Beard Up

by Lani Lynn Vale

  I smacked his chest and he took the hint.

  “My burns were still pretty bad, and I could hardly move without pain exploding through every nerve ending.”

  My eyes opened as worry filled them.

  Before I could say anything, though, he maneuvered my head by tugging on my hair, and forced me to rinse.

  “When I tried to escape,” he started, causing me to gasp in horror. “Exactly. They caught me before I could even step foot out the door. But I was delirious and not thinking straight. All I could think about was you and getting back to you before you got too scared.”

  This man…always thinking about everyone but himself.

  Leaning forward, I placed my wet face against his chest, and urged him to continue by squeezing his waist lightly with my arms.

  “They sliced part of my healthy skin off with a butcher knife to let me know how serious they were about me behaving,” he muttered.

  Bile rose in my throat.

  “I didn’t try to escape again for another six weeks. And when I got caught, again, they sliced the same piece of healing tissue off.”

  I didn’t want to hear anymore.

  His parents, wherever they were, better enjoy their last few days of freedom. Because, if I ever got a hold of them, I was going to do everything in my power to make them hurt as much as they hurt Tunnel.

  Before I could say anything else, though, Ghost started in on the conditioner as I reached for the soap.

  I ran it down over his chest and abs, taking extra special care of the parts that still looked angry, despite having healing scar tissue there. I wanted to take away all of his hurts, and all of his pain, but I knew even if I could do that, Tunnel wouldn’t let me.

  As he worked his fingers through my wet tresses, I realized that I’d also missed this.

  I’d forgotten how much I liked him playing with my hair, even if all he was doing was working his fingers through the long tresses and loosening my curls.

  My hand went lower, purposefully avoiding the appendage that I could feel against my lower belly, and I rubbed the soap into a lather around said appendage.

  “Wench,” he grunted, pulling my hair taut. “Touch me.”

  My lips quirked up at the corner.

  “Maybe later,” I said, moving the soap to my own body.

  He only chuckled, and I used that time to soap my armpits and behind my neck. I followed that up by quickly running the soap down my body, under my breasts, and finally down to the apex of my thighs.

  “You need any help?”

  I bared my teeth at him.

  “No,” I said. “Because, if you help, you and I won’t be getting out of here for quite a while.”

  He grunted something unintelligible, and I moved the soap to my backside, running it through the crack of my ass.

  He watched me, not trying to hide the fact, and a mischievous glint entered my eyes.

  “Can you hold this soap with your butt cheeks?” I teased him.

  This was an old question. One I’d tried to get him to act on every time we were in the shower together.

  The memory of trying to get him to try it was enough to make sadness enter my eyes.

  “Come on, try it,” I said, offering Ghost the soap.

  The sadness had to be why he did what he did next. If this were six years ago, he would’ve never, ever done it.

  He took it from my hand and looked at it, then shook his head and reached behind him.

  Then he started to laugh.

  “See!” I cried out. “I knew you couldn’t do it either!”

  “I never said I could,” as he continued to try to clench the soap with his ass cheeks.

  The soap dropped and we both looked at it.

  “Turn around and pick it up,” he suggested.

  My brows rose.

  Did he think I wouldn’t?

  Shrugging one shoulder, I turned around, backed up, and then bent over to reach for the soap.

  And immediately felt his erection prodding my ass.

  Then, without any hesitation whatsoever, he lifted me up, spun me around, and leaned me into the wall.

  The cold tile hit my back, but before I could voice anything at all, he pushed his erection to the entrance of my pussy, and advanced inside of me.

  My mouth dropped open into an O, and he took advantage of that, too, by placing his mouth on mine.

  He swallowed the scream that came in the next instant when he pushed so far into me that I felt impaled, and continued to hold his mouth there while he took me roughly.

  His cock inside of me felt like he was finally home, and though it burned where I stretched around him, I would do it over and over again just to feel it.

  Because feeling it now cemented the fact that he wasn’t a figment of my imagination. That he wasn’t some specter that I’d made up just to make me feel better.

  My hands ran down Tunnel’s shoulders.

  No, this man was alive and very well. Rougher and darker than he used to be, yes, but any less Tunnel? No. He was perfect.

  “Please,” I mewled, urging him faster.

  He didn’t change his pace, or give any indication that he heard me, or even cared, but Tunnel never had listened to me. He had his own agenda when it came to my pleasure, and I’d get mine when he was damn good and ready to give it.

  His gaze connected with mine, and I knew he was feeling the effects of our joining just as strongly as I was.

  “Tunnel,” I breathed. “Please.”

  He growled.

  My eyes closed.

  And then he started to fuck me in earnest. He pounded away inside of me, the tiled wall at my back steadying me against his unyielding thrusts. I took everything he had, and then some, and he looked so goddamn intense that it was nearly too hard to watch.

  “Oh, fuck, baby,” he said to me. “You undo me.”

  He undid me right freakin’ back.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he grated out. “I want to wrap your pretty face with my hands and never let you go.”

