CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WREN
I collapse against Carter’s chest in the tub, my breasts flattened against his pecs. My ass cheeks bob above the waterline, Carter’s cock continuing to pulse inside me. “Can we stay here forever?”
He holds the side of my face. “There’s a whole forest of firewood out there, a bed, a bath. What more could a man want?”
I lift up and let him slide free, his still-hard cock trapped against my belly. “I was thinking of cooking dinner again tonight.”
He sits up, one arm over the edge of the tub. “Says the girl who couldn’t even cook two-minute noodles back in school?”
I lift myself up and slap him in the chest, water splashing over the edges of the tub. “Like you were any better, and hey, you enjoyed my concoction the other night, didn’t you? Besides, I’ve learned a lot since high school.”
He flexes his cock. “I know.”
“Do you mind if I take the Jeep?” I ask.
“You’ll have to drop me at the rink. I can get Steve to bring me home later.”
“Is that a yes?”
“You’ll have to ask Merida.”
“Who’s…” And then I figure it out.” My eyebrows fall together. “You call your trombone ice machine thing Melanie and you named your Jeep after a Disney princess? I’m worried.”
“It’s green with a red roof—seemed fitting enough.”
I shake my head and slowly step out of the bath. “What am I going to do with you?”
I scream when he pulls me back into the bath, great, gulping waves of water cascading off the sides.
“I could think of a few things.” He smiles.
*
It’s been a while since I drove stick, the gears churning as I try to get a grip on how to drive this monstrosity.
“Don’t let her drive you,” Carter informs me, close to losing it.
Yeah, thanks.
Fifteen minutes later I’ve clunked and jerked us into the middle of town.
I drop Carter off at the rink and head down Main Street, parking the Jeep on the side of the road and heading across to what counts for a supermarket in this neck of the woods.
Pasta’s about the only dish I can put together without a visit from the emergency services, so I select a box of spaghetti, tomato sauce, and fresh basil from the display. It’s more of a general store than anything else, but I find what I need, lifting the items one by one onto the counter.
A middle-aged woman looks over the top of her reading glasses at me. ‘Glaring’ would be the appropriate term. It’s so blatant I actually stop, asking her, “Is everything okay?”
“You’re her, aren’t you?” she says.
“Sorry?”
“That murderer’s plaything.”
The hell?
I immediately come to Carter’s defense. “He’s not a—”
She cuts me off. “We don’t take kindly to his kind around here.” She’s looking at me like I’ve crawled out of a sewer. “And you? How could you be with a monster like that? Your husband’s own brother. It makes my stomach turn.”
I leave the food and get out of there, close to tears as I head to the Jeep. I’m opening the door when someone taps me on the shoulder.
I turn, a microphone shoved into my face. “Mrs. White, do you have a comment on your late husband’s investigation?”
I pull at the handle, can’t work out why the door’s not opening. “I, I—”
“Is it true that you’re seeing his brother, convicted criminal Carter White?”
What the fuck’s going on? I’m flustered, reaching at the handle now but the door refuses to budge.
Open, damn it!
I spin. “Please, leave me alone.”
The man with the camera adjusts the lens. I’m sure he’s zooming in on my face.
“Are you sleeping with him, Mrs. White?” I see she’s holding her cell out, a photo of Carter and I coming off the St. Mark’s hike together on it.
It’s lucky I decide to use the keys I fish from my pocket to open the door instead of opening up this bitch’s face.
I pull the door wide, the two of them jumping back, and get into the Jeep. I somehow stall it before taking off on the second attempt, Merida bunny-hopping her way down the street, the reporter and her cameraman running behind us, others joining them from the other side of the road.
I’m flustered as I drive. I’m tense, my fingers aching as I grip the steering wheel tighter and tighter. I knew the media wanted to talk to me, but I didn’t think they’d work out I was here, with Carter. I know how it must look, of course, but they don’t have the facts. They don’t have the full story.
And when has that ever stopped a witch-hunt?
I’m so caught up in my thoughts I don’t realize how fast I’m driving.
I hear the siren first, glancing up into the rear view at the patrol car approaching, its lights flashing.
Shit.
I pull over to the side of the road and turn the Jeep off, the engine ticking and pinging ahead.
There’s a tap on the window, a police officer standing there, a sheriff’s badge affixed to his shirt.
I wind the window down. “Sherriff Lawson?”
He puts his hand out, ignoring me. “License and registration, please, ma’am.”
I hunt through my handbag and glovebox, handing them over. He looks over my license. “Mrs. White. Mrs. Wren White.”
“Yes. You don’t remember me?”
He hands the license and papers back, leaning into the car, his arms on the windowsill. “Oh, I know you. I know you’re the same Mrs. Wren White who’s bunking up with one Carter White at the cabin up o-yonder?”
