making her watch them fuck, forcing her eyes to stay on his as she came. It’d been hotter than she’d ever imagined.
She knew the man would have her in here at every angle and position imaginable so he could watch.
When Molly glanced up, she jumped at seeing Deacon in the doorway, watching her. “Oh, hey.”
“Food’s here.”
“Great. I’m starving.”
He stared at her, his eyes dark with an unmistakable gleam.
“What?”
“I’m gonna fuck you in the shower.”
“Now?”
He shook his head. “Soon.”
“Okay. Good to know.”
“At least twice.”
Her stomach pitched at the thought of their wet, slippery bodies sliding together, creating their own steam. “That means we’re gonna get really dirty more than once?”
“Count on it.”
• • •
DEACON wanted to watch a couple of fights after they ate, so Molly curled up next to him on the couch. He trailed his fingers up and down her arm, the touch both soothing and erotic in its repetitiveness.
After dating a couple of sports guys, she expected he’d yell at the TV, trash-talk the guys fighting, but he didn’t. He grunted a couple of times when the welterweight challenger landed hard kicks. Besides that, he watched in near silence.
“How many fight tapes do you study before a bout?”
“Every one I can get my hands on. But at my level it’s slim pickin’s.”
“Why?”
“Because of my professional amateur status,” he said dryly.
“But you are a professional.”
“My win-loss record will back that up. The number of fights I’ve been in over the years will also back that up. But the officially sanctioned fights by the big fight organizations? I’m still an infant. I’ve had to beat any guy in my weight division that’s up-and-coming or even washed-up. That’s why the Needham fight is important.”
“Does he watch fight tapes of you?”
“He should. But rumor is he thinks I’m a joke. He’s called me ‘a street thug with a questionable fight record.’”
Molly turned her head to look at him. “Who’d you hear that from?”
“Needham trains in a public gym. Shit gets said and passed around. And that’s a perfect example of why Maddox insists on a closed practice. No one can video our training drills with their phones.” His lips curled into a nasty grin. “That fucker Needham has no idea how helpful the bootleg videos of his practices have been to me.”
“Where do you find them?”
“YouTube.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. All my fights from smokers the last three years are on there. So when I beat Needham, any organization that’s interested in signing me will look there first to see my progression.” He kissed the top of her head. “Sorry for boring you.”
“Nothing about you bores me, Deacon.”
“What job did you have in Colorado Springs?”
“A couple of updated exterior shots of businesses. We probably would’ve turned it down if we hadn’t been right there.”
“Why?”
“The need for custom photography has dropped off significantly in the three years I’ve been at Hardwick. Presley and I had fun, though.” Until she got that stupid phone call on the way back to Denver.
Deacon tipped her face up. “What happened?”
Man. He’d picked up on that fast. “Jennifer and Brandi decided to include me on a phone conference.”
His gaze sharpened. “Does your lawyer know about this?”
“He does now. And it was stupid. I shouldn’t have answered.”
“I’d tell you to block their numbers from your phone . . . but I know you won’t do it.”
He was right—she hated that he was right. It made zero sense why she couldn’t just end all contact with them. She’d sworn she’d do it. But she hadn’t followed through.
“What is the worst thing that could happen to you if you block them?”
“Nothing. My life would be better, wouldn’t it?” She sighed. “Maybe I should hand my phone to you and have you do it.”
“Nothing wrong with cutting people out of your life who treat you like dog shit, babe.”
“Speaking from experience?” she asked.
He snorted. “You have no idea.”
“Who’d you drop-kick out of your life?”
Deacon didn’t answer for so long, she assumed he wouldn’t. Shocked the hell out of her when he said, “My mother.”
Major reveal about his family. “How long ago since you excised her from your life?”
“Fifteen years.”
“So you never see her?”
“Not if I can help it.”
Molly nuzzled his chest. “I don’t even remember my mother. But I still resent her.”
He didn’t ask why.
She decided to tell him anyhow. “I’m pretty sure she killed herself. Grams called it an accident, but she was the only one who believed it. I’m not resentful that my mother abandoned me by a selfish act of suicide. I’m mad because she never left behind any indication of who my father was. Grams suspected, given my ‘coloring,’ as she called it, that my father was Mexican. Sometimes I caught her staring at me like she feared I’d start speaking Spanish.”
