by Sara Arden
Or to what she knew was inevitable.
The low growl of gratification in the back of his throat anchored her in the moment. She knelt down, the fine spray of water at her back and over her shoulders.
He pushed his hand through her damp hair and she took him into her mouth, relishing not only the feel of him, the sounds of his pleasure, but the power she had over him. Not because she could deny him bliss, but because she could give it to him.
It occurred to her, not for the first time, that he was indeed a beautiful specimen of manhood. She loved his oblique muscles the most—those hard lines often referred to as an Adonis apron, smooth lines of muscle that seemed to point straight toward his cock.
His legs were strong and powerful, thickly muscled, just like everything else on him. In his youth, he’d been a kind of young god, but now he was earthier, harder.
God, so much harder.
Everywhere.
Everything she touched was like living marble. This was a man built for fighting, for killing—for saving. His shoulders were just broad enough to handle the hero’s mantle.
She looked up and met his eyes. Kentucky loved that about the way they joined. It wasn’t some fey, wispy sort of lovemaking. Some pretty, lacy ideal. It was intense, primal…and he wasn’t afraid to look into her eyes.
Kentucky pressed her nails lightly into his glutes, pulled him forward. She sheathed him with her mouth, his flesh silky and hot against her tongue.
“Sweet Christ, Kentucky…”
She continued the campaign, bobbing down his length, tasting him, swirling her tongue over the thick topography of his flesh.
“I’m already close,” he warned.
She replaced her mouth with her hand, stroking him slowly, making it last. “Come for me, Sean. I want to taste you.”
He’d braced himself with one hand on the shower-curtain rod, the other on the safety handle in the shower. His knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip. Every muscle in his body seemed to be flexed as he fought the sensation, fought the tidal wave.
She wondered how far she could push him, how high?
Kentucky slowed her strokes but then brought him to her lips, where she teased the crown of his manhood with her tongue, licking and laving, changing her technique and increasing pressure depending on that delicious growl that kept reverberating from him.
“You’re killing me.”
“That is why they call it the little death.” She took him deep again.
His body spasmed and he arched toward her, hips thrusting, and she felt only satisfaction when he found his completion.
“Shit.” He turned the water off.
She looked up to see that he held the shower curtain, rod and all, in his hand. He’d pulled it down with the strain of his orgasm.
Kentucky grinned. “I’m so the boss of you.”
“I will fix this before I leave.”
She laughed. “I’m kind of proud of it.”
He lifted her up as if she were no bigger than a doll. “But now turnabout is only fair play. I think you’re in for some quid pro quo.”
She squirmed, delighted at the idea. “Well, if you insist.”
“I do insist.” He wrapped a towel around her. “Bed?”
“Definitely.”
Sean carried her into the bedroom and perched her on the edge of the bed. “Spread for me. Show me.”
She spread her legs wide and he knelt between them, pushing her back on the mess of blankets on the bed.
Kentucky leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, fisting the duvet as she waited for the onslaught of sensation.
God, but he was amazing.
He kissed her there first. His lips soft and warm, a gentle press before he slipped his tongue inside her and traced the seam back up to her clit.
“You taste so good.”
“So do you,” she replied, anticipating the next onslaught.
His fingers pushed inside her while his tongue worked at the swollen bud and waves of sensation echoed through her body.
He played her as if she were some sort of delicate instrument and he a master composer. It was nothing short of bliss.
She found her hips bucking, driving her cleft up against his mouth. He’d gripped her hips, pinning her where he wanted her. His breath was a warm caress over the heated and engorged flesh when he spoke. “When I’m done here, when you’re coming and riding the wave, I’m going to kiss you and we’ll taste each other.”
It was naughty and decadent, and it caused her interior walls to constrict around his fingers.
“Like that, do you? Yeah, me, too. I want to know what we taste like together.”
He dipped his head again, suckling and thrusting.
Just as he’d promised, when she was riding his fingers and arching up into her orgasm, he broke away and slammed his mouth into hers.
They tasted sweet together, a comingling of evidence of their ecstasy.
When she lay sated and exhausted, he slapped her ass lightly. “Okay, rest time is over. Let’s go.”
“What? I thought we were spending the day inside.”
“No, that was just a good start to an even better day.”
She licked her lips.
“Stop that,” he said. “It makes me think about your pretty lips on my cock. And we just can’t do that again.” Sean grinned. “I need like fifteen minutes.”
Her interior walls tensed at the idea, but holy hell. She wasn’t used to this much activity. “I think I need more than fifteen minutes.”
“Okay, that might have been optimistic on my part, as well. But the will is there.” He nodded.
“I say we put a moratorium on it at least until tonight.”
“So we definitely need to get out of the house or I’m just going to have to bury my face between those pretty thighs again.”
“And I’d let you, even though I’d be sorry for it later.”
“So where’s the bike?”
“It’s in the bay with my personal vehicles.”
“How many do you have?” He raised a brow.
