It was the dirtiest and at the same time most worshipful experience of my life. I never wanted it to end but I also wanted to rush through it because it still felt like the wrong place and the wrong time and I was absolutely the wrong guy . . . but she was right. Everything about her and the way she made me feel as pleasure coiled low at the base of my spine, while it had my thighs locking and my hands clutching at her head like it was my only anchor to this moment, felt so much like it should be, was meant to be, like it was the only right that had happened in my life in a very, very long time.
“You’re about to get more than you asked for, pretty girl.” My voice sounded like it had been dragged over gravel and dipped in acid. The drawl was thicker than it had ever been and I couldn’t keep my eyes open as pleasure pressed down hard on me and had my balls drawing up and my cock kicking hard where it was trapped between her lips.
She hummed again, twisted her hand the other way, dug the fingernails of her free hand into the curve at the top of my ass where she was holding on for balance, and then she licked across the steadily weeping slit that was touching her tongue. She pulled back just a little bit and I couldn’t take it anymore. I swore and then growled her name as I pressed the back of her head closer to my waist. It wasn’t delicate or kind. It was greedy and gluttonous. I wanted her to take all of me as I flooded her mouth and filled her up with pleasure that would no longer be contained. She swallowed just as voraciously, taking it all while she stared up at me with those unendingly dark eyes. I didn’t deserve any of this, but it was a moment, a memory that I would treasure until I took my last breath. She made me feel like a hero when I was the furthest thing from that.
She fell back on her haunches after placing a kiss right below my belly button. She leaned her head back against the brick wall and stared up at me as I figured my situation out and got myself adjusted back in my jeans. I couldn’t stop looking down at her. She made me take risks I would never take, not just because I knew better than to get distracted, but because when I was distracted I couldn’t keep her safe. She might have done a spectacular job going down on me but my mind was blown just as much as my cock had been. She made me forget to be on the lookout for the bad things that always seemed to chase the good ones out of my life.
Her mouth was puffy and swollen. Her cheeks were hot pink and there was no missing that her typically wild hair was even more unkempt from my hands pulling at it. I opened my mouth to say something, to say anything, but I was saved from tripping over useless words when the side door to the bar swung open and the cute cocktail server that had been taking care of us inside stepped out, cigarette in hand.
Her gaze slipped over us, me looming over a very flushed and very wide-eyed Dixie, and a knowing grin tugged at her mouth.
“That’s a popular pit stop, but you guys might want to relocate before last call if you don’t want to give the whole town and all the tourists a show.” She winked at me as I reached out a hand to pull Dixie to her feet. She wobbled a little and I pulled her to my chest, where she buried her flaming face.
“She needed a minute.” My voice sounded like it was traveling over sandpaper when I gave the waitress the weak excuse for our compromising position. Dixie let out a snort that the cocktail server echoed.
“I bet she did. By the looks of you I bet she needed more than one.” Dixie let out a strangled laugh and pulled back. She shook her tangled pigtails out of her face and waved a hand in my general direction.
“I mean look at him. Can you blame me?” The blonde let her gaze roll over me and she gave Dixie a nod.
“Nope. Not at all.” They shared a look that must have required a vagina to understand as I hooked a hand under Dixie’s elbow and gave her a tug towards the road.
“We need to hit the road early if we’re gonna make it to Lowry with enough time for me to swing by the hospital and see Elma Mae before they release her.” What I needed to do was get her somewhere alone and private so I could get my head around all the ways the dynamic between us had just shifted. I was starting to settle into the idea of having her as a friend, a friend I wanted to fuck but still a friend. None of what happened inside or outside of that honky-tonk felt very friendly. It felt like the start of something that was going to kill me when I had to finish it.
Dixie gave a sloppy nod and waved at the still-smiling cocktail server. She let me wrap an arm around her shoulders and hold her to my side as we made our way back towards the cabin-like motel.
“She’s used to it. Before Rome put up cameras in the bar I can’t tell you how many times I would walk out the back door and stumble onto something that should be on cable late at night.” She gave a little giggle that made me think the tequila was still thick in her blood. “Rome can’t ever fire me because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked in on him and Cora doing stuff that leads to all those babies they have.”
I grunted and hauled her even closer to my side. “You deserve more than a quick fuck in a back office or up against the side of the bar.” She deserved a guy that would be careful with her and give her back all the goodness she handed out so freely.
She dug an elbow into my side and pushed until I let her go. She stumbled closer to the edge of the street than I was comfortable with, so I pulled her back but she immediately shook my hand off her arm.
“Sometimes it isn’t about who deserves what. Sometimes it’s simply about what makes you happy. Sometimes it’s okay to take what you can get and be satisfied with that because you know more will eventually come along.” She cut me a look out of the corner of her eye and then let out a deep sigh. “Let’s just call it too much temptation and too much tequila.”
What had just happened between the two of us was the most selfless I’d ever had any woman be with me. Sure, I’d had other mouths attached to pretty girls wrapped around my cock, but it had never felt as personal and as important as it felt with Dixie. And none of them had looked at me like I was doing them some kind of courtesy by allowing them to suck me off. I sighed, louder and much more exasperatedly than she had. “You make me feel like you getting me off with the best blow job I’ve ever had was me doing you some kind of favor. Believe me, the pleasure was all mine.”
