Deb woke to Dandy’s crow. It had been a while since she’d still been sound asleep when he started rousing the world. As wakefulness pushed in around her edges, she felt cozy and a little sore—and not at all ready to start her day. The animals could maybe wait a few extra minutes this morning.
She grabbed a fistful of pillow, meaning to put it over her head, but it wouldn’t budge. Another tug, but nothing.
Because she wasn’t alone in her bed. Simon had stayed over with her.
Now that she’d achieved full consciousness, she could feel his warm body on hers, the source of her coziness—and her soreness—and the night before flowered in her memory. Nice.
He didn’t seem to be awake yet. She rolled to her other side to face him. He lay on his hip, his legs toward her, his upper body twisted slightly so that his back rested on the mattress. The cheap, but jaunty, black eye patch had gotten dislodged at some point, leaving what looked like a hard plastic Band-Aid showing over his injured eye.
An eye injured badly enough to be patched. A gash requiring a dozen stitches. A broken nose. All because he dared love her. Her brother could really be a psychotic jerk sometimes.
As she settled her head on her pillow, deciding to watch him sleep for a while and hold onto this comfortable nest, Dandy crowed again, and Simon sighed deeply, his gorgeous chest rising.
“Your rooster is an asshole,” he muttered.
“All roosters are assholes. Good morning.” She shifted and rested her head on his shoulder. As soon as she did, he lifted his arm, displacing her, but only so he could hook it around her and bring her closer.
“Good morning.” He kissed her head. “Gotta say, I like this waking up with you business.”
“Me, too—but it’s hard to get up, and I really have to. Dandy won’t let anybody sleep in. How’d you sleep?” They’d come up to bed early, barely past dark, and had exhausted themselves well before midnight.
“Better than I have in a fucking long time. What they say about country air is true, I guess.”
“It is better.” She kissed his chest, just above his nipple, and trailed her fingers across his chest, along his side, lingering on the long, ropey scar over his ribs, then in, tracing hard mounds of lean muscle to the center of his belly and down, through his treasure trail. The quivers beneath her touch made her smile; the lift of her quilt over his hips turned it into a grin. “But I think it was more than just fresh air. The hard work might have had something to do with it. And all the orgasms.”
“Good point.” He caught her traveling hand and wove their fingers together. “You keep that up, and we’re going to start racking up orgasms before breakfast.”
Stirred up and stuffed with happiness, Deb wanted to call that bluff. Besides, she didn’t know how long it would be before they could see each other again. Her asshole rooster could fuck off for a while.
She kissed his chest again, this time running her tongue over his nipple and giving it a little suck. He moaned, making a low growl in his chest that she felt on her lips. “Get on me, hon.”
She complied, pushing up and out from under the quilt and climbing onto him, settling her knees on either side of his hips. For a moment, she stood on her knees, high above him, and took in the sight—the brand-new dawn beginning to brighten, filling the open windows and lighting her room. Her white cotton curtains shifting in a breeze still cool from the last strands of night. Simon lying on her flowered linens, his dark hair spread over her pillow, his eye—such a pale, ethereal green—locked on her and fired with need.
Even under the bandage and sutures and bruising, he was handsome. He had an intense, serious look, except when he smiled. When he smiled, he did so with his whole face. The corners of his eyes crinkled, and that always just about undid her. The first thing Deb had ever noticed about Simon was his smile—something he did so often that the expression had left its lasting impression on his face, carving faint rays from his eyes to his temples.
Now, he wasn’t smiling. Now, he had hold of her hips, and he waited. She wrapped her hand around his cock to hold it steady, and she sat down, slowly, so she could savor his full entry.
Since the night that she’d left the note in his door, they hadn’t used a condom. She’d always insisted before, despite taking the Pill. He hadn’t been exclusive, and she didn’t want to catch something from a sweetbutt or any other woman. That night, and the night she’d confronted him and they’d decided to go for this thing between them, they’d been too intense and wound up for her to even think about protection. Last night, though she had a box of condoms in her dresser, she hadn’t cared. She wanted nothing between them. Not even latex. So she’d trust that he was healthy.
Bare with him, feeling how hot he was, feeling the true shape of him, especially that thick underside ridge—knowing how it felt when his hot skin touched hers, she couldn’t imagine going back to the cool, medicinal slick of a condom.
As she settled on his hips, taking his full length, he groaned, and the muscles in his stomach and legs turned to stone under her.
“Holy fuck, you feel good,” he muttered. “Get yourself off on me. I want to watch.”
