Riveted

  She tossed her head back so hard that I had to jerk my chin out of the way to avoid getting knocked silly. I rubbed my fingers across the gentle swell of her belly, stopped to circle her tiny belly button with my pinky, and then found my way to the spot where we were joined. I slid my fingers through her wetness, spread her slick folds open so I could get my questing fingers on her sweet spot. Her clit leaped at the first press of my fingertips and her entire body arched forward and away from mine as I circled the tender little nub relentlessly. I kissed the back of her neck under the fall of her hair and let out my own strangled sound when one of her clever hands disappeared between us so that every time I moved forward into her heat the base of my cock also slipped along the flat of her palm. She used her fingertip to tickle the ultra-sensitive globes that hung heavy between my legs and I knew I was about at the end of my rope when it came to gentle, playful fucking. I wanted to have an easy touch with this woman who shined so bright but she made me feel savage. She made me want to take, and take, and then take some more. Everything she offered up I wanted more of because I was driven and determined to give it all back to her. I felt like I had something to prove, but I had no clue what that something was.

  I played with her clit until I felt her body start to hum and quake around me. I couldn’t finish like this but I had no problem holding her and watching her come apart in my arms while she did. Her head turned and her eyes sought mine out, dark with desire and desperation.

  “You want me to come first?” Her voice was just a breath of sound as she panted and moved with me.

  “I want you to get what you want, period.” My words had her body clamping down on mine like a velvet vise. Everything about her was a satin trap I never wanted to escape from. I would happily be her prisoner forever.

  “Then I want you to fuck me for real, and I want you to come with me.” Well, shit. Just when I thought there wasn’t any possible way she could be any more perfect. I might actually be able to make a relationship work if we never had to leave this bed.

  I kissed her cheek and chuckled into her soft skin. “I can fuck you if you aren’t too sore, but I can’t come with you, pretty girl. No more condoms.” We’d blown threw my limited supply last night. It was risky being inside her the way I already was but it was a perilous chance I couldn’t seem to stop from taking.

  “Oh.” Her eyes widened and her teeth dug into her bottom lip.

  I lifted an eyebrow at her as I pulled out of her welcoming heat leaving a trail of moisture on the inside of her leg. It was a sexy glimmer I didn’t seem able to look away from. Before I could tell her that it was fine, that I fully planned on getting her off regardless of any obstacles in our way she turned away from me, braced her hands on the mattress, lifted her gloriously round and perfectly curved ass in the air, and looked at me saucily over her shoulder. She always looked good, cute and charming, but bent over, that slit between her legs shining and wet and her backside ready and arranged for the taking she had never looked better. Her wild hair slid across her pale shoulders and I couldn’t stop myself from running my fingers along each dip and divot in her spine.

  “I trust you, Church.” Her eyes pleaded with me to do the right thing. To tell her this was a bad idea even if she claimed to want it but I kept telling her I wasn’t that guy. I wasn’t her Mr. Right or even her Mr. Right Now. I was the guy that was going to take her every single way there was to take her until either of those preferred options showed up.

  “You shouldn’t, but I’m lucky as hell that you do.” I fisted a handful of her hair and pulled her head back at the same time I curled my other palm around her hip. I loved that she had a little something there to hold on to. It made her seem less breakable, able to withstand all the things I wanted to put on her.

  I leaned into her, curving myself over the tantalizing bow of her back, and pulled her hips back towards mine. She was already wet and ready from my earlier ministrations, so I slid in easily. We both gasped loud and long as I bottomed out, touching places inside of her that made my head spin and had my heart beating erratically. I kept her head pulled back as she rocked into me. I let my lips trail over the side of her neck as I braced myself on the mattress with a locked arm.

