Love Garage

by Liz Crowe

  He got three bourbons from the bar and turned to find her out on the small dance floor, swaying to crappy country music oozing from the juke. Her jeans were dark and formfitting, her waist slim, her arms bare and tanned. Afraid he might pant like a dog otherwise, he averted his eyes when the two girls started dancing together.

  “Jesus-hopped up-Christ,” one of his forgotten pool-playing buddies whispered, watching them. “Anybody got a video camera?”

  “Hit that shit, Love. I’m feeling a three-way in your immediate, lucky-dog future,” said another.

  He flushed then downed two of the bourbons fast, not tasting them. Setting the empties down on a nearby table he scratched his nose, noting he’d gotten pretty numb around the edges. Best slow down, grab some water. Because if he didn’t get both of them, he definitely planned to fuck Tricia’s brains out tonight.

  Yes, indeed.

  Where he would be doing that, he’d have to sort out later.

  He jolted forward when one of the assholes hit him between the shoulder blades, forcing him to take a couple of steps closer to the girls. They parted and held out their arms in encouragement. But he needed very little.

  Chapter Four

  It took him about an hour to sort out Tricia’s friend had no interest in a celebratory three-way. Aiden couldn’t remember why by the time he had Tricia in the passenger’s seat of the truck. They made their way slowly along back roads, with the windows open, the radio blasting, and it no longer mattered.

  They’d had a beer then a bourbon chaser, and danced, kissed, and generally engaged in enough publicly displayed foreplay to make him feverish and overwrought by the time the bartender hollered out last call. Aiden’s horniness level at that moment had blinded and deafened him. She’d dropped her hand right on his zipper, giggling into his ear, stroking him through his jeans in a dark, smelly corner near the juke.

  “You’re not gonna make me blow in my shorts again, Tricia. Stop trying. I’m a big boy now,” he’d whispered, letting his lips, tongue, and teeth tease her deliciously sweaty neck. He loved how her nipples poked through her thin bra when he did that, and had to bite the inside of his cheek not to grope her just as enthusiastically. He wanted to savor, to drop into her like the horny teenager he’d once been, but with a skill set honed by years spent with women determined to make a better lover out of him.

  “I can tell that.” She kissed him again in such a way it nearly did him in. Letting him go, she’d wiggled her way back out onto the deserted dance floor, shaking her hips and ass, closing her eyes, and generally making it a thousand times worse.

  Now, she sat with her face up to the warm night breeze, singing between taking long drinks from the neck of the bourbon bottle he’d bought on their way out. When he stopped at the entrance to Antony’s driveway, she gasped.

  “I can’t go in there.” She pointed at the house where Crystal and Antony had lived for a few blissful years.

  “I’m a country boy, Tricia.” He grabbed her hand and kissed it. “I know a place with some nice, dry hay.”

  She burst out laughing. “I am not going to roll in the damn hay with you, Aiden Love.” She unzipped him and he gasped with relief. “Wow.” Gripping his aching dick, she kissed him again. “Not-so-little boy, I see,” she said into his lips.

  “Oh shit,” he muttered, and grabbed her hand to make her stop. “No. Wait.”

  Remaining unzipped, he threaded his fingers in hers and drove past the house. He’d gone for so many hours wanting to touch her, not giving into it other than the kissing and ass-grabbing, he would likely explode if he didn’t get his hands and mouth all over her.

  But where to go? If she wouldn’t do the hay-barn thing, he’d be damned if he knew where. He climbed out of the truck, zipped up, opened the gate, drove through then re-latched it.

  “Kiss me some more, Aiden,” she demanded when he got back behind the wheel.

  He did, allowing a momentary touch to the side of her breast, a flick of his thumb over her nipple while she reached for his zipper again. The exposed skin of their faces and necks were slick. He indulged his earlier compulsion by lapping at the sweat beaded between her full, lush breasts.

