by Alison Kent
If she didn’t stop, her body was going to slam her to the ground and keep her there until she ran out of breath to cry uncle. He wasn’t unsympathetic; he knew what it was like, needing to unwind and being unable, all efforts to force muscles to relax making them tighten further, the fight for sleep more often lost than won.
The fact that she hadn’t broken down already during the last two days was a surprise. The fact that she’d finally done so in a place she felt safe wasn’t. The fact that he’d spilled as much of his guts as he had did not make him happy. Nor did her insistence on knowing why he was here.
Her insistence put him in the position of having to dig for an answer, and he’d been avoiding anything that looked like work, telling himself he was sticking around because he had nothing better to do with his time. Telling himself, too, that what he’d felt when he thought of losing her was nothing but a heat of the moment response.
It wasn’t exactly a lie. At least the part about his time. He had no pressing engagements other than a date with his sunshine and crawfish. But the truth went a lot deeper, and he’d didn’t think Fitz had packed a big enough shovel in the back of his truck.
Besides, he mused, finding the breaker box at the back of the house and switching the electricity on, if he did go digging for more, he might not like what he found and take off. And his running away from what was feeling like more than sexual involvement wasn’t going to keep Cady safe.
Once the electricity was humming, and he’d checked the level of propane in the tank, he returned to the utility room and set about draining the water heater. Then he headed into the kitchen, lighting the oven’s pilot and turning on the fridge so it would cool before they loaded it down.
Depending on how long it took to get fresh water pumped from the well to the tank for heating, and how soon Cady wanted that bath, he might have to haul water to the tub from pots warmed up on the stove. He’d roughed it himself a lot of years. The thought wasn’t the least bit daunting.
What was daunting was the prospect of waiting for her to wake up so they could do something about shopping for food. He was damn near close to expiring. The protein in the bacon and the caffeine in the coffee was losing out to the overload of carbs in the syrup-drenched waffles he’d downed.
He’d unloaded the Hummer, looked through Fitz’s latest stock of supplies, and done all he could think of to get the house ready for their stay. It was either pop open a can of Vienna sausages or pry his way into one of Spam, or starve while he sat out her nap.
Since he’d never been one to sit for anything, he went exploring instead, starting in the garage shed combo that hunkered behind the house. On a hook in the utility room, he found the key to the padlock securing the building.
Inside the building, he found a riding lawn mower, a fully stocked peg board and workbench, and room to park the H3. He’d move the SUV in here after they made the trip to the small grocery store Cady had pointed out before they’d turned off the main road from Rosingsville.
And then he decided this would be a good place to hide the gun neither one of them were registered to own.
He’d tucked both his piece and Alice’s into the zip-away bottom of Cady’s backpack that first night they’d shared a room when he still had his original Hummer and all of his hair.
Considering she hauled that bag everywhere the way most women would a purse, he couldn’t imagine she hadn’t noticed the extra weight, but she hadn’t said a word or even hinted that she knew she was packing.
The backpack was on the front room’s worn floral couch where she’d left it. He retrieved both guns, put his with the rest of his things still stored in the back of the Hummer, and the other in a coffee can of ten penny nails he found on top of a shelf in the shed.
He was busy checking out the tools—some rusted all to hell, some legitimate antiques—hanging on the pegboard when Cady finished her two-hour nap and joined him, driving all thoughts of shopping for food from his mind.
He heard her coming, her steps on the gravel of the driveway, and then he caught her scent, a mix of something warm and earthy and something else that he could only say was Cady. It was a harsh jolt to realize that he was so familiar with her after knowing her for just a few days.
Harsh, because it meant she was going to stay with him for longer than was good for him, long after they’d finished this detour, after he’d told her good-bye, after they’d both ridden off into their own sunsets. Yeah. He didn’t like how much he was going to hate doing that.
For someone who hadn’t had much sleep, she shouldn’t look as good as she did. There was actually color in her face besides green, purple, and blue. And there was more. An expression of serenity, of being comfortable here. And just a hint of joy that she’d found him.
“Thank you for letting me sleep,” she said, her hands in her jeans pockets, a shoulder propped against the open door. Her bangs hung into her eyes, her hair flatter on one side than the other and pointing this way and that on top.
It was a pretentiously affected look that he knew people with no fashion sense paid good money for. On Cady, it was cute. Even when she looked like she’d just run a balloon all over her head, it was who she was. Just like everything about her—the jeans, the sneakers, the T-shirts with logos for bands he didn’t know existed.
Christ Almighty. He sounded like the fashion police.
“No problem,” he said, looking down at the awl he held because looking at her was going to be his downfall. She was soft and sexy and he wanted to climb inside her clothes, a tight fit he wasn’t sure she was ready for.
Rubbing at the back of his neck, he said, “If I hadn’t been afraid I’d wake you up with my snoring, I probably would’ve stayed and done the same.”
“You do not snore.”
“Hmm. Must be you then,” he told her, and she stepped inside the building and slapped him.
