Church
I watched upside down and with heavy-lidded eyes as she moved deliberate and unhurried, popping the button open on her jeans and slowly lowering the zipper down. I would have given my left nut, or maybe my right since that seemed to be the preferred one, for her to have had a frilly little sundress on or better yet those leather chaps and nothing else. It was nothing but denim and some flimsy lace that kept my mouth from being where we both wanted it to be. I needed her naked and hovering over my tongue like yesterday. Especially now that I knew how close the danger was. Waiting, insidious and deceptive while hiding out in the open. I didn’t like a sneak attack when it was my stronghold that was vulnerable.
It took her a few minutes to scramble out of her clothes and another second to dart across the gym naked as a jaybird so that she could flip the lock on the door. I had no worry that my dad or my brother would be naïve enough to walk into any room I was in with her unannounced, but if it made her feel better and got her to sit on my face faster then I wasn’t going to tell her she didn’t need to bother.
When she came back I could see the way her pretty, pale skin quivered as she got closer. She wrapped her hands back around the bar that was sitting a few inches above my chest and took the last few steps required that would have my mouth lined up with her glossy center perfectly. I let out a breath that made her whole body shudder and had me flashing a wolfish grin that was all teeth and wicked intent. I grabbed the back of one of her knees and pulled it up next to my head on the weight machine and swallowed back a groan as she leaned over the bar slightly, rusty curls falling in front of her face and the tips tickling my stomach. The heavy weight of her breasts hung in front of my hungry eyes as I coasted a caress up the back of her thighs and pulled her closer.
She was already shiny and wet. Her hidden flesh my favorite color of pink and so obviously aroused and ready for me. I kissed the inside of one of her thighs and heard her let out a quiet gasp. She was so responsive, so easy to set off and please. I liked to think I had a special touch where her pleasure was involved. Something magical and mystical that only occurred when it was my hands on her, when it was my mouth eating her up and licking her clean.
My chin bumped into her cleft, where that single center of pleasure lived. The contact made her eyes flutter closed and had her thigh muscles tightening where they were next to either side of my head. It made me chuckle in satisfaction, which vibrated low through all of her tender folds. I let my tongue swipe all along the damp slit and stopped at her velvety opening so I could flick it in and out of her sweet heat. Her hips bucked in my hold and her breasts swayed enticingly above me. The thin track pants I’d snagged from Jules were doing little to keep my growing erection in check as I continued to work my tongue in and out of her as she made little panting sounds and rubbed herself against my face. She was always so uninhibited and ready to take hers when we were together like this. It was the only time I ever saw her get greedy and when she didn’t seem hesitant to take exactly what she wanted.
I needed to get my hands on those perky nipples. I needed to get my tongue on her hungry little clit. I needed to get my cock back inside that silken channel that was fluttering around each lick and swipe in a delicate caress. She didn’t feel like she was going to last very long, which made me feel like a savage, sexual superstar. There was something to be said for making your girl so quick on the trigger as long as she knew I was far from done with her.
I gave one of her ass cheeks a little tap, which made her yelp. Her eyes popped open and narrowed down at me where she was hovering over me as I continued to devour her. I was relentless as I licked and sucked at her. Brutal as I worked her over and helped her ride my face like she would win a big shiny belt buckle and be crowned rodeo queen after she came all over my face. These were the times I relished not having to be gentle in how I handled her. In our day-to-day I knew I was going to crush her, that all those feelings that were catching up to me were going to bury me, but here, with her mewling and rocking back and forth like her life depended on it, there was no place for a soft touch and a hesitant heart.
I tried to pull her down as she suddenly moved, dragging my tongue along more secret skin and hidden places that I didn’t think she was ready to let me have access to yet. She let go of the bar with one of her hands and placed it on the rigid lines of my stomach. The already tight muscles pulled even tighter and she maneuvered herself farther over the bar between us so that she was almost kneeling over me. Once she found her balance in the new position she let go of the bar with her other hand and used it to push the lightweight fabric of my pants down until the towering length of my cock sprang free of the confines. I had to lift my hips a little, which was tricky since I was practically holding her up. It was a good thing I hadn’t slacked off in the gym since getting out of the service or else this fucking explosive 69 wouldn’t be possible.
