Hissy Fit (The Southern Gentleman Series Book 1)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  Camryn had just climbed up on the bull around the time that Croft walked in the door with his date, momentarily distracting me from Camryn’s start.

  I gasped and started down the stairs, wanting to get a better look at Camryn’s face when she realized that my brother had seen her ride.

  By the time she was bucked off moments later, I was standing beside where she was sprawled indelicately on the mat and we were both laughing.

  I climbed onto the mat and wrapped my arms around her. “Oh, God! That was great!”

  Camryn held onto my head and pulled me to her side, shaking with her laughter. “That was fun, you should go!”

  I stood up, wobbled, and then reached for the bull to steady myself.

  My gaze was caught by a commotion at the stairs, and that was when I saw Coach Butthead heading down toward me.

  “That sounds like the best thing I’ve ever heard!” I declared.

  Then, before my brother or Coach Grumpy Pants could stop me, I climbed on the bull and pointed at the man controlling it. “Hit it!”

  The bull controller ‘hit it’ and then I was hanging on for dear life while also trying not to laugh my ass off in the process.

  I even got one second longer before I, too, went flying just as easily as Camryn had moments before.

  I hit the mat hard and awkwardly.

  My casted arm hit the metal underneath the bull that controlled its movements, and I cried out as pain radiated up my elbow and into my heart.

  “Owwww,” I whined, my drunkenness clearing the tiniest of bits. “That hurt!”

  Then I rolled over to see a pair of black Under Armour wind pants with our school mascot on them standing next to my face.

  I rolled over onto my back and looked up the long, lean body of Coach McDuff, and wondered if this was heaven.

  Surely it had to be.

  But then I got to his face and saw he was scowling at me.

  It must be hell.

  “Am I in hell?” I asked the coach that was glaring at me.

  “No, but you might wish you were after I’m through with you,” he growled irately.

  Oh, Coach McDuff was pissed.

  He reached down for my good arm, and I slapped him away. “Don’t touch me, Coach Cheater McCheaterson.”

  Ezra ignored me and hauled me up to standing beside him, causing my world to tilt on its axis for a few long seconds.

  “Whoa,” I chortled. “That was fun!”

  “Are you drunk?” he asked, sounding just as miffed as he had been when I was lying down.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Until today, I’ve never drunk a single alcoholic beverage before! What does drunk look like?”

  “You,” my brother grunted as he stared at me. “I can almost see your boobs.”

  I looked down at said boobs. “I have a t-shirt on.”

  “You have a freakin’ tank top on, and you’re not wearing a bra,” he challenged.

  I frowned. “I am, too.” I then pulled my bra strap out of my tank top to show the dumbass. “See?”

  “Do something with her, she’s embarrassing me,” my brother ordered the man holding onto me.

  I started to push away. “No! I have things to do!”

  “No, you don’t,” Ezra disagreed. “In fact, you have to work tomorrow, so it’s probably best that you stop drinking now. With any luck, I can get some coffee and water in you and make you halfway presentable for tomorrow. You got Camryn?”

  “I’m not going to work tomorrow,” I declared. “I quit!”

  “You’re not quitting, hoe!” Camryn yelled. “If you quit, then who will I talk about all the great asses of the school to?”

  “That’s gross,” the woman, Croft’s date, said. “Those are children.”

  Camryn looked over at the woman, who likely shouldn’t be privy to this conversation. “I was talking about Coach McDuff,” she hitched a thumb in Ezra’s direction. “And the assistant coach. And the girls’ softball coach, as well as one of the science teachers—he’s new this year, and yowza, does he have one fine ass. It was a tossup between him and Coach McDuff this year, to be honest. Not children, you freakin’ loser.”

  “What about Officer Flint?” I teased her.

  Camryn’s mouth tightened, and her eyes narrowed. Her finger went straight as a board as she pointed it at me.

  “Do not speak about that man in my presence again,” she ordered. “That man is a lying, despicable, no good, rotten, disgusting, arrogant, asshole, big, fat…”

  Croft slapped his hand over Camryn’s mouth, but something in his eyes told me he was trying not to laugh.

  Ezra scooped me up then, and in his haste to toss me over his shoulder, I knocked the beer that had miraculously appeared in Camryn’s hand onto the ground, half of the beer slinking down inside my cast as I did.

  “Shit!” I hissed. “That’s cold!”

  It wasn’t until we were outside, and I was on my feet next to Ezra’s truck, that he saw my problem.

  “We’ll go get it changed,” he said. “Then we’re going home.”

  He was true to his word, taking me to the twenty-four-hour emergency clinic to get my cast changed before taking us to my home.

  “Keys?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t have any. I rode with Camryn.”

  He grunted, his eyes never leaving mine. “So how are you going to get into the house?”

  I turned to the door and twisted the knob. “I didn’t bother locking it.”

  He muttered something else behind me that sounded like ‘stupid,’ but I couldn’t be sure.

  “What?”

  Chapter 16

  Please do not pet the peeves.

  -T-shirt

  Ezra

  I’d lost every bit of patience I had left, and it was all because of the woman looking at me with such fucking innocence in her eyes.

