by Zoe Dawson
“What’s the matter, darlin’?” I whispered, tunneling fingers through her hair, a cascade of bronzed silk. Blonde was so overrated. It fell through my fingers, soft and silky, and I could understand why she liked touching mine.
“She loved him so much. I bet she never got over it.” Silvery tears welled and slipped down her temples.
Uniforms and letters made this tough little cookie cry. But it didn’t make her look weak at all, but strong enough to own those emotions. I wish I could be so brave. She answered so honestly, and hardly ever got embarrassed, except over her tiara. And that awful dress.
“They were so in love. Had three boys together. It flows off the pages.”
I wiped at her tears with my thumbs.
“I think Duel might have been innocent,” she said. “No wonder there’s a scar on the tree.”
“Innocent?” I sat up, surprised. This was the first I’d ever heard of it, but I’d never bothered to read the letters. “What are you talking about?”
“I went through the ledgers, and there are entries in his handwriting noted during the same time period he was supposed to be killing those men and stealing the gold. And if he had stolen the gold, what was his motive? His store was doing really well. He didn’t need the money. Plus, I would expect he would have told Amy about it. They shared everything. If he’d stolen for his family, he would have let her know where it was. Don’t you think?”
“I guess so. Honestly, I don’t know much about him. Just like I don’t know much about my daddy.”
“Your daddy worked for us. Did you know?”
That bombshell exploded through me. “What? No. I didn’t. They said he was a thief, but I never asked. I didn’t want to know.”
“Well, he worked for my cousin, Earl, but I don’t know the particulars. I only know he said your daddy stole money.”
“He stole from the Suttons? From your family?” I was floored. It seemed the Outlaws and Suttons were always tangled together one way or another. Chase and Jake and my brothers, now River Pearl and me. I didn’t want to dive too deeply into the big pool of pain and anger that was my memories of my daddy.
She nodded. “According to my cousin Earl.”
I shook my head. “No offense, but I never liked your cousin. There’s something…off…about him.”
“None taken. He creeps me out.”
Tension rattled through me like the thunder shaking the windowpanes while memories I couldn’t stop played out. My daddy had been a big man, like the three of us, dark hair and the same blue eyes. We were the spitting image of him, which was probably why the townsfolk couldn’t seem to let our family transgressions go. My emotions rushed ahead, frantically torn between being open and protecting myself.
“I don’t want to talk about my daddy or Duel anymore,” I said, my voice thickening, cracking.
“Oh, God, Brax. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. Is this too painful? Too much? I need more material and was hoping to get up in your attic…but…?”
I was overwhelmed with the way she had of pulling this…stuff from me. Stuff I had buried so deep only the tips were visible, and those I’d concealed with unrelenting anger.
I shrugged it off like it was nothing, but in the lightning’s glow I could tell she saw right through me. “How about we check my attic as soon as I’m finished with what I have planned? Shouldn’t take too long,” I rattled off like my insides weren’t scored with acid.
“What do you…oh,” she replied when she saw my look, but she slipped her arms around me and pressed her cheek against my bruised jaw, her tears damp against my skin. It hurt, but I let the pain wash through me to bury the part of me who wanted to respond.
Longing welled, and I needed to ease the pain, to fill the hole in my heart, even if only temporarily.
“Brax,” she said quietly, and I closed my eyes against the compassion in her voice.
A guy could die from this.
She kissed my jaw gently, and she looked at me with her willingness to accept all I could give her with my hard, aroused body. Her parted lips, her gaze drifting from my mouth to my chest, and back to my eyes, all told me she wasn’t going anywhere without me.
All the women I’d had gave me a similar look, but there was something more in her eyes, something beyond the desire, something I was afraid to see, afraid to accept, afraid I couldn’t let it go if I did. I had to let her go. I had to. With her gaze on mine, breathless and intent, I couldn’t breathe in the thick air. Hunger rode me hard.