  She giggled and shoved him off her then jumped out of the truck without another word. He looked in the small backseat and spotted a blanket, grabbed it, and ran after her through the tall grass toward the big pond tucked into the back corner of Antony’s property. The expanse of water could hold a couple of rowboats or canoes, and Antony kept it stocked with fish. Tricia’s giggling floated back to him, and by the time he’d caught up with her, she stood in the moonlight utterly, gloriously, perfectly naked.

  He sent a quick thanks to heaven for her timing that night, and stripped out of his clothes, almost falling over his jeans in his urgency to get at her. She kept backing up, crooking her finger at him. Just as he reached her, she plunged into the water. He saw her surface as the surreal, dreamlike moment hit him.

  “Come on in, sweet cheeks.” She swam up closer, and rose so he got the full effect of the water sluicing off her skin. He followed her, wincing when the cold water hit his dick, but relieved when it knocked some of his edge off.

  They swam around, splashing each other, and she let out a scream when she claimed something brushed against her leg. “It’s slimy in this end,” she said, swimming back to him and wrapping her arms and legs around him. Her warmth pressed against his slightly softened erection, making him grunt. “Let’s get out. I want you to make love to me right here, under the stars and moon.” She threw her head back, and he buried his face in her neck as he tried to walk out of the lake without falling.

  Dizziness struck him between the eyes, but she had her lips on his, and he rallied enough to get them both out of the water. She licked her way down his chest, flicking her tongue over his nipples as she detached herself then dragged him by the dick, literally, about three feet from the pond, before letting go so she could spread the blanket out, which released a definite horsey smell. He blinked, trying to get past the urge to toss her down and plow into her, just to relieve the painful pressure up and down his spine.

  “Oh, Aiden.” she said, her voice tearful. “I…I’m….”

  “Shhh.” He kissed her cheeks, nose, forehead, and then her lips. “Shhh.” He deepened it, sweeping into her mouth with his tongue, and bending his knees, bringing her down with him. She lay back, taking him with her, keeping their lips locked.

  But he broke away, trying to catch his breath. “You are about to fulfill one of my deepest, darkest fantasies, Tricia. And for that I want to thank you.” Her nipples tasted like pond water but he didn’t care. When she arched her back and moved her hips against him, he kept moving downward, lapping at the water beaded on her skin. Tossing both her legs over his shoulders he focused on his task, one of his favorites.

  She yanked at his hair and dug her bare heels into his back. Her orgasm hovered close—he could taste it and smell it and feel it in the way her body tensed. He increased his efforts, wanting it so badly his whole body shook.

  “Oh dear Jesus!” she shrieked, making him let go of his suction, having learned that lesson. He adored the female anatomy, and had spent an inordinate amount of time pondering it. And this moment was his second favorite one of all—when he could watch it glisten, pulse, and spasm under his careful attention.

  “Holy shit, that was…potentially addictive.” She tugged at his arm so he crawled up her body, the breeze cooling them both and making his skin break out in goose bumps. He hurt all over, he wanted to come so badly—inside her. But for a little problem.

  “I don’t have a condom.” He exhaled and flopped over onto his back. Tricia dropped between his legs in an instant, her hand cupping his balls, and her lips over his cock by way of response to that dilemma. She did her own teasing, sucking, licking, and had him on the ragged edge, grunting, hips bucking when she stopped and sat up, wiping a hand over her lips.

  “I need you inside me,” she whisper
ed, still gripping his dick. “So badly, Aiden, baby, please.”

  He watched her straddle him as if from a million miles away. When her warmth enveloped him, he knew he wouldn’t stop her. God, you are an idiot, Aiden Love, his upper brain yammered at him, until his lower brain smothered it with a pillow as Tricia rocked against him, tightening and releasing her inner muscles.

  “Oh, honey,” she sighed and gripped his thigh with one hand, propping against his torso with the other. “That is exactly…it,” she ground out, moving faster and faster. He grabbed onto her thighs, dug in his fingertips and angled his hips.

  “Come again, Tricia.” He’d gotten breathless from holding back. “Give it to me.” He yanked her down so he could suck her nipples. Her wet hair shut them off from the world as she shivered and her second climax grabbed him hard.

