"Will he come after you?"
I turned to watch the buildings pass by. "No, I don't think so. I left him almost two years ago, and I haven't heard a word from him. He's got the resources to find me, if he wanted to. He's the kind of guy who can afford to pay what it takes to find a person, wherever they are."
"What if he does?"
I sighed. "Let's not borrow trouble, Tre."
I directed him to a hotel and we checked in, and Tre carried his duffel and my little suitcase. I'd only brought a few necessities. I planned to have a moving company pack everything up for me later. We showered separately, and I told Tre to dress nice, as I wanted to go on a date with him. All our time thus far had been spent in bed or at my house. I wanted to take him out, parade him on my arm, show him the big city.
I took him to Nick's in Fondren, and we spent a long evening drinking wine, eating, and talking. I was discovering that what Tre lacked in urban sophistication, he more than made up for in curiosity, eagerness to learn, and a capacity for stimulating conversation.
I found myself staring at him as we talked, watching his black-shadowed chin move, watching his eyes like cinnamon-sprinkled cocoa move with restless energy, his thick, gentle fingers always tapping the table or twisting a napkin or playing with his fork. His ink-dark hair constantly fell across his left eye, and he brushed it aside with a thumb. He was wearing a short sleeve blue button-down that left his biceps almost bare, stretching across his broad chest. He'd buttoned it almost to the collar, but before we left I undid the second button, exposing a portion of his smooth chest.
I had been attracted to Dan, of course. He was the epitome of polished charm, calculated swagger, and sleek, expensive manners. I was, then, just an unfinished corn-fed country girl, decked out in cut-off jean shorts that Daddy wouldn't have approved of, but he was dead so I wore them to spite him for leaving me. Dan drove through Savannah, saw me lounging on a park bench, reading a book, and he proceeded to charm the pants off me, literally. He talked me into his hotel room, got me hot and bothered with well-placed hands and lips, convinced me to let him touch me, got my hands curious with his seductive words and then it was too late, he was already there, poking me with a sharp pinch and slow movements that started to feel good, after the initial pain. After that, it was easy to believe his cool promises and to be impressed by his Jaguar and his Rolex and his easy talk of million-dollar condos. I left Savannah in his Jag without so much as a note to my mother or sisters.
Tre...oh, Tre was different, as opposite as it was possible to be. He wasn't at all polished, and he was unsophisticated in the ways of city life. He stared at the buildings and the people, fascinated by a place as tiny and backwater as Jackson. I imagined him in New York, or Paris, or Beijing, or Johannesburg, and I smiled at the idea. He was so genuine, though, his inherent kindness shone through in everything he did. He was prone to thinking before he answered, and his responses were always well-phrased and articulate. His father, for all his hard-headed, hard-right morality, was an intelligent, educated man who had passed this quality on to his son. There was ruggedness to Tre, though, a wildness to him. He would be at home on a horse, or a hiking trail. He had shown a dangerous side, too, when he punched his father, who wasn't a small man by any means. I thought again, as we walked along the Pearl River, that Tre was wasted in a place like Yazoo City.
We were heading back to our hotel, passing by a narrow alley, the hour late, the city dark and quiet. A young man jumped out at us, wielding a long, wicked knife. He was maybe eighteen, white, his dirty, ragged, appearance, track-scarred arms and rail-thin, gaunt frame proclaiming him a drug addict. He jabbed the knife at me, threatening rather than attacking.
"Give me money," he said, showing yellow, rotting teeth. "Gimme all your money, or I'll kill her."
Tre shifted subtly in front of me, and I willingly moved behind him.
"Why don't you put the knife down and we'll talk," Tre said, holding his hands in front of him.
He sounded calm, but I could see the tension and fear in the curl of his shoulders, the coiled-spring way he stood.
"Shut the fuck up!" Fear, desperation, and raw hunger blazed in the addict's eyes. "Shut up! Money, or you die!"
"Listen, we'll help you," Tre said, taking a slow step forward. "Just put the knife away. We'll get you help. You're sick. You don't need to threaten us."