I swallow. “That’s none of your business.”
He smiles, taking off his sunglasses. “Little miss, everything that happens in this county is my business.”
“I’m not doing anything illegal,” I add, trying to keep the nerves from my voice.
The sheriff puts his hands up. “Right you are, Mrs. White, but a word of warning, if I may.” He spits to the ground before continuing. “Carter’s bad news. If I was you, I’d be keeping my distance. Hang around someone like that long enough and you’re bound to become a little…” He licks he lips. “Tainted. Trouble follows men like that. A fine thing like you wouldn’t want to be caught up in trouble now, would you?”
“Did Magnus have something to do with this?”
The Sheriff spits to the ground again. “Now that Magnus White is a fine, upstanding pillar o’ society. I’d say it’s in your best interests to listen to what he has to say.”
“And what’s that?”
“Well, I think that’s Magnus’s business, don’t you?”
“Am I free to go?”
He nods. “I’m going to let this one slide, for now, but remember what I said.”
He taps the side of the Jeep door and steps back, watching as I start the car and move slowly back onto the highway, my head a jumbled mess.
Reaching the turn-off, I notice a camp of reporters at the front gate leading down to the cabin. Panic seizes me. I’ll have to get out to unlock the gate, and I simply don’t have the energy or strength to deal with their questions, the underlying accusation of why I’ve hooked up with my dead husband’s brother-in-law so soon, like I was waiting for him, or worse, that I had some hand in David’s death.
It’s an outrageous idea, but I know how the media can take hold of these things and make them real, shape and carve them out until they’re fact.
I pull a U-turn and head back towards town, to the rink.
*
I knock on the door, checking behind my back for a pack of reporters about to crush me against the glass, but no one’s there.
Relief runs through me when I see Carter approach the doors. He’s smiling at first, but once he sees my panicked face, it slides away.
He unlocks the door. “Wren, what’s wrong?”
I fall into his arms, let all the tears and worry flow on out until the shoulder of his shirt is a soggy mess.
He leads me over to a table, sitting me down and returning with a bottle of water. “What happened?”
I wipe my eyes. I must look terrible. “Reporters. A lot of reporters.”
Carter raps his knuckles against the table, shaking his head. “Fuck. They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“Not physically, but…” I don’t know if I want to repeat their questions, to speak and give them mock credibility.
He wraps his arms around me, pressing me into the same, wet shoulder as before. “I’m sorry, baby, but we both knew they’d come. It will pass. They’ll move on to the next story. We just have to give it time.”
I nod against him. “I know. I just didn’t expect…”
He holds me away, smiling, bringing the bottle of water to his lips. “Here. Drink.”
“Why are you so good to me?” I ask. “I thought ex-cons were supposed to be all hard and badass, all ‘you’re mine tonight, not tomorrow’?”
In a burst of laughter he sprays water over the carpet. “And I made shanks out of combs and never bent over to pick up the soap too, right?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Well, did you?”
He tilts his head. “Sure, and Morgan Freeman left me a note under a tree.”
I wrap my arms around his neck, always surprised by how firm he is—a rock. “You know I don’t like people dissing my favorite movie.”
He narrows his gaze. “Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’.”
“Guess we better get living then.” I lean my head forward and kiss him.
I’m freshly shaved, already wet.
He lifts me up from the seat.
There are no windows, no way to see through the front doors. We’re safe.
“Take off your dress,” he says.
I begin to shake with anticipation, the need so urgent it hurts.
With trembling fingers I reach down to the hem of the dress and slowly pull it above my head and off.
Instantly, my nipples harden against the tepid air.
He comes forward.
“Bra and panties, too.”
I remove them, standing naked before his heated gaze.
“Put your arms above your head.”
He reaches out with one hand and explores my chest as he spins me around. He strokes and kneads my breasts before pinching and pulling at my tender nipples. Below, my clit buzzes, moisture seeping from my pussy when his hands dip lower, running over my stomach and down to the cushiony vee of my sex.
I start to walk backwards, teasing him with a hooked finger.
He follows. “Watch out now.”
“For wh—”
I walk right back into the open gate leading to the rink. I trip and fall flat onto my butt on the ice, sliding away laughing.
It’s fucking freezing.
Carter steps onto the ice.
I try to get up.
“No,” he says, “stay down. Spread your legs for me.”
I spread them, heels scuffing on the ice.
“Wider.”
His eyes lift and I’m struck again by the depth of color within them, blues that span the entire kaleidoscope—deep cerulean, azure and everything in-between.
He strips away his clothes, one article at a time until he stands before me in nothing more than his socks.