  A tear formed at the corner of my eye.

  “I love you, Tun.”

  He pressed closer. Mere millimeters separated our faces now as he gave me all that he had to give.

  “I will work for the rest of my life to make sure that you and our baby girl are safe,” he explained to me. “I will suffer. I will give up anything. Anything at all that guarantees that you live and do it happy and healthy.”

  “Happy,” I breathed. “I finally remember what that feels like.”

  Then I exploded and took him right along with me.

  Chapter 19

  Nobody told me being a mother was just being a tiny person’s snack bitch.

  -Meme

  Mina

  I opened the car door of my SUV and grinned at my girl.

  “Hey, baby,” I called to her. “How was your day?”

  She pursed her lips. “It was okay. Evidence is not my favorite thing in the world to search for. I just wish we could give the death sentence to people that we know did wrong things.”

  I stifled a laugh.

  “What about if that person isn’t guilty?” I questioned her.

  She shrugged.

  Just like her father.

  “What’s for dinner?” she pressed, ignoring my question.

  “I was thinking a sandwich,” I said. “Sound okay?”

  She shrugged. “I’d rather the leftovers from last night.”

  I didn’t offer those because Tunnel and I had finished the rest of the enchiladas that I’d made for dinner last night during round one of reunion sex and round two.

  “You can help me make some tamales when we get home,” I offered. “But I ate the leftovers for lunch.”

  She huffed into a groan of disappointment. “I don’t like tamales.”

  But your father does.

  I couldn’t say that either, though.<
br />
  Not yet.

  We’d discussed it earlier, and we’d both agreed that we couldn’t tell Sienna about Tunnel until the threat of the truth getting to someone else was gone or this entire thing was over.

  And right now, the case against Tunnel’s parents was still very much a large problem for us, and we weren’t going to expose our daughter to that. Hopefully not at all.

  The moment I pulled into our driveway, five minutes later, I wasn’t surprised to find Tunnel sitting on the dirt outside of his trailer, holding a beer.

  “Mommy, that’s our neighbor,” Sienna said confidently. “He’s very nice. I like him.”

  That made my heart happy.

  She didn’t know the significance of her liking him, but I did.

  See, Sienna was picky when it came to people she was around. If you weren’t a member of the club or a teacher of hers, then this girl probably wasn’t going to like you.

  She seriously detested all new people, and Josh had been no different.

  I made a little finger wave at him before I got out of the car, and his lips twitched.

  “You should invite him over for dinner,” she said authoritatively. “He always eats sandwiches.”

  I knew that.

  I’d watched him, too.

  That was why I wanted to make him some tamales.

  I hated the fact that he had to eat a sandwich.

  See, the thing about Tunnel, was that he’s an absolute terror in the kitchen. My man, he tried to cook, but the inevitable always came true. He burned dinner. Or ruined it by adding too much salt. Or something distracted him, he forgot he was supposed to do something, and he never did it.

  Unless it came to cooking on the grill—and he was a master at that. But only when it pertained to the grill, and the grill only.

  People with ADHD got distracted easily.

  Since it frustrated him beyond belief, I’d always done the cooking, even when I’d come home from a twelve-hour shift. Why? Because I didn’t want to see my man upset. If it made life easier for me to do the cooking, I would do it.

  And knowing he was left to his own devices for six years left a hole in my heart the size of Texas.

  “You should invite him to dinner,” Sienna repeated. “I like that he calls me Dee.”

  My heart felt happy.

  Sienna DeeAnn, my baby girl, didn’t know what she was offering Tunnel, or Ghost to her, by asking him over for dinner.

  “Why don’t you go ask him while I go inside?” I said. “Tamales take a while to get prepared, and I have to lug all of these groceries in.”

  Groceries that I knew would drive Tunnel insane to watch me carry inside the house while he was watching.

  He always hated when I’d go to the store by myself. Especially when we lived in our apartment complex in Benton and I had to lug them up two flights of stairs.

  My cat, Taco, twirled around my legs the minute I stepped out of the car, and immediately launched herself into my seat before I could close the door.

  I just rolled my eyes and went to the back hatch, opening it easily and grabbing three bags in each hand.

  “You better get out of my car before I get back or I’m leaving you in there,” I lied to the cat.

  The cat eyed me from the dash, where she liked to lay, and flicked her tail in what I assumed was feline amusement.

  Normally, the cat got out when she felt like it, but with the weather pushing eighty degrees right now, I didn’t want to lock her up in there and accidentally forget about her.

  Turns out, after dropping the groceries inside, I didn’t need to worry about the cat, because she was outside, hissing at Tunnel, as he brought groceries in.

  All of the groceries.

  How did men do that?

  I wished I had the capability to hold ten bags with one hand. And, three of those bags contained gallons of milk.

  Chocolate milk to be exact.

  My daughter loved her chocolate milk and wouldn’t drink the normal stuff.