It happened like a nightmare lightning strike. The dirty young man lashed out with his knife, jabbing forward with the blade up. Tre knocked the blade aside, taking a long, deep cut along the outside of his forearm. He latched onto the knife-arm with his unwounded hand, clamping down with all his strength, twisting the arm upside down and putting his weight onto the stressed joint. The addict screamed, shrill and panicked.
Tre glared into the young man's eyes, and I saw the anger, the pent-up rage burning there, fueled by adrenaline. Tre's fist lifted up, cocked back, lashed out and connected with the other man's jaw. Teeth crumbled and fell loose, accompanied by blood and drool. The knife clattered to the ground, and Tre kicked it away, stepping back from the addict, who was clutching his mouth and moaning.
Tre pulled me away, turning his back on our attacker. I was opening my mouth to warn him when I caught a glimpse of motion from the corner of my eye. I shoved Tre, feeling a cold bite of pain along my shoulder. Tre bounced off the wall, grappled with the addict, who was strengthened now by pain and desperation. Tre was pressed back against the alley wall, the knife closing in on his face, holding it away with one hand, the other bleeding and scrabbling at his opponent's face.
The tableau froze like that for a second that stretched into eternity, and then snapped in a rush. Tre's fingers clamped onto the addict's throat, squeezing his windpipe, crushing it with inexorable fingers. A twist of his body, and Tre was shoving the attacker away, bashing out with a fist like a jackhammer, pounding, pounding, pounding. He was holding the bloody young man's frame up with one hand and bashing with the other, smashing mercilessly.
I found my senses, called Tre's name and touched his shoulder. "It's over, Tre! Let go! Stop!" I pulled him away, pushed him back from the limp form. "Come on, Tre, it's fine. He's down, you won."
Tre shook his head as if to clear it of a fog. He started, looking at the unconscious body at his feet.
"Is he...did I...?"
I knelt down by the body, listening. There was a gasping, gurgling breath, a low, weak moan.
"No, he's alive," I said.
I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911. The next several hours passed in stretching-toffee blur. We answered questions, got attended by paramedics, who put a bandage on the shallow cut on my shoulder, announcing that Tre needed stitches. The police filed their reports, telling us not to leave Jackson, but that it was unlikely Tre would be charged with anything, as the young man who'd attacked us was wanted in connection with several other muggings. He'd stabbed several people, actually, killing one and wounding the rest.
We went to the hospital, where we sat waiting in silence for an interminable number of hours, time without passage, just a ticking clock, a hard plastic hospital seat and the mobile bed. Eventually the hospital people came, nurses and anesthetists and the doctor, and his arm was stitched up, twenty sutures along his forearm.
It was nearly dawn by the time we got back to our hotel room, and we collapsed into bed, exhausted. I woke with mid-afternoon sun shining on me, snugged against Tre's chest. I let myself wake up slowly, savoring the peace, the muzzy warmth and Tre's skin against my face. After a while I slipped out of bed and took a long shower. When I emerged wrapped in a towel, steam billowing around me, Tre was awake.
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
"Like I could use a shower," he said. "But fine, otherwise."
"All yours, then," I said.
He didn't move, though. His eyes were on me, watching me, so I dropped the towel and did my hair with the bathroom door open, naked. I left my face make-up free, since I anticipated it getting smu
dged in the near future. After I finished brushing my teeth, he got in the shower, and I lay on the bed, watching him through the open door. I felt lust for his body pool in my belly and spread to my thighs. He toweled off, brushed his teeth, oblivious to my gaze. He came out, the towel wrapped around his waist, low and showing that V, that delicious arrowhead leading to his manhood.
I was naked on the bed, waiting for him. I lay on my side, supporting my head on my hand. He approached the bed slowly, and the towel around him began to bulge outward. He crossed around to the side of the bed, facing me, looking down at me with desire blazing in his eyes. I kept still, willing him to make the first move. His hands twitched at his sides, then reached for me, and I forced myself to hold still yet longer, even though I desperately wanted to roll over onto my back and pull him down to me and feel his hands on me, devour me, plunder me.