  “Hang onto me.” He rolled and pinned her beneath him. “I need….to….” He lowered his face to her neck and called on his grown-up reserves.

  She tilted her hips, wrapped her legs around him. “Fuck me hard, Aiden. Just like you always wanted to.”

  That tore it.

  With a groan of satisfaction he let it take him, allowed the orgasm to blind him, deafen him, and he pounded into her. Only at the very last minute, opening his eyes and staring into her face, did he see the tears glistening on her lashes.

  “Shit,” he muttered, his hips still moving, his body still clenched up with pleasure. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “You didn’t hurt me, sweetie. That was the best damn divorce celebration a girl could order up.” She kissed him, making him wince a little and realize his damn lips were sore it had been so long since he’d done this.

  “Hey!” A loud voice cut into his brain’s shut-down mode. “Who the hell is out here?”

  Aiden scrambled to his feet, trying to avoid the beam of the flashlight slicing through the dark trees. Tricia gasped and grabbed the blanket, wrapping it around her bare body, leaving him with his half-hard dick exposed, and facing his brother.

  “Good Christ, punk, you spooked my horses, and my dogs, and woke me up.”

  Aiden took a long, shuddery breath, trying to figure out what he could say that might make the moment less awkward. He had nothing. He tried to step in front of the crouching, blanket-wrapped woman about a half second too late.

  “Tricia, seriously? Out here in the mud with Little A? Nice.”

  “Hey, Antony,” the girl said, weakly. Aiden shut his eyes. “Sorry we woke you up.”

  “You’re both idiots,” Antony muttered as he stomped away.

  Aiden released a huge breath before helping Tricia to her feet. She giggled and fell into him.

  “Sorry, sweetie. He’s really a grump isn’t he?”

  “Yeah.” He tried not to despise his own sorry ass, with yet another example of his extreme lameness, getting caught fucking a woman in the pasture now under his fraternal belt. He groaned and his head pounded, already foreshadowing a nasty, bourbon-fueled hangover.

  They got dressed, slapping at the mosquitoes they’d managed to ignore during their screwing session. Thanks to his brothers’ various dumbass errors, not going bareback had always been a hard-and-fast rule for him—one he’d ignored tonight with relish.

  “Don’t worry,” Tricia muttered at one point as they made their way back to the truck. She slipped her arm around his waist. “I won’t get preggers.”

  “Whatever.” Fury made his vision dim—anger at himself, and with her for being such…such….

  Oh shut up, Aiden, you idiot. Get her home and pray she didn’t give you a disease, but don’t even think about blaming her.

  They didn’t speak on their way to her house, which happened to be in one of the new, expensive subdivisions named after the horse farm that had sold the land to a developer. He peered up at her gigantic brick mansion and sighed, wondering why in the hell the woman had not suggested they come there, instead of rutting around in the pond and pasture.

  She touched his leg, making him flinch.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it. He hardly ever got that out of control. Mortification, plus nausea from the booze, and the smell of pond water filled his consciousness.

  “Will you call me? I’ll make us dinner.”

  Even as he nodded, he realized he couldn’t face her again after tonight. She kissed him before she got out, and that seemed okay, nice even. But he kept a death grip on the steering wheel.

  “I’m usually not that—”

  “Eager? Amazing? Great at oral? Jesus, Aiden, I’m not kidding. You are addictive.” Her hand trailed along the inseam of his jeans. “I’m up for more. I have a big bed.” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Thanks for telling me that now. We could have avoided the horse blanket, the mud, and my brother’s flashlight.”

  She giggled, bit his earlobe then jumped down from the cab. He waited to make sure she got in the house then drove out into the empty street, wondering if the loose window in the lower level of his parents’ house would still be there, rigged up and ready to receive whichever Love sibling snuck in past curfew. Weighing the two crappy choices—dealing with his brother versus facing his parents, he took a long, deep breath.

  With the briefest acknowledgement that he did feel less fraught, thanks to Tricia and the sex by the pond, he kept driving past his parents’ street, in the direction of the farm and Antony’s fury.

  Chapter Five

  Love Garage opened bright and early the next morning, a Saturday, a day Aiden had hoped to spend recovering.

