Gentle is over and she needs him hard, needs him fast.
Their bodies slap together with slick sounds, filling the back of her Jeep with the loud music of their melding. The beat they create spurs Tallulah on. She uses the balls of her feet and Sterling’s firm shoulders to set a pace. Almost brutal as she desperately rides him for her own pleasure. It’s been so long since someone’s fucked her thoroughly—Tallulah wants to feel sated long after they are forced to return to reality.
Sterling’s fingers dig into her hips, branding her soft skin with red crescent-shaped marks from the bite of his short nails. Tallulah moans at the feel, whispering, “Harder.” And he digs deeper. “Like that,” she commands. I want to feel you for weeks.
She craves the bruises that never quite take.
Sterling’s teeth in her skin is electric. Tallulah comes when they clamp into the flesh of her yielding neck—clinging and crying out as her orgasm rocks through her. Tallulah’s body turns to jelly from the intensity of coming and while she is pliant Sterling flips them—putting her on her back as his strong arms hold her up by her full hips.
Sterling slams in and out of her—the Jeep creaks from the force. Tallulah digs her fingers into the clothes strewn beneath them. Her breasts slap together from how hard he fucks her, but she doesn’t really mind. Can’t. Not when he stares at her as if she is every prayer he’s ever uttered answered.
“Tallulah,” he groans so softly it is almost a whimper. “Tallulah.”
“Come in me, Sterling.” She commands, using the balls of her of feet to push up and meet his thrusts. Taking him deeper as she rocks with him. Tallulah’s own second orgasm is building low in her belly, and her cunt throbs with a need she can’t name.
A need only Sterling Savage knows how to sate.
“I love you.” Sterling tells her as he glides into Tallulah a final time. She doesn’t come again from that confession.
Still hard, Sterling rocks in her until she follows. Slow, measured movements that bring her off and cause Tallulah to shake within the circle of his hold.
“Oh that’s really wet.” Sterling laughs, breaking the moment as he gently eases out of Tallulah’s body.
“It was good.” She replies with a huff, trying to catch her breath. Seems harder now than it had in their youth.
“Best you ever had?” He asks with a teasing grin. An expression she wants to eat, but somehow manages to refrain.
Tallulah shoots him an unimpressed look, then gives a cocky smile of her own. “I’ve had better.”
Sterling doesn’t appear offended. He’s never gotten angry or appeared hurt when she’s said things in jest that could cut him to the quick. All Sterling does in response is dig his briefs out of their pile of clothes while he says, “Yeah, I did fuck you pretty good against your daddy’s shed that one time.”
“Never said it was you, Sterling Savage.” She tells him with a snort.
He laughs, lighting a cigarette, then holds her gaze. “Miss Tallulah, you didn’t have to tell me. I already know I’m the best you’ve ever had.” She’s about to smart off when he adds, “And you’re the best I’ll ever know. Sex crazed groupies got nothin’ on you.”
“Oh yeah?” Tallulah tries not to sound flattered—reality is slowly creeping back in and she knows she needs to put emotional distance between them.
His eyes are like a kaleidoscope—a thousand beautiful colors changing in the light. Tallulah loses herself in them as he holds her gaze. It’s a heavy look, one chock full of intentions and meaning.
Sterling’s voice is just as deep when he tells her, “I love you. You could touch me with a clumsy hand and it’d still be better than a eager whore’s hold. I want you more than I want anyone else, so yeah…you’re the best I’ll ever know.”
Fuck, don’t tell me that.
10
Sterling
They drive back to Tallulah’s house in silence. A quiet that is tense with the words they don’t want to speak. Sterling hadn’t asked about the boy, and she hadn’t mentioned him—the kid is the elephant in between them that they refuse to acknowledge.
Is he?
Isn’t he?
There’s so many questions Sterling has for her in regards to the child known as Lyric Grace. Doesn’t matter that Memphis confirmed Sterling’s paternity in the matter. Even if he hears it from God himself, Sterling won’t believe until Tallulah tells him that Lyric is his son.