  Why? Because her father, the man currently staring at me with so much love in his eyes, didn’t like it either. He liked chocolate milk and only a certain type. Hence the reason our daughter loved only that certain kind, too.

  “Uh, thank you,” I said, holding the door open when I got there.

  Tunnel walked right in, Sienna trailing behind him with a bag of her own and the cat.

  “Did you get the hatch closed?” I questioned as I looked back outside.

  It was, indeed, closed.

  I shook my head in amazement.

  “Yeah,” Tunnel said. “Got it closed and got your cat out. She’s going to die, one of these days, of heat exhaustion if she’s not careful about getting in there.”

  See, Tunnel and I were always on the same page.

  “I know,” I said softly as I watched him move around the kitchen and start putting stuff away. “I tell her that all the time.”

  Tunnel gave me a wistful look.

  I knew that look.

  Tunnel hated this cat and always had, since the day that the cat started hating him.

  It was amusing to me, since the cat had no problem with me, but the moment that Tunnel came anywhere near Taco, the cat started to go nuts.

  Tunnel opened the pantry up and started to put away items, being sure to leave all of the ingredients I would need for the tamales out.

  I hadn’t told him I was making them, but once he saw all of the ingredients I would need to make them in the bags, he decided on his own that I would be making them tonight.

  I started to giggle. “You’re terrible.”

  He shrugged unrepentantly.

  So that was how I ended up making tamales and getting my little girl to eat them when she’d always sworn she hated them, and I got to do it while I watched as my daughter fell for Tunnel all over again.

  ***

  Hours later, after Sienna finally settled down enough to go to bed, I was once again lying, panting.

  I’d had more sex in the last day than I had in the last six years.

  “How do I tell Sienna?” his voice rumbled out into the darkness.

  I ran my hand down his chest, exactly like I used to do when I was deep in thought.

  “I think you don’t beat around the bush,” I finally settled on. “Just tell her. She’s a smart girl. I think she’ll understand…when the time comes. Until then, keep doing what you’re doing.”

  He went up onto his arms and stared into my eyes, his mouth so close to mine that I couldn’t avoid the temptation and moved until my lips brushed his.

  He grinned down at me, then slowly slid his length out from inside of me.

  I gasped at the empty feeling first, and then when I felt the warm liquid that started running down my cleft.

  I didn’t worry, though. Now that we were at least thinking more clearly, we were a lot savvier with the fact that we needed something to catch the mess. Meaning we’d stocked up on towels and had placed them on top of the nightstand.

  Before it could fully fall to the bed, he’d reached for the towel, and plastered it to my body.

  I rolled with the towel as he got up and stood awkwardly by the side of the bed. He walked to the bathroom to clean up.

  He came back out moments later and I traded him places, using the time in the bathroom to clean myself with some baby wipes that I’d gotten at the store earlier for just this reason.

  Once I was done, I headed back out into the bedroom.

  I reached for my panties that were lying next to the bedroom door and pulled them on even though I knew the second I got into that bed, he’d be ripping them right back off of me.

  But as I watched him slip his socks on, and then his boots, my brows furrowed in confusion.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him, tripping over my underwear and falling back on the bed.

  He watched me with amusement.

  “I’m getting my
clothes on so I can go,” he said evenly. “Why?”

  “You’re not leaving. If you leave, I’ll have to kill you.”

  His eyes shone with laughter. “That’s an awful lot of smack you’re talking when you can’t even put your underwear on while on standing up.”

  I flipped him off, then sat down on the bed to put my underwear on. He had a point. I was very clumsy, and I likely couldn’t even take my man with a gun…if I had one.

  Once I had the panties at my knees, I stood up and slipped them the rest of the way on.

  “That’s irrelevant,” I said. “There’s no reason you can’t stay here.”

  He looked at the door.

  “Our daughter might see, and you just said that you thought I should wait, agreeing with my earlier thoughts,” he countered. “I can’t do both. If I stay here, she might see me, and that’s not the best course of action. We agreed on that.”

  I sighed.

  “I have a lock on my door.”

  He frowned.

  “I don’t like that,” he said.

  “Then you’ll just have to be vigilant,” I said. “You’ve been gone for a long time. If you leave me tonight, when I just got you back less than twelve hours ago, I will cry. Plus, you can slip out the window and head over to the trailer if you hear her coming. It’s just right there.”

  I pointed at the trailer in question.

  Speaking of…

  “Did you watch me get out of the shower last night?” I questioned him.

  His mouth twitched.

  “Yeah.”

  I just shook my head.

  My man had no shame.

  “You know, you’re quite smug for a man that has spent the last six years hiding himself from me,” I told him.

  He didn’t offer an apology.

  Instead, he slipped off his socks and gestured to the bed.

  “Let me do one more round for the night, and I’ll be back.”

  Then I watched him slip into the darkness of the house, never once turning on a light to illuminate his way, and make a perimeter check of the house.

  Like he said, he was back moments later, and I was in the bed waiting for him.

  He slipped in behind me, assumed our favorite sleeping position, and I finally felt like I was home.