Chapter 21

Consider this diem carped.

-T-shirt

Evander

I went to Kennedy’s house first.

It was an hour past dawn, and the only thing in the entire house making noise was the hum of the lights as they buzzed above me.

I was staring at the note, dread making its way through my gut.

The note that said only a few words. However, those words were enough to chill me straight to the bone.

Evander,

I’m tired of being second best.

I deserve to be someone’s first choice.

Thank you for giving me a few great weeks. I’ll remember and cherish them for the rest of my life.

Take care of my chickens.

And that was it. Not another damn word was said. It wasn’t even signed.

When I went to her closet, it was to see most of her clothes gone, some had fallen hastily to the floor. The kitchen was empty, her coffee cup still in the sink.

It was as if she’d left for a short weekend.

When I went outside, it was to find her truck still there.

I was supposed to look at it and hadn’t yet.

It’d died the day prior, again, and I hadn’t found time to look at it.

Her goats were gone, though, as well as her dog.

My eyes went to the chicken pen, and I realized another thing.

I didn’t know how to take care of chickens.

I’d seen her do it but was that really all there was to it?

“She’s gone?”

I looked behind me to see that Rafe hadn’t left. He was still there, standing in the middle of the yard, waiting for me to make my decision.

Go back…or chase after Kennedy.

“She’s better off without me,” I said.

He snorted.

“I thought that about my sister once.” Rafe looked away. “What I thought was only going to be a few months turned into years. It took me months to get back into her good graces, and even now, months later, I’m still wondering if she only tolerates me because she knows that I miss her.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

He was right, though.

Kennedy may be better off without me, but at this point, I didn’t think I could live without her.

She’d wormed herself into my life, planted herself so deeply into my goddamn heart that I didn’t think I’d ever be man enough to let her live without me.

Why make it harder to get her back when I had the power to do it right now just by saying three words to her.

Three words that I felt. Deeply.

“Fuck,” I growled. “Let’s go.”

Rafe waved me off. “I’ll keep doing the recon.”

And that was that.

He waved me off and stepped back into the shadows, disappearing into the shadows like he had never been there in the first place, leaving me free to follow after my wayward woman.

I turned away from the yard and stared blankly at the wall.

The only question was, where did she go?

***

Four hours later, I found her on a bus halfway to El Paso—the bus’s destination.

The next hour was spent following behind the bus, waiting for it to stop. After sixty miles of it, I realized that it wasn’t going to stop—not any time soon.

So I did what any sane man would do.

I rode my motorcycle past the bus, cut over in front of it, and started hitting my brakes.

“Here’s to hoping you’re paying attention, motherfucker,” I growled, watching the bus in my rearview.

The bus didn’t slow at first.

I assumed he thought I was taking the exit, but when I didn’t, the bus started to slow.

The more I slowed, the more it slowed, until the bus driver decided to pass me.

When it went to whip over to the next lane, I followed in front of it.

This continued for another ten minutes as I pointed to the shoulder.

It was more than apparent that the bus didn’t want to stop.

And I could understand that.

I was a big guy, covered in tattoos, and riding a motorcycle.

I wouldn’t pull over for me either, but it was happening.

It didn’t matter if I had to do this all fucking day long.

I’d do it.

Kennedy wouldn’t get away from me.

It didn’t get to end like that, I’d decided.

After another ten miles of this back and forth shit with the driver, the bus finally pulled over and came to a stop.

Likely, they’d called the cops, too, so I tried to make it fast.

The moment it stopped only ten feet away from me, I got off my bike and walked up to the driver’s side window.

Hopefully approaching him this way wouldn’t freak him out too bad.

But I could tell by the wary look in his eyes that he was freaked.

Oops.

“You have my woman on your bus, and I want to give her a ride back home,” I said to the older man, likely in his early fifties.

“Why?” he asked suspiciously. “What if she doesn’t want to go with you?”

I shrugged. “Why don’t you ask her?”

The man pursed his lips.

“What’s her name?”

I rolled my eyes.

He knew who she was. She was sitting almost directly behind him, and I saw her head poke back and forth from behind her seat for the last ten minutes.

“Kennedy.”

“Kennedy who?”

I gritted my teeth. “Kennedy soon to be fuckin’ Lennox.”

“No, I will not!” she denied from two seats back, plastering her face against the glass window of the bus.

She was so close to the window that her nose was scrunched up, and it was causing her nostrils to open wide.