Saint Charles Avenue is different in the light of day. Nostalgic and painful and so many things Sterling doesn’t want to think about. So many memories. Good and awful ones that are coming to life the closer they get to their childhood homes.
Merle is on the porch, in his rocking chair that’s weathered and peeling. The one Judson made for him in wood shop. The one Merle has always used despite the fact it’s not perfect. That’s the sort of man Merle Grace is—a man who loves his children despite their flaws.
Opposite of him, across the same street, in a house similar to Merle’s, is Sterling’s father. Beaufort Savage. Sterling’s daddy is as similar and as different from Merle as a man can get. Both are tall, both old Southern men who love to hunt and be in the outdoors. However, that’s where their similarities end. Merle is a kind, loving man while Beaufort is the sort of man who can put the fear of God into the devil. He’s ice cold and intolerant of failure. Sterling, his youngest child, is his greatest failure. All of his life Sterling has been told that he’ll never be worthy of his father’s love.
Love that comes in the form of grunts, an emotion expressed with words like, “Well, I guess you did okay—for once.” Sterling’s greatest desire in youth was to attain his father’s affection—to know his pride.
That desire has led them to this mess, in ways he’s not yet ready to face.
These are the things Sterling thinks about as he kills the engine to Tallulah’s Jeep. Merle stands, coming down off the porch appearing wan rather than angry. Tallulah releases a sigh and climbs out of the car first.
“Daddy, I can explain-” she starts, but he cuts her off with a single glance. That’s another trait Merle shares with Beaufort, they’re both good at stopping words cold.
“Don’t you start. Get inside and shower that scent off of you—Lyric is with Miss Jorie or you’d have to explain this mess to him.” He turns away from her, but Sterling would bet his life that Merle doesn’t miss the hurt on Tallulah’s face. The man’s a wolf—he can probably smell her emotional turmoil.
Sterling finally climbs from the driver’s side of the Jeep, after the screen door bangs closed behind Tallulah’s retreating form. He aches for her already. Merle’s jaw jumps with a slight bit of annoyance, but beyond that he doesn’t show any indication that he’s frazzled. They aren’t but a foot apart when Merle finally acknowledges him.
“Sterling Savage,” he chuckles, but the sound isn’t amused. “I didn’t think there’d be a day you’d come back to this town.” Merle crosses his still impressive arms over his broad chest. “Remember what you screamed at my daughter?”
Sterling does. The sins are hard to repress, he’s been down many a bottle trying to forget and none of them help. Sterling nods, mute. Unable to voice an apology for those old crimes.
Merle’s mouth goes thin as he purses his lips, “Then I think you know, son, that I’m not too fond of you. And I’m especially not fond of you being near my daughter or her son.”
Son. Right.
“Even if he’s my son too?” Sterling shouldn’t provoke a man who could kill him without a moment’s hesitation. Many years have passed since Beaufort last tried to train him to hunt monsters in the night, and Sterling knows he’d be no match for a man like Merle Grace.
Merle stares at him for a long moment, before he breaks the tension. “You never had a son. The moment you left that possibility was dead to you.”
“If I hadn’t left would he still be mine?” Sterling challenges. He’ll court danger until he breathes his last breath.
&
nbsp; Merle frowns, “That’s a question you’ll have to ask his mother. I often hope to Hell that you aren’t my grandson’s father.” Sterling doesn’t have to ask why. “You’re father is the most hateful, spiteful hunter I’ve ever known. He’d sooner slit Lyric’s throat and spit on him than he would love him. Go back where you came from, Sterling. Leave my kin in peace before Beaufort Savage leaves them in pieces.”
He makes his way across the street once Merle has dismissed him. Seems right to check in on his mama. This might be the last chance Sterling has to come home.
His dad’s truck is gone and the only vehicle in the driveway is his mama’s old ’66 Suburban. The white and blue of it brings a smile to his face, for a moment the porch doesn’t fill him with dread. In fact, now he finds himself anxious to be inside. With Miss Viv and a cold glass of sweet tea while they reminisce about better days. Sterling always was his mama’s boy. Another failure his father never let him live down.