She gave her head a little shake, which sent her captured curls bouncing, and I wanted to punch myself in the nuts for the way her eyes filled with shadows of sadness. “Fair warning before we fall into that bed together, if you put your hands and your mouth on me, Church, I’m going to want more. My stupid heart is going to spin big dreams that lock you and me together forever even though my head knows better. You gave me the little bit you just did and I can already feel every single piece of me is wanting to gobble it up and demand more. I’m happy right now, but if you take me to bed and make me feel special I won’t be happy when I realize that isn’t true. I’d rather stay happy and if I had to guess I would bet you want to stay happy, too.” Her lips twitched and she leaned into me. “Well, as happy as a big, broody former soldier and prodigal son can get.”
Her words stabbed at me with the unvarnished and unsheathed truth. “Everything inside of me is screaming that I need to give you what you gave me, pretty girl.”
She gave me a smile that nearly broke my heart in half. “I’m not looking for you to balance the scales by giving me as many orgasms as I give you. I put your cock in my mouth because I wanted it there. I’ve been thinking about how you would taste on my tongue and getting myself off imagining everything that is you for fucking forever. I didn’t go down on you because I wanted you to owe me anything, I went down on you because I saw my shot to live out a fantasy and I took it.”
I let her pull away from me and when we got into the cabin she silently disappeared into the bathroom. When she came out much later she was freshly showered and smelled like orange and honey. Her curls hung down to the middle of her back with the weight of the water still stuck in them and all she had on was her tank top and a pair of black boy-short panties that covered more than a bikini b
ottom would but made my cock jolt nonetheless.
“You want me to crash on the floor?” It was the least I could do since she wanted me to keep my hands to myself. Chivalry sucked and I really wanted to be less than gentlemanly at the moment. But she told me she wanted to stay happy and I couldn’t bring myself to do anything to mess with that even if she looked delectable and sweet enough to eat.
She shook her head in the negative. “Nope, but don’t take it personally when I build a pillow fortress around myself. I’m a middle-of-the-night cuddler.”
I wanted her to cuddle me . . . naked. She crawled under the covers and surrounded herself with all the extra pillows on the bed. There wasn’t a chance that we would accidentally roll into one another in the night and that fact made me grind my back teeth together and curse my inability to be the kind of guy that truly appreciated having a woman like her in the same bed.
It was a restless night for both of us. She tossed and turned while I laid as still as possible, eyes locked on the ceiling. She let out a tragic-sounding sigh every hour or so and when the sun filtered through the curtains on the window we were both ready to keep pretending we were asleep and silently agreed that being on the road was better than being in the bed, so close yet so far apart.
We rode hard and fast. We pushed on through the rest of Arkansas with the minimum of stops and ate an awkward and mostly silent lunch when we crossed into Mississippi. Every mile we rode closer to Lowry made me nostalgic and nervous at the same time. A man never forgot where he came from, even if he had tried his hardest. I didn’t exactly feel very welcome when we stopped and I had to endure several obvious sneers and dirty looks as I escorted Dixie to and from the ladies’ room. Some things didn’t change no matter how much time had gone by and it reminded me why, even though this place was home, I had decided to leave it behind and not look back. I was used to tuning out that kind of reaction and judgment, but there was no way to stop the way it made me tense up and get overly territorial where Dixie was concerned. I didn’t want her to get the same kind of flack I remembered my mother getting. Neither one of them deserved that kind of reaction just because of the company they chose to keep.
We blew through Tupelo, Dixie oohing and awing over the old plantations with their stately columns in the front and the giant weeping trees. She kept telling me to slow down as the main roads turned into barely paved country roads so she could snap pictures with her cell phone. I was anxious to hit the county line but I couldn’t deny her simple request, so we were cruising along, slow and steady when suddenly red and blue lights lit up behind us.
The siren whirred and Dixie went ramrod straight behind me. “We’re barely moving. Why would they stop us?”
I didn’t want to tell her it was a common occurrence in Lowry. If you didn’t look like everyone else the cops had no problem pulling you over just so they could let you know they were watching you. That had happened less when I became a cop’s kid but there was only so much Jules’s position could shield both me and Mom from.
“No big deal. Probably just wondering what we’re doing in town.” That was partly true because I didn’t want to lie to her. I didn’t want to share with her the other reasons they could be pulling us over, so I kept my mouth shut and my eyes on the vehicle behind us.
I watched in the side mirror as the cop grabbed his hat and climbed out of the car after we both stopped on the side of the road. The tall figure was achingly familiar and recognizable as he ambled his way up to the side of the bike. A face that I hadn’t seen in a decade stared down at me from behind mirrored shades. He looked like he hadn’t aged a bit except now there were threads of gray in the ever-present goatee that surrounded his mouth.
I took my sunglasses off and tilted my chin up at the tall man. “Jules.”
The cop’s mouth twitched and his head turned to take in my pretty passenger. “Glad to have you back, son.”