Already lost in the feel of him, she rocked her hips, not lifting away, but keeping him as deep as she could, moving so that he always pressed hard at the best places. She watched him watch her as she put her hands between her legs to finger her clit and her folds.
“Fuck,” she gasped when he thrust his hips up.
“Yeah, baby. God, I love to feel you touching yourself like this.” He stroked her thighs, her hips, her ass, her belly, her sides. She felt the cool brush of his rings and heavy bracelet on her skin.
Her clit swelled and throbbed, and she picked up the tempo of her hips while her fingers strummed over that amazing little bead where every good nerve seemed to live. “Oh shit, I’m close.”
“I know it. I can feel how close you are. Shit, you’re so wet.”
Her hands were full and busy, and she didn’t want to stop anything they did—driving her clit to madness, feeling the piston of his cock—so she cried out, “Work my tits, baby, work my tits!”
With a chuckle, he lifted his hands and took hold of her tits, grasping her nipples right away, knowing exactly what would drive her over the top. He pulled, both at once, and then, at the peak of their stretch, he gave them each a little twist.
“Fuck! Yes!” She couldn’t care how loud her cry had been. Her orgasm slammed through her. When he pulled even harder, another violent spasm blasted her, and she reared back so hard he lost his grip.
“Jesus, baby!” Simon’s hands grasped her hips again and he slammed up into her hard and fast, again, again, again, until he froze, deep inside her. She opened her eyes and saw all the tendons in his neck raised like cords as he came.
When it was over, Deb collapsed forward onto his sweaty chest.
“Holy shit.” He gathered up all her hair in his fist and laid a gentle kiss on her bare shoulder. “Holy shit.”
Just as Deb thought she might be able to breathe normally, Dandy crowed yet again. Twice. He got mean when he’d been closed up too long—mean to her, to the hens, to the world. Deb sighed. “I gotta let them out.”
“Okay.” He lifted her head and brushed his lips lightly over hers. God, she loved his beard. “I’ll help. That rooster’s no match for me.”
She laughed, remembering the last time he’d helped her put the animals out—a few hours before the first time he’d been in her bed. “I love you, Simon.”
The humor eased from his features, leaving behind attention and intensity. Deb could read the love in his eyes. “I love you, too. Came out of nowhere, but shit, it feels good.”
She shook her head. “It didn’t come out of nowhere. It was right there. Maybe from the start. Why else does it feel so good, and so completely right, despite all the reasons it should have been wrong?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
~oOo~
They were only going back to Tulsa. Not much more than sixty miles away. Why did it feel like they were sending their men off to war?
Because they were. Deb had insisted that Simon tell her something about what was going on with the club. Leah might be happiest in the dark, but Deb was far too much of a control freak about her own life to invite mystery and uncertainty in. He wouldn’t tell her everything, but he’d told her enough—enough to know that she’d already put the puzzle together fairly well from the pieces Max and Simon had scattered around—their insistence that Leah and she stay away, the news reports about the school fire and various other incidents of destruction and violence, the lockdowns. They were fighting a turf war with a gang from the other side of Tulsa.
Someone had been killed in that school fire. Now Deb knew that the Bulls had done it. Simon wouldn’t talk about that; he’d shut down completely when she’d put that piece in the puzzle. But they’d killed an innocent bystander.
She understood why Max had gotten so intense again. He’d been so much happier and calmer the past two years, but had lost all of that equanimity over the past few months. Now she had a concrete understanding of why.
It was bad. They didn’t know when it would be better. Or if it would be.
So, after everybody pitched in with the morning chores, and they had a good Sunday breakfast, Leah and Deb stood on the driveway with Max and Simon, beside their Harleys with club art on the tanks, and held on tight. They were sending their men off to war.
Leah wept freely, hanging on so tightly to Max’s neck that she must have been strangling him. But he didn’t seem inclined to ease her off. Max didn’t cry—Deb hadn’t seen him cry since he was little, not even after Martin and their mom had died—but he held Leah just as tightly and buried his face in her hair. Tears weren’t needed to know that he hurt, too.
They’d been together for a couple of years. Deb and Simon were brand new. And yet she felt it, too, that pull of fear and longing.
“Take care of yourself,” she warned. “Be safe.” Stupid things to say.
He laughed gently. “As much as I can. You stay put, out of the crossfire. And maybe this’ll be over soon. Like I said, we got some new information last week, and it changes the field. Might even tip the balance our way.”