She wrapped a hand around the base of my dick, looked back at me with a sexy little smirk that had my erection swelling even more in her hold, and then she bent her head and I forgot how to breathe. She sucked the head into her mouth, wrapped her lips around it, and rolled her tongue over the tip like she was licking around the outside of an ice cream cone. I wasn’t going to melt in her mouth but there was a good chance I was going to explode all over that quick and clever tongue. She started to move her fist with a little twist up and down the straining shaft and it took me a solid minute to remember I was supposed to be holding up my end of the deal.
I had to lift my head to get back at all her luscious and juicy places, so I was sitting in a perpetual crunch. My abs burned and my shoulders screamed but there was no way I was tapping out. Not when she was sucking more of my cock back as she moved her fingers lower, between my legs to gently run them across sensitive globes that were aching for some kind of release. I got my mouth on her, got my tongue back inside of her, and managed to hold her up with one hand so I could use the other to tease and taunt the puckered tips of her breasts where they swayed seductively over me. She hummed around the thick flesh in her mouth as I tugged on the rosy peak and the vibration made my eyes cross and had my balls pulling up tight as she continued to manipulate them.
I threw my head back and blew out a heated breath that had her hips undulating and swiveling in my hands as she chased the phantom kiss.
“Dixie, I need to be inside you. As good as your mouth feels and as good as you taste I need to feel you come on my cock.” She let go of my dick with one last lick and looked at me from where she was practically lying flat across my body.
“Okay.” Her whispery acquiescence had me fighting down urges to toss her on the floor and rut into her like an animal. She shouldn’t give me free rein. I would take everything because I was a selfish, needy bastard.
Once she was on her feet back by my head I maneuvered myself out from under the bar and leaned over to where I had tossed my jeans when I changed out of them to start my workout. I fished out one of the condoms that I’d stashed in there earlier and handed it to her as I stripped out of the rest of my workout gear. I grabbed her hand and pulled her around to the end of the bench, urged her to sit on the end of it where my cock was eye level and insistent that she do something with it.
I wrapped my own fist around the rigid length and gave it a few swift pumps, sliding it along the moisture left over from her mouth. She licked her bottom lip and looked up at me from under her lashes as she tore open the foil packet and pulled the circle of latex out. I was going to hate being inside her with the barrier between us after having a taste of her dangerous and raw this morning, but as much as I wanted to leave everything I had inside of her, I knew that wasn’t fair to her.
She batted my hands away and replaced them with her own. She had me covered in seconds and before she laid back she leaned forward and placed the softest, sweetest kiss right below my belly button. My stomach clenched and my thighs bunched up like I was preparing for an attack, and really, I kind of was.
I put a hand in the center of her chest, spread my fingers wide, and urged her to lay back. I followed her backwards and pulled her hips down to the very edge of the bench so that only her spine was making contact with the surface as I supported the rest of her body in my hands. She wrapped her legs around my waist and leaned up to meet my lips as I let gravity and the moisture we’d already stirred up pull me into the waiting warmth of her body. I kissed her. Lips seeking, tongue swirling as she took me into her body fully. I had to release her mouth so I could stand up and move.
I held her hips to mine as I started a steady, powerful rhythm. She lifted her arms up over her head and stretched them out so her breasts bounced and swayed with every thrust. I couldn’t look away and I was happy to say she didn’t seem like there was anything that was going to pull her eyes off of me either.
We rolled into one another, her stuck with the pace I set even as she used her heels in my ass to go faster, to pound harder. I liked watching the way the slow and deliberate thrusts made her eyes darken to almost black and I liked that the slower I went and the longer I took to drag myself out of her the more she flushed and the more her pale skin did indeed glisten. She strained towards me, hips grinding, legs squeezing, but she was my captive and this was my magic trick.
I moved her legs so that her knees were resting over the bend of my elbows, giving me the perfect view of the spot where we were joined. It made me groan every time her body fluttered and trembled around mine as she took me in. She was so welcoming, so willing to take me as I was.
“Need a hand here, pretty girl. Mine are occupied.”