He leaned down, kissed me, one hand propping him up on the bed, the other roving from my hip, caressing my ass with a brief graze before moving up my side, tickling my ribs. He cupped my breast and thumbed my aching, stiffened nipples, learning now how I liked to be touched. I moaned into his mouth when his fingers traced down from my breast to my pussy and nudged at me. I lifted my leg aside, granting him access to my opening, and he inserted a gentle pair of fingers into me. I let my hand tug aside the towel and grasp his hardening member as it sprang free, moaning again at the feel of him in my hand, anticipating his entrance into me, huge and hard and so thorough, so satisfying.
He moved to get on the bed, but I stopped him. "I want you to take me from behind," I told him.
"From behind? Like, in the..."
I shook my head and stood up, kissing him, fondling his cock as I dipped my tongue into his mouth.
"No, not there, not yet," I said. "I'll show you."
I turned around and bent over the bed, snagging a pillow and stuffing it under my stomach to lift me up farther. Tre pressed himself against me, and my eyes fluttered at the pressure of his hot length against the seam of my ass, his probing tip pressing against my anus. I considered, briefly, putting him in that opening, but decided to leave that for another time. Neither of us was ready for that, just yet. I reached behind me and guided him down to my pussy, lifting up on my toes and sinking down onto him as he thrust himself in.
I gasped, full of him, wet and ready for him. He moaned, pulsing into me, slowly at first, experimental thrusts. I moved my hips against him, encouraging him. I called his name, breathless already. He started to push harder, and then he leaned into me, taking my grinding hips in his hands and jerking me into him.
He slowed, suddenly.
"No!" I said. "Don't stop, please!"
"I'm already there," he gasped, "I want you to...come with me."
I pushed my ass down against him, starting my own rhythm. "I will, I will, I promise," I said. "I want to feel you come, I want to feel you lose it, deep inside me."
He started to move again, pushing into me, and the brief pause had brought him back from the edge. He thrust, thrust, thrust, harder now, his hands pulling me with increasing violence into him, a near-savagery that shocked me.
"Yes, yes, Tre! Fuck me so hard," I said, with a gasp and a whimper, "I love it like this, give it to me hard!"
Tre complied, moving harder until he was slamming his cock into me, stabbing deep, pushing into the very uttermost depths of my pussy, drawing ecstasy from me with each push. He came hard, blasting his seed into me, groaning and crying my name, "Shea, Shea, yes, Shea!"
His hands were rough and strong on my hips, pulling me into him as he came. My orgasm began as he buried himself with slow, hard thrusts into me, and I clawed the pillow as small explosions rocked through me.
"Don't stop, don't stop!" I said, shoving my buttocks into him furiously, gasping his name now in the rhythm of his thrusts into me.
I came with explosive fury, and he felt it, caught the intensity of it and redoubled his frenzied ramming into me, even though he was already done and his come dripping out of me now. He kept going, kept going, softening but still filling me, driving the orgasm to an agonizing roar of rapturous delight through me, until I was sobbing and limp, my folds sore from his passion, throbbing with pulsating pleasure.
He picked me up in his arms, and easily lifted me to the bed, gathered me against him, suddenly as tender as he had been savage a moment ago. Our breathing matched, quick, heaving gasps, as we lay together sweat-slick and spent.
When I could breathe, I said, "Oh my good Lord, Tre...I have never in my life been fucked that hard."
"I didn't hurt you did I?" Tre said, apprehensive now.
"It's a good hurt, baby," I said. "I loved it. I love making you lose control on me. You'd never hurt me on purpose, I know that."
"I did hurt you, though." It wasn't a question.
"I'll be a bit tender for a few minutes, yes. You were very...passionate."
He looked at me across the pillow, his eyes sorrowful and apologetic. "I'm so sorry, Shea, I shouldn't have...I don't know what came over me, I just...something about that position, I felt you and I just...I lost it. I didn't mean to hurt you, I'm so, so sorry."
I rolled over on top of him, took his face in my hands. His tenderness and abject pain at the thought of having hurt me was too much, too deep. It pierced my heart, pulled down more of the walls I'd been trying to put up between my inner soul and the feelings that were developing for Tre.