“Oh, you know how I am with the project cars. I always have at least three or four. Then I sell ’em.”
He got dressed and laced into his combat boots while she searched for something clean to wear. She found a pair of black jeans and an old band T-shirt from high school, then pulled on her own combat boots. Of course, hers hadn’t seen any actual combat. They were Doc Martens. She tied her wet hair up into a low ponytail.
“Except Betty.”
“I might sell Betty.”
“You lie. You’ve put off finishing her just so you don’t have to make that choice.”
“You don’t know everything, Mr. Smarty-Pants.”
“Not everything, Kentucky. But I do know you.”
“As if, bro,” she teased. “So, you still cool to let me drive?”
“It’s your bike.” He grabbed her. “Let’s go to that little coffee shop in Ozawkie for breakfast.”
“I haven’t thought about that place in years. I wonder if they’re still open.”
“I Googled. They have crepes…”
“Done.”
8
IT HAD BEEN a long time since Sean had been on the road like this.
A long time since he’d felt the wind rushing around him, the connection to the pavement, the endless possibilities of everywhere the road could take him.
He felt a lot like this when he was in the air. He loved flying the Black Hawks, but there was something more intimate about being on a bike, having all of that power between his legs.
Sean especially liked being on the back of the bike, with his arms wrapped around Kentucky’s waist, feeling her powerful body holding up the bike, guiding it down the spinning ribbon of highway. Feeling her ass pressed up against him.
He liked the freedom he felt with her driving, too.
He could race with the wind and he didn’t have to be in control. He wasn’t the one whose
hand was the guiding force of life and death.
Although it was a little terrifying, too. He was so used to having all of that responsibility resting on his shoulders. It was quite something to surrender it to someone else.
To put his life in her hands.
Even though she was an expert rider.
He watched the speedometer as it kept climbing, and the higher it got, the faster they flew, the less it mattered to him that he wasn’t in control.
Sean was flying, defying gravity while still cruising the ground. The sky loomed ever larger, brighter, calling him.
He couldn’t imagine ever doing this with Lynnie.
He felt guilty for the thought, but then it was gone. He had no reason to feel guilty, at least not for this. There were things she’d enjoyed and things she hadn’t. She and Kentucky were two different people.
Lynnie was gone.
He and Kentucky had been left behind.
So now they were living the life that had been given to them. What was so wrong with that? It wasn’t as if they were pretending she’d never been. Or they hadn’t both loved her.
He tightened his arm around her waist and inhaled the sweet apple scent of her hair.
It wasn’t long before they pulled into the parking lot for the tiny coffee shop out in the middle of the countryside called The Ruby Slipper.
It was an odd place to open a coffeehouse and it had been expected to fail. But the kids from Lawrence who didn’t want anything so mainstream as a coffee shop in town would come hang out and read poetry late into the night. They’d drive out to where there was no internet and barely any cell service and have poetry slams and study nights and drink their own weight in coffee.
He held the door open for her and she ordered them two coffees and two apple fritters. Sean certainly wasn’t going to complain.
The fritter was warm and flaky, the apples inside sweet with just a bit of cinnamon. It practically melted on his tongue and it was good. Not just that the fritter tasted good, but everything about this moment was good.
The burn of the coffee, the scent in the air and the woman sitting across from him with the sun shining down on her like a halo.
It was a lovely image, but he wasn’t trying to make her into a saint or a maiden in distress. He was pretty sure Kentucky Lee was the dragon in that story.
Sean wasn’t sure who he was, but he was okay with that for now.
“This is the best morning I’ve had in a long time,” she said while taking a sip of her coffee out of the fat red cappuccino mug.
“Me, too.” He took another sip of his own coffee.
For a second, just that single instant, he wondered what it would be like to wake up to her—to this—every day. He’d never wanted to stay in Winchester, but it suddenly wasn’t about the geography.
It was about the players.
It was about looking at a beautiful woman who was everything he wished he could be. It was about the taste of the coffee and the tightness in his chest when he thought about leaving.
It was about how when he was with her, he wasn’t drowning. How he could breathe.
Hell, he could even float.
Maybe even fly.
How had he missed it? There was nothing about Kentucky that was a shackle, an anchor or a weight. Not the way he’d felt with Lynnie.
Guilt surged again.
“I hate to ask that basic girl question, but what are you thinking about?”
He arched a brow.
She laughed. “It’s just, there was this look of joy on your face and then it was like a storm cloud blotted out your sun.”
“I was thinking about Lynnie.”
“What were you thinking about her? Tell me?” She reached out and squeezed his hand.
He searched her eyes. No, he didn’t want to tell her those things. He didn’t know what good they would do. “I was thinking about the last time we came here.”
“Did she read one of her poems?”
“She did. It was about beginnings. Endings. And how they don’t mean what we think they do.”
“I’m sorry I missed that.”
“Me, too.” He exhaled. “I miss her, Kentucky.”
“I know.”
“I think I’ll always miss her, but it’s different somehow, you know?”
