by Knox, Abby
She adjusts the nursing baby in her harness to the other breast and says, “You have my word,” before leaving.
I watch her go, and then I dig through my stash of blouses I keep in my chambers closet in case of coffee spills. I unbutton and take off my suit jacket and replace my blouse. As I fasten up my jacket again, I think about recent events.
I barely know which way is up right now, but I know one thing: That woman is going to spill the tea to her husband the second she gets home.
Chapter 16
Drea
After work, I’m so wrung out from all the adrenaline of today that I draw a bubble bath and grab my favorite go-to romance novel.
Maybe alone time is just what I need.
Maybe Paul will come tonight, maybe he won’t.
Doesn’t matter, Drea. Focus on your reading.
Oh jeez. The voices in my head sound like 20-year-old me haranguing my younger sister to finish her homework. Great.
The novel I’m reading is a historical romance with one of those fantastically brave heroines on the cover who can sail a ship and rock an 18th century bodice at the same time. The cover is one of those I love to feel in my hand with the raised metallic lettering. The corner of the cover and the pages inside are tattered, I’ve read it so much.
This was one of the books I found in our parents’ bedroom when Ever and I finally gathered up the courage to clean out their things after they died.
Ever had no interest in reading them. In fact, she wanted to sell the lot of them. And we did sell some of them, but I kept the rest. Maybe it was a way to connect with my mother after she died.
I had no idea she read these books. Maybe she was embarrassed. Maybe she and Daddy read them together and that’s why the books were in the bedroom, in the night stand.
If she was embarrassed, I don’t know why. A lot of these are amazingly well written. The historical ones are my favorite, probably because the stories are so different from my everyday life. They’re a one hundred percent escape from my day-to-day reality.
This particular hero and heroine play a game of cat-and-mouse throughout the entire book that is both delicious and erotic. When he finally takes her by force at the end, it is so over-the-top exciting. He kicks her door down after they’ve had a terrible argument. I was so enthralled by the scene, I showed it to Ever. She was horrified. She said the book was glorifying rape. I tried to explain to her that if you read the whole book, there are obvious clues that it’s what the heroine wants. The whole thing is consensual but it’s also kind of not, which is what turned me on so hard.
And that was the day I realized not everybody is turned on by the same things. Ever is like a sparkly, curvy little fairy with an adventurous streak and no filter on her mouth. Her opinions are right there at the surface, always ready to come out.
I’m the quiet one. The reliable one. The one who puts everybody else’s needs first and always made sure the bills were paid. And made sure that little Ever didn’t fall down a ravine and get smashed by a train in our backyard. That was a good day…a good day to vomit in the sink when I envisioned losing my only other family member.
I shouldn’t be so hard on Ever. I’ve taken care of her my whole life and was pretty judgmental of her when she quit her newspaper career out of the blue and fell in love on her solo trip out west.
She was always boy crazy.
Me? The first time I ever even had the urge to masturbate, it was after reading the bodice-ripping scene in this book. The connection between this book teaching me to masturbate and my need for a man to rip open my window screen and take me from behind is not lost on me.
Speaking of windows, I’m snapped out of my reading by a sound coming from my bedroom. The hairs on the back of my neck perk up.
He’s back.
Oh god.
He wants to finish what we started in the barn today.
Oh god.
I hop out of the tub and towel off.
Then again, maybe he’s not here for that. The sun hasn’t even set yet; it’s hardly the dark of night.
I wrap myself up in my bath sheet and pad down to my room. What do I find but Paul, not breaking in this time but fixing my window.
“What are you doing?”
Startled, he turns to see me standing the doorway and nearly drops his hammer.
“Geez. You scared the shit out of me. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“You let yourself into my house and you’re the one getting startled. We make quite an interesting item, don’t we?” I say.
Paul sets his tools down on the floor and walks over to me, rubbing a hand through his hair like he’s working up the courage to tell me something. When he’s right up in my face, he asks, “But are we? An item?”
I bite my lip. “Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want; I just want you. I hate having to maneuver my way around all the pearl-clutching people of this backward little town. I hate that I’m free, but I don’t feel free. I hate that I’ve paid the price for my crimes, but it’s never going to be enough. But if I leave, there’s nothing for me anywhere else.”
“Paul…you’re going to be fine, wherever you go. Deep down you’re a kind, sensitive soul. I’ve seen it. And you work hard, you learn fast. You know how to fix things, take care of animals. You can do lots of things.”
“What are you, my guidance counselor?”
“No!”
He grabs my shoulders. “Drea! I need to hear you say the words. Do you want me to stay or go?”
“I…I want you to stay. Yes, the selfish parts of me want you to stay, but I can’t ask that of you…”
“Shut up.” The sting of his abrupt words is quickly healed by the tender, passionate kiss he lays on me. Paul cups my face and kisses my lips so sweetly it nearly breaks my heart.
I rest my palms against his massive chest, and he lets out a deep, quiet moan against my mouth. He swipes his tongue across my lips, which part to welcome his tongue into my mouth. I want him to touch me. To rip the towel away and lay waste to my curves and to all my dark places.