  She had no clue what she did to me.

  She also had no clue that her tears nearly brought me to my knees.

  I hated walking out of the principal’s office today. I hated it even more to see her tears rolling down her cheeks after she realized that I’d be taking over.

  It took me about two hours to find out why she’d been removed from the class, and once that had happened, I’d lost nearly all of my patience.

  I’d talked to Mrs. Sherpa, letting her know that Raleigh and I were in a relationship. I’d also let her know in no uncertain terms that out of anyone in the school, Raleigh was the least likely teacher to do anything like that ever.

  She agreed with me, and also told me to keep my relationship out of the school as best that I could—which we would.

  But I was done hiding what I felt for the woman currently drunk off her ass standing in front of me.

  I was also tired as hell of hiding the fact that I cared for her a whole lot more than I ever thought I’d care about a woman.

  “Despite what you think, it’s not safe to keep your doors unlocked,” I growled, trying valiantly to control my temper.

  She snickered. “Ezra Wezra, this is Gun Barrel. We have a population of twenty thousand. Plus, I have that alarm sticker on my window.”

  I grunted. “You have an alarm sticker on your window…and you think that’s helpful?”

  She shrugged and started to strip, her shirt first, followed shortly by her bra.

  The bra got caught up on her new cast, and she hastily pulled on it to get it unstuck.

  The moment it came free of the cast, it slung across the empty room, and my eyes followed it.

  Something caught my eye, and I frowned.

  “What’s that?” I pointed.

  Raleigh snickered. “Camryn found that at a garage sale today on the way over to my house. Isn’t it cute?”

  It was something.

  “Is it real?” I asked as my hand hovered over the stuffed cat.

  The very real looking stuffed
cat.

  “No,” she answered, starting on her jeans. “It’s fake. Touch it.”

  “I’d rather touch something else,” I murmured, liking the view in her direction a lot better.

  She finally got to her underwear and shoved those down, too, leaving her in nothing but her short little ankle socks that I hadn’t seen she had on inside her ankle boots.

  Once those were off, she stared at me expectantly.

  I was too preoccupied with her breasts to notice that she was expecting something from me.

  “Well, let’s go!” she declared.

  I frowned. “Let’s go?”

  “Yes,” she said, bending over the couch. “Do me!”

  I chuckled.

  “What if I didn’t want to ‘do’ you?” I rumbled, coming up behind her.

  She closed her eyes and smiled sweetly. “Then I guess I could go to sleep right here.”

  I chuckled, having no doubt in my mind that she might very well do it if I left her there for too long.

  “Maybe sleep is the best thing you could have right now,” I contemplated.

  She snickered, her eyes opening to slits. “I’ve heard that drunk sex is better than sex.”

  I bit my lip to hold the laughter in. “Drunk sex, I think, is categorized under actual ‘sex.’”

  Her pursed lips told me she was actually contemplating what I said with all the seriousness that she could muster at that moment in time.

  She pushed up on her elbows and glared at me. “Ezra McDuff…you have one job right now.”

  My brow rose. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she confirmed. “And if you don’t get to it, you lose boyfriend points. You’ve already lost some after the day I had…so I’d suggest you doing extra credit to make up for it.”

  The idea of doing anything ‘extra credit’ with her really turned me on. Like, really turned me on.

  I bit my lip as ideas started to roll through my head rapid fire, one after the other.

  “Extra credit?” I teased, finally pressing my hand against the soft skin of her ass and rubbing down the length of her thigh lightly. “What kind of extra credit?”

  She spread her thighs.

  “The kind where I get to feel that beard between my legs.” She pointed down.

  I felt adrenaline start to burn through my veins and my dick that’d been hard since I saw her the first time tonight stiffened further.

  But I didn’t want her where she was at.

  I wanted her on her back on the bed, her hands free to pull and tug on my hair when my mouth was doing things between her thighs.

  Without waiting for permission, I walked up behind her and picked her up around the waist.

  She squealed in surprise, drunkenly clutching for the furniture that was no longer near her and giggled as I carried her into the bedroom.

  The moment I was close enough to the bed, I tossed her and grinned when she continued to laugh her ass off.

  She bounced twice before she finally sat still, her hair covering half of her face and her hands high above her head.

  She blew the hair on her face, but all it did was go straight up and fall even more distractedly over her eyes and nose.

  She tried it again, and then inhaled it, coughing moments later.

  I put one knee into the bed and reached forward, wiping her hair away from her face.

  If she hadn’t been so drunk, I was sure that she’d be able to accomplish that feat on her own, yet I was happy to do it for her.

  Honestly, I’d be happy to do just about anything as long as it was for her.

  I looked down into her beautiful eyes and studied them.

  She was staring at me with a small smile on her face.

  “I love you, Raleigh Crusie,” I growled, knowing she wouldn’t remember in the morning.

  Moments later, I dropped a hard, fast kiss on her upturned lips and pulled back before her grabby hands could make purchase in my hair.

  “Sorry, Ms. Crusie, but I have extra credit to start working on,” I teased, crawling my way down her body.

