by Dahlia West
Jack shrugged again. “I don’t eat pussy,” he repeated. “I don’t have to.”
She stood in front of him, astonished, her humiliation worsening by the second. Here she was drawing down her underwear for a man who clearly didn’t give a shit about her needs at all.
Apparently, it was a blow job, dinner, then head off to bed.
She yanked up her panties while staring daggers at him, awed by his selfishness. “You’re right, Jack. You don’t have to eat pussy. In fact, I can think of a lot of things we don’t have to do anymore.”
She turned on her heel and stomped across the bedroom.
“Hey,” he called after her. “Hey, wait a minute. Erin!”
But Erin was already out the bedroom door. She marched, stiff-legged, down the staircase as a few choice words escaped her lips.
“Wait a damn minute!” Jack bellowed from the second floor, but she didn’t even stop to give him another dirty look.
Oh, she’d wait a minute. She’d wait a whole hell of a lot longer than a minute. Erin had, involuntarily of course, had a dry spell that was coming up on a whole year before this silver-tongued devil had darkened her door. She wondered just how long she could hold out on purpose this time.
She didn’t know, especially since Jack had apparently awakened desires in her that she was sure hadn’t been there before, or at least not this intense. But she was pretty sure she could hold out longer than he could.
She felt her own thoughts turn darker, though, as she rounded the corner into the kitchen. It was ridiculous to pretend like this was their only problem, their only point of incompatibility. Erin’s problems with Jack ran much deeper than reciprocal oral and, unfortunately, she damn well knew it.
Chapter Forty-One
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Jack sprang up from the bed, fastened his belt, and headed downstairs in pursuit. He could tell by the thumping and banging coming from the kitchen that she’d headed that way.
As he turned the corner, the crack of a cabinet door smacking shut reverberated off the walls. Jack snorted but the noise was muffled in Erin’s anger-fueled whirlwind. Her back was to him and she hadn’t noticed him. She threw a whisk down onto the counter and huffed loudly.
He rolled his eyes. There were a lot of things that were unfair in this world and a whole lot of things to be pissed off about. Not getting eaten out wasn’t exactly one of them, in Jack’s not-so-humble opinion, and he opened his mouth to tell her just that, to tell her to just take what he would give her and do it with a smile. She always got off, he was about to remind her.
“Whore,” Erin muttered to herself, and that stopped him cold. She slammed down a mixing bowl and yanked open the drawer next to her. “He’s had dozens of them,” he heard her tell herself. “You’re just another one, like all the others. Idiot. He doesn’t even look at you. You’re just a wet hole.”
Anger surged in Jack now and he sprang forward. He caught Erin by the arm, just above the elbow, and tugged hard enough to spin her around. She dropped the whisk and it clattered on the floor. For a second she looked surprised, then her features settled back into the hard glare she’d given him just a minute ago.
“Sorry,” she snapped. “I’m cooking and I sure as hell can’t perform more than one service at a time, Jack. So, which one of us is getting our mouth filled?”
He didn’t reply but instead grabbed her suddenly, snaking his arm around her waist and lifting her up off her feet.
Erin shrieked.
He turned, holding her tight against him, and took the three steps across the room to the small table. He gripped Erin around her small waist with his large hands, lifted her a second time, and slammed her panty-clad ass down on the table.
“Jack!” she gasped.
“No,” he growled so fiercely that Erin stilled.
She perched on the table, her liquid brown eyes huge, tinged with caution, as she searched his.
“I don’t want to hear another word out of your mouth,” he told her. Especially not if she was going to call herself a whore, a hole. He wouldn’t allow it.
“Jack,” she argued and the tenuous control Jack had over the situation finally snapped.
He grabbed her by the throat and she sucked in a sharp breath. She tried to flinch away from him but he held her firmly in his grip, not squeezing, not hurting her, but making damn sure that Erin knew who, literally, had the upper hand here.
