by Rie Warren
We dodged through pine and saw palm, weaving under glossy green leaves dappled with sunlight and thorny bracken seeking to waylay us. More than a handful of squirrels lifted onto hind legs at our approach before skedaddling into the underbrush, tails bushy, weasel eyes wide.
Reardon was hell bent on overtaking me as we crested a small hill, but I gunned the engine and hunkered low so clumps of mud spun behind me. “Eat my dust!”
Glimpsing back, I caught his grin and wink, then the defiant determination of his expression. Around the far edge of a brackish swamp, he made his move, cutting across the water, skirting cypress knees, a field of lily pads parting before him.
Gearing down, he idled ahead, waiting. “Any further and we’re gonna end up in the Ashepoo River.”
“Well, I’m filthy as sin, but I don’t much feel like a swim right now.”
He reached across and dabbed a smear of crud on my cheek. “You’re good at off-roading.”
“Compliments will get you everywhere.”
“Rematch?”
“You want me to kick your ass for you this time?”
His laugh lit his eyes and put the cute dimples in his cheeks, and his smile lasted the entire ride back to the main arena, even though I wiped the floor with him.
He left his ATV running and loped to me. In a hurry, he unbuckled my helmet, tossed it aside. He bent me over backward, his mouth thoroughly finding mine, tongue swirling inside, roughly massaging mine.
As he straightened, he lifted me off the seat.
Twirling my fingers through his hair, I murmured, “Off-roadin’ get you hot, baby?”
“You do, mud and all.” He tugged my earlobe between his teeth, scraping me across his thick erection. “Besides, it’s been a damn long three weeks, Shay. Can’t wait to get you naked.”
“Mmm, I do believe I offered already.”
He and Junior hosed down the vehicles while I lounged against the tailgate with a cold beer after commandeering the hose for a quick rinse-off. A popular place to ride, the obstacle course and tracks were overrun by families and couples and friends out for an afternoon of trail blazing.
The excellent sight of Reardon and half a dozen other men getting all wet, cleaning off four-wheelers and dirt bikes, was deeply engrossing.
Hmm, now that’s what I called a wet t-shirt contest.
A pair of strong arms encompassed me from behind, a cool, damp chest pressing against me. My yelp turned into a whimper as Reardon made his way up my neck to my earlobe with his tongue. “Enjoying the view, are you?”
Swiveling my bottom into his hips, I sighed. “People watchin’.”
“That what it’s called now?”
No, it was called perving on the pretty boys, but I wasn’t about to admit that.
Setting off down the other side of my neck, his open-mouthed kisses made my eyes shut and my lips part. “You like a dirty guy, then?”
I nodded.
“In that case, I got something to show you.”
Towing me to a secluded spot beside his truck, Reardon leaned against the hood, slowly, seductively unbuttoning the top of his jeans, spreading the flap wide, making it crystal clear he was free-balling it.
He took my hand, coasting it inside his jeans. His hot, solid cock overflowed my palm, and I pumped him.
“Figured you could get me out back for a fine-tuning, did ya?”
His irises were all but blacked out, his ears and cheeks and lips raw red with arousal, his fingers curling inside my jeans. “Hoped so.”
Licking my palm before placing it back on him, I couldn’t resist an innocent heckle. “Always with the romancin’, ain’t ya, baby?”
Swiping his thumb across the top of my cleft, he made me straddle his thigh. “I’m gonna give you so much romancing you won’t be able to walk straight for a week, Shay.”
My knees gave out, which was okay since his large thigh held me steady, rubbing, almost bringing me to orgasm right there.
“Would you mind getting in the truck now? Because I think we need a fast dirty fuck, before all the romancing, that is.” He raised his fingers up my body to pluck my nipples. “So long as you’re amenable.” It was a really good thing his arms and legs were caged around me.
Chapter 14
Perks of the Trade
Oh, I was amenable all right. After the fast, front seat fuck, Reardon had driven us to his place for some much needed lovemaking. My hands spreading over his back and running down to the crescents of his ass, whispering into the tight ropes of his throat, “Yes, Reardon. Baby, I…” I’d lost my voice inside a moan when he’d risen to his forearms, head hanging low and his face strained as his muscles.
