by Alison Ryan
He put his hands on my face and paused just long enough to look into my eyes, and he kissed me again. Slow and deep, a passionate kiss with depth and weight. A serious kiss. His hand moved from my face to the back of my head, not that I needed any urging.
This kiss I returned, for all I was worth. It had been too long since I’d been kissed or touched by somebody who cared about more than what how short my skirt was, how tight my top was, or what I might be able to do for their career.
Sex in Hollywood is a form of currency, and in many ways, you have to pay to play. There were times I’d done things I wasn’t proud of, no matter how good they may have felt at the time. But sex that’s just sex, or even kissing that’s just a means to an end, a tool to get into the other person’s pants, can never be as good as with somebody you love, and I mean really love. Not the kind of love that shows up over drinks at some ephemeral hotspot on the Sunset Strip and disappears when the sun comes up the next morning or the kind that closes a multimillion dollar deal to get a client a role in the next summer blockbuster.
Being kissed by a man motivated by nothing but the pounding of his heart, kissing that didn’t necessarily intend to lead to the shedding of clothing, was refreshing and welcome.
I kissed Hayes back, my hands finding his chest, flattening against his pecs. He kissed my face, my cheeks and chin, the tip of my nose. He moved down to my neck, a kiss here and a nibble there, the rough stubble of his cheek grazing against the soft flesh of my throat. It was electrifying, and I threw my arms around his neck to remain upright.
We were both on our knees, raised up as tall as we were able, pressing against each other. Alone, but for the river meandering past below and our horses grazing upstream, paying us no mind.
His right hand wandered down to my hip, finding the exposed skin where my t-shirt had lifted from my jeans. I gasped and trembled at his touch, and the fingers of his left hand intertwined in my hair and tilted my head back so he could aggressively claim my mouth with his.
As we kissed, the hand on my hip dropped to my ass, taking a handful of it and pulling me tight against his erection, so rampant I could feel it clearly through the jeans we each wore.
I reached for his t-shirt, pulling it from inside his jeans and stretching it up and over his shoulders. He withdrew just long enough to let me get it off and toss it onto the grass. Everything about him was hard and muscly. My hands explored the familiar terrain of his chest and abs; his incredible shoulders and flawless back.
The hand on my ass kept grabbing and pulling and grinding, and his middle and ring fingers were dipping deep into the cleft of my sex, providing a pressure I couldn’t get enough of.
Except I needed more.
I fumbled with his belt buckle, an oversized silver decorative piece he’d won in some rodeo, desperate to get at his cock. He separated from me a moment, and I followed his lead in scanning the horizon in both directions. Across the river was a solid wall of trees, but where we were was much more exposed. The horses were content, and the only other sign of life were a pair of hawks circling overhead.
We made eye contact and exchanged conspiratorial grins. He pulled my shirt and bra off all at once, liberating my breasts, capped with angrily swollen nipples. As he stared hungrily at them, I returned to working on his ridiculous belt buckle, finally getting it unhooked.
He kissed my shoulders and head as I set about freeing his manhood. Once I got his zipper down, it sprung out, a coiled snake striking at me. The sight of it inspired a throb inside me, a place deep inside that remembered, wistfully, his impressive size.
I took hold of it, squeezing and pulling, and he groaned, his mouth right next to my ear. “Shit, Sarah, I wasn’t expecting…I mean, I didn’t bring anything…”
I stroked him and whispered back in his ear. “I don’t care, Hayes. I need to be with you. I need it so bad.”
I stood up and he slipped my boots off. He unbuttoned my jeans, reaching back to ease them over my ass. His eyes drank me in as he lowered them to my ankles, where I kicked them away.
“You have the prettiest…. well, you know,” he said, his eyes locked on the altar of my femininity.
I turned coquette. “My what, baby?”
Instead of speaking his reply, he used his tongue to show me exactly what he meant. He took my ass in both hands and pulled me forward, pressing his mouth between my legs.
