by S Doyle
I took off the rest of my clothes even as she removed her bra and panties. I took her hand and pulled her toward my bathroom. I had a day of work on me, and besides needing to wash that off, I wanted to take my time touching her. I stopped at the nightstand next to my bed and opened the top drawer to get a condom out.
“You know you don’t need that. I mean, maybe you do. But I don’t. I’m on the pill. After that last…well, I know I’m not supposed to talk about other guys while your dick is hard and all, but I was tested, so I’m clean.”
The words ran through my brain.
You can come in her. You can come in her. You can COME. IN. HER.
“I’m tested every quarter. I’m also clean,” I mumbled. I thought about what it would mean. What it might feel like. What it might make me feel like. I had never had unprotected sex. Not even with Betty. She always insisted I wear a rubber.
She always insisted you wear a rubber because she knew she was fucking some other guy.
I waited for the rage to wash over me. The sense of betrayal. I couldn’t take Sabrina if I was in that kind of state. It wouldn’t be fair to her. Except then she pressed her front against my back. I could feel those hard nipples pushing against my skin. And her cheek against my back.
“We don’t have to if you don’t want to. Maybe you think it’s too intimate.”
My silence was inserting doubt into her mind. She was worried about how I was reacting to her suggestion. That was good, I thought. It meant she didn’t expect too much from me.
Because I didn’t have anything to give. I was broken and couldn’t be fixed. I had always known that.
I dropped the condom back into to the drawer and pulled her with me into the bathroom. I had a large shower stall. Big enough for four people to fit, if I’d been the type to indulge in that sort of thing. I wasn’t. I preferred to focus my attention on one woman at a time.
The water quickly got hot and I pushed Brin in before me. She squealed as the water hit her, but it was more out of shock than any discomfort. My girl liked to make noise. I was okay with that.
I got the soap in my hands quickly and started to lather it, running my hands up and down her body.
“Now my turn,” she said as she did the same. She was more careful with me. Careful to avoid my painfully hard dick. Just brushing her hands over my ass.
She’s still so new to this. I’m going to have to teach her everything.
I dipped my head and took her mouth. She moaned even as her hands went around my neck. When I reached between her thighs I could feel the heat and slickness, and I thought about how that was going to feel on my cock.
Unable to wait any longer, I turned her and pushed her hands against the wall of the shower. Then pulled her hips back toward me.
“Spread your legs a little more, baby.”
She did, and the sight of her braced, ready take my cock, nearly undid me.
“Is shower sex as good as other sex?” she asked.
I pushed my dick against her entrance and slid home. “You tell me,” I grunted and proceeded to fuck her into oblivion.
“Ohhhh. Unnnnnhhhh. Ahhhhhh. Garrett!”
My ears were ringing again. She was slapping her hands against the shower wall even as the hot water cascaded down around us. The heat of her body, her slick pussy, were unlike anything I had ever felt.
So tight. So wet. I reached around her hip and my thumb found her clit. “You need to come for me. Now, Brin.”
Because I wasn’t going to last. My back was tight and my balls felt like they were in my gut.
“Yesssssssyesssssyesssss,” she cried out.
She was squeezing me hard from the inside and my mind went blank. I thrust into her without restraint or control, and then I was coming, and the idea that I was pumping my cum deep into her body wrecked me.
I finally came down off the fucking high of my life, but I didn’t leave her. I wanted to stay inside her, keeping my cum inside of her, too.
That’s how it would be if we were trying to have a baby.
I forced myself to pull away then. She was breathing heavily, her hands still planted against the wall.
“Hold still. I’ll clean you up.” I took the washrag I hadn’t used on her body and looked down between her legs. There it was. Starting to slide down her inner thigh. What was this? This feeling that had basically been with me all day. And there, seeing my cum drip out of her body I realized what it was.
It was fucking hope.
16
SABRINA
Pine’s Ranch—One Week Later
“You have got to be shitting me.”
“I’m not!” I said.
It was late at night and we were lying in Garrett’s bed, naked, because that’s how he liked things when I was in bed. It had been a day off for him. One of the first he’d had since we’d been together. I mean, since I started staying at this house. He’d taken me to Branson, which was the nearest town that had a big movie theater. We watched a movie, went and got some burgers. He made me eat a whole half and FRIES! I’d forgotten how delicious those little suckers were. And then he brought me home and made love to me.
He didn’t even mind that I kept Romeo with us the whole day in my purse. Romeo didn’t seem to mind at all. He just took his normal feedings and napped the whole time.
It had been the best day. It had been the best sex. Because that just continued to get better and better. He showed me what he liked when giving him a blow job. I was becoming an expert in ball cupping. And he made me figure out what I liked best when he was giving me cunnilingus. Which, I agree, is not the sexiest word in the world, but he kept referring to it as eating me out and there was something about the food and sex reference that I didn’t like, so I was sticking to cunnilingus.
“Say it again,” he demanded.
“Louis Vuitton.”
“Now the other one.”
“Louboutin.” I did this in my best French accent.