When he was certain she wasn’t going to fight him, he pressed lightly on her throat, forcing her to lie back on the table. Her pulse hammered away under his fingers, like a little bird caught by a predator. His little bird.
With his free hand he reached down and grasped the thin fabric of her panties. The sound of shredding filled the room and a cry erupted from Erin’s throat.
Fear.
Jack knew it pretty well, even after all this time away from the club.
He moved quickly then, not wanting to terrorize her further. He lowered himself to his knees, sliding his hand from her slender throat as he did so. He parted her thighs with both hands and took a long, quick swipe of her bare pussy with his tongue.
Erin quivered and he could hear her gulping huge swallows of air, clearly overwhelmed. She seemed bewildered, but not totally against the idea. She wasn’t fighting him off.
Unfortunately, that was the sum total of Jack’s knowledge on the subject of pussy-eating. Once, on a dare, long before he’d become president, he’d taken a lick of a club whore’s snatch. Jack remembered that it had tasted foul, like sweat and piss and probably other things that he didn’t want to imagine. Club pussy was only good for fucking. And nothing else. And you had to get your shit checked out by a Doc-in-the-Box every few months just to do that.
But fresh from the shower, Erin smelled like the soap he’d just used on her and she tasted like the warm summer rain that covered the lush grass outside in the yard. She wanted this and he wanted her.
So, Jack supposed, it was time to eat…crow.
He parted her with his thumbs and felt his cock jerk at the sight of Erin’s flush, red pussy clenching in the cool air.
He moved in again, taking his time now. He slid his tongue down until he could just barely dip it into her glistening…well. “You are not a hole, Erin,” he told her. “You have a hole. One that I can’t seem to stop thinking about.” He grazed the pad of his thumb over her mound, just a feather light touch.
Erin moaned and tried to thrust her hips up off the table.
Jack was pleased that she thrilled so easily to his touch but the prospect of having to admit to inexperience made him frown. He sighed to himself, though, and decided that if he couldn’t be honest here, with Erin, then there was no place on God’s green Earth where he could be.
He kissed her between her legs, marveling at the warmth of her on his face. “Erin, I really don’t do this,” he finally confessed, whispering against the flesh of her inner thigh. He heard and felt her take a deep, steadying breath.
“Move closer,” she replied.
He did, inching up, so very aware now of her delicate scent.
Erin lifted her legs and placed one foot on each of his shoulders. The soles of her dainty feet slid smoothly against his skin. Her hands reached out and she threaded her fingers through his hair. She pulled him closer, urging him to her. “Go slow,” she instructed. “Gentle at first.”
He nodded, mostly to himself. He’d fingered her that way, slow at first, so as not to hurt her. He parted her swollen lips again and inhaled deeply as he leaned in. The tip of his tongue touched her.
She was already on fire for him.
Erin’s hand dropped to his cheek and she stroked it with her fingertips, slow and languid.
He matched the rhythm of his tongue to her light touches, savoring her sweetness.
Erin wiggled and moaned while lying flat on the kitchen table and he knew he was handling her in just the right way.
Jack knew about clits. He’d pinched enough of them in his day.
Very reluctantly, he abandoned her delicious, weeping slit and rubbed her mound with his thumbs.
Erin’s hood spread, achingly slowly, and her pink little nub peeked out from her damp, silky curls. She gasped as he sucked it into his mouth.
He was careful not to bite but he grazed it with his teeth, enjoying the reaction he got from her.
She bucked into his face, trying to ride his mouth.
“Easy,” he ordered and placed a flat hand on her lower belly to keep her still.
“Jack,” she said breathlessly.
“I got it from here,” he declared. “Lie still.”
He nibbled at her tight little bud again until he could smell the juices pooling between her thighs. Then, unable to resist that heavenly scent, he dove down again, burying his tongue as deeply as it would go.
“Oh, God!” she cried and gripped the edges of the table.