"Listen to me, baby," I said, letting the affectionate name drop with intentional emphasis. "You didn't hurt me, okay? Not like you're thinking. I'm completely fine. You were wonderful, so, so wonderful. I would have stopped you if you were actually hurting me. I promise. I loved it. Do you hear me? I wanted you to lose control. I wanted it hard. Did you hear me telling you to give it to me? I was saying that because it felt good, so, so good."
Tre searched my eyes, looking for the lie, for the covering up of his feelings, or the hint that would tell him I was just trying to pacify him. I held his rough cheeks in my hands and let him look, tried to put everything into my gaze. I let the conflict, the burgeoning love...yes, love...the fear, all of it.
At length he lay back down, satisfied with what he saw.
"Baby?" he asked, between the spaces of our synchronized heart beats.
I nodded. "Baby. Honey. Sweetie." I tilted my head to look up at him across his chest. "I can think of others."
"Baby. No one has ever called me that."
"You were wonderful, baby. Thank you" I said it as tenderly as I could.
His chest swelled with a long breath, and imagined the inbreath was the swelling of my love expanding into him. I was terrified of loving him, terrified more still that he would love me back. I knew he did, which is why it scared me. We were in uncharted waters for both of us. I didn't know how to love any more than he did. I had never loved Dan, nor been loved by him.
"I still don't know what came over me, why I went crazy like that."
"I do."
He cocked an eyebrow at me. "You do?"
"Well, it was two things. One, the adrenaline from last night, the rush of testosterone and all that. You went warrior on that guy, protecting your lady—which was hot, by the way. Seeing you fight to protect me, it was scary then, but thinking about it now gets me wet for you all over again. And number two, I think you just really like taking me from behind."
"It did feel incredible," he said.
"Good," I said. "I'll give it to you like that whenever you want. I like it too."
More silence, and then his voice, tense: "I really messed that guy up."
I thought for a moment, trying to formulate the best response. "You were protecting me, and yourself. He would have killed one or both of us. You did what you had to." I rubbed my hands on his chest as I spoke. "The police didn't seem to think you were at fault either, so that has to tell you something."
"True," he said. "It was just scary. I saw him lunge at you, saw the knife cut you, and I went berserk."
&n
bsp; "I know. It's okay. It's an instinct." I let my hand roam south along his torso, cupping his testicles, feeling them tighten in response to my touch; he would be ready again soon, and so would I. "And like I said, it turns me on. A woman likes to feel safe, and now I know you can and will protect me."
He smiled at me, rolling over to kiss me. It was a long, slow, tender kiss, full of the new spikes of love between us. This time, instead of blossoming immediately into lustful twisting and rubbing, we let the kiss go, let it curl around us and through us, merging our hearts and souls in a way no sexual act ever could. I felt his arms around me, and the knowledge that he was willing to risk death to protect me gave wings to my new-found love for Tre.
I don't know how long we kissed, how long we delved into each other; it could have been five minutes, or it could have been five hours. All I know is at some point, without either of us instigating it, Tre was on top of me, moving inside me with exquisite gentility, eyes boring into me, questioning. I was still a little sore, but he was gentle, and I felt nothing but the pleasure of his love, the heart-cracking wellspring of emotion in his eyes, in the slow, delicious strokes of him inside me. There was no weight against me, just him gliding deep and pulling back, just his lips against mine, against my breasts, our stomachs touching, brushing. This time, we came at the same moment, a long rolling ocean of pleasure, our breaths hitching into sobs, our hearts tangled and merged.
We slept again, deep and without dreams, wrapped in each other, content in a soul-deep way.
For the second time since I first slept with Tre, I was woken by the sound of angry pounding on the door. There was no furious shouting, though, and some primal instinct clamped around my heart.
"Will you answer that, Tre?" I asked, fear make my voice tiny.
He didn't answer, just stood up, wrapped a towel around his hips, and strode confidently to the door, fists curled at his sides. I clutched the sheet to my chest, terrified at who I knew was on the other side of the door.
The Preacher's Son: Unleashed Page 4