“Shay, uh!” He coiled his arms around me, curling our bodies into some sort of divinity. “I missed you. Missed you so much, I couldn’t even–” He gasped when I folded my ankles together at the base of his spine. “Ah...Shay…”
I’d forgotten lover’s whispers, tucked inside groans and thrusts and hands held beside my head. I’d forgotten love. Making love.
Pressed together, slick and hot, we’d slowed, expanding in and out with his sensual lunges.
“This feels…”
“You’re so…”
“Yes…”
“Need you…”
“Reardon!”
Nipping my shoulder, he’d plunged so hard he shoved me to the headboard, coming apart inside me. Grunting my name over and over as his release joined mine, his lunges slowing to languid thrusts spinning me through another searing orgasm.
Sweeping the covers over us, he’d shouldered his chest beneath my head. Our fingers dangled together, as our sighs did.
* * * *
A take-the-boy-by-his-horn kinda gal, I wanted to make sure this romance thing went off without a hitch. Because I was sure whatever Mr. Reardon Day-Day Boone had hidden up his fuck hot French-cuffed sleeves or down his pants was damn sure to beat my sad, sad days of no-mance.
Dressed to the nines–frig, I was dressed to the tens and twelves–I’d primped instead of skimped for our next date. Okay, I might have skimped on my panties: a silky pair of cheekies framing my ass just so for a love-tap.
It was ponderously hot outside. My car choked and reared like a nervy filly down Mathis Ferry Road, and I tried my damnedest not to sweat. Instead, I perspired like a lady.
Lady of the night, Constance the Conscience yawned, already bored by me.
On the top floor of The Tides it was even quieter than the normal hush that lined the place. All Agent Provocateur, I worked along the halls, peering around every corner. The unnatural silence continued while I headed to Reardon’s bedroom.
For the first time, the shutters were closed, leaving a dense lapse of light. No candles, no welcome. Huddled into a corner, he sat with his arms bent around knees, his head hidden, back jerking in wrenching motions, fingers clenching. His sobs were great big gluts.
“I can’t do this.” His muffled words broke my heart.
“Reardon?” I reached for him the same way I’d reached across his desk the other day, turning the new photograph until the picture of him pushing Will in a swing came into view. It was filled with sunshine and grins and utterly a boy and his dad on any old day, having fun. The one image every parent should always have. He’d chosen it, for himself. Framed it. Looked at his son every day while he worked.
“I just want…” He gasped. “My baby boy back.”
On my knees beside him, I pulled his stiff form into my lap. “Oh God, baby. I know. Shhh.”
He shook his head ferociously. “No, nonono!” Clawing at his chest, he shouted, “It’s in here!” He pounded his heart. “It won’t go away.” His face skewered closed. “How can I?”
A shiver jolting through his body, he stayed locked inside my arms until the last spasms shuddered away.
“I miss Will. It’s having him die all over again, this endless pain.” His red-rimmed eyes moved along the walls, touching anything but me. He sidled to the do
or of the bathroom and bent over, a hand covering his face.
“I need…” He cleared his throat. “Can you give me a few minutes?”
“All the time you need.” I wanted to be in there with him, helping him, holding him, but he wouldn’t allow me to follow him.
The shower ran until he emerged wearing a wry grin.
Before he could shut me out with that mask of his, I said, “Don’t.”
His boardroom-cum-bedroom effect vanished with the dejected drop of his chin.
Even though he was unyielding, I hugged him, tugging off his towel, putting us to bed. “Don’t you hide from me, baby, not again.” I kissed his shoulder, nuzzling his body from behind.
“It’s hard, thinking of Will. It hurts so much.” He rubbed our fingers together over his heart, the gold emblem warming against his skin. He mumbled, “I ain’t weak like this.” A hint of the McClellanville boy shined through for a minute.
I filtered my fingers through his black curls. “No you ain’t, babe. But it’s not a weakness to feel.”
