by Eden Connor
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Note from the Publisher
Dedication
Trademarks Acknowledgement
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
About the Author
Reviews
A Silver Publishing Book
Wildly Inappropriate
Copyright © 2012 by Eden Connor
E-book ISBN: 9781614957508
First E-book Publication: September 2012
Cover design by Lee Tiffin
Editor: Jae Ashley
All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Silver Publishing
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. This book cannot be copied in any format, sold, or otherwise transferred from your computer to another through upload to a file sharing peer to peer program, for free or for a fee, or as a prize in any contest. Such action is illegal and in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
If you see "free shares" offered or cut-rate sales of this title on pirate sites, you can report the offending entry to [email protected].
This book is written in US English.
PUBLISHER
www.SPSilverPublishing.com
Note from the Publisher
Dear Reader,
Thank you for your purchase of this title. The authors and staff of Silver Publishing hope you enjoy this read and that we will have a long and happy association together.
Please remember that the only money authors make from writing comes from the sales of their books. If you like their work, spread the word, and tell others about the books, but please refrain from sharing this book in any form. Authors depend on sales and sales only to support their families.
If you see "free shares" offered or cut-rate sales of this title on pirate sites, you can report the offending entry to [email protected].
Thank you for not pirating our titles.
Lodewyk Deysel
Publisher
Silver Publishing
http://www.spsilverpublishing.com
Dedication
This story is dedicated to my daughter Channing, who shared her experiences with interracial dating so generously. If Cynda's experiences ring true to you that's due to the endless hours she spent listening to me drone on about these characters and giving me invaluable feedback. I wanted to write an interracial story where skin color was more than a fact, like eye or hair color, and with her help, I hope I've done that.
If a train leaves Chicago at eleven pm, and a truck full of good ole boys crosses the South Carolina state line at midnight, at what time will they collide in Alabama and how old will Eric be at the time? If you don't know, you're not alone. Neither do I. Writing backward in time is a math word problem, and I confess I once made curtains for my math teacher's modular classroom in return for a passing grade, so huge thanks are due Silver Publishing EIC Kathy Kozakewich, my beta reader Jennie Anderson, and my friend Keenan Jones for keeping Daniel's memory train on the tracks.
And to Jae Ashley, my content editor, who challenged me to make this story the best it could be.
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Benadryl: Warner-Lambert Company LLC
Ford Focus: Ford Motor Company
Crown Victoria: Ford Motor Company
Glock: Glock Ges.m.b.H.
Jaguar: Jaguar Land Rover PLC, wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Motors
Volkswagen GTI: Volkswagen Group
Formica: Formica Corporation
Coke: The Coca-Cola Company
Tylenol: McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson
Swarovski: Swarovski AG
Oreo: Nabisco (Kraft Foods)
Buick Regal: General Motors
Chevy: General Motors Company
Beretta: Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta
Clemson: Clemson University
Yankees: New York Yankees
Dodgers: Los Angeles Dodgers
Captain Morgan: Diageo
John Deere: Deere & Company
Electrolux: AB Electrolux
Snow White: The Brothers Grimm
Chapter One
The dusky color of her skin accented the chrome chain stretching from her slender neck to the hitch on the bumper of his Chevy truck. The combination hit Daniel De Marco like a punch to the gut. His truck was black, the factory paint a color he'd been told was the absence of all light. The woman could be described as black too, but showcased against his tailgate, her skin defied the label. She was a rich brown, with depths of shade that varied from her shoulders to her tummy, from her elbows to her knees—a kaleidoscope of darkness that seemed to him more like the presence of all color.
She was also half-naked. Early morning sun caressed her curves and her costume, both delighting and annoying him. She wore a lime-colored tube top with black stripes that, frankly, hurt his eyes. The standard tires on a small import car were wider than her skirt was long, but the ripe curves of her ass peeking from beneath it were entrancing. Her shoes were the final insult, clunky monstrosities with thick platform bottoms in an eye-assaulting shade that made him grateful there were no lime trees in his yard to take offense at the way the color of their fruit was being mocked.
Not the final insult, he noted as she bent to scratch her calf. Her nails were painted a hideous shade of purple. Her toenails matched. It might've been self-defense that made him focus on her ass as she lingered in her position. Although, it was most likely the fact that while some men were into breasts, and some were into legs, Dan was an ass man.
God help him, it was so easy to imagine ordering her to hold her ankles while he wrapped her chain around his fist. He saw himself pouring his favored peach oil over her skin, rubbing it into those rounded cheeks until they gleamed, coating his cock with it to ease the slide of his shaft into the small puckered hole he preferred to fuck. Dan almost felt his cock slipping between those voluptuous curves and pressing into the tiny opening so forcefully she'd cry out.