“Babe.”
“When I think about it, which I try not to because it’s so screwed up, my mother left home without a word and disappeared for twenty years. Her parents had no idea whether she was alive or dead. Who does something like that?”
Deacon’s body went rigid beneath her.
“Then she returned home to Nebraska a few months after her father died. My uncle Bob said that my mother never got along with her father and he was the reason she left.”
“Most people don’t understand when leaving isn’t an option; it’s the only choice.”
Molly had the feeling Deacon knew about that firsthand. “Of course, my nasty-minded, bully cousins had a theory on why my mom took off.” The first time they’d shared that theory with her, she’d gotten violently ill. They teased her about that and kept detailing scenarios that were more disgusting than the last. When she became numb to it and didn’t react, they moved on to some other verbal torture.
“What did they tell you was the reason?” he said tightly.
“That my grandfather had sexually abused her. They had no proof. Now part of me thinks they said that only because they wanted me to go to Grams to see how she’d react.”
“Gimme your goddamn phone, Molly. I’m blocking those bitches from your life forever. Right. Fucking. Now.”
When Molly thought of all the years of verbal abuse, all the years she’d cowered in fear of them, all the things they’d taken from her—not just makeup and toys and candy, but her sense of self—not to mention the atrocious lies they’d told . . .
Deacon’s hands framed her face, forcing her to look at him. “Tell me why you just gasped like you’re in pain,” he demanded.
“Because I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk about any of this.”
“Tell me.”
That Sunday morning after church became so clear in her mind, she could see the heat shimmers on the blacktop leading out of town. Her cousins had begged her to come along with them because they had a big, secret surprise for her. And they promised they’d be back at the church before the annual meeting that Grams and Uncle Bob had to stay for ended.
So because Jennifer and Brandi had been so nice to her the last two Sundays, she’d gone with them. She’d secretly hoped that Grams was right and they were outgrowing their meanness.
The August day had been a scorcher. The blacktop squished beneath her white dress shoes. The sun beat on her head. Sweat poured down her back, and she wished she’d left her sweater in the car.
They cut through Mr. Stewart’s pasture and climbed under the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the junkyar
d.
Before Molly could point out the NO TRESPASSING signs, or ask about the pit bulls that patrolled the area, Brandi and Jennifer had taken off. And unlike her, they were fast runners.
She’d run up and down every row, looking for her cousins, and had fallen down twice. When she saw the blood welling on her scraped-up hands and knees, she’d panicked, positive the mean junkyard dogs would smell blood and attack her.
She’d stayed very quiet until Brandi jumped out from behind a car. That’d scared her so much she’d screamed and wet her panties a little.
Embarrassed, hot, out of breath, and bleeding, she knew this had been another trick. She turned to hide her tears and to start walking back to the church.
But Jennifer had come up behind her. Pinching the back of the arm to direct her where she wanted, steering Molly to her surprise.
They stopped in front of a twisted heap of metal.
“What is that?”
“That’s the car your mom died in.”
She’d been too horrified to speak. The car had been mangled so badly it didn’t resemble a car.
“We thought it was time you saw it,” Jennifer said. “Can you imagine how much it must’ve hurt to die in that? With a train ripping your body to shreds?”
By that time Molly had been all-out weeping.
“Oh, shut your fat face,” Jennifer sneered.
“Yeah. We’re not done with the story,” Brandi added.
“What story?”
“The truth Grams was too ashamed to tell you. About the night your mom died.”
She remembered wanting to ask . . . and not wanting to know. Not that Brandi and Jennifer had given her a choice.
Jennifer had pinched her arm harder and leaned in to whisper in her ear. But she never whispered. She thought it was funnier to yell in Molly’s ear at close range.
“Listen,” Brandi hissed.
“The night your mom died? She wasn’t alone. You were in the car with her.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Of course you don’t, stupid. You were, like, two. Anyway, your mom drove to the railroad tracks late at night and left the car there.” That’s when Jennifer’s eyes glittered. “And she left you sleeping in the car. See, she realized after coming back here that she didn’t want a fat, ugly kid like you. She knew you’d never fit in and no one would like you. So she was gonna make it look like an accident that you died when the train hit the car.”