  I surged into her. Powered myself in and out of her soaking channel as my vision blurred and my lungs burned for air. She bucked back into me, moving against me as violently as I was moving into her. Our bodies slapped together filling the room with the sounds of sex and satisfaction. Thank God I actually knew what to do with her once I finally managed to get a girl naked and under me in this room. I was glad I didn’t have any other experience here to compare to this one. Anything before Dixie would be pale and unremarkable in comparison.

  She was already primed and close from the way I’d handled her body earlier. She was moaning low and loud. I took a minute to hope that my dad and brother had already left but if they hadn’t I didn’t care. The noises she made urged me on, begged me to go at her harder, so there was no way I was going to remind her that we possibly weren’t alone.

  The arch of her neck was so delectable. I wanted my teeth on it. I wanted my hands wrapped around it. I wanted to lick it and suck on it as her blood pumped furiously through her veins. I could see her pulse throbbing under the alabaster color of her skin and it had my balls tightening and pleasure kicking hard at the base of my spine. I was close and she still hadn’t come first. I needed to get her there and get her there fast.

  I let go of my hold on her hair and put a hand between her shoulder blades so that she had to lower her top half to the mattress. She rested her cheek on the wrinkled comforter as I clutched both her hips in my hands and really started to pound into her. I didn’t stop to think that she was still tender from the night before, my only intent was to drive her to the brink so that she was as out of control as I was.

  She screamed my name and I saw her hands convulse where they were wrapped in the fabric of the bedding. Her pussy locked down on my cock and engulfed it in waves of liquid pleasure. She scalded me with satisfaction and blinded me with bliss. This was perfection. This was more than I deserved. She was everything and I had no doubt I was bound to ruin her.

  That thought was sobering enough that I managed to get it together enough to pull out of her engulfing heat before my own completion hit. I wrapped my cock in my fist, gave it an obligatory stroke that almost wasn’t needed, and watched with a primal sense of accomplishment as I marked her in the rawest and most basic way a man could. She was covered in sweat and sex. She had the sticky remnants of my orgasm glistening on the curve of her still-lifted backside as she collapsed on the bed underneath me. It was an image that was going to be burned into my brain for an eternity. It was the picture I was going to pull up every time I was alone and missing her. I was going to remember that for this second, this moment she was undeniably mine. The proof of it was clinging to her gorgeously speckled skin.

  It was my turn to lean over the side of the bed and rummage on the floor for something I could use to clean us both up with. I retrieved my shirt from the night before and scowled when it was my phone that rang and interrupted the quiet moment after the hurricane-like sex that had just consumed us. I swiped the cotton across Dixie’s skin, feeling a little like a teenager scrambling to hide the evidence of what had just taken place.

  I felt my eyebrows lift when I noticed it was Dalen’s number on my phone. I sent him a few text messages on holidays and his birthdays when I was deployed after Jules told me he got the boy his own phone. I typically didn’t get a response back, so I couldn’t imagine why he was calling me now that I was under the same roof in the same city as him.

  “Did you pocket dial me, kid?” Dixie shifted in the bed next to me and turned her head so that she was looking up at me, chocolate-colored eyes alight with curiosity.

  “I need you to come and pick me up.” He sounded funny, not that I knew how he normally sounded but his voice was shaky and missing some of the resentment it’d had last
night.

  “I gotta go get Elma Mae from the hospital and bring her home. Aren’t you at school?” I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and reached for the pants I’d carelessly dropped last night.

  “Forget about it. I should have called Dad. I don’t know why I thought you would show up when I needed you. You never have before.” Sucker punch. I sucked in a breath through my teeth and rubbed a hand over my face as the kid hit me with a shot that took more out of me than any of the bullets and shrapnel that had ripped through my skin.

  “I’ll come get you, Dalen, but you need to tell me what’s going on so I can tell Jules. I’m not going to get between you and your dad my first day home.”