He caught her hand and laughed. “If this is how you treat all your men, no wonder you spend so much time looking over your shoulder.”
“All my men?” She jerked, her eyes flashing when he pulled her closer and held her there. “You think I put up with this abuse from anyone else?”
“See? I knew I was special.” And then he couldn’t help himself. He kissed her. He tugged her between his body and the workbench and kissed her.
He wasn’t gentle as he ground his mouth against hers. He knew he might be hurting her, but he couldn’t stop. His need was too great. His heart too hungry. His mind unable to wrap around conscious thought.
She parted her lips, and he accepted the invitation, pushing his tongue inside to find hers. They played there together, sliding, loving, a parry and thrust that had his sword rising, had him moving Cady’s hands to his fly.
She cupped him in her palm, pressed against him until he moaned into her mouth. Her hands were sweet, but not nearly enough. He moved his legs to straddle her thigh and ground his crotch against her, his hips bucking, his cock straining as it grew to mammoth size.
He found the hem of her shirt and pulled the garment over her head, but lost patience with the hooks of her bra and tore them out of their moorings. Her laughter spilled into his mouth. “You owe me a bra, mister.”
“Fuck your bra. I’m about to owe myself a pair of boxers and jeans,” he said, too caught up in his ache to snag her when she ducked away. She didn’t go far.
For that he was grateful, because he was in no condition to chase her down. And when he realized what she was up to—unbuttoning, unzipping, pulling her pants to her knees, sliding her panties down to bunch on top of the denim, turning, bending over, bracing her hands on the lawn mower seat—he was afraid he was rooted to the spot for good.
All it took to set his feet in motion was Cady wiggling her ass. He made quick work of his belt and button fly, shucked his pants and boxers to the top of his boots. And then he spat into his hand, wet the head of his cock, and pushed inside of her all the way to his balls.
She groaned. He groaned. She
cursed under her breath. He cursed out loud. And then he held her hips and began to move, thrusting, driving, pumping, in and out and in. Goddamn, but he liked to be in.
She was tight, so tight, like a fist, like his own skin, scraping him, sucking him, slicking him with her juices until he was dripping with her.
He reached around and found her clit, pressed against it the way she liked, rubbing, pinching, wishing his mouth was there so he could bite.
She shuddered, moaned, ground against his hand and his shaft. Then she shifted her weight on the mower seat so that she was leaning on one forearm, freeing up one of her hands to slip down and join his.
Her fingers were everywhere, playing with herself, with his shaft, with his balls, with the head of his cock when he withdrew to tease her, fucking through her folds and then into the cup she made of her hand.
He stayed there as long as he could stand it, pumping, clenching, closing his eyes and throwing back his head. Sweat beaded in the hollow of his throat and rolled down his chest. His thighs burned. His chest ached, and he pushed against the emotion building there, struggling to breathe as he moved his hands back to her hips.
Digging in and holding, he shoved his cock inside of her again. She gasped, and shoved back, meeting him stroke for stroke as things got wild, both of them giving and taking, hurting and easing, searching and coming apart.
His completion ripped through him like a knife to the gut. He jerked once, twice, unloading as Cady cried out and contracted, tightening around him like a cinch.
He held her while she shook, stayed with her until she calmed, waiting until he was empty to pull free, and then he slipped out and collapsed, draping himself over her and leaning against the lawn mower seat.
Cady finally pushed him away, mumbling something about her aching back. He wanted to laugh, but his lungs weren’t working, and so he reached out and spanked her. She yelped, jumped, turned around and glared.
He looked her up and down as he went about pulling up his boxers and jeans. “You know, chère. It’s hard to take that evil eye of yours seriously when your pants are bagging at your knees.”
“I didn’t ask you to take me seriously,” she said, rubbing her bare bottom. “Only to take me.”
“I’d say I did that.”
“Proud of yourself, are you?”
If she kept standing there like that, her lower half naked and not the least bit inhibited, he was going to be proud of himself all over her again. “If you’ve got it, no need to be shy, my grandmother would say.”
“Well, my grandmother would be rolling over in her grave if she knew someone, but me especially, was having sex in the shed.”
“You’ve never had sex in this shed?”
“I’ve never even spoken the word sex in this shed until now. And the only place on this farm that I’ve ever dropped my panties is behind the closed bathroom door.”
He wanted to see her naked outside. He wanted to fuck her naked outside. “So drop them the rest of the way.”
“What?”
“Take them off. Take everything off. Your shirt. Your pants.” He popped open the snaps of his shirt. “I’ll get a blanket. We’ll do it out in the open like animals.”
It took her a minute to respond, her gaze measuring his intent, her head cocked to the side as she studied him. The next thing he knew she was slipping her feet—sneakers and all—through the skinny legs of her jeans.
Balling up her clothes—her jeans, her panties, her torn bra and top—she took off running, calling over her shoulder, “I don’t think animals use blankets.”