Everything in me was focused on her, the hot place cradling my even hotter dick, the smooth, cool feel of her satiny skin, the round press of her breasts. I settled her more fully under me, wanting to dominate her, take her, make her surrender, submit to me. It was savage and raw and somewhere in my mind I thought of myself as an animal, one trapped and imprisoned in my own desire.
“You’re as beautiful as an angel,” she murmured.
Bracing myself on my knees, my stomach tightening and aggravating my bruised ribs with more pain I could use to build some distance between us. I hooked an arm behind her gracefully arching back, bending down and shoving the cotton out of the way, grasping her breast roughly, squeezing it and clamping my hungry mouth over the tip. Her nipple budded at the onslaught of my tongue, and I drew on it hotly, greedily, wringing little cries of pleasure from her sweet mouth.
I gripped the hem of the shirt and pulled it up. Over her quivering abdomen, over the beautiful rose-tipped mounds and higher. She lay back and lifted her hands over her head. On all fours, I pushed the shirt to her wrists and held her there with one hand, pinning her to the mattress. My eyes locked on hers. She was breathing hard and she cried out softly when I kneed her legs apart. She fought against my restraint.
“What do you want?” I said roughly.
“Let me touch you, please, Brax. I’ve wanted to touch you. For so long.”
“Where?” I rasped, my chest heaving.
“Let me go,” she pleaded, pulling at my hands.
“Not ready yet,” I said, then dropped my open mouth on hers and kissed her hard, maybe too hard, but all she did was moan.
When I rose back to all fours and released her hands, she said, “Don’t move.”
I froze on my hands and knees while her hands stroked up from my wrists to my biceps. “Oh my,” she said as I tightened through my arms and chest at her touch.
“Oh, God, Brax, you are so gorgeous.” She ran her hands over my pecs and down the length of my abs to my raging hard-on. As she slid her hands over my dick I grunted and thrust, but she continued around my waist and down over my butt, up my back, neck and face, then into my hair. “I want you so much,” she whispered. She started to slide down and my gut twisted.
“No,” I gritted, “I want to be inside you when I come. I won’t last long the other way.” It was a lie. I wanted her mouth on me so much, but I…fuck…this was truly crazy. I couldn’t let her do it.
I came down on top of her, settled my rock-hard dick against her. Her eyes widened, then darkened. I heard the little catch in her breath.
It was golden, that little catch. She did it every time I got close to her, sometimes when I fit myself inside her, sometimes when I got into her personal space. It’d happened the night I caught her, so hot, so exquisitely beautiful, in the bayou when I’d been sixteen, and the remembered heat and hunger I’d felt that night came rushing at me like a locomotive. It was like lightning from the storm struck me. Every cell responded to the little catch in her breath. It was amazing. Fucked me over good. Absolutely irresistible. I intended to do my damnedest to make her do it again and again, and fucking again.
I moved slightly, and the restraint of holding myself back from entering her made my whole body tremble, and I groaned like I was dying, but she did it again.
“Brax,” she whispered, and the sound made my balls tighten and my dick hurt so good.
I leaned into her another inch, and I was on fire, sweating freely. I hung the
re and looked at her. Her hands reached down, splayed over my butt, and urged my hips forward.
I pushed up into her, and—oh, man, she felt so good. So good, her legs wrapping around me, holding me tight against her.
I buried my face in her neck, kissing it, sucking on her skin, loving the softness of her skin, the feel of her breath against my ear, and reminded myself to breathe with her.
She thrust her hips and gloved my dick to perfection, making me almost lose myself. I pressed deeper up into her, giving her more of me. It was an exquisite sensation, entering a woman, always, every time I’d ever done it, but with River…Man, making love to her was incredible.
I stopped after my first few thrusts, stopped and held myself still, dropping my head onto her shoulder, trying to catch my breath. I needed a minute to simply hold her, to simply fill her up and fill myself with her scent and her softness. She was wrapped in my arms. I was buried deep between her thighs, and I still didn’t feel close enough to her. Whatever I was after with her, whatever it was going to take, I was afraid it might drive me crazy before I got it.
