Chapter 13

I speak three languages. English, profanity, and bullshit.

-Evander to an unsatisfied customer

Evander

After I finished my food, not stopping until every last piece of cinnamon was cleaned off of my plate, I gestured toward the door.

“Are you ready to go?”

She was shifting from foot-to-foot, I’m sure wondering what exactly I would want her to do now that she was finished eating and that she had calmed down.

At my words, she stiffened and then nodded.

“Yeah, I’m ready.” She stared at me for a few long seconds, then started heading toward the door. “I need to check on the animals, anyway. With storms, they sometimes get confused and do stuff they wouldn’t normally do.”

“Like what?”

“Drown themselves,” she muttered.

I stopped when she said that. “What do you mean?”

“Well, chickens aren’t the smartest animals in the barn,” she pointed out. “For instance, if a chicken was watching his other chicken friends get attacked, he’ll just stand there and watch once he gets himself a safe distance away. Me, I’d run the fuck away and not stop until my legs either fell off or gave out. My chickens? Every last feather was found in the main yard, meaning that not one of them ran any further away than their usual hunting grounds.”

I understood what she meant.

“They’re a little slow, I’ll give you that,” I amended.

She smiled up at me and walked out the door when I opened it for her, not stopping until she was beside my truck waiting for me to deal with the unlocked door.

I locked it, then headed toward her side of the truck.

Once there, I opened it, but stopped when I bumped her with the door due to the closeness of my body to her back.

She chuckled, and I cursed silently as her backside made contact with my still hard-as-a-rock shaft.

She didn’t shrink away from it, though, so maybe it went undetected.

It didn’t.

When I finally stepped back and allowed her entrance to the truck, her face was tinged with pink, and she was no longer meeting my eyes.

Wonderful.

The sky overhead rumbled again with thunder, and I offered her my hand to help her along.

She took it gratefully and hefted herself into the seat, then pulled her feet in tight to allow me to close the door.

I tried not to find the blush on her cheeks fascinating, but once I was back in the driver’s side, I realized that that was futile.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off the woman, even when I tried.

She was magnetic, and I wanted nothing more than to have her stay at my place and force her to hang out with me the rest of the night.

I was a lonely man! Surely, I deserved the company of a woman.

But then my brother’s shock at seeing me with Kennedy earlier in the evening played through my mind, and I wondered if I could get away with threatening everyone’s life that questioned why I was with her.

And I was again reminded that I wasn’t good for her.

She was a good girl. She had a lot on her plate, and she didn’t need my shit piled onto it.

We drove in silence back to her place, and by the time I pulled into the driveway of her house, I decided that I would walk her to the front door and then leave.

I should’ve known it wouldn’t work out like that.

By the time I’d gotten out, opened her door, and then led her up to her front stoop, the bottom dropped out of the sky and rain started to pour down.

Though, that wasn’t the problem.

What was the problem, was the way something ungodly loud crashed from somewhere inside her house.

“What was that?” I asked.

She ignored me and my question, then threw open her front door just to come to a stop when she saw the way her roof sagged by the front door.

“Oh, no,” she moaned. “Shit, shit, shit!”

She snatched up some papers off the table directly under where a board had obviously broken through the roof due to something—maybe extra weight from the rain on the roof—whatever the reason, it wasn’t going to be fixed tonight.

And it likely would need a professional.

“Damn,” I murmured, checking out the damage.

She mumbled something under her breath, and I turned my head down to study her.

“What?”

She sighed. “Karma.”

“Why Karma?” I questioned.

She pursed her lips in disgust.

“That cop whose truck you repossessed?” she murmured, her eyes flicking to mine and away. “He asked me if I wanted help with my roof a few weeks back when I went for some new shingles. I told him no, that I would be able to handle it. Obviously, I was wrong.”

I looked back up at the damage, and just then noticed the rotting wood that was exposed due to the ceiling collapsing. Then winced.

“I’ll get this checked out tomorrow,” I told her. “Anything we can do tonight will be just reserved for in here. The roof ain’t happening in the rain, and the damage is already done.”

I tried to close the door, and growled when it wouldn’t close due to the shift of the house around it.

“And it looks like I’m staying here for the night,” I said. “You got a couch?”

I looked at where a couch would normally be, and she made an aggravated sound.

“My sister needed one and couldn’t afford one, so I gave her mine,” she murmured, looking at where a couch might sit. “Dammit.”

Then her eyes started to fill with tears, and I knew that I couldn’t leave her.

And likely never would’ve been able to.

Not tonight…and likely not for a while after that.

She was under my skin.

I didn’t know who I was kidding. It sure as fuck wasn’t myself.

The moment the first tear hit the skin underneath her eye, I had her in my arms. When the second tear fell, it was against my chest. The material of my t-shirt soaked it up, then another, and another.