He slides on his knees across the ice, slides right between my legs like some kind of icy rock star.
His fingers brush my legs and I quiver, more so from his touch than the cold that lashes at the extremities my body.
I’ve let my knees fall apart slightly and his eyes move there, between them. Gooseflesh rises on my skin, my back prickling against the ice.
His erection grows outwards, thick and long.
Our eyes lock together in that moment. I begin to shiver. My nipples press as arrowheads into the top of my thighs, compressed there.
I’m cold, but I’m hot too.
A sudden need takes over, desire flooding through me. My breathing is strained and uneven as the head of his cock rises steadily into the air.
It grows, stiffening further and further until the top of it, a baby apple, rests against the hard plane of his chest.
Mesmerized, I cannot look away.
My teeth drag along my lower lip as he crouches between my legs.
His member hovers between us, bouncing unaided in the no man’s land there, veins thick on its surface.
Take me, I want to yell. Please. I’ll do anything if only you’ll take me now.
He places his own elbow inside mine and leans his head in. Even as his lips approach, I sense the heat they give off in juxtaposition to the cold ice below, his hard body in wait.
My lips meet his and I shiver as they press together. He kisses me deeply, his hand at the back of my head, drawing me to him. His tongue, warm and wet, probes at the hot cavern there, seeking out my own. Together they tangle as his fingers move over my dimpled skin, my spine twitching and a warmth leaking from the heated space between my legs as my sex readies itself for him.
I pant harder, the skin of my back burning, sticking to the ice.
I reach down and curl my fingers into myself, using the fluid that seeps from my swollen lips to lubricate his shaft, rolling my fingers over his length and pistoning my hand up and down upon him. He stiffens in response, pressing himself against my chest.
His mouth leaves me and takes up one of my nipples, pulling it taut from my breast. Caught between his lips, it stretches there as I pump my hand below, his hips sliding forwards and backwards in rhythm, knees slipping on the ice, my ass on fire against the frozen surface.
I roll my hand around the glassy knob of his cock as it leaks against my palm, his arousal merging with my own and preparing him for the enviable union, a union my body yearns for in desperate anticipation.
He takes place between my thighs.
I gasp when his fingertips press back the velvety folds of my vagina. He places his cock at my entrance and thrusts forward.
Oh, god.
The cold, the pain—It’s all forgotten.
I shudder in delight as his prick moves past my lips and penetrates slowly into the depths of my wetness. He takes my ankles and raises them into the air until my legs are vertical, sliding me back and forth on the melting ice below as he slowly drives his cock in with powerful thrusts.
My fingernails scratch long channels into the ice at my sides, strange noises coming from my lips. His cock opens my pussy wider, penetrates me deeper. Soon I cannot control my plaintive moaning as his shaft becomes more and more merciless inside me, almost caught to the hilt.
He pushes at my legs until I’m folded in two, a frosty wetness gathering at the base of my skull where it meets the ice. Clouds of white leave my mouth, drifting outwards like dancing specters caught in the void between us. He heaves my legs again and my thighs touch my breasts until I’m like some strange inverted insect. He slides himself back until only the head of him remains inside and then slowly, drives back in.
His thick cock disappears up to the hairs, feeling as if it is going to come out of my navel. I slap my hands flat on the ice as his speed quickens. I hiccup and scream with each thrust, struggling to gather air and send it to my lungs. Trickles of sweat gather on my forehead and freeze just as quickly. All the while his member moves forward and back, sliding easily into my wetness, his body hard against my clit.
He presses down on my legs and drives into me harder than ever before, desperate to seek out the deepest confines of my pussy, and when I feel this, his cock threatening to tear me in two, I scream out in delirious joy, my eyes closing and the words “Yes, yes,” a quiet mantra upon my lips.
My orgasm hurtles through my body unexpectedly, with such velocity and fury I do not notice his cock jerking with its own, imminent release.
Another orgasm tilts into the first. I swear to god my back’s breaking as I arch off the ice, my skin burning where it remains in contact—hellfire.
Carter thrusts on. His enormous cock buried in my core. It squeezes him like a velvet tong, his balls, heavy with cum, brushing against my raised buttocks, fine hairs tickling my anus.
Finally, as the embers of my orgasm drift away and the spasms subside, I am dimly aware that he’s stopped. With a series of groans, I feel him flood my pussy.
He sits, lifting me from the ice. I fall into his lap and scream as a second orgasm overlaps the first, my fingernails digging deep into his back.
We kiss, the welcome warmth of his tongue a blissful contrast to the icy rink around us.
When I open my eyes, I see his own glazed over in ecstasy.
I rest my head against his shoulder. “How’s your butt?”
“Cold,” he laughs.