  “He’s your dad, too, asshole.” My little brother wasn’t pulling any punches. “I’m at the Stop N’ Save on route 12. I skipped my first class with a couple of other guys on the team. There was an assembly on something stupid, so we slipped out and decided to grab something to eat at the gas station.” He swore and I heard his voice shake when he went on. “I was waiting for my buddy Drake to come out of the store. He’s old enough to drive, so I was chilling by his truck when these guys in another truck pulled in and blocked us in.” He cleared his throat and I felt my blood start to boil and fury flare to life blazing and explosive inside my veins. “They started saying some really ugly stuff, Dash, really ugly. I thought they were giving us a hard time because we were kids. I figured they maybe supported a rival school and were pissed we had Lowry colors on.” He sounded like he was crying and I wanted to level the entire fucking town in order to make him stop.

  “I’m on the way. Are you okay, Dalen?”

  “They messed me up, Dash. I mean I’m a big dude and I take hits day in and day out on the field, but there were three of them.”

  “Son of a bitch. Do you need to go to the hospital?” Dixie gasped and bolted up next to me. She put a hand on my arm and patted the muscle that was locked in a battle-ready position. I would rip anyone that hurt the kid apart limb from limb. I would make them suffer in ways they couldn’t imagine. I would hunt them down and run them to ground if it was the last thing I did.

  “No. My face is busted up. Split lip, couple black eyes, and my knuckles are busted open, which is going to piss coach off. I tried to call Dad but he got a call out to the Holler and won’t be back in city limits for another hour. I told my buddies I would find my own way home. I don’t want them in trouble for skipping school. Coach will bench all of us for the next game if he finds out.”

  The Holler was a trailer park way out in the boonies. It wasn’t easy to get to and the people that called it home weren’t easy to deal with. Jules was going to be pissed when he found out what had happened.

  “Hate to break it to you, kid, but once the old man catches sight of the damage done he’s gonna want to talk to your friends. They’re witnesses to an assault. I’m headed out the door right now, so sit tight.”

  He mumbled a sullen agreement as I turned to look at Dixie, who was also climbing out of the bed, her curls clasped in a hand to hold them away from her face.

  “I gotta go get Dalen. The kid is in bad shape, and I need to call Jules so I can fill him in. Can you go get Elma Mae and get her settled at her place? I know that’s asking a lot.” She nodded without hesitation and grabbed some clothes from the pile I’d brought in from the laundry room last night.

  “Of course I’ll go get her. I hope your brother is okay.”

  I clasped the back of my neck and squeezed the thick coils of tension that were suddenly there.

  “He’ll be all right. The redneck assholes that fucked with him won’t be able to say the same thing. I’m glad he called me. Surprised but glad.”

  She paused and gave me a serious look as she covered her nakedness with her bundle of clothes. “Of course he called. He’s giving you the opportunity to show up because he wants you to prove that you still care about him the way he still cares about you. You were his idol and he’s giving you a shot to reclaim your position as his hero. He could have called the police, in fact he probably should have. He could have called a friend’s parent or another adult he trusts, but he called you. Don’t screw this up, soldier. This is a mission you cannot afford to fail.”

  She was right about most of it. She was wrong about me being any kind of hero.

  A hero wouldn’t have bolted when things got tough at home. A hero wouldn’t have let the man he idolized and adored grieve alone for the second woman he’d loved. A hero wouldn’t have abandoned his little brother with no explanation and no justification. A hero wouldn’t make love to the woman of his dreams over and over again knowing he was going to end up doing irreparable damage to her heart. A hero wasn’t terrified to let himself fall in love, because all real heroes knew that pain was unavoidable and it was the suffering that was optional. Hell, half the guys I served with had those very words inked on their skin somewhere. It was a reminder that I didn’t just choose to suffer, I embraced the suffering until it was the only thing I could feel aside from duty and obligation.

  I had been many, many things in my fairly short and most definitely exciting lifetime but a hero wasn’t one of them.