Jack felt drunk on her, dizzy, lightheaded. Erin was the sweetest thing he’d ever had on his lips and he knew he’d found a new addiction to replace every one of his old ones. He licked, and sucked, and nibbled, and grazed until his face was covered in her juices.
Erin was wild. Her small feet pushed at him, her thighs quivered uncontrollably. She had her hands in his hair again, tugging this time, urging him on. She begged for more in short, sharp breaths.
In the moment she tensed, Jack pushed himself away from her and rose to his feet.
“Jack, no!” she cried and clawed at his forearms. “Jack! I’m not—”
He snatched her wrists, pressed them together, and wrapped one large hand around them both. He lifted her arms up over her head and there was a dull thud as he pinned her back down to the table.
With his free hand he shoved down the waistband of his boxer briefs and took out his raging cock. He moved closer, between her thighs, and guided himself into her heat.
He pushed hard, sinking deep inside her.
Erin screamed.
“You only come on my cock,” he growled into her mouth with his own. The taste and scent of her own juices covered both their lips. “I’ll eat you,” he vowed huskily. “Sweet Christ, Erin, I’ll eat that fresh, hot pussy any time you want from now on. But…” he said, pulling out and slamming back into her, punctuating his words with each thrust of his hips. “You. Come. On. My. Cock.”
With the final word on the subject, Erin’s pussy tightened gloriously, as if ordered by him. It milked Jack’s erection in that way that he’d come to love, to crave. Like his seed belonged nowhere else but inside this snug little channel.
He realized at this moment, with thick, warm jets of cum pulsing into her, that he wouldn’t have let himself come in her mouth, either, had she finished the blow job he’d expected earlier. He belonged inside her, just like this, just like Adam and Eve, which was fitting because Thunder Ridge was Jack’s own personal paradise.
He held himself over her, gazing into her flushed face. Her parted lips, swollen from his kisses, were glistening in the dying sunlight. Her pink cheeks gave her a glow of life and warmth that’d he’d never seen naturally on another woman, not without heavy makeup and artifice. He searched Erin’s eyes, not wanting to miss a single part of everything she kept inside herself.
Blushing under his intense scrutiny, she blinked and turned her head away.
Jack let go of her pinned wrists and grabbed her face, just under her chin, careful not to mark or otherwise mar her beautiful skin. He drew her gaze back to his own. “I don’t look at you because you scare the hell out of me, Erin.”
She blinked again and her deep brown eyes widened in surprise. “I…what?”
Jack had emptied his semen into her and now, for some reason, he was burdened with the need to empty everything else he had into her as well. With his cock still inside her, softening in her tight folds, he smoothed back her damp hair with his fingers. “You make me want things, Erin. A different life. A life I can’t have. A life I don’t deserve.”
“You…you could—”
He pushed off the table and tore his cock from her body.
Erin gave a muffled cry at the sudden loss of him.
It pained him to hear it and he winced. He wanted to stay inside her forever, till the table collapsed, till the house fell down around their ears. Till oblivion finally took them both. He turned away from those lush, pink lips that were about to make him so many promises, all of which he wanted to hear, and none of which could ever come true.
Chapter Forty-Two
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Jack didn’t really wake in the night, because he hadn’t been able to sleep. Behind him, Erin was pressed against him. At least she was sleeping peacefully. She must have been having a pleasant dream, because occasionally she sighed happily, her warm breath tickling his back between his shoulder blades.
His own mind kept wandering, back to the kitchen and what they’d done earlier that day. He didn’t care so much that he’d given her head. He’d liked it, actually, and would do it again. And therein lay the problem.
Every time he looked at Erin, he took his eyes off Rapid City. At this point, too, he estimated that he’d given Thunder Ridge just as much blood and sweat as he’d given the Buzzards. Maybe more.
He was in danger of letting himself forget who he was.
Jack slowly pulled back the blanket and slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb Erin as she dreamed of something better than him, hopefully something she deserved. His bare feet hit the wooden floor and Duke lifted his head off his dog bed in the corner.