“You’re saying the same damn thing,” he insisted.
I laughed. “I’m not. There is a Louis Vuitton and a Christian Louboutin. People think they are the same when they hear it, but they are two totally different designers.”
“I think I’ll stick to Nike. Which pair of shoes is your favorite?”
I gasped and lifted my chin from where I was resting it against his chest so that I could glare at him. “You would ask me to choose between my shoes? Are you some kind of animal? I love them all equally, of course. Okay, don’t tell the others, but my Choos…well there’s just something special about them.”
“I think I would like to fuck you in your shoes.”
I snorted. “That would be a lot of fucking.”
He ran his hand along my back and I snuggled deeper into him.
“I don’t mind. You got somewhere else you need to be?”
No. I didn’t. There was absolutely nowhere else I wanted to be. This past week with Garrett hadn’t been like anything else I had ever experienced in my life and I didn’t want it to end. There was just one problem. Theoretically, it did have to end.
There hadn’t been an “event” this whole week. I went into town with Garrett on three different occasions and saw nothing. Maybe whoever it had been had finally given up and moved on. Which technically meant I didn’t need a bodyguard anymore.
I lifted myself up, but when I did Garrett’s eyes fixed on my breasts. He was making his adoration of my body quite well known. I pulled a sheet around me to cover up so he could focus as I sat next to him.
“We should probably talk about that,” I said. “I mean, it’s been over a week since anything has happened. Maybe my stalker has finally moved on.”
I watched his jaw tighten. “You’re saying you want to go back to The King’s Land, then? Tired of slumming it here?”
“Don’t say that,” I said, hurt that those words would come out of his mouth. “I love this place and you know it. I’m just…I mean, I don’t know…I can’t stay her
e indefinitely.”
He sighed and rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I suppose not.”
“Not if we’re, if you’re just…fucking around…with me.”
He glared at me then and I waited for him to correct me. To tell me that what had been happening between us was more than just fun times and good sex. That it went way deeper, which was why he didn’t want me to leave. I realized I was actually holding my breath.
“Right. I wouldn’t want you to think…” His voice trailed off but I understood his meaning.
“Wouldn’t want me to think we were serious or anything.” I had a hard time saying the words, and I could feel my heart pounding against my chest.
“I told you I didn’t do serious,” he snapped.
I nodded. “I know. You did. It’s okay. I’m going to go get a glass of water. Do you want some?”
“Brin,” he growled. “Don’t do this.”
I had to get out of the bedroom before I started crying in front of him. Because that would only piss him off more. “I’m not doing anything but getting water.”
I slid out of the bed and found his T-shirt as the first article of clothing that would cover me. I put it on and loved that it smelled like him.
“I’ll get you a glass, too,” I said with my back to him. I shut the door quietly behind me and made my way to the kitchen before I broke down and bent over, the hurt was so bad.
I told myself I could handle it. I told myself that I could just take what he offered and let it be what it was. I told myself I had kept enough barriers around my heart that when he did this, when he dumped me, it wouldn’t hurt so bad.
I was wrong. I was so damn wrong.
I fought to hold my shit together, and in the end I was proud I didn’t cry or sob. I just let myself feel the pain so I would know how it was going to feel when I did eventually leave. A smarter girl would have packed her things and gone immediately. Shown some pride. But I was never very smart when it came to Garrett Pine and I’d certainly never had any pride when it came to him, either.
So I filled up two glasses of water, put a smile on my face, and went back to bed with him. He didn’t say anything when I walked into the room. I checked on Romeo. Garrett let me keep his cat bed on the bed with us so Romeo would know I was close. I gave him a little rub on his tiny head and then settled back in between the covers in the space Garrett had made for me.
No, I wasn’t very smart. A smart girl wouldn’t dig the hole any deeper than she already had. But it was like I couldn’t stop myself.
“Goodnight, Garrett.”
“Goodnight, Brin.”
I thought about how nice that was. How I wanted to hear that from him every night for the rest of our lives.
Instead, I would take the next few days. If there were still no more threats or calls or sightings, I would leave. And break my own heart before he could do it for me.
GARRETT
Dusty Creek—The Next Day
I needed a drink. It was after five and I should have been heading home to check on Brin but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go back and face that smile. I knew it would be there.
She would beam at me when I walked through the door. She would have something cooking in the oven. She would have made some crazy-ass dessert.
But her smile…tonight it wouldn’t be real. Not after last night. Not like it had been this whole past week.
After five years of one-night stands, suddenly there was this amazing, gorgeous, sexy woman in my home who made me feel like I was the best part of her day. And I couldn’t go home to her.
I left the station and made my way to The Bar. I took a stool away from everyone else, sending the message I didn’t necessarily want conversation.
“Sheriff, it’s been awhile.”
I acknowledged Jack with a chin tilt.
“Your regular?”
My regular was a draft of the house brew, but I felt like I needed something stronger than that.
I shook my head. “Make it a whiskey. Neat.”
Jack let out a whistle. “Sounds like woman trouble.”
“Is this the part where the wise bartender solves all my problems?” I snapped.