“Sterling?” Vivian Mae’s voice—warm and full of that affection he’s known since the womb—causes him to look up. There she is, grayer now than she was the last time he’d seen her. In Nashville a few years back when he was passing through and his parents were there for a job. Beaufort hadn’t bothered to see Sterling, of course, but his darling of a mother had come to his small bar gig.
“I never thought I’d see you standing here again,” she admits, voice thick with emotions Sterling doesn’t try to name. If he puts words to them he’ll choke up too. Sterling doesn’t need his emotions making him appear weak to his father. Not when the man finally rolls home. Sterling needs this homecoming to be as painless as possible.
“I’m here now, Mama.” He makes his way up onto the porch. The fried gator she’s cooking for dinner wafts out from the house and is a powerful nostalgia that washes over him. “God knows I’ve missed you.” He admits as she wraps him in a hug. Her hair, when he buries his nose in it, smells as comforting as it always had when Sterling was young.
They go inside when the sound of water boiling over reaches their ears. His mother wipes at her eyes with the corner of her dirty apron but neither of them mentions it. They are both fragile in their silence. Hoping to maintain this peace.
A hope that shatters when, as he sits down at the kitchen table, Vivian Mae asks, “Is that boy across the street my grandson?”
It’s been so long Sterling isn’t sure if her question is full of hope or disappointment. Disgrace of a son. He thinks to himself while he traces his fingertip around the rim of his cool glass of tea.
Sterling doesn’t have a clear answer for Vivian Mae so the question hangs between them like something foul.
11
Jorie
Lyric sits on the floor wiping down all the liquor bottles. The ones Jorie pulled from off the shelf, behind the bar, when he first walked in this morning. Jorie is supposed to be taking note of inventory. She’s not—rather Jorie is standing there watching Lyric as he frowns down at the label on one of her whiskeys.
“I think this is Uncle Jud’s favorite.” He says, breaking the silence.
It is. Judson Grace takes a double every Friday night after work. On Sundays Judson cons her into opening the bar, after Sunday Service, to pour them until he’s pink-cheeked and glassy-eyed. That’s Jorie’s favorite time to be near him. When he’s no longer the stiff, oldest son but is the playful fool she remembers falling in love with when she was but a girl green in youth.
“Dunno,” Jorie lies with a casual shrug. She pretends to write something down on her yellow pad, but it’s more doodle than anything important. Her mind is too caught up in the lack of Tallulah’s presence to think of much else. The phone call from Memphis Boone last night doesn’t help her concentration.
Sterling is home.
Three words and Jorie knows this’ll be trouble.
Last time Sterling was in Abita Springs there was a war between the Savages and the Graces—the sort of war that made the Hatfields and McCoys seem tame. A war Sterling left poor Tallulah to while he skipped town.
“Miss Jorie?” Lyric says—drawing her attention away from her doodle to his young face. A face that reminds her of the Sterling she knew when he was still a kid. A sweet kid ruined by the circumstances of his raising.
“Yeah?” Jorie prompts when it seems Lyric won’t say much else.
Lyric bites his lip—big hazel-green eyes on his shoes but his focus seems far away from here. “Is Sterling Savage my dad?”
Yes. She wants to say. But Jorie also wants to tell him no.
Sterling is and isn’t Lyric’s daddy, because that’s how complicated truths work. Yes because even without Tallulah saying it, even without a DNA test, Jorie can see the Savage in Lyric. Everyone can. Everyone but the stubborn mule known as Beaufort Savage.
No because a daddy is someone who is there with you, someone who bandages your knees and sighs when you’ve done something wrong. A daddy is the person who grins and tells you good job when your mother isn’t looking—after she’s given you a dressing down for starting—and finishing—a fight. A daddy is someone who is proud of, yet challenges, your flaws.
Sterling cannot be that for Lyric. He’s never been a dad because dad’s are present. Else all they are is a biological father, and there’s not much in that sort of connection as far as Jorie is concerned.
