He grew harder. His arousal started when she first touched him, but now his cock was like steel and begging to be released from his jeans. He ran his hands down her body, feeling her waist that had filled out, her behind that had gotten fuller, rounder, even more arousing than before.
She broke the kiss and stared up at him, a combination of lust and surprise in her eyes. Duke found that incredibly sexy. “You’ve gained weight,” he said.
She pinched him. “I see having money hasn’t taught you manners.”
“Ow, damn it.” He rubbed his sore arm. “I meant that as a compliment.” He cupped her ass in her hands and squeezed. “You’re not a girl anymore. You feel like a woman. You feel good to me, Grace.”
“What the hell do you do to me, Duke?” she said right before she kissed him again. He had the same question for her. Once he had a taste of her, he couldn’t get enough.
He felt her hands wander under his shirt, feeling his skin, stroking up his back. Those hands on his body … suddenly he was picking her up and taking her to his car. He opened the back door and pushed her down on the backseat. She reached for him, pulling him on top of her, her kisses growing wilder, almost uncontrollable, as if they had caught fire and couldn’t be put out.
He touched her through her underwear, finding her already wet. He groaned. Grace was always ready for him. She was a woman who liked sex, who was sexual, even though she held herself so elegantly and seemed so delicate. She had given as much as he did in bed, and it seemed as if that hadn’t changed. He pulled her underwear aside and ran his fingers over her lips.
“Duke, touch me there, please.”
Those words were more erotic than any dirty talk in the world, and it made his cock strain even more against his pants. He had to be inside her. He couldn’t leave her behind again without feeling her squeezed around him one more time. He parted her, stroking his thumb across her engorged clit. She trembled and let out a moan. Her eyes drifted shut and her teeth bit down on her plump lower lip. She was just so fucking sexy. He stroked her again in little round circles, feeling her getting closer and closer to climax, but each time she was near, each time her back started to come off the seat, he changed directions, driving her wild.
He slid his fingers all the way inside of her, slowly pumping in and out, giving her a preview of what he was going to do to her body next. Suddenly she froze, her eyes flying open. She put her hand over his to stop him.
“I have to go!” She sat up and yanked down her dress.
“What?” His cock was about to explode and she had to go?
“I’m going to be late.” She flung open the passenger-side rear door and sprinted from the car. And Duke just sat there with the worst case of blue balls of his life.
Chapter 5
“Honey?” Grace called to Ryder from the bottom of the stairs.
“Yeah?” he answered her. From the volume of his voice she could tell he was in the playroom, which she had turned into a den for him.
“I’m going to Judy’s house. Do you want to come?” She held her breath waiting for his answer, secretly hoping he wouldn’t want to come. She needed to process what had just happened with Duke, and it would be hard to do with Ryder around.
“No. I’m working on my Honda,” he said, referring to the model car she had gotten him a few weeks ago. He didn’t deserve the gift after he flunked math and gave every one of his teachers a run for their money last year, but she felt compelled to because the intricate model kept him occupied for hours, and brought him closer to the father he’d never known.
Ryder was car-crazy. It must be genetic.
“Okay,” she said trying to keep her voice light. “I’ll see you in a little while.” She escaped the house, looking back at the ugly, rotting thing that seemed to have just been slapped together. She had bought it because it was the cheapest one in town and had plenty of space for her growing boy. But maybe it had too much space for just her and Ryder.
She allowed him to move to the bedroom upstairs in the back of the house when he turned thirteen while she stayed on the ground floor. Sometimes she regretted having him so far away from her, but he said he needed some privacy now that he was older. She was sure that was true, but she didn’t know exactly how much space to give him. None of her friends had teenage boys at thirty-two years old. She was an only child with no one to ask for advice or guidance. She didn’t even have Ryder’s father to turn to. She felt so alone sometimes.
Judy’s house was just a five-minute drive, and Grace was glad that she had at least one person in her life she could talk to. She had lost a lot of friends when the town found out she’d been with Duke King. But Judy, who was a teacher in the elementary school she worked at, had always been her friend. They had gone to school together. She was the only one who really knew who Ryder’s father was.
“Come in, honey.” She opened the door even before Grace had the chance to knock. “Your voice sounded funny on the phone.”
“Duke is back,” she blurted out.
“That’s old news, girl.” She put her hand on her hip. “The town has been buzzing about the King boys since they arrived in that car with the flames on it. Have you seen him yet?”
“Yes.” She swallowed. Seeing him was the only thing she could think about. “Twice now. Once in passing and the second time was today. Maybe an hour ago.”
“No wonder you’re a wreck.” She ushered her in the house and shut the door behind them. “What happened? What did he say?”
“We didn’t get much of a chance to talk.” She quickly debated how much she should tell Judy. But they were best friends, and if she didn’t tell her she was going to explode.
“Why?” Judy winced. “Was he mad at you? Duke looks like the type to get mad. I mean, we all know what happens when he gets mad. He didn’t end up locked up because he was a pussycat.”