“But you climbed out of the car window,” Brandi inserted. “Your mom tried to catch you, but you hid in the ditch. That’s when she knew her plan wouldn’t work, so she got back in the car to move it.”
“That’s when the train hit her and killed her dead. So it’s your fault she died.”
Molly fell on the ground, spewing out her morning milk and Raisin Bran. Her stomach muscles spasmed even when she had nothing left in her belly.
Brandi dropped onto all fours beside her, making the same retching noises and laughing.
Jennifer crouched on the other side. “They found you wandering along the railroad tracks the next morning. Grams knows your mother didn’t want you. She didn’t want you either, but she felt so guilty that your own mother tried to kill you, so she took you in.”
The images went black, and she struggled not to let that darkness suck her in. As a child she didn’t have that ability. It’d taken her months to crawl out of that pit of despair.
“Babe.” A pause. “Molly.” Another pause. “Darlin’, look at me please.”
Deacon’s insistent voice broke through the sensation of her being underwater. She looked at him, but his face was a blur.
He wiped her tears. “How old were you when that happened?”
“Eight. It sounds far-fetched now, but when I was a lonely eight-year-old girl, it was all too easy to believe. They knew I was too mortified by the possibility it could be true to ever ask Grams. And even if I had found the guts to ask and there were questions about where I’d heard the story, Jennifer and Brandi would both claim they’d never said anything like that and I was lying, making up stories to get attention. A couple months later, my logical brain had picked the story apart completely. There wasn’t any way that anyone knew what’d happened that night. And living in a small town that size? If I’d been found wandering on the railroad tracks after the accident, I would’ve heard about it.”
“I hate that you had to go through that.”
“I hate that I even told you. You must think I’m the most pathetic woman on the planet.”
“No.” He got right in her face. “Fuck no. I . . .” He rested his forehead to hers. “I’ve had ugliness like that in my life too.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
“Someday. Not now. Right now I’m taking you into my bed.” He placed a possessive kiss on the spot on her neck that he’d claimed as his. “I’ll make all that bullshit disappear.”
• • •
WARM woman. Soft, bare flesh nestled against him. Deacon had his hands on Molly, but he needed his mouth on her. Needed to feel her squirming and moaning beneath him. Needed urgency and a reminder of the passion between them.
Last night had been about comfort. About making her mindless and boneless as he made love to her. Wearing her out so she slept without bad dreams and bad memories.
Thankfully she’d slept like a rock, so she hadn’t known his restlessness.
He shifted his weight, moving over her, bracketing her hips with his knees. He smiled when she turned, seeking his body heat. Yeah, she liked sleeping naked with him, despite her half-assed protests.
Deacon backed down the mattress until his head was directly above the thin strip of hair covering her mound. Keeping his knees pinning her legs together, he closed his eyes and let her scent be his guide in the darkness as he lowered his head.
She smelled of flowers and sex. He parted her slit with his tongue, tasting her warm musk. She moaned. By the fifth long lap, she’d become aware, if not fully awake. Her hand landed on his head and she tried to spread her legs farther apart.
He stopped long only enough to say, “Hands above your head,” and then he buried his mouth in her pussy.
Molly’s immediate compliance, her unwavering trust in him . . . He’d never had this before—never wanted it. Now that this lush woman was his for the taking, he’d take her as often as possible.
Deacon zeroed in on her clit, alternating between licking and sucking. Plumping the little nub beneath his lips. Hearing her breath change from the slow, deep rhythm of sleep to fast, short pants of passion.
Her thighs went rigid, but her hips didn’t shoot up when she started to come. She gasped softly, eliciting his own growl as he tongued her clit past the first wave. He stayed there, consumed by the need to bring her to orgasm again before he sated his body’s needs.
“Deacon,” she breathed. “Stop.”
He shook his head. Within a few short minutes, he proved that stopping would’ve been a bad idea.
That time she came so hard she released a small scream.
Hard not to feel really fucking cocky about that.
Deacon rubbed his damp mouth between her hip bones, fascinated by how this section of her skin quivered. In the past two weeks he’d spent hours putting his mouth and hands over every inch of her body, memorizing her every reaction.
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