Jack gave him the signal to stay and dressed himself in the dark. He started to walk past Duke, thought better of it, and leaned down to give the dog a pat on his head. He was a good dog. The best dog Jack had ever had, since he’d never had any.
“You be a good boy,” he whispered softly. “Take care of her for me.”
Duke thumped his tail and Jack gave him the signal to stay again. The Lab let out a small whine of protest, but Jack silenced him with a look. He headed downstairs, boots in hand, and slipped them on in the kitchen before grabbing his heavy Carhartt to ward off the cold outside.
He unlocked the front door and stepped outside. He only made it a few steps though before he realized that it wasn’t merely cold. It had snowed.
He inched forward, to the porch railing, and peered out from under the roof. Above him, in the velvet night, thousands of stars glittered, rivaling the newly fallen snow on the ground for his attention. There were no stars in Rapid City, not that he remembered. Or perhaps it was just that Jack had never looked. But he was here now, surrounded in a blanket of crisp white and inky black, with a shimmering sky overhead.
It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Try as he might, as much as he told himself he should, his feet wouldn’t move to the edge of the steps. They just didn’t seem to want to. Not much of him actually seemed to want to, he realized. Only that niggling part of his brain that sparked every time he thought of his club. Sometimes he used it to fuel himself when he was on the verge of collapse, used it to get one more hour of work in, finish one more chore, telling himself he was getting stronger for the final battle.
His boots didn’t seem to want to mar the perfection of the accumulating snow. It was pretty. And fuck if he didn’t want it to stay that way, stupid as that seemed.
Jack was tired of ugly. He was tired of filth and, he supposed, above all, he was just plain tired of being fucking tired. He worked hard for Erin, not that she didn’t deserve it—she did. But as he took in a deep, chilled breath and let it out slowly, he thought maybe he didn’t have to work so hard, maybe not anymore.
Would it be so bad to not go back? To let Hook and Haze and the rest of those bastards have the club that Jack and his father had built? Before Scratch died, Jack had made every deal, every dollar just to make the old man proud. And after Scratch had died, well Jack wasn’t sure if he’d kept on going because he wanted to, or because club life was all he’d ever really known—all that was sustai
nable, anyway.
Revival tents and well-thumbed Bibles certainly held no special sway for him. Now that Jack was almost forty, he could barely remember that small slice of his life anyway.
But there was a third option. The life he’d told her he couldn’t have.
But why couldn’t he? Why shouldn’t he?
He’d never reneged on a promise, never failed to follow through on a threat. Not giving Hook and Haze their due would be the first time in his life that Jack didn’t take back any ounce of respect that was owed him.
He still felt that familiar flame, down deep, way down deep now. He nearly snorted as he wondered if it had somehow been dampened by the night’s cold.
He looked out at the driveway, covered in a white sheen of pristine snow.
It was pretty cold. And it was a long way to Rapid City.
Chapter Forty-Three
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Erin stood in the darkened kitchen with its view down the main hallway and to the front door. Through the glass she could see Jack’s shrouded form standing on the porch.
She’d felt him stir, knew he was getting out of bed. At first she’d thought maybe his nightmares had come back. But then she’d heard him say goodbye to Duke.
It took everything she had not to jump out of bed, yell and scream, and demand an explanation. She’d waited just until he’d gone downstairs before pulling on her own clothes in a flash. She’d almost charged out the door, to take off after him, when she realized that he hadn’t actually left yet.
Then, as now, he was just standing on the porch, watching the first snowfall of the season. Not knowing quite what else to do, she’d set about putting two mugs of cocoa in the microwave.
Now she took a deep breath and headed for the front door. She set her own mug down on the entry table as she twisted the knob. She knew he heard her because his shoulders tightened a little, but Jack didn’t turn around to face her.
She didn’t think that boded well.
Erin moved to the edge of the porch steps, stopping alongside him, so that he could no longer ignore her presence. When he finally turned to her, instead of starting an argument, she simply handed him one of the mugs.