  She shifted her legs, but the way my knees were positioned on either side of her thighs, she couldn’t move them far before she got to the barrier.

  “Ezra,” she hissed. “Move!”

  I snickered, moving first one knee, and then the other.

  The moment she was free, she widened her legs and then pointed at her clit with one finger. “Right there, Coach McDuff.”

  I licked my lips, then dropped down onto my elbows, pressing my erection into the bed.

  “Here?” I asked, kissing the inside of one thigh.

  She shook her head, her eyes clearing up by the second. “No, here?”

  She touched her clit again, and we both hissed.

  “Here?” I moved closer, kissing the crease of her thigh.

  “No,” she wailed, her hand going to my hair. “Do you need me to guide you?”

  I grinned against the skin of her thigh and nodded my head. “Maybe, Ms. Crusie.”

  She yanked on my hair, and I obediently looked up at her. “Will you follow the directions? Most don’t.”

  I nodded. “Oh, yeah. I’m good at following directions.”

  That was a lie. I was totally a fly by the seat of my pants guy, but I’d tell her just about anything when she was in this mood.

  I liked it when she was feisty.

  “Okay,” she said. “But if you don’t listen, you’re going to need to do some serious ass kissing to get the points you’re losing back.”

  “Oh, no,” I teased. “We can’t have that.”

  She narrowed her eyes and pulled on my hair. “Up.”

  I went up, nibbling my way to where she wanted me.

  “Open your mouth,” she ordered.

  I did.

  “Stick out your tongue,” she continued.

  I did that, too.

  “Forward,” she instructed.

  I moved forward, feeling my saliva gather in my mouth in anticipation of tasting her.

  Her pussy was so pretty, and I could see the clear fluid gathering at her entrance, giving away her excitement.

  I wanted to taste her everywhere, but for now, I’d play her game, doing what she wanted.

  Though, what she was wanting definitely wasn’t displeasing.

  In fact, I fuckin’ loved every second of it.

  Her hands in my hair, her taste in my mouth? Yeah, there wasn’t anywhere else I would want to be but exactly where I was.

  “Jesus,” she gasped. “Push it inside.”

  I did, following her directions to the exact preciseness that I did all things in life.

  There was no reason to half-ass anything.

  I was never the type not to give it my all. That was why this thing with Raleigh was going so far, so fast.

  I wanted her.

  I’d always known what I wanted, and I trusted my gut.

  My gut was telling me exactly what I should do—and that was take her and keep her.

  Make her mine forever.

  I wasn’t at the point where I’d propose, but I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I felt it was the right time.

  “You’re not paying attention.” She yanked on the hair she had fisted in her hands. “Lick me!”

  I liked this assertive, drunk Raleigh. I liked her a lot.

  I made a mental note to get her drunk more often.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I teased.

  Then I did what I wanted, and she forgot that she was supposed to give instructions.

  It was when I’d brought her nearly to the brink of orgasm and stopped that she finally realized I wasn’t doing as I was told. However, at that point, she was too far gone to care.

  Before she had a chance to protest, I was yanking the rest of my clothes free and crawling up between her legs, thrusting inside. I gave her my full length without giving her a chance to adjust.

>   Which, in turn, had us both crying out. Her in surprise and pleasure, and me in such exquisite agony that I could barely find it in me to breathe.

  Even though I’d had her regularly and had been masturbating on my own when she wasn’t around to give it to me, I was on the brink before I’d even gotten three thrusts into that tight body of hers.

  Everything was just so hot and wet that I couldn’t function, let alone tell myself that it was too soon. That I hadn’t been going long enough yet for either of our best interests.

  But then she started to ripple around me, and I started to spurt inside of her in reaction.

  I couldn’t help it.

  With Raleigh, she rendered me utterly useless when it came to making her mine.

  “Fuck!” I snarled.

  Or was it Raleigh?

  I wasn’t sure, to be honest.

  But in the end, I wasn’t sure that I really cared, because I was inside of her and everything in my life was fucking right.

  For the first time in forever, I knew what I wanted out of life.

  Her. Us. Me and her. Kids. Three. A house. Two cars. A white goddamn picket fence.

  Everything all centered around her, though.

  And as I looked into her eyes and saw the same feelings that I was currently feeling rising in my chest, I knew that we’d make this work.

  I wasn’t going to ask her to marry me today…but I knew it’d happen.

  Soon.

  “I love you, Raleigh.”

  She closed her eyes and smiled.

  Then she turned her head on the pillow, with me still inside her, and started to snore.

  I had no other recourse but to laugh.

  Chapter 17

  I’m mom’s favorite.

  -Text from Raleigh to Croft

  Raleigh

  “Gotta go change and get to practice,” Ezra growled against my mouth. “Be good.”

  I smiled into the semi-darkness, patting his muscular forearm, and falling right back to sleep.

  At least, I would have had the words that I’d always wanted to hear not fallen from those perfect lips.

  “Love you, Raleigh.”

  By the time I processed them, and realized that I needed to return the sentiment, he was already starting that loud truck of his up and backing out of my driveway.

  I reached for my phone to type out a text but realized it wasn’t by the bed.