Her glare was ferocious.

I tried not to laugh.

“I can see your boogers.”

She immediately removed her nose from the window, then gave me the finger.

Then, to add insult to injury, she breathed over the window, fogging it up, and wrote, ‘Fuck yo’

She breathed on it again, and then wrote ‘u’ underneath it.

I snorted, and tried really, really hard not to burst out laughing like I wanted to.

Really, I did.

But the way she scrapped it once she realized how non-perfect it was, and started over, this time further from the side of the window, I just couldn’t help it.

I bellowed in laughter. It couldn’t be helped.

“Can’t you just run him over, Mr. Bus Driver?”

I looked over to the bus driver, who was trying not to laugh right along with me.

“I can’t, Ma’am,” he apologized. “And since you told me I couldn’t call the police, there’s really nothing we can do but sit here until he moves his bike.”

“You could back up?” Kennedy suggested.

The bus driver sighed. “I already thought about that, but he’s got more maneuverability with that monster bike of his.”

I looked over at my bike.

It wasn’t really a monster. It was more of a pretty girl—at least, in my opinion.

But whatever.

“Well, that’s just perfect,” she snarled. “Can you open the little hatches underneath so I can get my suitcase?”

I hid my grin and winked at the bus driver, who was standing up from his seat.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

I walked around the side of the bus and waited for her to get off.

The moment she did, she glared.

“How did you manage to get onto an empty bus?” I asked her, walking alongside her to the doors that were holding only a single suitcase.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she snarled, turning her head away and crossing her arms over her chest while she tapped her foot impatiently.

I held my breath, then nodded my thanks to the driver when he wheeled her suitcase over to me.

“Have a good one, Ma’am,” the bus driver said as he made his way back to the bus. “Don’t do anything stupid, Son.”

I snorted.

“Already one step ahead of you. Now I just have to get her to accept my apology.”

“Like hell I’ll accept anything from you,” she snapped.

My eye twitched.

“Okay,” I said as I rolled the bag over to my bike, then looked at the huge bag and my bike uncertainly.

I hadn’t thought this part through really well.

I’d just gotten on the damn thing and took off in her direction the moment my brother confirmed that she’d been seen getting on a bus to El Paso.

Now, I was thinking that she might be mad at me when I told her that we’d have to leave some of the stuff behind.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked as I pushed the suitcase onto its side and started unzipping it.

“We’re gonna have to shove all this shit into the saddle bags,” I told her. “Why do you…”

I stopped when I saw my t-shirt right on top.

She caught my raised eyebrow and narrowed her eyes.

“You can leave that one on the side of the road,” she snarled.

I swear to Christ. This woman was my fuckin’ heart.

“Whatever,” I mumbled, setting it aside. I wouldn’t be leaving it, though.

It was one of my favorite ones. I’d purchased it almost fifteen years ago when I went to see Journey in concert.

It was soft, threadbare, and fucking comfortable.

The next thing underneath my shirt was her purse, which I shoved inside the saddle bag.

The rest of her shit, which wasn’t very much, went into the other bag.

The only thing that was left was a box of tampons.

“You need this now?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

Nodding, I tossed it back into the luggage, and then shoved the luggage further off the side of the road until it was nestled in between two trees.

“You can’t just leave that here!” she cried out. “That’s littering.”

I raised my brows at her.

“Yeah, but I have nowhere to go with it, and we need to the get the hell off the side of the highway before we get run the fuck over.”

Her eyes looked up one side of the highway and down the other.

It was long and straight, and not one single person had passed us the entire time we’d been pulled over.

“You’re so full of shit,” she countered. “Why are you even here?”

The venom in her voice gave me pause, then I came up like a tiger launching himself at dinner, and wrapped my arms around her before she could step away.

“I’m here because I love you,” I told her. “I wanted to finish what I’d started. I wanted an ending before I gave you a beginning. I wanted to make sure that what I had to offer you wasn’t tainted in that motherfucker’s bullshit and lies. But you didn’t wait, so I couldn’t either.”

Her mouth snapped shut so fast that I heard the click of her teeth.

“You’re lying.”

I laughed, tilting my head back and barking it at the clear blue sky.

When I finally gathered my composure, I looked back down at her, a wry smile on my face.

“How many men that don’t love you would drive four hours away, breaking their parole, to bring you back?”

She sniffed at me.