She made a noise of satisfaction low in her throat and slowly started to trail her hands over her skin. She stopped to play with her breasts, which she knew would make me lose the steady rhythm I was using to torture us both. My hips kicked into her and she gasped. She smiled up at me and continued to let her fingers dance over that freckled skin. She circled her cute little belly button and then, after what felt like hours, finally touched that place where I had her spread open and shimmering with sex and saliva. Her touch was butterfly light as I watched her fondle herself. She circled and circled with the pad of her finger until her breathing got choppy and her gaze got hazy.
When I felt her start to tighten around me, when I saw her legs quiver and felt her stroking rhythm get erratic and wild, I finally let loose. I plowed into her, dick hammering and balls swinging against her ass. She moaned my name and scrambled to find something to hold on to as I pounded into her so hard it started to move her farther up the bench. Her slick skin squeaked on the vinyl but neither one of us stopped to readjust.
I took her harder and more viciously than I had ever taken another woman and I knew I was driven by the fact that I didn’t want her to be able to forget me when it was time for us to go our separate ways. I wanted to fuck her better than any man that may come after me could.
I felt my orgasm start to coil and wind into a spring that was beyond ready to snap at the base of my spine. “Dixie.” It was a warning but it was also a plea. I never wanted her to get shortchanged when we were together like this, not after all the big promises I’d made to her about giving her the time of her life in the sack, but her demanding and serious way of fucking me back was unraveling me and blowing all my restraint to hell. I wanted to give her what she deserved, but she was just as determined to give me all the things I didn’t deserve.
She gave a wobbly smile and I saw her toes point and stiffen as her body broke under mine. The rush of pleasure from her orgasm pushed me ruthlessly into my own.
I’d had more than my fair share of sexual experiences since I lost my virginity when I was fifteen. But none of them compared to this one. None of them would be remembered because this one was the only one that felt like it mattered.
Sex with Dixie had proven to be different, deeper than any other sex I’d ever had, but I hadn’t realized until this minute that that was because she made it as much about me as I tried to make it about her. I wanted her to come first, figuratively and literally, but she wanted us to come together. She wanted to make sure that it was as good for me as I tried to make it for her.
I let her legs drop and watched as gravity pulled her body away from mine. Sex looked good on her. Sex with me looked perfect on her.
I let my gaze drift over every satiated, satisfied inch of her and couldn’t stop one of those grins she’d forced me to find from pulling at my lips.
“You glisten good, pretty girl.” And I wasn’t so sure anymore that I was going to be able to hand her off to someone else that might take better care of her if that meant I didn’t get to see her shine anymore.
THE REST OF my workout was put on hold since all my muscles felt like they were made of taffy and my bones had the rigidity of water after Dixie was done with me. She was yawning and barely able to keep her eyes open, so I walked her back to my childhood bedroom, but there was no way I was going to sleep. Not with my brain swirling around the information she had given me about the dating app and not with the realization that letting her go and handing her off to someone else might not be as easy as I’d once had myself convinced it would be. I was used to guarding my heart but somehow she had slipped under those ironclad defenses and imbedded some of her optimism and unshakable belief in the territory inside of me I thought was toxic and contaminated. Everything needed sunlight and care to flourish and grow. Dixie had both in spades and was relentless in her quest to turn my insides from something barren and lifeless into something that flourished and thrived with light and color.
After her breathing turned steady and even, I maneuvered my way out from under her freckled limbs, pulled on the black track pants I’d snagged from Jules, and quietly made my way through the house towards where the master bedroom was located. The silent journey was one down memory lane as well as down the hallway. It felt like yesterday that I’d been creeping down these same floors searching for comfort during angry storms or when I’d had a bad dream. Even after mom had passed, Jules was always there, always with an open door, ready to offer comfort and soft words that made everything in the world seem better. I’d always thought he could keep all the monsters at bay until we lost another amazing woman. It was then I realized there were some things even the bravest men couldn’t battle, so instead of staying to fight I chose to flee.
I didn’t make it to the bedroom because the sliding back door was open and the rich scent of a lit cigar wafted in from the outside. There was a big deck on the back of the house, where the barbecue to end all barbecues lived, and ever since I was little Jules had liked to sit out there with his feet propped up on the rail, smoking a stogie after a particularly long day at work. The smell was one of comfort and fond memories. It was one that made me feel like no matter how much had changed, more things, the important things, had stayed the same. The smell held regret and remorse for all the nights I’d missed it, missed the simple, quiet times with the man who raised me.