He wasn't dressed, having just rolled out of bed and headed to the kitchen to get the coffee pot started before showering, and the fading erection he'd woken with came rushing back while he stared.
He had to get her off his property. Damn Brian Case. After six years of trying, either Brian had talked to someone who really knew what made Dan tick, or the real estate developer had gotten lucky.
He'd never seen the woman before, h
e was sure. She straightened, giving her microscopic skirt a yank, and resumed stalking back and forth. He noted her circuit took the chain to its limits, the way he imagined a wild animal would. Her hair was straight, with a few half hearted waves. He pictured the heavy length if allowed to reassume its natural kink and volume. He'd prefer it that way, he decided. No, he'd prefer neat braids, finished off with beads. As long as he was standing in the shadows of his own kitchen, making over a strange woman to suit him, he'd strip off her garish makeup too, and mentally remove her nail polish along with her clothes.
But because his father's blood ran in his veins, he'd leave the chain around her neck. No, he'd replace the chain with his belt.
He exhaled in frustration, using one hand to rake his hair from his eyes and curling the other around his aching shaft. This was a helluva start to the long Labor Day weekend. Now, rather than enjoying a few days without the concerns of his business or his brothers, Dan knew he'd end up roaming the ruins of his personal Eden, longing for something no decent man could have.
He'd come so close a couple of times, with women he thought understood what life as his woman entailed, only to end up being told he was a bastard and a caveman on their way out the door. While his parentage wasn't in question, his father's influence was surely what kept Dan a single man.
Why then, did he long to be just like his father, Rafe, ruling his woman and his offspring with unquestioned authority? Because all that had gotten either of them was alone. He wasn't like his baby brother Colton, who'd found love with a woman so stubborn she made Dan's teeth ache, or like Eric, whose relationships with women were so superficial it was a wonder to Dan his middle brother remembered the names of the women he dated.
He snorted softly. No, all he wanted was to pour his soul and his seed into one woman who'd want nothing more than to make him her world. Dan yanked his hand off his dick in disgust. He hadn't sunk low enough to jack off while peeping out his own kitchen window at a strange woman, even if she was trespassing.
He was a dinosaur and he knew it. The concept hadn't worked for Rafe and it'd worked out just as badly for Dan. Women were no longer content to stay home and raise a family. They wanted jobs and felt their equal paychecks gave them an equal say in family decisions.
Why was it was so barbaric to want to spoil and coddle one woman, and in return, expect her to honor his decisions in all ways? He'd given up trying to understand why that was true and just accepted it. He'd stay single, though, because apparently what he wanted was the new form of slavery to the current female way of thinking. Perhaps that was why he found the sight of the woman chained to his bumper so riveting.
* * * *
Cynda Avery paced, waiting for the old farmer to wake and find her, recalling what Kingsley Dazza had said when she begged him for more time. "You got two choices. Either go to this farmhouse and play this game to soften old Daniel De Marco up so I can buy a few acres of land he won't sell, or gimme nineteen thousand dollars," the loan shark had growled, yanking her hands loose from his shirt. "You got two weeks. Since I know you ain't got nineteen thousand dollars, you can either go park yo' ass in his yard till he listen, or start helpin' yo granny pack."
Recalling Dazza's low laugh still made her want to rake her nails across his shiny head and right down his bowling ball face. She pictured blood running into his cold eyes and felt somewhat better. He wanted her to come here and play sex games, in hopes she could soften up the farmer so he'd listen to King. Sex games. As though all men didn't play those. This game had some rules, according to King. The biggest ones were not to talk back and no matter what, to keep your eyes down. Good idea, that way this old farmer wouldn't see her contempt.
What kind of black man would force a black woman to show up at some old white dude's house, offering to reenact the Civil War—not the fighting part, but the slavery part?
She knew the answer. The kind of black man that claimed to be all about community, but in reality just stole houses from little old ladies like her grams.
She'd refused, but two days later had gone slinking back to his office, agreeing to try his plan. She'd had no other choice. Though she felt what he'd done to Grams was illegal, no lawyer in town would take her grandmother's case without payment. Tied like a dog to this truck, Cynda knew how abandoned puppies and kittens must feel when folks threw them out.
Something smelled wonderful, though. Now that the sun was up and she could see the butter-colored farmhouse, she thought the scent might be coming from the odd tree loaded with huge bell-shaped tangerine blossoms that anchored one end of the long back porch, but then, the delectable aroma might be from the Confederate jasmine vine scampering up the side of the two-story home to disappear over the tin roof.