All I could do was hold her as a fresh wave of tears took her over, and I felt, once again, helpless.

I wasn’t used to feeling helpless.

When I felt helpless, I tended to use my fists.

But, at this point, I wasn’t sure I could use my fists again.

I couldn’t take it out on Kennedy’s brother-in-law, and I sure as fuck couldn’t take it out on the dying sister.

I did the absolute only thing I could, which was gather her in my arms and pull her into my chest as I carried her down the hall to what I assumed was her room.

I wasn’t wrong.

When I arrived at her bedroom door, I didn’t bother to flip on the lights. Instead, I kicked off my boots and headed to the bed, holding her close the entire way down to the softest mattress I’d ever slept on.

We stayed like that for what felt like forever.

Then she fell asleep and still I stayed.

***

I laid in her bed for most of the night, her tucked up to my side, and listened to her breathe.

I should’ve left hours ago.

In fact, I would’ve left hours ago…had she not been wrapped around me like a second skin.

She’d slept for over four hours before she slowly woke, and even then, I stayed where I was.

The storm continued to rage around us, and I winced every time something sounded like it was creaking in the living room.

When I felt her bring a piece of her hair up to her hand and twirl it against my t-shirt covered chest, I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

I had to talk to her.

“I have a military friend,” I said to the ceiling. “He calls this weather baby making weather.”

“It was one of his favorite sayings. ‘It’s baby making weather.’ Every time it stormed. It couldn’t be just regular rain, though. It had to be thunder and lightning.”

“That’s kind of funny,” she giggled, and her hand started moving down the length of my chest, stopping just above my belly button before it moved back up again.

“I should go.”

The abrupt declaration had her tightening her arms on me, holding me there as if that would actually stop me from leaving if I’d really wanted to go.

But since I didn’t want to go, I allowed her to stay my muscles, and continued to stare at the ceiling.

“I’m a bad bet, Kennedy.”

She snorted. “Everyone’s a bad bet.”

“You’re not a bad bet,” I countered.

She laughed humorlessly, her entire body shaking against my side. “Everyone in my family has had cancer at some point in their life. I’m the only one left standing that hasn’t been affected.”

She had a point.

“But you don’t know that you won’t ever get it. You’re just assuming.”

She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Who wants to date a woman that has a seventy percent chance of getting cancer and dying before the age of fifty?”

I didn’t know the answer to that question.

“You find that right person, and it won’t matter to them,” I told her bluntly.

Like it didn’t matter to me.

If I’d been a different person…a better person…I’d take hold of her hand and never let go.

But I wasn’t a better person. I was a criminal. Though I didn’t commit the crimes I’d been sent to jail for, I’d done a lot of bad shit in my life. Killed a lot of people—sanctioned by the US government, sure. But still.

I had blood on my hands and that wasn’t going to change.

“We don’t have to actually make the babies,” she told me, startling the shit out of me with her words. “Just practice. I don’t want forever with you, Evander. Forever means a whole lot of shit, and I don’t want to leave my family. My kids. My husband. Because I may not have cancer yet, but it’s inevitable. It’s gonna happen. And I just want someone to be with me in the meantime. When you’re ready for it to end, we’ll end it.”

I was making a mistake.

A huge, hulking, I’m about to make the worst decision of my life—and maybe hers, too—mistake.

But I didn’t stop myself from rolling over and pinning her beneath me.

I didn’t stop myself from slamming my mouth onto hers.

I didn’t stop myself from fitting my hips between her legs, and grinding my hard cock against her mound.

No. I didn’t do anything to stop what I knew was about to happen.

Why? Because I was weak.

So fucking weak.

She pulled away from me and her lips started to skim along my bearded jaw, but I hadn’t had enough of her mouth yet. Not nearly enough.

“Kiss me,” I growled, pulling her hair and bringing her lips back to mine.

“I want to taste the rest of you, though,” she said between breaths.

“I know,” I muttered. “And there’s plenty of time for that…later.”

She kissed me back, her hands taking up the work that her mouth was doing earlier, smoothing them up and down the length of my spine, up my sides, down my chest.

Her legs wrapped around my hips, holding me to her tight, as she lifted up and pressed herself more fully against me.

And that’s when I knew that I didn’t care if this was a mistake.

Nothing this good—nothing that felt this good—could be a mistake.

I pulled away from her mouth, panting, and stared into her eyes.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “You’ve had a bad day.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

Yes. Nothing more, nothing less.

Just yes.

I lifted up onto my knees and pulled my t-shirt over my head, then followed up by hooking a hand around her jeans and panties at each of her hips, and yanking them down her legs.

Luckily, they came, because I hadn’t bothered with the button.