She didn’t speak but instead took another drink of her coffee.
“But this isn’t about Lynnie today.”
“No? What’s it about?”
“Us.” He nodded. “Who we are. And like you said, we’re not dead.”
“I like that.” She popped a bite of fritter into her mouth. “So what else is on your agenda? The picnic? Motorcycle sex?”
“Definitely the picnic. What about a ride in a puddle jumper?”
“Seriously? Yes!”
When he was a kid, he’d seen those tiny planes called puddle jumpers, sometimes used as crop dusters, in the air. He’d never thought they seemed like a good idea. Even as a pilot, he was amazed at how the science worked to keep those things in the air.
But she was always ready for an adventure.
She’d shown him what she could do; he’d seen Betty, her garage. Now it was his turn. He didn’t know why this was suddenly so important to him, but it was. Almost as much as the next breath he took.
She crammed the rest of the fritter into her mouth and downed the coffee. “Let’s go. I’m ready.”
He laughed and finished his pastry. “Yeah, okay. Slow down.”
“Nope. Can’t do that. I might miss something important.”
“Okay, boss. Take us to the Lawrence Municipal Airport. The little jumper is waiting for us.”
Back on the bike, in no time at all she was speeding down single-lane highways through cornfields to get to the small airport.
When she slowed to a stop and took off her helmet, she asked, “So how did you get a plane on such short notice?”
“Buddy of mine. His family uses one for short trips down to Texas and Oklahoma for cattle auctions. I told him I was in town and had a pretty girl to impress.”
She blushed. “You did not.”
“I did.”
“You don’t ever have to impress me, Sean.” She looked down at her boots, seeming to be suddenly shy.
He tilted her chin up with his thumb. “Any man you let into your bed better always be trying to impress you.”
“You’re silly.”
“Hey, I’m not kidding.” The thought of any other man trying to impress her hit all his buttons. But he knew that wasn’t his place.
“So where are you taking me?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I want to see the Chalk Pyramids. Can we go that far?”
“Yeah, I’ll make sure we have enough fuel. It’ll take about an hour, give or take.”
“Really?” She grinned.
“If that’s what you want. I’ve never seen them either. It sounds like fun.”
The small plane was painted red and had his friend’s ranch’s logo painted onto the side so it looked as if it had been branded into it. He did the walk-through with the attendant, made sure it had enough fuel to get them where they wanted to go and home, and registered the flight plan with the tower.
He double-checked their safety gear and made sure she had a headset so they could talk over the noise during the flight.
She squealed when they took off and he found it to be incredibly endearing.
The higher the craft climbed, the more she oohed, aahed and pointed at various things she noticed.
He liked how she saw the world. How she processed things.
The landscape began to change. As they left behind the countryside of eastern Kansas—slightly hilly due to glacial till and proximity to the Ozarks—the land started to level out, conforming to what one would expect of Kansas terrain. Flat and endless. But it had its own beauty, from the endless rolling waves of wheat and corn to the green of the Flint Hills dotted with cattle.
&nbs
p; It wasn’t long before the Chalk Pyramids, or Monument Rocks, came into view. They looked as if they belonged in Arizona or Nevada rather than Kansas.
Some standing at seventy feet tall, they formed buttes and arches, like strange tributes to ancient peoples.
“I always wanted to see these. I don’t know why I didn’t just get in Betty and drive here,” she said through the mic, her voice tinged with what he thought was awe.
“Yeah, but this view is much better. Want to get closer?”
“Yes!”
He took the little plane down and circled around the chalk formations, gliding as slowly as he dared to let her have the best view.
“They’re so powerful. Look at them, just standing there impervious to time. To the landscape around them. They don’t fit here, but they stand there anyway.” She laughed. “Kind of like me, I guess. I mean, I don’t know how powerful I am, but I don’t fit in Winchester. Yet I stand there.”
“You fit anywhere you want to be, Tuck.”
She was quiet and kept her own counsel on the flight back to Lawrence.
When they were on the ground and he’d helped her out of the plane, she launched herself into his arms.
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” He enjoyed having her in his arms. It was a simple thing to have done for her, really. He couldn’t help but think Lynnie wouldn’t have wanted to do this with him either. He could never get her to go up with him.
Yeah, he was a different man than the boy who’d been quarterback for the Winchester Eagles. A million miles away from that kid.
“I’m starved. That fritter didn’t go very far.”
“Good. Picnic time.”
“Oh, is the food going to be okay?”
“Yeah, it’s in a cooler in your top box.” He pointed to the rear of the bike.
“Trust the flyboy to be prepared for any emergency.”
“Of course. I know better than to take risks with not feeding you. Your hangry self is terrifying.”
She shoved his shoulder lightly. “So where are we going for our picnic?”
“Do you remember that road…?”
“Oh God, yes!”
He loved that she knew what he was thinking. It was as if they were always on the same wavelength.
“I’ll let you drive,” she said, handing him the keys to the Harley.