But he doesn’t. Strangely, all he does is kiss me. Deeply, sensuously. Alternating between feathering his lips over mine and exploring, probing, with his tongue.
My body wants to be manhandled. Roughed up. Grabbed. Spanked. Plowed to exhaustion. But we’re still kissing.
His thumbs trace over my jawline, my cheekbones, my earlobes, down my neck. His fingertips brush the baby soft hairs that have fallen out of my top knot.
I’m starting to wonder when he’s going to start bossing me around.
“Mmm,” I hum into his mouth as I slide my hand up to touch his throat. “What are we doing here? Why is this towel still on me and why isn’t your cock making me scream yet?”
As I speak, he scatters kisses down my neck. “I’m getting to know your magic,” he says.
As if I’m supposed to know what that means.
And yet I do.
“Don’t you know how powerful you are, Drea?” he murmurs while tenderly delivering little kisses all over my throat, back up to my nape behind my ear, across my forehead. “Everyone turns to look at you when you walk into a room. Your skin glows beyond what should be allowed. Your eyes are full fire. You’re a better lover than you give yourself credit for…”
My breath hitches. “Stop it, Paul. You’re going to make me cry.”
“I won’t stop,” he says, applying gentle suction to the little curve between my collarbones. “You deserve more than just a man who makes you come by smacking your ass beet red. You need a man to love you.”
“Paul…” My eyes are stinging. This is getting real. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.
“Shut up and let me finish,” he says. “I don’t often feel like talking, so you gotta let me get this out while the gettin’s good. I love you…”
The hard knot in my throat is starting to hurt.
“…And I don’t care if you love me
back; I just need you to know. I love you. I love everything about you. I can’t stand not being with you. I’ll stay here if you say you love me too, but listen—I can’t be in the shadows. This is real or it isn’t. I know this is a big decision, so I’m not asking you to decide right now. I just need to get this all out and let you chew on it for a while.”
No man has ever said he loves me before.
“This is all so new to me,” I say, my voice quavering. “But I love you too. And I don’t want you to be in the shadows—it’d be wrong to do that to you. I just need a minute to process, to think about everything. Two days ago this was just us fucking… fulfilling a need…meeting our obligations to each other. And now it’s something completely different. But you’re right. It’s right. We’re right. I love you. I do!”
He cups my face again and kisses me so tenderly I might crack into a million pieces.
He blots a tear that has fallen onto my cheek with the pad of his thumb.
“Stupid to cry over it,” I say.
We both laugh and he presses his forehead to mine, his hand on my hair.
Just then I hear the kitchen screen door creak open and slap shut again, and the sound of women’s voices in the kitchen. Instinctively, I step back until my back is against the wall.
Paul kisses my nose and says, “Get in bed, I’ll get rid of them.” He grabs his hammer and heads down the hall.
I don’t move.
A second later he returns.
“Um, did you have a meeting scheduled with someone named Remy and Misty tonight? They’re here for that.”
I slap my forehead. “Shit, I can’t believe I forgot! They’re volunteering for my reelection campaign!”
He smiles, but it’s a little bit sad. “OK, you get dressed and I’ll cover for you.”
I spend the time throwing on jeans and a Middleburg High School Red Foxes baseball shirt, wondering what the heck he means by that.
I figure it out when I get to the kitchen. Misty and Remy are ogling Paul and smiling. If they weren’t both happily married, I might feel a little bit jealous of them speaking to him. Love? Jealousy? Where is this coming from?
“I am so sorry, ladies! I completely forgot to reschedule. I’ve had such a weird day…”
“No worries,” says Misty, arching an eyebrow at me that lets me know it was, in fact, quite bothersome to come all the way to my house on a Tuesday evening only to be told I’d forgotten all about our meeting.
Remy, also a woman who brooks no nonsense, says, “We can still have our meeting while Paul here finishes his work. No problem at all. Let’s do this.”
Misty shrugs and takes a seat at my kitchen table with Remy. I look over at Paul and see he’s started in on fixing my back door. Turning back to my volunteers, I ask, “What?”
Remy says, “Oh. Paul told us the whole thing. About how your hinges got rusty and fell apart and then the wood rotted. He told us you hired him to do some work around the place. That’s nice of you! It will play well with the voters that you, a judge, is giving an ex-convict—sorry, Paul—a second chance.”
Paul nods to Remy. “No offense taken. It’s the truth.”
I look at Paul and he’s shooting me a look that tells me, “Don’t worry. I covered for you. I got this.”
But this is not what we talked about.
I swallow hard, take a deep breath, and spill everything. “Listen, ladies. You’re my best volunteers—OK, my only volunteers, because let’s face it, I’m a down-ballot, small-town county judge and not the president, by any stretch of the imagination—so here’s the truth. Paul and I are in a relationship. We’ve been writing to each other since his first year in prison. He came to see me when he was released just a few days ago and now… Well, now we’re in love. We’re an item. I know it’s shocking, but there it is. I’ll understand if you don’t want to volunteer for me because it’ll be too hard to work around this. Whether you stay or not, I will need you to be discreet until Paul and I are ready to craft the whole story for public consumption.”