“I don’t really care.”

“You don’t care if I go back to jail?” I asked.

She nodded, looking away.

“Then why didn’t you let the driver call the cops when I was trying to get y’all to pull over?” I teased.

She shrugged.

“That was his idea,” she lied.

Bringing my hand up to her face, I cupped it and tilted her chin, forcing her to look at me.

She gave me her best scowl.

“All that face makes me want to do is kiss it,” I informed her.

She glared even harder, narrowing her eyes to mere slits.

“I don’t care what you want,” she hissed. “Let me go.”

I did and she stepped away.

“What now?” I questioned.

“Now you take me to where I wanted to go.”

I sighed.

“What’s in it for me?”

“What do you mean what’s in it for you?” she growled.

It was so cute I wanted to pinch her little cheeks.

“I mean, what’s in it for me?” I asked. “If I take you to El Paso, what is that going to accomplish?”

“It’s going to accomplish me going to where I want to go,” she said, sounding confused. “What else would it accomplish?”

I decided that maybe she needed to be fucked into a better mood, so I did just that.

I stalked toward her, and pulled her into my arms, even though she tried to step back once again.

“Let me go!” she shrieked.

“No.”

Then I slammed my mouth down onto hers.

She bit my tongue and I pulled back with a growl.

“You want to play rough?” I checked to make sure.

Because if I did this, it wasn’t going to be nice. If she fought me, I wouldn’t be able to help myself.

I knew she wanted it.

I could see the way her nipples were pebbled, and the fact that the only thing she was doing was being mean, which was enough to cement the fact that she wanted me.

Her breathing was choppy, and her neck was flushed red.

Her eyes were soft and heavy, like she wanted me just as bad as I wanted her.

“You’re going to get on that bike, and you’re going to take me to El Paso,” she ordered, pointing her finger at me.

I laughed at her, and then caught her wrist, spinning her around, forcing her up against my body.

“I’m not taking you anywhere but my home, where you’ll be moving in with me,” I informed her. “And then you’re going to put my ring on your finger, and we’re going to get married at the county courthouse tomorrow.”

She struggled to free herself.

“Macho asshole doesn’t suit you,” she grunted, pushing both elbows back at once.

I shifted, then dropped my mouth to her neck, causing her to cease all movement.

The moment my beard met her skin, I opened my mouth and ran the tip of my tongue along the cords of her neck.

“Spent every fucking second, of every fucking day since I’ve met you, thinking about you. Worrying about you. Wondering if you’ve eaten yet,” I whispered against her skin. “I’ve slept with you only a handful of times, but it was enough to know that I don’t ever want to sleep without you again.”

A sob caught in her throat, and she dropped her head, her hands clutching mine where they were wrapped around her waist.

“I didn’t say I love you, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t fucking feel it.” I bit down lightly on her shoulder, then soothed the hurt with my tongue. “Say it again.”

She shook her head. The soft tendrils of her hair got stuck in my beard, but I didn’t care.

Nothing was more important than saying the words back to her.

I just had to get her to repeat hers, first.

Still, she didn’t say them.

Time to pull out the big guns.

Ripping my chest open to reveal my heart was hard. Every time I opened myself up to someone, they did nothing but disappoint me.

It fucking hurt when people didn’t reciprocate, but the thing with Kennedy? Yeah, it wasn’t fake. It wasn’t something that could even be quantified.

It was real.

She was real.

And I needed her to know that I was in this one hundred percent.

“I want to have babies with you.”

Her legs started to tremble.

“All those times that we didn’t use a condom?”

She shivered.

“I want you to get knocked up.”

She inhaled shakily.

“I want to see you pregnant with my child. I want to see you around town with everyone knowing that I put him inside of you.”

I tilted her head back by latching onto her hair.

Her eyes were filled with tears; one spilled over.

I kissed it away.

“I love you, woman. Lock, stock, and barrel. Down to my bones. Everything that I have to give is yours. It may not be much, but it’s all that I have to give, and I want you to have it.”

She closed her eyes, and she lost the battle with her tears.

They spilled over.

At first, I tried to stem the flow, but soon I realized how futile an effort that was, and decided that maybe hugging her would be best.

So that’s what I did.

I held her while she cried in my arms on the side of a deserted Texas highway.

Her crying put me into a weird mood.

One where I was starting to get pissed at myself for causing all of this heartache for her.