For an hour or so, before I dropped off, we talked about Will and Delilah, our fingers linked tight between our hearts.
Disorientated, I woke in a warm puddle...of drool. I smeared my hand across my mouth and took a minute to ascertain where the hell I was. Gigantic bed, manly bedroom. Mmm. I rolled to my side, gazillion thread count sheets. The Tides. But no Reardon. Well, that was a blessing, considering Drool Fest 2013.
I shrugged on one of his shirts and padded down the hallways. Running my fingers over the walls, I was guided by dim lights lit like candles, flickering here and there. The smell of wood polish mingled with lemony perfume from vases of giant, waxy-white magnolia blossoms.
Not in his office.
Not in the kitchen.
I’d already played Hide ‘n’ Seek once today.
Led by a warm breeze and soft sounds of low music, I found him on the balcony. A cigar in hand, glasses on, he lounged on one of the low teak chairs. He still wore his heavy silver wristwatch, and the pendant of Will glittered from the open lapels of his robe. It wasn’t any old bathrobe either, it was the one I’d worn the night he’d given me the pearls. The deep blue widened over his tanned chest down to his hard-packed stomach, revealing thickly muscled thighs and strong calves.
The sight of him sprawled like a satyr punched me in the gut with longing. “What are you doin’, Reardon?”
He took a long inhale of his cigar, looking out past the Ravenel Bridge. “Sorry about earlier.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Hush up now.” I smoothed rumpled hair off his forehead. “I’ll have none of that.”
“Well, I can’t sleep anyway. Slaughter’s up to something.”
“Isn’t he always?”
He gave a slight laugh. “Yes, but he’s being more sly than usual.” Looking up, he seemed to really see me. His shoulders relaxed while he curled his hands around my waist to draw me near. His low voice rumbled, “You look beautiful out here.” Stubbing out his cigar, he stood, brushing against my body. “Dance with me.”
We swayed around the balcony on our bare feet. Our hands knotted together over his chest where the steady thump-thump sped in time to my heartbeat, our hips swirling and our lips lightly kissing.
I breathed against his parted mouth. “I have to leave.”
As sudden as the midnight thunderclap booming around us, Reardon’s mood changed. He sat down, opened his legs, urging me to stand before him.
His words were scathing even though his voice vibrated sizzling messages against my breasts. “You still sleeping in the same bed with him?”
“No!” I pushed his head from my breasts. “No. I told you, he’s in the spare room.”
“Is he?” Reardon tested me. “You went out with him, he took you to a hotel, he has you in that house whenever he wants you. There was only one bed in your room at the inn, you told me so yourself.”
I put my palm on his cheek when what I really wanted to do was slap him. “And I told you he stayed on the couch. I said he doesn’t want me. I wouldn’t lie to you. I would never lie about the way it hurts to be so unwanted.”
“Sorry. Sorry, Shay. Damn it! I want you.”
His fingers hurried, he unbuttoned my shirt. He yanked it down my arms and lay back, pushing open the robe until it fell from his wide chest and rampant erection. My reaction was an instant rush of desire, a need to feel him inside me.
His husky words fueled me. “I wanna make love to you now, Shay.” He hungrily licked the orb of my tit until he made it topside, his shallow breaths teasing the peak tight and swollen. “I want my scent on you when you go back to...him.”
His fingers a clockwork over my nipples and dipping through my dripping pussy made me moan. Biting an engorged bud, he tugged it roughly, let it go, and watched with dark eyes as my breast bounced into his palm.
“I want my come inside you. If I have to go to bed alone, it’ll be with the feeling of your breasts moving against me. With the memory of my cock.” He shifted me on his thighs, spread my knees and thrust deep. “Spilling inside of you.”
With every broad stroke, he groaned into my cleavage. I held on, closing my eyes, clawing at the solid wall of his chest. Possessiveness consumed us in such wild fucking, we came quickly with grinding kisses and grabbing hands, shouts filling out the night’s softer sounds.
Afterward, he carried me to his room and eyed the bed.
His long sigh made me want to cry for all the yearning it betrayed. He set me down and handed me my clothes.