“Glad to be back.” And I was. That surprisingly wasn’t a lie.
“We got a situation, Dash.” Jules’s deep voice sounded like home but his tone was serious and it made my very honed instincts stand up and take notice.
“What kind of situation?” I felt my eyes narrow as his head turned so he could look at Dixie where she was silently taking in our exchange.
“Got a call into the station about an hour ago about a kidnapped woman. The call hit dispatch in Tupelo a couple hours ago and they passed it on to us to keep an eye out. Got a description of a redheaded woman, small in stature, last seen in Arkansas. Caller said she was abducted by a man on a brand-new sportster with temp plates out of Colorado. The description that dispatch operator sent along sounded awfully familiar.”
Dixie stiffened behind me. “Wait . . . you’re saying someone reported me kidnapped?” She sounded incredulous and alarmed.
Jules lifted a hand and rubbed it over his mouth, a gesture I must have picked up from him along the way somewhere. It took time and distance but I could now see a lot of the man that had picked me to be his in myself. I wondered if that gave him a sense of pride or disgusted him seeing as how I’d left him and the good life he’d tried so hard to give me through thick and thin.
“That’s what it sounds like.”
“No way. That’s crazy. Church asked me to come a couple of days ago and I agreed. I’m with him by choice.”
She was with me by choice and through a little bit of coercion, but I was starting to wonder if her being unable to tell me no when it came to something I really, actually needed her for was the worst mistake she had ever made. After all, she was nothing but good and I had a really bad track record when it came to being able to keep a good thing going.
Chapter 9
Dixie
The cop looked almost exactly like Shemar Moore. The afternoon sun glinted off his shaved head and cast his confident swagger in shadow as he approached us. He even had the neatly trimmed goatee surrounding his mouth and the kind of smile that made me forget my own name. I was having a really hard time listening to what he was saying and not gawking with my tongue hanging out. He was tall, built, and gorgeous, just like the man sitting stiffly in front of me. They might not be related by blood, but there was no mistaking that Church was every inch his father’s son and there was also no missing that his dad felt it was long past time his eldest returned home.
“I am very obviously not kidnapped.” I couldn’t believe that someone had reported me missing. For a second I wondered if it could be Kallie going above and beyond to get my attention since I wasn’t around to keep her world from crumbling around her like I normally was. I wouldn’t put it past her, but I quickly dismissed the idea when the hot cop took his sunglasses off and pinned me with a hard, chocolate-colored stare several shades darker than my own.
“You give anyone a reason to report you missing before you left Denver?” His voice rumbled like distant thunder and his drawl was so thick and low that I really had to listen to understand him.
I shook my head vehemently no as Church swore. “I pissed off a drug dealer before I blew out of town. Could be payback for that. Got some looks outside Kansas City and some more once we hit the Mississippi state line. Could be that.” He tensed up and practically growled at the man standing stoically next to us. “You know how it goes.” He sounded pissed and his words made the man he didn’t refer to as Dad look angry.
“I do know how it goes, son.” It sounded like it didn’t go well for either of them in the past.
“Someone locked Dixie in the bathroom at a truck stop the first night. They jammed a pipe in the door and she was stuck there while I helped some guy out with his radiator. Someone also tried to run us off the road the first night. I’m thinking none of that was coincidental now.”
“You got a description of the guy?”
Church shook his head. “No, sir. I can’t tell you what kind of car he drove or what he looked like. I can tell you all of Acosta’s guys are Hispanic.”
“Acosta, the drug dealer?” It was s
o formal, so regimented. I couldn’t believe neither man was an emotional mess after spending so many years apart. There were no hugs exchanged, not even a friendly handshake. It was all facts and information exchanged in clipped sentences. It was almost painful to watch.
“Yep. He’s tangled up in federal court right now, but he’s got a dirty lawyer that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn is helping him run things from behind bars.”
The cop switched his attention to me and his lips lifted in a half grin. Dear Lord, if Church ever let go of all that history and horror that made it impossible for him to smile he would be devastating. He was already the prettiest man I had ever seen, and if he ever got to the point where he could comfortably flash his pearly whites my heart wouldn’t be able to take it . . . and I was pretty sure my vagina would spontaneously combust.
“You see the car that tried to run you off the road, Curly Sue?” I couldn’t hold back the giggle at the nickname. When Church called me “pretty girl” it made me feel all kinds of hot and bothered. The “Curly Sue” from his dad made me feel welcomed and enfolded in the warmth of a family that was missing a piece. I didn’t have anything to do with bringing the prodigal son home, but the cute nickname and the lazy smile that showed all of his strong white teeth made me feel like I was the key to putting all the fragments back together.
“No, I didn’t see anything, but I wasn’t paying attention because I was too busy watching my life flash before my eyes.”
He nodded and put his sunglasses back on. “It’s been my experience that most drug dealers tend to be more in-your-face with their retaliation, but this guy might be more subtle if he’s looking at federal charges. Not sure what’s going on and it’s going to be a paperwork nightmare to get the alert pulled on you two, so I would keep an eye out for anything else that seems out of sorts. Pretty easy to spot the things that don’t belong in a small town.”