“No. He didn’t get mad. He didn’t have the chance to get mad because I ended up in the backseat with my dress bunched up and his hand between my legs.”
“What?” Judy dropped herself down on the couch. “What did you just say?” She shook her head and stood up. “Wait. Don’t tell me yet.” She walked to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of wine and two water goblets.
“Those are not wineglasses, Judy.”
“I know. This is not a wineglass conversation. We need to drink this one out.” She handed Grace a glass as she unscrewed the top. “You tell me everything. Did you drop your panties as a diversionary tactic? That’s a good one. I need to use that.”
“No! I wasn’t trying to distract him. It just happened.” And she liked it. She liked being with him. It brought back all those memories that she had tried to push out of her head over the years, but failed miserably. Duke was her first. Once upon a time, he had made her feel safe. He made her feel loved and beautiful. She hadn’t realized that she hadn’t felt that way in years. It just took one touch from him to bring it all back.
“Tell me what happened,” Judy prompted.
“We were in Millborne Park. I went there to clear my head before I had to pick up Ryder from summer school. I knew Duke was back in town and I didn’t know how I was going to handle it. Part of me was hoping he would just leave and I wouldn’t have to worry about it. But a bigger part of me knows that we have unfinished business.”
“You haven’t talked to him since that night, have you?”
Grace shook her head, remembering the night Judy was referring to. She remembered the blood running down Patrick Andersen’s face. She remembered Duke being taken away in handcuffs. She remembered her father shipping her off to Rhode Island to stay with some of his friends and shield her from the world.
But still she tried. She had written to him, but all of her letters had gone unanswered. And after all the silence, she had just given up. Figuring he was too mad at her to care anymore. But today he didn’t seem mad at all, and that confused the hell out of her.
“I looked up and he was just standing th
ere. As if my thoughts had brought him. To see him up close after all that time was unreal. I had always thought Duke was such a man when I was younger, but looking at him now…” He was beautiful. It seemed like a funny way to describe a man who was the size of a linebacker and covered in tattoos, but he was. He had that strong jaw and those beautiful full lips and a stare that went right through her. But it was more than just the way he looked. It was the sound of his voice and the way he moved and carried himself, and the man he’d made himself into.
“He’s super-hot.” Judy nodded in agreement. “That is, if you like the big mean biker-looking type. I watch that show of theirs. Duke is rarely in it, but you get a glimpse of him once in a while and the man is built. It’s no surprise he makes you drop your panties.”
It was true. Grace was wildly attracted to Duke—but it was more than that. She had always felt this pull toward him. This need to love him. His mother died. His abusive father left without a word. He had his brothers and Lolly, but Duke needed someone to really love him. And when she first saw him at sixteen years old she had promised to love him until the day she died. She didn’t know then that her love was the reason he would get sentenced to prison for ten years. “I’m not even sure how it all happened. I think I kissed him first.”
She couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t stop looking at him or touching him. He caused sparks to go off in her body and her nipples to tighten and heat to curl in her belly. She had been celibate since Ryder had been born. Thirteen years without the touch of any man. There had been opportunities. There had been a few nice men along the way who could have been contenders, but she could never bring herself to go all the way with them. For some reason she felt guilty. She compared every man with Duke King, and none of them came even close. She’d hoped her attraction to him might fade over time. She thought her memory might have deceived her and it hadn’t been as good with him as she remembered. Maybe it was because she had been young and exploring her body, and every sexual experience with him had been beyond exciting. But she was thirty-two now and she still felt that wild lust for him, still felt so aroused around him that her body shook with need for him.
“So what happened?” Judy took a big sip of her wine. “You had a big orgasm and just walked away without talking about anything?”
“No. I stopped him.” She was about to have one of the most intense orgasms of her life when she stopped him.
“Why on earth did you do that? It’s been forever since you have been with a man.”
“I had to pick Ryder up from school.” He came first, even before her own needs.
“Oh. Well, damn. That kid ruins everything fun for you, doesn’t he?”
It was true that she’d missed out on going away to college and traveling abroad with her friends. Her twenty-first birthday was spent nursing a sick toddler with the flu, but she wouldn’t take a moment of it back. She hadn’t gotten to date around. She hadn’t gotten to lead the life most twenty-somethings did. But that was okay, because she hadn’t known real love until Ryder. Nothing could compare to being a mother to him.
“Does Ryder have any idea what’s going on?”
Grace sighed. “I’ve got to tell them, don’t I? I’ve got to tell Duke that he has a son and tell Ryder that his father has returned.”
*
Duke was always an early riser. He was used to working. He had gotten his first job at fourteen and had worked every day since. Even in prison he worked a number of jobs. He cooked in the kitchen. He made park benches and picnic tables. He even did farmwork, raising and taking care of animals for a year. He worked hard and went to bed tired, but now that he was back here in Destiny, he felt restless. He was used to being in the shop before anyone else arrived. He knew he had a job to complete now, but it didn’t involve physical labor, so it wasn’t easy for him to get it done.