In fact, I was so lost in thought, berating myself for doing stupid shit all the time, that I didn’t watch what was happening right in front of me.

Sure, I was looking at her—or more honestly, the top of her head—but I wasn’t paying attention to the fact that she was no longer crying.

Nor was I paying attention to her hands.

Not until they were on the zipper of my jeans.

“What are you doing?” I questioned her, stepping back slightly.

The move gave her more room to do what she wanted, which was unzip my pants.

“I’m touching you inappropriately,” she said. “Right here in public.”

I thought she was joking, and I was about to tease her, but then she dipped her small hand into the gap of my jeans, cupping my half-hard cock in her hand.

A half-hard cock that only stayed half hard for all of three seconds before it filled with blood.

Which was about the time she tried to pull it out of the small opening in my jeans.

I winced and pulled away.

Her hand stayed in my pants, though, and she glared.

“What?” she asked. “You’re saying I can’t do this?”

I grinned, and then circled her wrist with my hand.

“No,” I said. “I’m saying that my dick literally will not fit through that opening. I know from experience.”

She blinked.

“If you want to do something, like suck my cock, you’re going to have to open my belt first.”

Her eyes turned calculating.

“You’d want that?”

I stared at her blankly.

“I’d want what?” I questioned. “My dick sucked by my woman?”

She nodded.

“What kind of question is that?” I teased, pulling her in by a hand hooked around her neck. “Let me tell you something, honey. If you offered to suck my cock in the middle of a crowded restaurant, I’d probably let you do it. I don’t think a man alive has ever said no to a blow job by an attractive woman.”

She giggled, then dropped to her knees.

My mouth fell slightly open.

“You’re going to hurt your knees…” my voice trailed off when she yanked open my belt and yanked hard on the button of my jeans.

“You think we should at least move further off the road?” I wondered gruffly.

She pulled the front of my jeans down slowly, and then moaned when she got the first good look at my cock’s base.

In fact, she was so enraptured with the first sight of it, she forgot what she was doing, and leaned forward to lick the base while the waistband of my underwear cut off circulation to the rest of my cock.

But the moment she pressed that hot tongue to the base and trailed up the vein to where my cock was being bisected by my underwear, I threw my head back and moaned.

“Fucking goddammit,” I found myself saying.

I hadn’t been aware that the base of my cock was even all that sensitive; but apparently, it was.

Greatly so.

“I wonder if I could take all of you up to right here,” she blew a breath along the line where her tongue had traced along my bare skin. “It’d take a lot of practice.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore and reached forward, putting the palm of my hand over her ear.

“Seriously should go back into the shadows at least,” I muttered, gritting my teeth lightly when she reached forward and tugged down the front of my boxer briefs.

My cock bounced free, bobbing lightly with the beat of my heart.

She reached forward and encircled the middle of my cock with her hand and gave it a few expert pumps.

I closed my eyes in bliss.

Then I felt the heat of her mouth on my tip right before she circled her tongue around it like one would a melting ice cream cone as they tried to catch all the drips at once.

I saw stars.

With her down on the ground, knees likely uncomfortable as hell due to the uneven road, I could do nothing but watch. It was hard to convince her why we shouldn’t be doing this, especially with her choking on my cock.

Literally choking. Each time she would push forward, I would hit the back of her throat, and she’d try to push a little bit past where she’d gone the first time.

Then she swallowed, and all of those beautiful muscles in her throat clamped down on my cock tightly, stealing my breath.

“Fuck!” I grunted, circling the base of my cock with my own fist, halting my release that was already boiling in my balls.

“Get up,” I barked.

She pulled off my cock and stood, looking at me uneasily.

“Bend over the back of the bike.”

She blinked at me.

“Now!”

I started to slowly work my fist up the length of my shaft, waiting for her to comply.

Which she did.

Only, before I could do anything crazy like rip her jeans down to her ankles and plunge inside of her, I heard the unmistakable sound of a motor.

“Fuck,” I grunted, going up to her and pulling her up and spinning her around.

I pinned my cock between us, holding her close, and waited for the car to pass.

It did moments later, topping the hill from the opposite direction in which we’d been headed earlier, and passing us all within five seconds.

Only, they pulled over about a hundred yards down from us.

“Goddammit,” I grumbled.

I looked down at the woman in my arms.

“This is all your fault,” I grunted, pulling her into my hold tighter than before.

She blinked her eyes at me innocently.