Thirty-three
Cady had been teasing King about animals and blankets before she’d run butt naked out of the shed, but she was glad when he’d followed her up the front steps, through the house, and out the back, that he’d stopped and grabbed the quilt off the bed where she’d napped.
The quilt had kept them from having to worry about dirt and sunburn and things with six legs coming close. Yet as much physical pleasure as they’d shared, she’d had a great time getting to know him better.
Not that doing so had come easy.
Prying answers out of him—serious answers—was worse than prying herself into panty hose, and even at the end of the day, she wasn’t sure her success rate outweighed the work it had taken to get there.
“King?” she asked, curled up against him, her head on his shoulder.
“Cady?” he answered, his arm draped down her back, his hand playing with her bottom.
She wiggled. “Do you think we’re compatible?”
“We seem to fit,” he said, stretching out his fingers as if measuring her width. “You’ve got the round hole, and my peg ain’t so square.”
Men and sex. Always with the size. “That’s not what I mean.”
“You’re going to have to be a little more clear then, chère, because except for you being the target of a psycho drug kingpin, we seem to be getting along.”
She ignored his dig and rolled onto her back, staring at the sky that was turning indigo. “If we had checked each other out on a dating Web site, do you think we would’ve hooked up?”
“Wait,” he said, a frown in his voice. “Are we dating?”
If she wasn’t so lazy, she would’ve smacked him. “We skipped a lot of normal relationship steps on our way to intense.”
“Wait,” he said, the frown giving way to good humor. “Is this a relationship?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to hurt you now,” she said, and pinched his nipple.
He pinched hers back. “And I’m afraid I’m going to have to like it.”
“Can you be serious for five minutes?” she asked, squirming when he lingered longer than required by a retaliatory pinch. “Or for five questions at least?”
“What five questions?”
“Five questions you’d have to fill out for your profile on a dating Web site.”
He huffed. “You fill out a lot of those?”
She wasn’t going to tell him that she’d worked for a dating service and had been assigned to design them. She just started feeling him out by asking the ones that came to mind.
“Would you rather read Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Paste, or Time?”
“You’re assuming I can read,” he told her, turning onto his side and replacing his fingers on her nipple with his mouth.
She clenched her thighs that were tingling. “Would you rather visit the UK, China, Australia, Italy, or Tanzania?”
“The last three I could probably handle—” He paused, licked her, sucked her, blew a breath across her damp skin. “As long as you take me there in the middle of summer.”
He wanted her to take him there. He didn’t want to go alone. She closed her eyes, the thought even more than his tongue causing her nipples to tighten, and she found her hand sliding down to her clit that tingled in response.
It was getting really hard to remember what she was saying. Or why they were talking at all. “Would you rather eat seafood, barbeque, Tex-Mex, steaks, or lasagna?”
“I’d rather eat crawfish, but I won’t say no to any of them.” He opened his mouth over her belly, nipped her skin, moved lower, and sucked on her fingers wet with her flavor. “I’m like you that way. I love eating.”
As long as he kept her on his menu…“Would you rather spend a day off fishing, playing golf, skydiving, hiking, or building houses for charity?”
“I think my best days off involve screwing and you,” he said, moving his body to cover hers.
She closed her eyes and parted her knees. “Would you rather watch a horror movie, a Seinfeld rerun, a Broadway musical, a meteor shower, or an air show?”
“Porn. Isn’t that one of the choices?” he asked, sliding into her with a slow, steady, never-ending stroke.
She was done being able to think. “Your turn.”
“For what?”
“To ask me five questions.”
“How about I just a
sk you one, but give you five answers to choose from?”
“Okay.” That she could probably stay conscious for.
He leaned close to her ear, and on a gruff whisper asked, “Would you rather I make love to you on your back, on your stomach, bending over, standing up, or from beneath?”
“That is not an appropriate dating profile question,” she said, then it was a very long time before she had the strength to say anything again.
Shifting his body weight from her to the ground, King stayed inside of her until he grew soft, and even then he didn’t move, just slipped free to lay against her. “So you are familiar with those services.”
“I never said I wasn’t,” she said, enjoying the intimacy and his comfort in letting her feel him.
“They work out for you any better than finding roommates online?”
She ignored the dig, concentrating on his naked body. “I met some people.”
“People? Or penises?”
“Does everything have to be about sex with you?”
“It has something to do with my present company.” He kissed the tip of her nose, her chin, her closest ear. “And my present lack of pants.”
He tickled her, and she found herself charmed. “Ask me something real.”
“Dogs or cats?”
“Goldfish. They don’t require any work.”
“Frank Sinatra or Frank Zappa?”
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn for either one. I’d have to go with John Mayer.”
“I don’t even know who that is.”
That didn’t surprise her at all. “We’re looking less and less compatible.”
“If you found a buried fortune in gold coins, what would you do first? Build a new house, buy a shrimping trawler, or drill an oil well?”
“What did you do first?”
“I’m asking the questions here, boo.”
Fine. “D. Other. I’d buy a vineyard in California and forget the East Coast exists.”