What that new information was, he hadn’t told her, and she hadn’t asked. She didn’t need to know everything, not yet. “Okay. Call me.”
“Every day. You’ll get sick of my voice.”
“Nope.” With a shake of her head, she kissed him.
“Back off, asshole,” Max snarled. But when Simon and Deb turned to him, his expression had no menace. Irritation, sure. “I want to say goodbye to my sister, if you don’t fucking mind.”
Simon backed off, holding Deb’s hand until the distance between them was too much.
“Skank,” Max said and wrapped Deb up in his arms.
“Loser.” She squeezed him back. Those habitual insults had become endearments long ago. They meant ‘I love you’ as much as any word might.
Tears still streamed down Leah’s face when the guys finally rode off. Deb pulled her close, and they stood on the gravel and watched until the bikes crested the hill and disappeared from sight.
After Leah got herself together, they went inside. Deb’s dad sat in his chair in the living room, with his Bible on his lap. Not attending services regularly hadn’t changed her father’s quiet faith. He read from a devotional every morning, after he was dressed but before his chores. On the Sundays they stayed home, he read a chapter in the Bible itself.
But he wasn’t reading now. He sat with it open on his lap, staring out the window. He didn’t acknowledge Deb and Leah when they came in.
“Dad, you okay?”
With a sigh, he turned from the window, but he didn’t answer her query.
He had a special bookmark that clipped to the place on the page where he’d stopped. He marked his place and closed the Bible. He put it back where it belonged on the bookshelf.
On his way from the room, he stopped and brushed a fatherly hand over her arm. “I’m okay, Debra. I think I’m gonna take a walk.”
He pulled his walking stick from the umbrella stand at the front door, and he left.
“That was weird,” Leah mused, watching the door close. “Was that weird?”
“Yeah.” Following a hunch, Deb crossed the living room and picked up the family Bible. She opened it to the page her father had marked—Jeremiah. The passage he’d marked was Jeremiah 6:21: Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will lay stumbling blocks before this people, and the fathers and the sons together shall fall upon them; the neighbour and his friend shall perish.
The Siege of Jerusalem. Deb looked up and out the window. Her father walked down the drive, toward the road. He walked with his head down, driving his tall walking stick ahead with every step.
Her father was not an emotional man, nor effusive. He felt deeply, and thought seriously, but he kept himself to himself, for the most part. He let his children be who they were. He’d never fought Max’s devotion to the Brazen Bulls. In fact, in his quiet way, he’d made sure they wouldn’t lose him to it—he’d made the first move in the friendship he had with Brian Delaney. He’d followed Max so they could hold onto him. But he was no fool; he knew who the Bulls were, what they did. He rarely said it, but he worried.
Watching him walk away, that verse of the Bible ringing in her head, Deb knew. He understood that he’d sent his only living son to war. And he was afraid.
~oOo~
“I can’t believe you got me back out here. I like it much better when you come to me.” Aly sank back against the aqua vinyl of the booth and sipped her iced tea. “There’s a reason I don’t live out here anymore, you know.”
“Your fancy television job.” Aly was a news producer for one of the local stations.
Aly aimed a sidelong glance at her. “Among other things, yes.”
Like her mother. “Did you see her?”
Aly and Deb had been friends since kindergarten. They were the same age and had both lived in the Grant school district, a district so large in size and small in population that there had been only one class of each grade in the single elementary school. They both knew everybody their own age out here. Really well. Though they two had already been best friends, by middle school they’d acquired a larger pack of girls they’d done almost everything with.
Deb had had a good childhood, overall. She’d loved school, all the way through, and she’d had lots of friends. The farm had always provided at least enough to keep them warm and fed and clothed. She’d had the country life that made people romanticize country life.
Until her mother and brother had died. But even after that, even when that life had gone lame, it had still been good. Still was.
Aly hadn’t had such a life. Her father, also a family farmer, had reacted to the failures and struggles of Oklahoma agriculture not as Deb’s father had—by being both more conservative and more innovative—but by chasing every new idea and promise that came along. He’d lost the farm while they were juniors in high school. He’d shot himself on the front porch when the bank came to foreclose on the property.
Aly and her mother had moved into a mobile home close to Grant and scraped by on welfare and the kindness of neighbors. That mobile home had been destroyed in the Grant Tornado of ’96. Marcella had been in the hospital, recovering from foot surgery, so she’d been safe while all of her possessions had been lost. Now she lived in a mobile home in Wheaton.