One second they were there and the next, completely gone, leaving her bare to me.

The minute that her sex was exposed to me, I started to touch it with my free hand that wasn’t gripping her thigh like my life depended on it, but she closed her legs, halting my progress.

“I have to tell you something,” she murmured.

A dozen things soared through my brain. One, she was changing her mind. Two, there was something wrong. Three, she…

“It’s been a really, really long time.”

I halted in my tracks, my brain stalling on the words, ‘really, really.’

“How long is ‘really, really?’” I questioned slowly.

She sighed.

I reached over for the lamp, my hard cock brushing her upraised knee, and returned to my previous position on my knees beside her.

“Really, as in…never.”

I blinked.

“You’re not a spring chicken.”

She nodded.

“And you’re fucking hot.”

She blushed.

“You’re telling me that no one, not one single person in this whole goddamn world, has touched this?”

She nodded hesitantly.

I jerked off the bed and started pacing.

“I’m not a good bet,” I repeated my earlier promise. “I’m fucking older than dirt. I’ve been with no less than fifty women in my time. I’ve been in prison for four years. I’m fairly sure that the minute I get inside you that I’m going to blow my load, and let’s not forget that I’m six foot six. That means that I’m a big motherfucker. Everywhere. I’m not first-time material.”

Out of all the things I expected her to do, laughing was not one of them.

But she did…laugh, that was.

At me.

She dropped her knees to the bed, and the move gave me a perfect view of everything she’d covered up, leaving me with my resolve wavering.

“You’re so fuckin’ funny.” She brought her hand up to her eyes to wipe away the tears that were leaking out. “You think you’re ever going to find a woman on Earth that is going to complain about a man having a big dick?”

I grunted, and then decided that there was nothing to do for it.

I had to show her what she was dealing with.

I’d always, and I do mean always, had to deal with the looks.

I’d had not one, not two, but four partners decline to fuck me after coming face to face with the monster.

Usually, a man wouldn’t have a problem with being known as big, but once that shit was spread around, everyone looked at me funny.

It only took one girl to tell nearly all of the other high school girls, and then it was fuckin’ over.

But having Kennedy understand that I wasn’t fucking joking was paramount.

She needed to know that I was large and why this wouldn’t work.

So I dropped my pants, and then shoved down my underwear to allow her to see it all.

My dick bobbed, the tip already weeping for her and everything she had to offer.

The laughter abruptly died, and she was on her knees within seconds.

“Wasn’t fucking joking,” I grumbled, letting her look her fill.

Her eyes came up to mine.

“I didn’t think you were,” she murmured, then hesitantly brought her hand up to wrap around my girth.

She swallowed thickly, then glanced up at my eyes before leaning forward.

Everything inside of me froze at seeing her mouth open.

Then, when her tongue met the head of my cock, I threw my head back and moaned.

Her other hand circled around my length right next to the other one, and she worked the length of my cock while she sucked on the tip like she’d done it a hundred times before.

“I’ve never done this before,” she murmured, bringing her lips off the tip of my dick. “Is it okay?”

Then she blew on my cock…fucking blew on it!

And I felt the come boil in my balls.

“Hanging on by a thread here, woman,” I choked out. “You do much better, and I’ll damn sure go.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound like too much of a bad thing,” she murmured. “How long does it take you to recover?”

Then she put her mouth on my dick again while she sped up her hand movements.

My legs started to shake, and I couldn’t help but thread my fingers through her hair for something to hold on to.

I didn’t hinder or help her movements, only laid them there, but the urge was definitely there.

If she wasn’t so inexperienced, and I wasn’t so much of a goddamn gentleman, then I’d yank her forward at the same time that I thrust.

She gagged, and I realized that maybe I wasn’t so much of a gentleman after all.

“Fuck!” I moaned.

There was nothing hotter than watching her gag on my length.

At least, I thought that until she dropped both hands from around my shaft, then pushed forward, taking as much of me as she could physically fit into her mouth.

“Gonna come.”

Three syllables were all I could manage, and when she still didn’t come up for air while she practically choked herself on my cock, I realized that it was likely that she wasn’t going to.

I felt it start at the base of my spine, swirling around my lower half, and then shoot out of my cock with so much ferocity that my knees went weak.

She didn’t flinch away from me. Didn’t stop her torture. Didn’t do a goddamn thing other than take everything I had to give her.

She moaned around my staff at the first shot of come that left my cock, and the second. And the third.

By the time the fourth finally left, I was spent, barely hanging onto my feet.

She pulled away and licked her lips as if she’d just had the tastiest of treats, and then leaned back in the bed and scooted until her back hit the headboard.

“Come here,” she whispered, patting the bed.

I did, practically falling face first into her lap.

If she could do that for me, then I’d return the fucking favor.