My hands grabbed his shoulders to maintain my balance, and I rode his handsome face like the mechanical bull at Marlin’s Honky Tonk in Great Falls, where Hayes and I once snuck in with fake IDs the summer before I left for Loyola Marymount.
That night, after way too many shots, I’d rode the bull a full two seconds longer than Hayes, to a standing ovation and high fives from every woman in attendance.
A hand tangled up in his hair was the only thing keeping me from falling as I approached my release, and he seemed to sense it. He helped ease me down to the soft grass, where he resumed his ministrations. He kissed me everywhere, and a particularly cool gust of wind, a harbinger of Autumn, found my nipples and made me whimper. I took them in my hands as his wonderful tongue coaxed me over the edge, his powerful arms holding my hips in place.
He lithely slid up my body, his face drawing level with mine just in time to watch me react to his entry.
In an instant, he filled me. I yelped at the invasion, my body unaccustomed to his girth. His pace was hard and fast, and when he kissed me again, it was seasoned with the flavor of my own arousal. So naughty, so wicked, so fucking hot.
I came easily for him, writhing on the grass. I could see cotton candy clouds in the blue sky through the branches of the tree overhead, past his shoulders, and I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t floating on one of them. Heaven couldn’t feel better than being made love to by Hayes Calloway.
He gave me a sweet battering, a relentless, delicious pounding that had me clawing at his back and forced my legs to wrap themselves behind his thighs and then up around his waist in a desperate attempt to keep him there forever.
One climax flowed into the next, and when he rolled my hips back and took a new angle, I bit down hard on his shoulder in distress at the overwhelming intensity of the ecstasy.
He slowed after that, and I caught sight of the teeth marks, a perfect set of indents that would leave quite a bruise. Any harder, and he’d be bleeding, but he gave no notice.
“I love you, Sarah. I’ve never stopped loving you. No matter where you go, I’ll always love you.”
His voice bypassed my ears and spoke directly to my heart, and tears formed in my eyes. I loved him, too, and, likewise, I’d never stopped loving him. Never stopping pining for him. Whatever Whitmer and Kevin and my father had done to drive me away, and whatever the amusement park ride that was California had done to keep me off balance and spinning through my absurd facsimile of real life among all the make believe of Hollywood, this was where I was meant to be. With this rugged specimen of a man, kissing me and forcing my body to do things and feel things he alone was put on Earth to make me feel.
His long, slow strokes built a different kind of climax, and each time he entered me fully, he found that place only he knew, touching it again and again.
Like chopping down an oak with hand axe, striking with power and precision, that same spot, digging deeper into my soul, chipping away all the time and the distance between us, the detritus of wasted years piling up around me like pieces of bark and chips of trunk, deeper and deeper until…
Until, instead of yelling “Timber,” Hayes gasped “Sarah!” and he erupted. And the tree he’d been chopping away at, the oak that was the steadfast resolve beneath my cold steel exterior, to never care too much, to put my career ahead of my heart, came crashing down.
I kissed him desperately, a violent trembling beginning in my legs and traveling up my spine to my arms. I was bitterly cold and boiling hot all at once, and everything inside me clenched down on him.
The feeling, the actual, physical sensat
ion of his coming inside me, giving me everything he had to give me, was what first sent me into delirium, and as I recovered, it was the smelling salts that were his kisses that guided me back to the present. His arms were wrapped around me, and his hardness had lost none of its rigidity.
He let himself sort of slide sideways, rolling me with him so that we were face to face, legs twisted together. Every beat of his heart made him throb inside me.
Holding my face, he kissed me softly, first my forehead, then my eyelids, my cheeks and below my ears. My hips were still gently churning, rolling, wanting to get every drop that he might have held in reserve.
When he finally arrived at my mouth, we kissed sweetly, small kisses from every conceivable angle, both holding back joyful laughter.
It ended with a final deep kiss, and then his hand traced the curve of my hip and the nape of my neck. He couldn’t stop touching me, not that I ever wanted him to.