“Brax,” she gasped my name, and it was like a benediction. I especially loved hearing it when I was inside her.
Lifting my head, I met and held her gaze. She was so lush, her skin so smooth. As I watched, pleasure shuddered through her while I pushed hard into her, and her lashes drifted closed.
Bands of light and shadows slid across her face as the lightning flashed outside. Her mouth was ripe and full and I took it again. She tasted better than my adolescent mind could ever have imagined. A man would never, could never get his mouth on anything more gut-wrenchingly addictive than a woman. I’d never felt the truth of it more than with River Pearl Sutton.
“Brax,” she whispered my name again with a shuddering sigh, moving against me, needing more.
I felt it, too, the heat building between us, the long seconds dragging out, the tension winding up. I thrust once more and then groaned. There was too much I wanted to do with her, but I couldn’t do it all. But this was goddamned good, trying to stay still, dying a little and letting her kiss my neck and throat, her hands sliding up over my muscles like they were irresistible, then pressing on my butt. She wasn’t strong enough to force me to do anything, except in the fuck-this-is-killing-me-slowly-by-degrees way. She moved me that way. Moved me real good, hard and deep, right down to my core.
“Please Brax…,” she murmured, her words pleading, her breath hot against my skin. “Please...please.”
It’s what she said aloud, but what she meant was far more succinct and a hundred times more erotic and raw. I knew exactly what she wanted, exactly what she wanted me to please, please do.
Please fuck me, Brax—that’s what she meant. It was what she wanted, and, when I couldn’t hold myself back anymore, I fucked her, one long, slow thrust at a time, each one taking us higher, each one coming faster and harder than the one before. I opened my mouth on her neck, filling myself with the taste of her.
The storm rolled off toward Lafayette, thunder sounding like the faint echo of drums, rain sizzling like the sound of steam.
I was lost in her, lost in the fragrant panting of her breath in my ear, in the love bites she was nibbling along my jaw and down the length of my neck. I moved my mouth to hers, and she sucked on my tongue, her hips arching into mine, trying to get even closer.
We were getting wild, completely out of control. She arched up and I felt her tighten around me and I clenched my teeth at the pleasure I got from fucking her to orgasm. I reached for the headboard. My brain short-circuited and lust took over. She was so sweet and tight and so hot for me. I was losing it, completely losing it.
I couldn’t think and that was my goddamned problem. I couldn’t think around her when the smell of her was enough to get me hard. I had a death grip on the headboard. I used the wood as an anchor to get deeper. My hips moved in uncontrollable bursts while I hung on, wanting her to come again. But then it was too much, I was jacked up as far as I could go, and I fell, going over the edge with a long, hard moan from the intense pleasure exploding through me, going rigid with the sudden, powerful rush of release.
Her cry tore through me as she shattered around me again. She came hard, holding me so tight, her ankles locked at the small of my back, forcing me deeper and deeper until I thought I could die from the pure mind-blowing pleasure of it.
When she finally released me, her legs sliding off to either side, I was spent, completely wrung out. I collapsed against her, careful to keep my weight off her chest. She’d gone so quiet. I thought she might have drifted to sleep. Then her hand slid up my thigh, and over my hip.
“Oh, God, Brax. I think you ruined me for any other man,” she murmured, sounding as wrung out as I felt, completely done in. Her hand continued stroking me, moving up until her fingers were sliding through my hair.
If I hadn’t just come, her words would have made me hard all over again.
I lifted up enough to look at her, resting my weight on my forearms. Her eyes were a sated, silvery color, her face utterly replete. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen anything so beautiful. The sight of her beneath me with her serene angel’s face, kiss-swollen lips, and cloud of bronzed hair seemed like a dream I’d lived many times.
“You just ruin me.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself.
A slow smile curved her mouth, and her eyes drifted closed while she adjusted her hips ever so slightly, with me still in her, still between her legs.
