one that tasted like brown sugar. I almost wish she’d chased it with some bourbon like that first night. I drew back and asked, “You want it here or you want to go back to the room?”
She opened those big brown eyes, panting slightly and said, “Room, take me back to your room.”
“You’ve got it, baby.” I switched off equipment, hitting the button to close the bay doors. I grabbed her by the hand, pulling her out into the afternoon light before the door could come down and hinder our escape. She pressed close to me as we went into the building that housed my room and trailed up the hall. I stuck my key in the lock and we went in, shutting the door tightly behind us.
Bailey turned her face up to mine, and I bent and kissed her. Her fists knotted in the front of my cut and she pushed it back off my shoulders. I helped things along, piece by piece until we were both standing there naked as the day we were born, skins flushed with heat and the need to be a part of each other.
Her fingertips glided over my body, lingering over the spot on my ribs dedicated to the one percent diamond I had there. I asked her softly, “Too much?” needing to know if it was something she’d never be able to get over because that would suck. It would hurt worse than anything that’d gone before, and there wasn’t anything I could do to change it. She smiled and shook her head, and reached up to bring my lips down to hers. I felt a knot of tension I hadn’t realized I carried ease out of the center of my chest and out from between my shoulders. Spine loosening up with relief.
I hauled her fit body up against mine and deepened the kiss, letting my need for her shine through. She smiled against my lips and it was like a flower opening up to the sun, the change in her. I knew in that moment, that I somehow brought her joy. That being with me was the same as it was for me being with her. That we just needed to hold on to that. This attraction went way beyond just having the hots for each other. Some things were just fated to be and we were one of them.
As much as we both liked it rough, I didn’t want to go there with her right now. She was fragile, and I figured it was time to show her I had a few other tricks up my sleeve than just banging the shit out of her like some caveman. So, I got her up on the bed and laid her down on her stomach, taking my time to press my lips lightly to every square inch of her skin in these light little butterfly fart kisses until she was left gasping and giggling, her body wriggling at the tickling sensation.
Still, me being me, I pinned her fine ass to the top blanket. No matter how much she writhed, kicked, and begged me to do something else, I kept at it until I was satisfied. When I was? I flipped her on her back and did it all over again to the front of her body, that is, until I reached the juncture of her thighs… then my interest was captured with making her writhe due to an entirely different set of circumstances.
I rolled my eyes so I could watch her face as I kept her thighs open with the set of my shoulders. Bailey’s eyes filled with the dark, hungry light of desire and her breath let out in a shuddering sigh at the first tentative touch of my tongue. I teased her opening with my fingertip and slid my middle finger easily inside her, stimulating her body with that come hither motion, my knuckles pressed tightly to her outer lips. I lowered my mouth back down to her pussy and took that hard little kernel of flesh into my mouth and sucked.
I felt her body tense, her hands gripping the covers to either side of her hips as she gave a slow, steady roll of them, lifting them unconsciously off the bed. I braced my free forearm across her hips and pressed her back down to the bed and I swear, the act of restraining her was enough to make her pussy pulse around my finger. It was erotic as hell how responsive her body was to what I liked, and not for the first time, I thought we were made for each other in more ways than one. I’d never been with a woman whose tastes complimented mine so fully.
“Stop, stop, stop!” she gasped and I leaned up. She arched an eyebrow and said, “I want to come with you inside me,” and I had to smile. I liked the sound of that. I liked the sound of that a lot, and I wasn’t about to deny a request like that, especially when I was so hard, I could crack rocks with it.
I climbed her body slowly, and pressed a few kisses to her skin, pausing to take one of her nipples into my mouth and suck on it, teasing it with my tongue while I watched her face. I adjusted my angle with one hand while I leaned on my forearm by her head with the other so I wouldn’t crush her.
I pressed into her in one long, super slow, steady stroke and her eyes slipped shut, her breath escaping her in a long, satisfied, shuddering sigh. I held myself there, not daring to move just yet, and kissed her, holding her close in the warm cage of my body. Willing her to understand by touch alone just how much she’d come to mean to me with her willingness to adapt and keep going, her commitment to stay the course.
I loved these things about her, I loved her, and I really wanted her to stay the course with me and try on her dream for size. Was it scary? As hell, but it was also the right thing to do. It was such a rush being with her, and I needed that in my life, to keep me steady and on course for walking this straight and narrow. Nothing was ever boring around
Bailey Lynn Berling, and I really, really loved that about her.