As he stepped out the front door to go check out a car he had seen listed in the paper, he ran into Levi, who was just coming in for the night.
He had a grin on his face. Far too happy looking for someone who hadn’t gotten any sleep yet.
“Where the hell have you been?” Duke asked him.
“I wasn’t aware I had a curfew.”
“This town … There always seems to be trouble surrounding us when we’re here even if we didn’t cause it. Just be careful.”
“I was with Shelly.”
Shelly. Duke remembered their neighbor well. She was a sweet little plump girl who loved Jesus and listened to everything her prison guard daddy had to say. She and Levi had been very good friends when they were kids. It was a relationship that Duke never understood. Levi was the type of boy Shelly should have run from, but they spent nearly every available hour with each other and thirteen years later it seemed nothing had changed.
“How is Shelly?”
“She’s a grown-up. An elementary school teacher, just like she said she was going to be.”
“She let you keep her out all night?”
“Not all night, just most of it. I was teaching the teacher how to live a little.”
“I’m going to look at a car. You need one? How are you getting around town?”
“I bought one, Duke.” He sensed a little edge in Levi’s voice. “I’m twenty-nine. I think I can take care of myself.”
“Sometimes I doubt if you can wipe your ass good enough.”
“I don’t know if you realize it, but I’m an adult, too. And I managed to get pretty damn far in life without your help.”
He nodded. Levi was always going to be the baby of the family, but Duke had a hard time realizing that he wasn’t actually a baby; he’d carved out a successful career all by himself. It was just that some habits died hard. “I’ll see you around.”
It was still too early to check out the car so Duke went into the diner on Main Street, remembering that they had the best biscuits and gravy he had ever tasted. The place went quiet as soon as he stepped foot inside. It was then that he remembered, next to the bar, this was the place where most of the town’s gossip was exchanged. He’d had a hard time walking in here for the first few years after his father caused the accident at the factory. Things had gotten better after his father skipped town, but now it seemed that things had gone back to the way they were all those years ago.
But he didn’t give a shit what any of these people thought of him. He went to the counter and took a seat.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” the owner Boris said in his booming voice. “How the hell are you? Welcome back.”
“Thanks,” Duke said picking up a menu, even though he knew what he wanted. He also knew all eyes were on him, and he wasn’t giving anybody the satisfaction of thinking he cared if they stared.
“We never thought you’d make something of yourself. Showed us, didn’t you?” Boris laughed. “Walked in here like you own the place. Hell, you could own the place if you wanted to. I’ll sell it to you. Heard you were personally worth thirty million dollars.”
“Just give me an order of biscuits and gravy, Boris.”
“You got a raw deal, sweetheart,” an older woman said to him, patting his arm. “That Andersen boy got too big for his britches and needed his ass whooped.”
Duke didn’t know how to respond to that. He wasn’t sure if they were being genuinely nice or if it was because now he had money. He knew from experience that rich people were treated better than poor ones. “Thank you, ma’am.”
It didn’t matter. As soon as he settled things with Grace, he was out of here. He would drag Lolly to Vegas with him if he had to. He wasn’t going to look back.
He finished his breakfast although it became increasingly hard to choke it down when people kept coming up to him. They mostly wanted to know about the show, about how he’d managed to build a company from the ground up. Even about his life now. If he had a poorer memory, he would have nearly forgotten that everybody hated him once.
He stepped outside feeling relief even though it was nearly ninety-five d
egrees that morning. He drove to the part of town where the wealthier citizens lived. Destiny was mostly a town of working-class people, and the few who did have a little more made sure they segregated themselves from the rest. Whitehall Terrace was where Grace grew up. While he had never been inside her house, he knew exactly where it was because he’d mowed lawns here one summer as a kid. Not much had changed since then. The lawns were still green and manicured even though they were in the middle of sandy desert. The judge’s white Cadillac sat on the street in front of his house. The house with the car for sale was right across the street. He hadn’t realized it would be when he decided to come here. The judge would probably have a stroke when he learned Duke was back in town. Duke never wanted to see his bloated face again, but a ’67 El Camino was a ’67 El Camino and he needed to check it out.
The owner greeted him at the door, his eyes widening a bit. He was the clean-cut type, wearing a golf shirt, plaid shorts, and a pair of sandals. Duke would have bet his fortune that he wasn’t from around here. They didn’t grow yuppies in Destiny. “You’re Duke King.”
“I am.” He extended his hand. “I called about the car.”
“Of course. It’s in the garage. I’m almost embarrassed to show it to you. I figured some teenager looking for his first ride would want it, but you really know about cars so you’ll know this thing is a piece of shit.”
The guy wasn’t lying. It looked ready for the scrap heap. “Where did you get it from?” Duke ran his hand along the body, which was intact. There was little to no rust, but it was pretty beat up. There were scratches and a few dents. The wheels needed to be replaced. The bumper was completely trashed. But the thing had potential. That’s why Duke was so good at his job. He could see the potential in most everything and everyone.
Betting the Bad Boy Page 4