Her grams would know. Grams would love the assortment of flowers growing around this place. Her grandmother was surely the reason Cynda let herself be chained in some strange man's back yard.
Honey chile, ever' woman's gonna pick her own pain.
That was her grams' favorite saying about men. Cynda had yet to find a man she felt was worth suffering for. She tried to see her beloved grandmother's face, to keep from unhooking the damn leash and starting the long walk back to the highway. She couldn't afford to dwell on the insult of being chained in some white man's yard, but fury burned within her that a black man would suggest this… this… outrage. It didn't take a genius to figure out this landowner must be some redneck who didn't want black neighbors.
Or maybe he sensed, as she did, that King wasn't the kind of man anyone would want nearby. She couldn't afford for it to be the latter. Besides, if the farmer was prejudiced, wouldn't King have sent a white woman?
* * * *
Dan forced his gaze away from the woman Brian had sent to soften him up about selling the family land to stare instead at the parallel rows of trees that began at the edge of his close-clipped back yard. He raised his gaze once more, to the gentle mountain beyond, crisscrossed with the verdant remains of what had once been the largest commercial peach farm in South Carolina. If he squinted, he could see the gaps in the rows where the fruit trees had died and he and his brothers had cut them for firewood but not bothered to replace the loss with a sapling. The family made their living from the garage out on the highway nowadays, a business Dan's father had begun after their mother walked out when Dan was nine. His grandfathers had jointly continued operating the orchards as long as they'd been profitable, but once Dan's mother disappeared, Rafe had wanted nothing else to do with the farm. Coaxing fruit from the land required love, the old man had said on many drunken nights, and Cammie had taken all of his when she walked out the back door without saying goodbye.
Mocking silence from the six-bedroom farmhouse combined with his half-hard cock made him step onto the back porch without bothering to grab pants or a shirt, uncaring of her delicate feminine sensibilities, assuming she had any. She was trespassing, goddammit, and if she didn't want to see a dick, then she had no business letting Brian chain her to his truck.
He was going to use the diesel fuel left in the barn and burn the farmhouse to the ground this week, too, Dan decided as his bare feet hit the gray-painted boards. He'd been thinking about doing it for years. Maybe he'd roast fucking wieners and marshmallows while he watched his old man's ghost twist in the flames. Then, he'd build a one-bedroom cabin on top of the mountain and send Brian Case a picture of it. Because while none of the brothers cared to operate the eight-hundred-plus acres of orchards, every last living De Marco would burn in hell before he'd sell the land to some asshole like Brian, who wouldn't be satisfied until he'd crammed a few thousand families into overpriced homes set so close together people couldn't step foot outdoors without tripping over each other.
"I expect you to unlock that damn chain and get the fuck off my land or I'm gonna bend you over my knee and spank your ass for letting Brian Case chain you to my bumper," Dan drawled. She nearly tripped in her hideous shoes when she spun, causing Dan to grin despite his anger. Her
brown eyes went wide when she realized he was bare-assed, her gaze dropping to his erection. Her succulent lips opened to form a perfect circle.
Leaning against the porch post, Dan replaced his hand around his newly-throbbing shaft, stroking his fist along the waking length while watching her through narrowed eyes. "You can get in your car and go tell Brian the orchards still aren't for sale." His grin got wider as she continued to stare at his hand rather than his face. "But do tell him I thank him for finally figuring out the skinny bitches he's been sending aren't my style. Give him my compliments on picking a woman with an ass a man could really get into, not to mention how fucking fine you look in a collar. But sugar, your taste in clothing is wildly inappropriate."
Chapter Two
The deep male voice nearly scared Cynda out of her borrowed shoes. She stumbled as she turned, her heart pounding so loudly she almost didn't hear the rest of his words.
She had no idea who Brian Case might be. Case and King must work together, Cynda decided as her mouth rounded in shock. There had been another man in King's office both times she'd been there—a white dude. Made sense he'd refer to the white man rather than King, if racism could be said to make sense.
The farmer wasn't old, and he was a good-looking devil. Dark brown hair would've hung past his collar, if he'd been wearing a shirt. His eyes were light, maybe green. Very tall, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist and she couldn't see an ounce of fat on him. No wonder he strutted around buck naked. He was built like a god. He was more than naked. He was hard. And getting harder by the second.
Oh yes, I'd give a lot to see King Dazza on his knees, bleeding to death at my feet, Cynda thought angrily, unable to stop watching the stranger stroke his cock. If the bastard was dead, Grams wouldn't be worrying herself sick about having to live in government-assisted housing when she was used to her own home, and Cynda wouldn't have to beg this stranger to let her suck that big dick.