I pushed the door open wide enough to accommodate my shoulders and made my way over to the chair that was next to the one Jules was lounging in. The only light was coming from the half-moon overhead and the cherry glowing at the end of the cigar clamped between Jules’s teeth.
I propped my feet up and crossed them at the ankles, copying his pose without even thinking about it. I’d been emulating the man my entire life, tried to live up to all the big examples he set, but when it came down to it, I’d failed at being the man he raised me to be.
“I need you to dig up whatever you can on some people named Erikson. Joseph and Marie. I have a friend,” I used the term loosely, “in Denver who is dating a cop and I’m going to see if she’ll look into them as well. Dixie met the son online and went on a date that went sideways. It sounds like they might be our culprits.”
A puff of smoke billowed out in front of him and his chin dipped down in a nod as he pulled the cigar out of his mouth. “I can do that. I have a car parked outside Sassy’s looking for our yokels as well. No sign of them yet. They’re probably lying low or they may have figured out they got the wrong guy and are keeping their heads down so the person that hired them doesn’t come looking for a refund.” He stuck the cigar back in between his lips and when he talked the red end bounced up and down. “Keep that pretty little thing close, son. She’s a keeper and you don’t want anything happening to her.”
I laced my fingers behind my head and rocked back on the chair so that it was balanced precariously on the back legs. “I’m more the catch and release type.” I wasn’t actually a fisherman at all because the catch of the day tended to land in the boat without me reeling them in. “And I promised her I wouldn’t let anything happen to her while she’s with me. It’s a promise I intend to keep.”
The cigar twitched as he turned his head to look at me and then he sighed long and loud, which sent fragrant smoke drifting up around his head. “That’s not a promise you can make good on, son. Sometimes the things that happen to those that we love are out of our control. The only thing you can make sure of is that you’re not the person or the reason she gets hurt. That you can control completely. If you hurt her, that pain falls squarely on you, Dash, and you don’t get the luxury of blaming God or piss-poor luck.”
His words dug themselves deep inside my skin. It was a fatherly warning, but it was more than that. It was hard truth that I couldn’t bury my head in the sand and ignore. I was always waiting for the bad to work its way into my good thing. I rarely stopped to wonder if I was the bad working myself into someone else’s good thing because of my long-held hang-ups and refusal to let anyone close.
“I owe you an apology. I know the words don’t make up for my actions, but I am sorry.” I kicked the chair back even farther so that I was looking up at the night sky. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was really risking when I was overseas. I’m sorry I never made it back home. I’m sorry I left the way I did and I’m more than sorry I wasn’t here when you needed me the most. You have always been the best example of a father any kid could ask for and I’m sorry you got stuck with me instead of a kid that deserved you.”
There was absolute silence from the man next to me, so I turned my head just as he was shifting in his seat so that he was looking directly at me. He pulled the cigar out of his mouth and gingerly placed it in the glass ashtray that was resting near the leg of his chair.
“Did I ever tell you I loved your mom long before she ever agreed to go out on a date with me?” At the abrupt change of subject I gave him a quizzical look and shook my head. “Well, I did. I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen when we were in high school together. I used to watch her in the hallways, and I had a picture that the paper ran of her from her pageant days stuck on my mirror in my room. I would have given anything for her to look at me, for her to see me the way I saw her, but she never did.”
I snorted. “Probably because her parents would have lost their shit if she tried to bring home a black boyfriend while she was still living under their roof. It probably never occurred to her that you were a viable dating choice back then.”
He nodded and lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Maybe, but I didn’t know that. I didn’t know she was raised by racists and had been taught that different skin color was something unacceptable. What I did know was that she came from money, and I did not. I came from the Holler. My home had wheels and aluminum walls. I shared that space with a mom who had a drug habit and a dad who liked to knock her and me around when he was home. I didn’t have a lot, and what I did have wasn’t anything to brag about, so I never asked your mom out. I never took a chance.” His eyes were intent on mine as he kept talking. “When I saw her again when she came back to town the rumor had spread that she left school and had a baby. This is a small town, so it was no secret she was on the outs with her folks because the baby wasn’t enough like them. By that time, I’d been on the force for a few years, I’d gone to college, I’d bought a home, and had a life any man could be proud of, but I saw your mom and all those old fears came back. I wasn’t good enough for her and there was no way I had anything impressive to offer her. I didn’t deserve a woman like that because I didn’t know what I would do with her even if she gave me a shot. My life was violent and ugly, that was the reality of things. I didn’t know if I had it in me to be a different kind of man than the one I was raised to be and that terrified me.”