For the longest time, we just stared at each other, hands exploring, kissing intermittently, listening our impatient steeds whinnying and snorting to remind us that they’d been ridden hard and would like some dinner. He finally softened and rolled onto his back, and I kicked a leg across his and let an arm fall across his chest.
“I’m in the mood for sushi. Who delivers out here?” I asked, innocently.
“Sushi? That might be a problem,” he replied. “There are usually some wood grouse out this way, but I’d have a whole lot better chance with a rifle than with my bare hands.”
“You’ve got all the weapon you need right here,” I said, holding him in my hand until I felt him start to grow again.
“You’re so sexy, Sarah. So damn pretty.”
“You already got lucky, Hayes, you don’t need to keep saying that,” I responded, enjoying the feel of him hardening in my grip.
“You should be told that every day. Every day for forever. Speaking of which, you probably heard that Huck is getting married, right?”
I nodded. Momma had mentioned it.
“Would you accompany me?”
“I’d love to, but I didn’t pack anything formal. I wasn’t expecting to attend a wedding,” I said.
“You’d be the most beautiful girl there if you showed up in a burlap sack. Maybe you ought to, to be fair to Belle. That’s Huck’s intended.”
“Bless her heart,” I answered, the first time I’d used the trite, country expression in many years. I meant to express my sympathy for her evidently average looks.
“Oh, she’s gorgeous. But next to you, plain as a pancake with no butter or syrup.”
I stretched out on the grass. “You like my butter and syrup?”
“I like your everything, girl.” He rose onto an elbow and kissed me again, his hand crossing my body between belly button and sex making me shiver. “But that sun doesn’t figure to stay up in the sky too much longer, and as hot as you are, the nights are starting to get pretty cold out here. Let’s ride back home and see how your momma’s coming with dinner. Then we can find a hayloft for a nightcap.”
“You’re mighty cocky, Hayes. What makes you think I want a nightcap?” I asked, playfully.
“This body of yours,” he said, letting his hand graze my tender opening, making me whimper. “Speaks my language. And it’s telling me it’s aching for more. Am I wrong?”
“You’re definitely not wrong,” I said, reaching for my t-shirt.
Hayes stood up, stretching, sculpted from granite. “What happens when Belle throws her bouquet, Sarah? At the reception, I mean.”
I adjusted my sports bra and pulled my t-shirt back on. “What happens? Somebody catches it and they’ll be next to get hitched, if memory serves,” I answered.
Hayes extended a hand to help me up and we started walking back to our horses, boots in hand.
“I thought so. I can see the headline in The Hollywood Reporter now. ‘Super-Agent to the Stars Sarah Acres Catches Bouquet at Country Wedding, Forced to Marry Lucky Local Boy’.” Hayes winked at me as we walked.
“The Hollywood Reporter?” I laughed. “Who are you and what have you done with Hayes Calloway?”
“Gotta get my Sarah Acres news somehow,” he smirked, slipping his boots back on and pulling himself up into his saddle after untying Johnny Rocket. “Now get your fine ass up there in that saddle and race my back.”
Making love to Hayes like that stirred long-forgotten things inside me, and I required no help mounting Jezebel this time, although I wondered which would leave me more sore – galloping on horseback over rough terrain, or endless orgasms all over the magnificent cock of Hayes Calloway?
Once I was comfortably in the saddle, I pulled a fast one on Hayes to get a head start. “Shit, I misplaced my keys. Are those them on the ground next to the tree?” When he trotted over to look, I gave Jezebel a little kick and a “Hee-ya!” and we took off as if we were shot out of a cannon. Hayes would have to eat our dust all the way back.
I made a mental note to search for a YouTube tutorial on “How to catch a bouquet at a wedding reception” as soon as I was back in the civilized world of cell phone reception.
9
After an amazing dinner prepared by Momma, we were in the cab of his truck, parked out in a field by his house, like we’d done so many times when we were teenagers.
But there was no curfew this time. We had all the time in the world if we wanted it.