“Let me drive you home.” It wasn’t a question, although uncertainty sprouted in his eyes.
It was so simple a request and such a bad idea. But I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. “Yes.”
Reardon behind the wheel of the Honda was too comical to pass up. And I wanted him to take me home. I needed to believe he was my second love, the one who would wait, the one greedy enough to take what I could give him.
“Really?” His face lit so boyishly. There was that, too, his pleasure out of somethin’ so simple, from the man who could have anything at all, and all of me.
* * * *
Several days later, I was still snorting over him crunched into my compact car when he was made for big flashy rides. I had to hand it to him, he didn’t even raise an eyebrow when it backfired halfway down Whipple Road. The lights had been out at my house, and he’d sneaked away like a wily country boy to his rendezvous point with Junior, leaving Palmer none the wiser and Reardon satisfied he’d been able to do the chivalrous thing for once.
For my upcoming foray on the town, I upped the ante, but while trying on outfits, I feared a red-faced Ty Pennington Move That Bus moment...the bus being my ass in some unflattering ensemble or other. So I did what any confident women would do. Instead of trusting my instincts, which were–I didn’t need Connie to confirm–on the questionable side, I modeled in front of my old friend Addy.
Clearly that was a mistake.
I didn’t know how she had room to talk about the size of my rear end, what with the trunk load she carried under her garish muumuu, but that didn’t stop her one damn bit. She motioned me to turn around, slowly. Suddenly she was Heidi Goddamn Klum, with a do-rag.
“Girl, you done got some meat on dem bones, didn’t ya?” She clucked approvingly. “Y’all sure you can walk in that there dress? Go’on now’n give Miss Addy here a l’il walk, tha’s right.”
I swiveled and swished down Aisle 2, in between Family Planning and Greeting Cards.
“Damn, girl! I said, yes ma’am, swing it, sister.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Y’all don’t be ashamed of carryin’ some cushion back there, nuh uh.” A group of customers came in and still she didn’t stop. “That man a yours likes it like that, don’t he? Full figure? More to grab hold of when he gets–”
“Addy,” I screeched, slicing a finger across my throat.
“What? Don’t be embarrassed in front of them.�
�� She waved over to the family settling on the bar stools. “These jest the Walters from over on Whilden.”
My face suffused with a hell of a blush, I backed to the door so no one could see my caboose.
Adelaide halted me. “Y’all sure you don’t want some a’ dis here macaroni and cheese? I promise, y’all like to put your foot in it.”
“I’m sure it’s yummy, but I don’t see how a thousand calorie plate of mac n’ cheese is gonna help me with the Mack truck I’m hauling around back here.”
Later, the evening promising to be one long, intimate, romantic interlude, I was escorted along a cavernous brick passageway toward a private dining room in an upscale downtown restaurant. Leaving the heat-saturated air outside to wander down the cool, damp enclave, I shivered from the change in temperature.
Most helpful, the handsome maitre d’ offered to fetch a wrap to take the chill off.
“Y’all can do that?” This was some kind of establishment. Not like Melvin’s BBQ at all. Although I bet they didn’t do ribs half as well, seeing as this was an Italian joint.
“Of course, madam.”
Ooh, madam, that sounded so much sexier than ma’am.
Busy batting my eyelashes at him, I stopped when Reardon spoke, deep and throaty. “I’ll take it from here.” Reardon was curt when he transferred my elbow to his hand, dismissing the man. “If she needs to be kept warm, I’ll take care of it.”
Oh my, didn’t take much to get him all randy and riled. I liked it.
Smoothing my jade green sheath, I turned to him with a smile. Jealousy forgotten, his eyes leisurely strolled up my legs, hitting all the high points of my figure, his lips slightly parted.
“You gonna be okay there, baby?”
He leaned over to whisper at the corner of my lips, “You look sinful.” His tongue softly dipping across the seam of my mouth, he fingered a loose wave of my hair as if the color fascinated him.
“Wait ’til you see what’s underneath.”
A hand roving up my thigh, he groaned. “I hope it’s nothing.”
“Near enough. But you’ll find out later.”