“I don’t know. Do those problems have anything to do with Sabrina King?”
I glared at him while he poured my whiskey. “What do you know about me and Sabrina?”
“I know you’ve hung out here a few times. Had dinner. Sat at the bar. I’ve seen you around town doing errands with her, too. And, of course, there is the way she looks at you. Like you hung the moon or some shit.”
I didn’t want to know that. I didn’t want to know how she looked at me. It’s why I…I tried my hardest not look at her.
I took a sip of my drink and felt my tongue go numb.
“I know you don’t look at her the same,” Jack said, and it was like a knife in the gut.
Because he was right. I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I was broken. All that she offered wasn’t mine to take, because I wasn’t going down that road ever again. Fifteen fucking minutes. For fifteen minutes I had been the happiest schmuck on the planet, waiting for the woman I loved to pledge herself to me.
Who would put themselves through that again?
“You hear what she’s doing?” Jack asked.
What the hell was she doing? As far as I knew she was planning a freaking engagement party and a wedding at the same time. If she wasn’t in the middle of putting something together to eat when I got home, she was usually on her laptop. Any time I asked her what she was doing, she would say her job, which to her meant shopping for things.
“No,” I snapped, pissed that he knew something that I didn’t about Brin.
“Setting the vet up with an animal rescue shelter. Doc and Charlotte have been wanting to do it for a long time, just couldn’t get enough donations. Sabrina King got her soon-to-be brother-in-law to pony up the whole nut. As long as it’s maintained as a no-kill shelter.”
“Yeah, that sounds like her.” Like a woman who would bring her cat on a date and keep it in a towel-lined purse.
“Hot and kind. You don’t find that too often, huh?”
I looked at Jack then. He was a good-looking guy. Right age. Someone Sabrina might date after we ended things. I might see them around town holding hands and shit. Because he was right. Sabrina was hot and kind and a million other things. A good man would see that in her and want it for himself. Suddenly I had this urge to break his nose and make him not such a good-looking guy anymore.
“You didn’t strike me as a poacher, Jack,” I said calmly.
He laughed. “Oh, I don’t poach. But I’m telling you this, man. If the situations were reversed, how long would you stay with someone who doesn’t look at you like you look at them back? Me? Not too long, I would think.”
I couldn’t hear this anymore. I needed to get out of there. I shot back my drink and grimaced as the burn slid down my throat. I threw a ten-dollar bill on the bar and walked way.
As soon as I hit the street I saw him.
A tall, lean male wearing a black hoodie. He was heading for what appeared to be an old Nissan that looked like it had seen a lot of miles. I jogged up to him before he could get in the car.
“Hey! You! Stop.”
He turned toward me. “Is there a problem, sheriff?”
“Do I know you?”
The kid put his hood down and I thought his face seemed familiar. “I’m Danny Wade, Pete Wade’s son.”
Right. I knew Pete had a son named Danny. “Haven’t seen you around here for a while.”
“I was working a well outside Houston. Dried up, so now I’m back until something else opens up.”
What else did I know about Danny? Something about him and his father. “You living with your dad? Last I heard you two had a falling-out.”
As I recalled, Pete had been furious enough with his son to kick him out of the house. He’d just never said what it was about.
“He’s up in Wyoming until fall,
working on a drill up there,” he said, spitting on the ground while he did. “Only reason why I’m home. Me and Dad don’t mesh well together.”
“Let me ask you, do you know Sabrina King?”
He snorted. “Uh, yeah. Like, the whole country knows Sabrina King. Cowboy Princess and all that reality shit.”
“Yeah, but did you know her before that?” I pressed.
“She was a senior when I was a freshman in high school. So I knew of her, yeah. She was the most popular girl in school. I doubt she knew who I was. What’s with all the questions?”
“Just looking into some things for her. Have you seen her in town lately?”
He seemed to consider that. “Yeah, I saw her coming out of the Piggly Wiggly like...I don’t know, a week or so ago. I pointed at her and was like, oh, shit, it’s Sabrina King. Then it was weird because I remember she took off running. No clue what startled her, though.”
“You been to Dallas recently?”
He shook his head. “I told you I was working outside of Houston. Am I in some kind of trouble here? Because I didn’t do shit.”
I could tell he was getting defensive. Probably had every right since his only crime happened to be wearing a black hoodie and loosely fitting the description Brin had given me.
Of course it made sense now that it was probably Danny she had seen that day in the street. She’d just leaped to the wrong conclusion about who he was. Which meant there was no stalker in Dusty Creek.
Which meant there was no reason to keep her at my house any longer.
“No, you’re fine. See you around town.”
“Whatever, sheriff.”
He got in his car and I watched as he drove away. I had to go home. I had to tell Brin the man she’d seen had just been someone who recognized her and who had happened to be wearing a hoodie.
I stood rooted there on the sidewalk because I knew. I knew as soon as I did, that as soon as I told her she had nothing to fear anymore, I would lose her.
Because her smile, when she beamed at me, wasn’t going to be real tonight.