  Chapter 13

  Dixie

  Julian’s massive 4x4 dwarfed me. The shiny red truck had wheels that came up to almost my hip and gleaming chrome runners that ran along either side under the doors that I most definitely needed to use when I pulled myself up into the motorized beast. I was sure I had to look ridiculous behind the wheel but the interior of the truck was nicer than anything I had inside my apartment and I couldn’t deny that I felt almost as badass sitting up so high and on top of so much horsepower as I did in the leather chaps Church was so fond of. I couldn’t resist snapping a selfie, complete with duck face to send to Wheeler, because even though the truck was newer and not one of the classics that he preferred, I knew that he would appreciate the hilarity of me being the one behind the wheel of the beast.

  I got a text back filled with question marks and a whole bunch of confused-face emojis followed by one that simply said sweet ride. I owed him an explanation as to why I’d been so distracted and dismissive on the phone earlier, not that I could figure out one that wasn’t a lie. We were close and shared a lot, but I doubted we were “talk about the amazing sex I was having with the guy you almost threw down with in my living room” close. Hell, apparently there had been issues behind closed doors with him and my sister for a while now and neither one of them had bothered to fill me in. How was I supposed to help if I didn’t have all the information?

  Maybe Church was right. Maybe it wasn’t my problem to try to fix. Maybe it wasn’t my place to wade in and play peacemaker even though that’s what I had always done. Kallie had to find her way to the truth and I couldn’t walk Wheeler by the hand to forgiveness if he didn’t want to go. Even if all the mediator tendencies I harbored and hoarded were screaming at me to do something to smooth everything over so that my family could stay the way it was. I wanted everyone to be happy, but spending these last few days with Church and being dropped into the center of his fractured family had shown me that sometimes wanting happiness wasn’t enough. You had to work for it, and once you had it, you had to cultivate it and care for it. I liked to pretend that everything was always coming up sunshine and roses, but being on Church’s home turf reminded me that every day had a night. That the sun had to go down and that as pretty as flowers were they all eventually died, no matter how carefully maintained they were. There was no good without the bad, no joy without sorrow, no peace without war, and there definitely couldn’t be love without the sour taste of hate. You had to know what one felt like to fully experience and appreciate the other. All of the things I wanted and strived to bring into my life and the lives of others couldn’t be experienced without the furious backlash of the opposite emotion.

  I took up two parking spaces. I felt bad about it for a second and then rationalized we would be leaving soon, so it really didn’t matter. I was g
oing to have to pull the mammoth machine around to the front when they wheeled Elma out in the wheelchair she was going to be confined to for the next few weeks anyways. I didn’t envy the physical therapist or the home care nurse that were going to be spending the next six weeks getting Elma Mae back on her feet. The feisty white-haired terror was going to put everyone through their paces during her recovery.

  I maneuvered my way through the small hospital, acutely aware that I was drawing a lot of curious looks that I hadn’t been on the receiving end of yesterday. It could have been the very obvious sex hair I was rocking. It could have been the fact that without Church by my side I was an unfamiliar face in a place where everyone seemed to know everyone else. Or more than likely it could have been my tightly fitted T-shirt that had a cow on the front with the words “I’m Not in the Mooooooood” printed below it. I thought it was cute and kind of funny but the side eyes and the lifted eyebrows from everyone I passed indicated they didn’t share my quirky sense of humor.

  I actually owned a closet full of normal, non-hilarious clothes but they weren’t things I wanted to roll into a ball and shove into a backpack that may or may not have ended up sliding across asphalt. In fact, my ridiculous T-shirts were a big hit at the bar when I wore them. They were a conversation starter and it gave the guys that were going to stare at my boobs anyways an actual reason to have their gazes locked on my chest. So as silly as they were I had no plan on ditching them, no matter how many turned-up noses and divisive snorts were fired my way. Plus, Church didn’t seem to mind them, not that I would retire them even if they were suddenly a deal breaker. I would miss his dick, but I would miss that little piece of me even more.