Remy and Misty look at each other.
Misty speaks first. “We knew.”
“Wait…you knew?”
“Well, we knew as soon as we saw him come into the kitchen with a hammer and you were nowhere to be found, and his face was as pink as a prairie coneflower,” Remy says.
“Yeah,” says Misty. “But we didn’t know you were like…a love thing!”
“When’s the wedding?” Remy asks.
Paul and I exchange looks. I see the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile since he got out.
And I want to see more of it.
Chapter 17
Drea
I drive to work with a smile on my face.
Paul held me as I slept almost all night, whispering sweet nothings and playing with my hair.
But they weren’t sweet nothings.
They were sweet everythings.
Most of what he said I don’t remember, but I do remember him reminding me that I love him. That I make him happy beyond what he ever thought he was allowed to be.
One thing he said stuck in my heart: “From your first letter, you made me want to be a better man.”
I don’t remember all I said, but I know I said something in response before completely dozing off.
Remy, Misty and I stayed up late into the night drinking wine and strategizing for my campaign, while Paul spent the entire time fixing the door.
By the time the ladies left, I was so tired that Paul had to help me to bed. After coercing me to drink some water and take some ibuprofen, as well as eat a little bit of protein, I lay down on the bed, feeling happy and somewhat free. It felt good to tell someone our secret.
When I woke up this morning, I half expected to feel hungover but I didn’t, not even a little. Paul kissed me good morning and said, “I’ll see you tonight, beautiful.”
As I left for work, I noticed that he’d fixed the door and the window, and both looked good as new.
I’m fairly certain Remy and Misty ran and told their significant others right away about my relationship, because how could they possibly be expected to keep it to themselves? However, they gave me their word that they would be discreet, and who were Troy and Ryan going to tell anyway? They were busy enough with their own growing families.
Arriving in my chambers, I look over my docket for the day and it’s full. A lot of traffic tickets, one wedding and a ruling on a separation agreement in the afternoon.
My direct extension rings and I pick it up. The man doesn’t introduce himself. He simply says, “Leave the robe on. Take off everything else. Noon.” Click.
Every inch of my skin is covered in goosebumps.
Holy shit. Is he for real?
A secret selfish little gremlin inside me has the thought of putting off my afternoon schedule until tomorrow so I could extend indefinitely whatever Paul was planned. Kissing and cuddling all night was over-the-top sweet, but I regret not capping it off by sitting on his face a little. And now, he’s coming for me. Like he somehow just…knew.
I get through the morning’s docket in a pretty damn good mood, and when we break for lunch, I’m feeling extra horny. That wedding about did me in. I wonder who’ll marry us? I wonder if Paul is even the marrying type?
I should just ask him. He made it pretty clear that I should ask for what I want and to not be afraid that he would run away. And I believe him.
I sit at my desk, staring out the window, debating whether to lock my office door when I hear my assistant speaking to someone with a deep male voice.
I stand up. “Send him in,” I say.
Paul swaggers into my office looking like he’s fresh from another morning spent in the field. He’s damp with sweat, his tee-shirt clinging to him and his face red from the sun.
I go to my mini fridge and fetch him a bottle of water. “Can I help you, Paul?”
He shuts the door. “I
forgot something.”
My mouth barely has time to form the word “Oh” when Paul covers it, claims it with his own. He’s kissing me so hard it hurts, and I love it so much it lights up my entire body with urgent need.
“Paul, here?”
“Here. Now,” he breathes, pushing me to sit down on my desk, nesting his legs between my thighs.
My hands have a mind of their own, wresting off his sweat-soaked shirt to show me his glistening upper torso in all its glory. But I only have a second to stare at his beautiful body before he’s owning me with his mouth again and hiking up my black robe.
I squirm to pull it off, but he grunts out, “Leave it on, judge. I’m gonna fuck you in it, the way you fucked me while wearing it seven years ago.”
A moan escapes me and I slick my panties. It’s so messed up, what he said. But so fucking hot.
Is this what it’s going to be like having a relationship with this man? Him just showing up when he wants to fuck, and me just having to deal? Well, I’m down with that.
Chapter 18
Paul
Her look of pleasant surprise combined with hunger has me harder than I thought I could possibly get for this woman.
Drea has me wrapped up. Whipped. She calls to me without saying a word. I can’t look at a barn full of hay, a window screen, or the back seat of my truck without getting a stiffy. And now that I’m here, my face under her robe, I’m barely able to finish eating her pussy without exploding in my jeans.
I might just.
Giving her sweet little clit one deliciously sloppy kiss, I stand up and share her taste with her.
“Paul, I want you so bad,” she says.
“What do you want?”
“I want to have your baby. So, stop fucking around and give me one.”
“Shit, I was hoping you would say that,” I rattle off, unbuckling and unzipping.
I look down briefly to see her pussy open up to me as I press her thighs apart as far as they’ll go. The peachy pink slickness is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