Aly didn’t see much of her mother. They got along as well as most mothers and daughters got along, in Deb’s observation. Equal parts guilt and need, mostly. She hadn’t gotten along any better with her own mother; her teen years had been rough, though not in the same way. But Aly couldn’t stand this part of the world. To her, it was misery and loss. She couldn’t see the good anywhere, and she remembered too much bad. She’d gotten out as fast as she could, getting a full ride to the University of Oklahoma, and she stayed away as much as she could.
Not too far: after college, she’d settled in Tulsa, where she could be close enough to help when her mom needed it, but far enough that Grant didn’t touch her. For all these years, except for certain occasions, like the opening of the produce stand, Deb went to Aly and they played in Tulsa, where Aly felt safe.
But now Deb wasn’t safe in Tulsa, so without sharing details that would excite her friend’s news antennae—Aly had a strict ‘family is not news’ policy, but Deb felt careful about the Bulls nonetheless—she’d found a way to convince Aly to play in the country again, only a few days after she’d ‘helped’ open the stand. Aly was bursting with the friendly need to know all there was to know about Simon, and she couldn’t wait any longer, so it hadn’t been as difficult to lure her back as it might otherwise have been.
“Yes, I saw her. She’s the same. You know, everybody is out to screw her, and if I really cared about her I’d fix it for her. The usual refrain. But she won’t come into town, and I won’t move back here, so there were are.” She sipped at her tea again and gave the glass a nasty look. “You know, I’d be happier about being here if this was a Long Island iced tea.”
Deb laughed. “I know you would. Bea’s still doesn’t serve alcohol. Just like always.”
“Would it help if somebody else checked in on your mom?” Leah asked. On a whim, Deb had invited her along; the girl was getting housebound and mopey. “I mean, I used to do that all the time, with my dad—go visit shut-ins. I’d be happy to do that for Mrs. Collier.”
Aly reached across the table and patted Leah’s hand. “Oh, sweetie, that’s so nice. But no. Marcella will suck you into her black hole, and you’ll never be seen or heard from again. She’s not a shut-in. She’s a hermit.” She slurped up the last of her tea. “Okay, all we’ve done is talk about me. I want to talk about the boy! Tall, dark, and shaggy. I have opinions, and I’m about to burst.”
“If you’re going to pummel me with snark about my boyfriend, I need pie.” Deb turned and caught the waitress’s attention.
“Boyfriend,” Aly snorted. “Like we’re in Mr. Steuben’s math class, passing notes.” Her voice took on a bimbo’s breathiness. “Will you be my boyfriend? Check yes or no.”
“Fuck you, Al.”
Aly responded by blowing her a kiss.
Yeah, she was definitely going to pummel her with snark. But Leah grinned, and that was the most lighthearted she’d been in a few days. And Deb loved Aly’s sass and sarcasm. It was meant with a good heart, and usually had a core of truth that Deb needed to see.
~oOo~
After pie, with the conversation moved on from men but still in full flower, they decided to pick up some cheap wine at the market and take the ‘party,’ such as it was, back to the farm.
A big SUV, gunmetal grey with blacked-out windows and fancy wheels that made it look like some kind of science fiction machine, was parked a couple of storefronts down from Bea’s. Deb noticed it because it had parked right in front of Aly’s Corolla, and she insisted that it had her parked in. It hadn’t; she could pull out in about three or four points, but she had to rant about inconsiderate assholes and double-bird the opaque windows before she could be convinced that she could get out of her space.
They had a little caravan of two to the market—Deb and Leah in the Buick and Aly following—and ended up spending twenty minutes, buying munchies and soda as well as wine. Then, on the spur of the moment, Deb picked up a video from the store’s rental section. They could watch after it got dark and the mosquitos drove them indoors. Seemed like a good night for Thelma & Louise.
On their way out, Deb noticed that SUV again—it was hard to miss—and she got a weird feeling in her stomach. Enough that she stopped in the middle of the parking lot, holding a sack of ice cream and Doritos, and stared.
“You okay?” Leah asked.
Just as she was about to point out that the SUV seemed to be following them, it pulled out of its space and left the lot. Huh. Coincidence, then.
“Deb?” Aly was curious now. But apparently neither of them had seen it.
“Yeah, fine. Sorry.”
The SUV tugged at her thoughts a little on the drive home, but once they were ensconced in the back yard, drinking rosé and passing a bowl of Doritos around, laughing and talking and putting on an excellent buzz, Deb forgot about that big grey tank completely.