And she wrecked me again with aftershocks from Earthquake River. I let out a hoarse groan, short and guttural, while she wrung out the last ounce of energy I had left. Kee-rist. I’d just had her and I still wanted her. Not sexually. Deeper, more intensely. Too deep for me to let myself think about it too much.
After tonight, I probably wouldn’t be able to get it up for a week—or at least until morning. She’d done me in, but I still wanted her, wanted…something. I eased my forehead down to rest on hers and let out a short breath. If this had been anyone else, I would have already been dressed and out the door. I didn’t cuddle. I didn’t hang out. And I didn’t sleep over. It had always been sex for me. Pure and simple.
But there was nothing simple about this…with River. I couldn’t let her go. It was out of the question, and I was glad she’d brought a bag and wanted to stay with me.
She would be gone soon enough, back to her world. But right now I didn’t want another man within five feet of her, ever. She’d taken my most raw, aching, adolescent imaginings of a fantasy fuck and eclipsed them as easily as she took her next sweet breath.
I would never be the same.
A few minutes passed and neither of us moved. I needed a shower. I had worked myself into a frenzy with Booker’s goading and then the bag, and now with River. I felt completely drained.
“Brax, what is this?” Her voice was hushed and languorous in my ear, barely a whisper as she used her fingertip to lightly trace the knife scar right above my hip indentation, pushing the sheet back as she did.
On a scale of one to ten, getting knifed was about a negative four on the list of things I wanted to talk about right now.
I looked out to the porch. I studied the bands of light and shadow, like lace on the wood from the play of light through the trees. It was a full moon out that night in the bayou. The ground where I had lain bleeding and beaten had the same lacy quality, something I remembered even though my side had been on fire, in agony, everything going hazy, with the edges fading to gray.
No. I didn’t want to talk about it, not when I was still in a post-coital haze. This moment was too damn good to mess up with the story of what it was like to be an Outlaw. I had never given anyone the particulars. Not the guy who’d rescued my ass or my ma or brothers.
“Mmmmm,” I murmured, deliberately not committing to the conversation. I eased myself out of her and nuzzled along her face and down into her hair. I loved the smell of her shampoo, her skin.
&nbs
p; “Shower,” I said softly.
“Looks like a knife scar, and you had stitches. Did this happen at the beginning of school our senior year? You were gone for a week, and when you came back you had these bruises on your face.”
She wasn’t taking the hint. But I was the stubbornest sumbitch.
Chapter Thirteen
River Pearl
“What happened?” I demanded. Darned if I was going to be put off, if that’s what he was trying to do. I’d just made incredible love for the fourth time with the man, had a raging crush on him for years, and I wanted to know more. Everything. I needed to know.
This might be temporary, but it didn’t mean I had to curb my curiosity. Besides, this didn’t feel temporary. I knew it was. I wasn’t deluding myself. But to be honest, it felt like we were building something.
Brax’s retreat made me angry. Even after everything I had gone through with him, and considering what I might have to deal with at the end of this, I wouldn’t have missed taking the chance for the world. Whatever I had given him, I’d gotten far more in return.
While my one hand was carefully checking out his side, the other was doing a sensory exploration of his chest. He was a wall of hard muscle covered with unbelievably smooth skin. Touching him, sliding my fingers across that skin, was heaven. I flattened my hand close to his heart and felt the deep, solid, rhythm thump through my palm and into my awareness, and I knew he’d given me more than simply sensual pleasure.
I had always been admired, put on display, ogled and manhandled. But other than my brothers, and Aubree and Verity, I had never known anyone who treated me like I was real and not a Barbie doll or a piece of real estate. He treated me like a person and not a commodity.
I felt safe with Brax, cocooned in his physical warmth and his regard for me. It was totally crazy, but my instincts about him had been completely right. We’d broken some sort of barrier, Brax and I, and on what was actually one of the best nights of my life, I was interested, intrigued, and thoroughly under the Swoon spell of the most enigmatic of the Outlaw trips.