“What did I do?”

I leaned down and nipped the side of her neck with my teeth, causing her to jerk in surprise.

My cock twitched between us.

She batted her eyelids.

“Y’all okay?”

I looked up at the shout, and saw a man half leaning out of the window of his truck, staring at me like I was crazy.

Sure, my bike was kind of hanging out in the road, but I suppose it wasn’t every day that you saw a couple kissing on the side of the highway…even if we were in the middle of Podunk, Texas.

“I’m fine, thank you. Just stopped to stretch our legs.”

My words turned from sure and confident, to a high-pitched squeak at the end due to Kennedy raising her hand and encircling it around the head of my cock.

When she swiped her thumb over the hole and collected the fluid that’d started to form there, my eyes nearly crossed.

I cleared my throat. “Thank you for asking, though.”

The man waved and then took off without another word.

I stayed where I was, glaring down at the woman in my arms who didn’t even have the decency to look up at me, until the man was so far away that I could barely see him any longer.

“That was fucking rude,” I growled, then lifted her up into my arms and started walking into the trees off the side of the road.

She easily circled my hips with her legs, and locked them behind her back. Though, as we walked, she started to unbutton her jeans.

When she shoved her hands down the front of her pants, and came back out with wet fingers, I leaned forward and sucked them clean.

“Fuck me,” she whispered.

I couldn’t tell if it was a demand or an exclamation. Whatever it was, I chose to take it as an invitation and dropped her down into the pine needles as far into the trees as I could in my presently over-excited condition.

I could see the road where I was at, and my bike, which meant if anyone looked hard enough, they could likely see us, too.

But at this point, with a hard, throbbing, still-wet-from-her-mouth cock, the taste of her on my tongue and the feel of her in my arms, I no longer had the control, or the will, to care.

With swift movements, I yanked both her panties and jeans down the length of her legs, and then used the bunched fabric as a handhold to roll her over to her belly.

She whipped over so fast that I had to hold in a laugh at the look of surprise on her face.

“Holy shit!” she cried out. “That was like, super-fast!”

I grunted and started to work my cock again.

“Up on your knees,” I ordered her. “This has to be fast and hard, because my bike’s hanging on to the road, and if anybody looks hard enough, they’ll know exactly what we’re doing out here.”

She got up on her knees and looked at me over her shoulder.

“Do you care?”

I grinned and lined my cock up with her entrance, moaning into my throat at the feel of her heat against the head of my cock.

“If I get caught and go back to jail, that means I won’t have this to come home to every night,” I informed her. “So yes, I care.”

Then I thrust forward, so hard and suddenly, that she squeaked in surprise.

I only got my cock halfway in before I had to pull back out, but the next thrust had my cock sinking all the way home.

No extra inches left out.

She’d taken every single inch I had to give.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she whimpered.

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and counted to ten as I tried to get myself under control.

“Are you okay?” I growled low in my throat.

Her pussy muscles were clenching around me spasmodically, and I was finding it hard to draw breath into my lungs.

“Yesssss,” she drew out the ‘s’ like a snake. “Pleasssssse.”

I pulled back and then thrust forward again.

But this time, she met me with a push of her own, causing me to thrust into her so roughly that I was scared that I’d hurt her.

She easily shot that worry out of the air, though, when she leaned forward, pulling her body away from my cock, and then slamming herself backwards on to it again.

She did this, over and over again, and I did nothing but watch her fuck herself with my cock.

I leaned back, entranced with the play of muscles around her ass, and the way her butt cheeks jiggled.

“I love your ass,” I told her, running one finger down the part, circling that forbidden entrance.

She mewled something when my thumb passed over it a second time.

I grinned.

“You ever had anybody in your ass, baby?” I knew the answer to that seeing as she had been a virgin.

She shook her head.

“You want me in your ass?”

Her wide, startled eyes looked at me over her shoulder, and then she started moving again.

“Yes.”

One word, but it was enough for my hand to clamp down onto her ass as need shot through my body.

How would she feel around my cock?

Certainly, she’d strangle me.

I was big. Really big.

It’d probably hurt her the first time, but not too bad.

Not if I went slow and lubed her up.

Fuck, just the thought of taking her there was enough to send tiny shocks of need shooting down into my balls.

And then she stopped.

The tiny shocks went away, and I opened my eyes to see her staring at me.

“Are you going to participate?”

I grinned.

Then I started to participate.