“Does it matter?” She asks Lyric instead of giving him a definite answer. “You’ve got your Pawpaw and your uncles—there’s plenty of dad-ing those three do.” She knows for a fact Tanner and Judson treat Lyric like he’s theirs. Each weekend she sees Lyric, in one of their white pickups, being driven to some adventure on the river or to the gator farm Merle runs.
Lyric sags, clearly unsatisfied with Jorie’s answer, but he goes back to polishing bottles in silence. Jorie believes that’s the end of their discussion. Something she’s fine with because she doesn’t need any Graces coming at her for putting her nose where it isn’t needed.
As they’re finishing up, and she’s getting Lyric’s pay for his help, he asks. “Is my mom with Sterling right now?”
That’s another complicated question. Jorie is certain Tallulah is with Sterling.
They were like an inevitable storm—Sterling and Tallulah. One nothing could stop. One that everyone prayed to never rise up—a travesty they all hoped would never come to fruition. Yet, Sterling and Tallulah collided and the aftershocks were devastating.
It was a relentless storm.
One a mean old man had to summon up God to stop.
“I don’t know,” she replies, but Jorie’s half certain Lyric knows she’s not being honest. Had Lyric been like his mother he’d have called Jorie on her bullshit. He’s got Sterling in him—she’s certain—because Lyric accepts those words with a self-deprecating smile. An expression that breaks her heart, yet Jorie still doesn’t tell him the truth.
She can’t. She won’t.
Jorie’s been burned too many times by Savages and Graces.
Tanner fetches Lyric closer to evening—when Lula still hasn’t shown for work. She waves at them both as Tanner’s old pickup tears out of the gravel strewn lot.
Jorie sent word around last week that today and tomorrow would be her monthly deep cleaning days—so the bar is blessedly empty as she allows the door to close behind her. The dim lighting is brighter when there isn’t a bunch of cigarette smoke fogging up the air.
She wanders over to the old jukebox, selecting a Waylon and Willie duet.
The bar door creaks open, when her back is still facing towards it and Jorie calls out to the faceless arrival. “Bar’s closed.”
“Cowboys really do got it rough—or so I’m told.” Judson’s deep voice filters through the room. He follows the words up with a low chuckle. One that might as well have been warm hands on her skin—the sound of his voice causes goosebumps to pebble over her arms. In her chest, Jorie’s heart beats out a wicked, desirous rhythm.
“I already sent Lyric home,” Jorie tells him.
Using her rag to wipe down the jukebox even though it’s already been cleaned.
“Didn’t come here for him, came for a double of that Tennessee whiskey,” Judson replies in his casual way. Boots heavy on the old scuffed wooden floor.
“It’s not Friday?” Jorie puzzles, then could kick herself for her stupidity.
“Life’s been hell, Miss Jorie, and I’m in need of some courage tonight.” Her knees go to jelly when he gives her a devastating smile. One Jorie wants to lick, but she manages to refrain from whimpering at best or caving to her desire at worst.
“Sure,” she swallows, moving towards the bar with intention.
It’s silent around them as she fills two glasses. At Jud’s questioning look, Jorie laughs, “This one’s for me, cowboy.”
They clink their glasses together, downing the shots with ease. Judson taps the side of his glass, indicating he wants her to pour another. Jorie complies.
She pours her own second drink, watching him with an assessing gaze before she gets brave enough to ask, “Do you want to talk about it?”
He downs his drink before giving her a wry smile. “Not really.”
Maybe it’s the two doubles swirling in her empty gut that makes her warm. Brave. Or maybe it’s the final explosion of a want that’s been threatening to boil over for years. Either way Jorie says, “Would you like me to comfort you another way?”
Jud’s lusting grin grows slowly and it’s appearance thrills Jorie in a way nothing ever has.
“What did you have in mind, Miss Jorie?” He asks, but she can tell Judson understands the intention of her words.
Anything you want, she thinks, but her reply is a coy laugh as she reaches across the bar to haul him into a kiss.
12
Judson
Judson rubs at his temples as he sits up in an unfamiliar bed. The scent of sex is a thick perfume in this room that doesn’t belong to him. Memories from the night prior flood his mind, and Judson wishes he could stop the barrage of them.
The Grace of a Savage Page 5