She moved under me, her eyes closed, a look of concentration on her face, and I wanted to stay like this forever.
Chapter 34
Bailey
I wanted Rush, needed him like the very air I breathed but he was driving me all sorts of crazy and not necessarily in a good way right this minute. He moved in me, slowly and deliberately, and not at all with his usual fervor which set my nerves on edge. I was beginning to worry that something was wrong when he chuckled and bowed his head, sucking a nipple into his mouth. I arched, pressing more of my breast into his mouth and tensed down around his cock.
That felt good…
“Relax, baby,” he growled against my chest, “I feel like a slow ride.”
Oh, well in that case…
I stretched my arms above my head and relaxed into his hold and let him take over. I adapted and decided that he could do whatever he wanted to my body, mostly because whatever he chose to do, I knew it was going to feel good. He always felt amazing.
He grinned down at me and murmured, “Wild ride or slow ride?”
“Whatever you want,” I said back, voice low and husky and his face turned serious.
“I love you, Bailey Lynn.”
“I love you, too, Logan.”
He hooked an arm beneath my knee and folded it up to my chest, the angle he had me at making my pussy shallow, his slow driving thrusts feeling like they went impossibly deep. Some women, when their cervix was bumped by the head of a man’s cock, they found it uncomfortable or painful, but not me. I couldn’t get enough of the sensation. Loved it, wanted more to the point I was willing to beg.
“God, like that, yeah just like that,” I breathed and Rush was always keen to give it to me just how I wanted.
“You like that?” he growled by my ear and I nodded.
“Yeah, I love that.”
“Good.”
He pressed himself tight to my body and ground against me, and oh my god, I liked that. It was like every time we made love, he found newer deeper parts of me to touch and stroke. It drove me wild in ways I couldn’t have even imagined existed.
“I want to watch you ride me,” he whispered next to my ear and I nodded. Before I even knew what was happening, the world was spinning and I was straddling Rush, his dick still buried deep. I put my hands on his stomach, trailing fingertips over the curves and ridges of his muscles and used my legs to rise and fall, working his length in and out of me. His hands found my thighs, smoothing up and down them leaving heat and a tingling rush in their wake, a tingling rush that effervesced like champagne bubbles up into the rest of my body, causing my nipples to harden even further.
“Take your pleasure, babe. I wanna watch you do it. I wanna watch you make yourself come.”
I felt the deep abiding ache of a building orgasm, and took my time nurturing it, grinding myself onto Rush’s dick, gripping the ornate headboard as the passion between us simmered on low. I wanted to enjoy this feeling of hanging off the edge for as long as I could get away with it. It was that magic space between earth and sky, sleep and awake, pleasure and unimaginable bliss and I just wanted to discard all my worries and all my cares and just live there for a time.
Rush fostered and encouraged it, the words he murmured lost to me, so involved was I in concentrating on that feeling taking over my body, his cock just brushing that aching point inside me that fucking loved to be touched but rarely ever was. The golden glow suffused my being from my vagina out, crawling up through my body, leaving a faint, gentle blush of sensation everywhere it travelled even though nothing actually physically touched me there.
I tensed around him and cried out, riding on that very edge, about to come but suddenly it was so maddeningly unattainable. I needed that final spark, that last gentle nudge and I managed to focus on Rush’s words then, “That’s it baby, you’re almost there, now touch yourself.”
My fingers drifted to the top of my sex and I found myself so incredibly wet and wanting. I barely pressed my fingertips into my clit and stiffened, my pussy seizing on that little touch and taking me the rest of the way. I arched, voice escaping my throat in a wailing moan despite the fact that I didn’t remember giving voice to anything.
I crashed and was sucked under, rolled under again by the next pulsing wave when I even tried to come up for air, and so completely consumed by Rush I never wanted to take a breath without him being a part of it ever again.
I hadn’t realized he’d rolled me physically as well as metaphorically until I came back to myself with him on top of me. He had one leg gathered up over one hip while he drove himself into me and I gasped. We stared into one another’s eyes while he worked himself in and out of my body, taking his own satisfaction a moment or two after mine.