I had laid my head on his arm that was stretched across the bench seat, just staring at him when he asked it.
“What really kept you from us?”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at him. I laid my head back, the top of it hitting the cab’s rear window. What could I even say?
“Kevin’s death hit me so hard,” I started, but Hayes shook his head.
“Don’t use Kevin as an excuse,” he said. “It wasn’t just about him. You forget I know you better than that, Sarah Beth Acres. You’ve got a scar on your leg, but the deepest scar of all is on your heart.”
I was angry now. I sat up, my cheeks flushed. “You don’t know shit. Kevin dying about killed me. Actually, it did kill a huge part of me, a huge part of my family, a part we can never get back. What was the point of staying in a place that would only remind me every single day that he was gone?” I started to sob uncontrollably, the rattling sounds of my anguish spilling out of me- a faucet of grief. One I couldn’t turn off.
Hayes reached out and grabbed me. He pulled me to his chest as I shook beneath him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to dismiss what you’ve been through. But I know that’s not what keeps someone away for a decade. Kevin is the easy answer. Why won’t you just admit it?”
I screamed. “Because what good does it do for you to know? Why are you pushing me to talk about this?”
“Because I love you,” he said. “I’ve loved you since we were eight years old. I’ll love you until we’re long gone from this world, and if there’s another life after this, I’ll love you in that one too.”
I clung to him now, desperate to hear him say it again, but scared to say it back; terrified to tell him I felt the same way and that I always had.
That I would love him until the day I died.
“When you love someone,” he continued. “You never give up. Even when they move away. My love for you didn’t stop then and it won’t stop now. And that’s what scared you, Sarah. Because you loved me as much as you’ve loved anyone. And love is fucking terrifying. Especially after you lose it. You never want to go through that pain again.” He paused. “I know it all too well.”
He pulled me away for a moment and put my face in his hands. “But it’s worth it, Sarah. It’s worth the risk, especially when the only thing that would ever keep me from you is death itself. I’d never hurt you, but damn… you burned me good. It about killed me to let you go. And I told myself if you ever came back to Whitmer, I’d do everything I could to get you to stay. To show you my love was worth staying for.”
I
kissed him, a deep kiss that I hoped would act as a response to all he was telling me. I didn’t have the words. Not yet. Maybe never.
He kissed me back, the taste of him both familiar and new. This was an older Hayes now. When I’d kissed him years ago, we’d lived in a different time and place. It had been before the loss, before all the grief that had numbed me to his love and to this town.
They say time heals all wounds. But it doesn’t, not really. A heart can only take so much, and then it’s broken beyond repair. It can’t take the sadness day after day after day, every day. So, we put it other places. We leave it where we can’t see it, where it can’t remind us of what we’ve lost.
I’d left my heart and my grief here. In Whitmer. Underneath a ponderosa pine tree and with Hayes. Kevin had my grief, but Hayes had my heart.
I needed him. Like always.
I can’t remember how I got into his bedroom.
I’m guessing he carried me. There’s no way I could have walked. Hayes was broad and strong, and I have a hazy memory of my arms draped around his neck, his mouth on mine, pulling away only to tell me I was beautiful and that he loved me.
Always.
His hands were not the hands of the past. He was skilled now, older, and he knew what he was doing as he pulled my dress over my head. There was no hesitation like there had been in the hayloft years ago. Hayes was a man now, after all.
He knew what he wanted from me and wasn’t afraid to take it.
In just a few moments I was naked and he was inside me. It was both familiar and foreign. I was making love to the past and the present all at once.
I was dizzy with desire.
I arched my back as he thrust, hard and slow at first, making me call out his name as his size and fury bore into my core. I ran my hands up his muscled chest and to his handsome face, the one looking down at me, his expression full of primal lust.
“I need to fuck you first, Sarah,” he growled. “This is years of aggression. I can only pound it into you. And you’ll have to take it, baby. I made love to you earlier.” He thrusted into me hard. “But now? I have to fuck you.”