“That’s shitty.” We’d never talked much about his childhood since so much if his focus had been on making sure I had a great one, before and after my mom.
“It is shitty, but it turned out I wanted your mom more than I wanted to keep her safe from all the things I was scared of. I asked her out without meaning to and almost had a heart attack when she said yes. I was already in love with her, so I was surprised how easy it was to be the kind of man she needed me to be. When things got serious and she told me it was time to meet you—” he stopped talking and had to clear his throat “—I remembered every single time my dad hit me. All I could think about was how short-tempered and angry he was with me all the time. I’d always had a thing for your mom but you were this tiny, innocent stranger that I was going to have to fool into thinking I was worthy of love and affection. I didn’t think I could do it. All I could imagine was doing the wrong thing with you, screwing up and having your mom leave me, and worse than that, having her leave me because I’d been right all along and I wasn’t good enough for her.” He gave me a pointed look that I could see clearly even in the dark. It was like he was looking right into my soul. “I broke up with her before she could bring you around me. I left her with some lame excuse about things moving too fast, lied through my teeth that I wasn’t ready to be a daddy, told her it wasn’t her, it was me … all the stupid stuff idiotic men say when they know they are breaking a good woman’s heart.”
I felt a frown pull at my face as the sides of my mouth turned down. “I don’t really remember that.” I had vague recollections of my mom being sad after we were back in Lowry, but I always figured it had to do with my grandparents’ ignorance and the mean things people would say about me when they thought she couldn’t hear. Maybe there was a time before I remembered Jules being a part of my life when she had cried more than normal but I was too young to have any clear memory of it.
“That’s because it didn’t last long. I realized pretty quickly that I was an idiot. Fear can make a smart man do very hurtful things, but eventually the heart wins out because fear is fleeting and love lasts forever. It took me six months to win her back and another six plus an engagement ring before she would let me meet you. She said she could handle me breaking her heart again but there was no way in hell that she was going to let me mess with her little boy’s. She didn’t need to worry. It was love at first sight with you, son. I took one look at you and knew I would do everything in my power to be the best dad I could be for you. I knew that what my dad had taught me didn’t matter, that being a parent was something you could choose to be good at, and could make the effort to get better at every single day. He didn’t want to do the work, I did … and still do.”
It was my turn to clear my throat. “You were the best back then, and if Dalen is anything to go by you’re the best now. You didn’t have to keep showing up when things got hard. In fact, I don’t think anyone would have blamed you if you’d bailed.” Well, he probably would have blamed himself like I’d been doing the last ten years and that was a heavy burden to haul around.
He chuckled but there was no humor in it. “You don’t think I wanted to, Dash? I was a county cop in a small town with two kids that had just lost their mom. I lost the love of my life and didn’t have anyone to turn to. There were times I would be on patrol and think about driving and driving until Lowry and everything that was here was behind me. There are nights I don’t remember getting you kids to bed and there are entire days I can’t recall. I started doing stuff at work that had my bosses threatening to put me on a desk. I wasn’t living for me, and I was hardly showing up for you kids. Thank the Lord Elma was there because there’s a good chance I would have screwed everything up and lost you both.”
Again I couldn’t remember any of that. After Mom died I was in my own youthful fog of grief and misery. I’d also had my hands full with a little brother that needed constant care and supervision. Plus, I was a new teenager and dealing with puberty that hit like a Mack Truck. Sure, Jules had maybe been a little more distant, a little less affectionate than he typically was, but I figured that was how real men, how men like him, dealt with the loss of a loved one.
“It was Caroline who pointed out how much I had to lose. I brought Dalen in for a checkup and he was underweight, he needed his nails trimmed, and he had cradle cap. She yelled at me, told me that it was awful I’d lost my wife but my son was still here. I still had the opportunity to hold him in my arms, and if I didn’t get my head out of my ass I was going to lose that.” A soft grin touched his mouth as he spoke about his second wife. “It was a wake-up call I desperately needed because I had checked out, son. I was physically here, but mentally …” He blew out a breath and pointed to the stars. “I was long gone.”