  “I get so many oil changes and random small jobs on Saturdays, it doesn’t make sense to be closed and let the jackasses with the Quickilube at Walmart get the business,” Antony insisted when Aiden groaned with dismay upon being awakened after two hours of drunken sleep. It didn’t help that the awakening occurred at the business end of a thrown pillow. “Get up, Romeo. You owe me rent money.”

  He did, slowly, queasily hitting a shower, sore all over, his skin mottled from bug bites. But nothing topped the glorious agony of a bourbon hangover like the one that had him firmly in its evil grasp.

  He slouched out the door, cursing Antony, cursing Tricia, cursing her ex-husband for throwing her in his path last night. But mostly cursing his own weak-ass uselessness. He rested his head against the cool comfort of the truck window until Antony hit a bump or two, which sent extra pain jolting down his spine.

  “Sorry,” his brother muttered, glancing over at him.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Got me there. And you’d better warn me if you’re about to toss your cookies. I won’t have that in my vehicle, got me?”

  Aiden rubbed his neck and nodded, swallowing the urge to throw up all over the pristine interior on principal. “Why d’you hate me so much? You used to like me.” He stared over at his brother, heart thumping, ears humming, throat closing up with nausea. He despised waking up still drunk.

  “I don’t hate you.” Antony turned onto the main road headed into town.

  “Could’ve fooled me. You’re a real asshole anymore. Worse than Dom.”

  Antony merely shrugged, not rising to that tried-and-true bait. So they spent the rest of the ride to the garage in silence. Once there, Antony sat gripping the wheel. Aiden waited, hoping he’d get something out of him—something that would assure him that the man he thought he remembered as the protective, funny, and loving guy he’d grown up with still existed inside the guy walking around wearing Antony’s skin.

  Finally, he let go of the wheel, exhaled, and squared his shoulders as if prepping for battle. Aiden made a mental note to talk to Kieran about how badly Antony had descended into his life of nonstop mourning and jerk-hood.

  “So, Rosalee, not putting out for you or what? You need to get laid maybe? Knock the edge off?”

  The glare Aiden got for saying those particular words did make him worry Antony might punch his aching head through the passenger-si
de window.

  He clenched his jaw in the way Aiden remembered from their childhood. “That is so far outside the realm of your business as to be in another galaxy. Get to work and don’t say her name to me again.”

  And with that, Aiden was left with the fleeting thought that mentioning Rosalee directly was probably not a good idea. He surely didn’t need Antony to guess that her name was on his lips, or front and center of his mind.

  He shook his head—a Bad Plan because it summoned the pounding agony back with a vengeance. Groaning, he climbed out and shuffled over to the door.

  A new day began at Love Garage.

  It passed in a haze of nausea and agony then of exhaustion as his body shifted gears from alcohol processing, to the urge for real sleep. He scurried around after Antony awhile, until the man nearly brained him with a socket wrench for being “underfoot.” Then he retreated to a corner, willing the hangover to leave him in peace. That worked about as well as it usually did.

  Finally, one of the mechanics motioned for him to help with a tire rotation. Sweat streamed down his face, and his shoulders ached, but the exertion pierced through the agony, leaving him thirsty and hungry. He glanced at Antony’s profile, while he sat at the giant desk in his newly clean office, then nodded when one of the other guys asked if he wanted in on pizza for lunch.

  After a couple of slices of pepperoni, and a few slugs of sugary cola, he acknowledged he might just possibly live through the next twelve hours. His phone had been buzzing like crazy with texts from Tricia, but he ignored them. Tonight he had a hot date with Antony’s couch, giant flat-screen TV, and sleep. He grinned, pondering that potential awesomeness.

  By 4 p.m. with another two hours to go before closing, the garage teemed with business. Every lift held a vehicle, and there were three more hanging around in the parking lot waiting for service. Aiden slammed more cola and tried to stay focused on the oil-changing lesson Antony insisted on giving him. By the time he thought he had the hang of it, the clock showed six-thirty and the place had finally calmed.