He shuddered above me, and bowed his head and I let my arms go around him, holding him tightly until the storm within us both settled. He gasped for breath in counterpoint to my own panting, and just managed to withdraw from me, vaulting one of my legs to collapse beside me. He gathered me close and kissed me, and we kept kissing until our breath returned to something closer to normal.
“Why didn’t you take it, baby?”
The change in conversation was too rapid for me to follow and I closed my eyes and asked, “What do you mean?”
“The offer, me and the girls put together… helping you get your place up and running, why didn’t you take it? What is there to think about?”
I lay my head back into the pillow of his shoulder and looked at him, committing every bit of his face to memory from his warm, golden brown eyes, to his sandy hair, close cut and barely brushing his forehead. From the light shadow of growth along his jaw and the grim set of his mouth as he waited for my answer. He was beautiful to me, but somehow I thought he might get offended if I told him as much. That ‘beautiful’ might not be a descriptor he appreciated.
“I want it,” I said and swallowed hard.
“So take it; it’s right there.”
“That’s the problem,” I said nervously, scrapping my bottom lip between my teeth. “Any time I’ve really wanted something, I’ve had to work for it, I’ve had to earn it, and nine times out of ten when I finally got there? It was either denied me, or like Blue Hills, was snatched completely out of my grip anyways. If something good is going to finally come my way, I want it to be you. I guess I’m scared, and overwhelmed, and I just don’t know what to do…”
“Say yes,” he said. “Stop letting these assholes tell you what you can and can’t do. Stop coloring inside the lines and fucking say yes. Let a motherfucker come and try and take this from you. See what he gets.”
I searched his grim face and said, “It was you, wasn’t it? Or if it wasn’t you, it was the club.” I’d had the news messaged to me from several different sources about Giangiulio’s house exploding in the wee hours due to a suspected gas-leak. ‘Karma Hits Disreputable Developer’ was the going headline and the photos of his leveled house were displayed side by side with aerial shots of the burned out shell that was mine.
“That’s club business, baby. You know I can’t and won’t discuss.”
I closed my eyes and nodded, shivering a bit. Rush pulled the quilt at the bottom of the bed up over us both. He gathered me close and I cuddled into the cocoon of heat his body provided in the air conditioned hush of his room.
“So much is happening just so fast, do I have to decide right now?”
“No, baby, you don’t. You can take as much time as you need with this.”
I nodded and lay my head on his shoulder and picked at myself silently. Why didn’t I just say yes? What was holding me back? I mean what I’d said had been true. I’d lost count of how many times I’d been promised something or other and had gotten my hopes up, only for funds and attention to be diverted to what the favored son wanted to do instead.
I thought Blue Hills had finally been something I could build and be proud of but no, even that ha
d been ruined for me by my brother. I wondered why he hated me so much, I mean he had everything he could ever want and god forbid I should ever complain about it… I just didn’t know what the hell my problem was, other than I needed therapy, and likely a lot of it.
I drowsed peacefully in my lover’s arms and he held me, no judgments, no recriminations, just held me and made sure I knew that whatever I decided it was okay.
Chapter 35
Rush
“It’s just an idea,” she said to me, dropping into my lap. I looked up from the plans I was drawing up for a piece of furniture and put my arms around her waist.
I tipped my head to the side and said, “What is?”
“The corporate retreat, the bed and breakfast part of it, it was just an idea that I had, not a dream I was fully invested in and what’s more, it’s not your dream. I’m serious, Rush. What do you want?”
She straddled my hips and faced me, her fingertips lightly curling in the short hairs at the nape of my neck and I leaned back and looked her over. It’d been a few days of dealing with clean up and shit over at Blue Hills. Storing things away and getting the stables and large barn ready to go dormant for a longer period than either one of us would have liked.
“I want a place that I can work on my furniture and be around horses. I like working with my hands,” she wiggled her eyebrows at me and I laughed, and she smiled too. “But most of all, I don’t give a fuck what I’m doing as long as I’m with you and we’re both some kind of happy and committed to doing it.”
“I feel shitty for giving up on Blue Hills so easy, I was meant to deal with thoroughbreds, not yuppie corporate types. I mean, I would love to have a riding school, a place to introduce kids to the joy that is horses, but I went to school, got all of that education in hopes I’d be able to stay at Blue Hills, down on the ground and committed to making it the best damn racehorse farm and breeding facility Kentucky has ever seen.”