He cut another look at me. “I didn’t want to fall for Caroline. I didn’t want to love anyone else. I had my boys and my work and I was happy with that. When she started to pursue me I resisted.” He gave me a look with a lifted eyebrow that told me without words he clearly remembered my resistance when he entered my life. “I remember when Caroline was pulled out of school when she was initially diagnosed. She was a few grades younger than me and I remembered thinking it was impossible for someone so young to be so sick. But like I said, love will always outlast fear.”
He didn’t talk about being afraid like it was something to be ashamed of. He didn’t talk about the fear like it was something that made him, or me, weak. He talked about it like it was a fact of life and we had to learn how to live with it, and the hurtful things it made us do, just like we had to live with the fact we couldn’t pick the person our hearts settled on.
“I loved her when I didn’t want to and I don’t regret a minute of it. What I do regret, son, is the same thing you now regret. I regret the time that I allowed fear to steal from me. I regret every second, every minute, every hour I let fear keep me from your mom all the way to when I was younger up until she let me back into her life. I regret every moment of time I lost with Caroline because I was terrified of something I had no control over. She would have been sick with or without us and I thank God every day that she got to spend the last years of her life with our family because we were the only thing she wanted and she gave us back everything we lost and then some.”
I felt a ball of emotion lodge in my throat. I had to blink my eyes because they stung. My hands curled around the arms of the chair so tightly the plastic groaned in protest.
“I hated when you left, son. I hated it for you and I hated it for us. You should have been here so I could watch you become the man you are today, Dash, but you let fear take that away from you, and you let fear keep that from the rest of us. It’s up to you if you’re going to let fear take even more from you.” He reached out a hand and put it on my shoulder. “Make good choices, son.” That seemed to be his favorite bit of advice now that I was back home.
I ground my teeth together and when my voice made it past the lump in my throat it sounded like sandpaper scraping over razors. “I was scared. I was scared something was going to happen to you, to Dalen … to Elma. Everyone I ever cared about went away and it really fucking hurt. I thought it would be easier if I was the one that went away. I took myself somewhere where things are always bad so when shit went south it wasn’t a surprise. It didn’t feel like my heart was getting ripped out of my chest because over there …” I shook my head. “Bad is all you know.”
I sighed and lifted up a hand so that the moonlight made my skin glow. There was always a light in the darkness if you opened your eyes and looked for it.
“It took longer than I would have liked but you’re finding your way to where you need to be, son.”
I was but that was only because one perky redhead had burst into my life and lit the way. I threw my head back, not thinking about the fact I was still on two legs of the chair, and gave a surprised shout as the entire thing started to topple backwards. The sky swirled starry and black before my eyes as I braced for the impact of my head hitting the hard wooden surface of the deck.
But my fall was halted mid-crash by a strong hand on the back of the chair. Like it and I weighed nothing Jules latched on to the back slats of the chair and hauled me back to a seated position.
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and watched as he bent down to pick up his cigar.
“Thanks … Dad.” The man had never let me down, never let me fall, and he refused to let me be less than the man he’d raised me to be. It’d taken almost thirty years, two moms, a little brother, and realizing that even though I didn’t want to and was terrified of it, I was falling in love with a girl that I didn’t want to hurt more than I wanted to protect myself to get the words out of me. With him, I’d never had to earn the title of son. I was a real asshole for ever making him feel like he needed to earn the title Dad. It was who he had been the minute he entered my life.
The cigar quirked between his lips, and in true Jules fashion, even though what had just happened was monumental and life changing, he acted like it was no big deal.
“Anytime. Sometimes you gotta let your kids fall and remind them that you’ll be there to pick them up. And sometimes you gotta step in and keep them from hitting the ground in the first place.”
There was one fall he couldn’t prevent or help me up from. That was the fall that had started when I walked into the bar and felt the warmth of the sun after what felt like a lifetime spent in the frigid cold. Slipping, sliding, skidding, tripping, tumbling, flailing … falling into love with Dixie Carmichael.