Church
I couldn’t remember a night that I slept throughout without waking up. My body was trained to doze lightly and to wake when even the slightest thing seemed off. I never rested easy when I was in a new place and I very rarely managed to out-sleep the sun going up even after working the extreme bar hours I’d been keeping as of late. It was an instinct honed over years of catnapping under a sky set on fire by missiles and gunfire. It was a reaction that had saved my ass more than once.
My childhood home wasn’t exactly hostile territory and bedding down with Dixie sprawled heavy limbed and orgasm drunk all over the top of me definitely wasn’t sleeping with the enemy, but there were enough differences in my usual routine that it should have been a restless night without much shut-eye. The opposite was true. I slept better than I had in ten years. I wrapped my arms around the warm, pliant woman that had blown my mind … and other parts of me … closed my eyes, and drifted off like I didn’t have the kind of history behind me that usually led to nightmares instead of sweet dreams. Granted I was more than worn-out. The reunion with my family, getting an earful from Elma, the puzzle of who was trying to make this trip home more difficult than it already was, all of that weighed heavily on my mind, and then Dixie had her way with the rest of me and every muscle I had, every tendon and bone felt like it had turned to mush. I’d never considered myself a man that had the ability to go soft for a woman, but dammit all if she didn’t make me malleable and pliable with nothing more than her sexy moans and wicked demands whispered in my ear. I told her I would give her the best of what I had. I didn’t anticipate the need, the overwhelming desire to give her better than my best because that’s what she gave me.
I woke up when Jules and Dalen were rambling around the house getting ready for work and school respectively. I heard them down the hallway in the kitchen and contemplated getting up and bringing breakfast back for the woman who was still breathing slowly and evenly into the center of my chest. Her uncontrollable tangle of hair was brushing my chin and sticking to the scruff that I had yet to find the time to shave off. One of her hands was folded under her cheek, lying across my heart, and that little traitor leaped at the knowledge that if I dared to let her hold it there was no way she would handle it with anything but gentle care and delicate reverence. Her other arm was tucked along my side where my arm was curved across the sexy dip of her hip. I had no idea when my palm took up residence on the luscious swell of her ass but I wasn’t going to complain about it and I was in no rush to move it.
I liked her goofy T-shirts with their silly sayings that she seemed to prefer sleeping in, but if I had a say she wouldn’t be in this bed with me with anything covering her up for the rest of our time together. I was still finding cute little freckles that I hadn’t yet put my tongue on and there was no way I would be able to find them all if she was keeping those lush curves of hers hidden.
She had one of her legs cocked at an angle between mine and while my morning erection was always alert and ready to go before I was, this morning it was particularly insistent that I get my shit together and take advantage of the fact that what felt like an endless amount of silken smooth female flesh was pressed against it, warm with sleep and soft from lingering satisfaction. She felt good draped across me. She felt like she belonged there.
My fingers stroked across the supple skin like they had a mind of their own. Dixie mumbled something drowsily and rubbed her nose on the hard line that divided my pecs. The heavy muscle flexed involuntarily, and I sucked in a careful breath as her knee grazed the very sensitive part of my anatomy it was resting against. My dick twitched and lifted, pressing pointedly into her thigh. I couldn’t tell if she was on board with this particular wake-up call but the hand along my side moved so that it was resting under my ribs and her freckled cheek brushed against my chest like a kitten searching for affection. I took the hand that was resting behind my head and tunneled my fingers into her fiery mane of hair. I loved the way it coiled and snaked around my fingers. It was the only trap I would walk willingly into time and time again.
“You awake?” My voice was raspier than normal and I could hear the throb of desperation in it. I really, really wanted her to be awake or I wanted to wake her up in a way she wasn’t going to be able to forget anytime soon. We’d gone at each other hard last night, several times over. I could feel it in my thighs and in my back, so I had no doubt she was probably sore and tender in all the places I wanted to leave even more marks and memories on. “I know it’s before noon, but if you rise and shine I can guarantee you won’t regret it.” It wasn’t lost on me that my asking her to let me in had more than one meaning. I wanted inside all the sweetness that would go wet and ready for me in an instant, but I was also starting to feel like I needed inside, past all the warmth and kindness she had for everyone, to the real heart of her.
The tip of her nose rubbed back and forth over my collarbone as she shook her head and mumbled something else I couldn’t make out but her leg shifted between mine again, this time more deliberately. This time it was a caress. This time it was her leg sliding along the underside of my very erect cock, rubbing it up and down, causing it to pulse against her and making me shift my hips under her so I could chase the sensation. She made me desperate and entranced me with very little effort. I’d wanted to take her to bed from the minute I saw her, but now that I had her there it felt so much more significant than getting off and getting a piece of her. It felt like something I had been fighting for, something I had been working towards without even knowing I was taking those steps.
I buried my face in the side of her neck and licked along the creamy column. It was easy to maneuver her so that we were lying face-to-face and I growled in satisfaction against her skin, now damp from my mouth, when her leg moved so that it was on the outside of mine, giving me unfettered access to her pretty, pink center. I was kissing my way up to her ear and rubbing my hands all over her back while retaining my hold on her ass when I vaguely heard the trill of some song I didn’t recognize coming from somewhere on the floor.
I was wrapped all around Dixie, I had the tip of my dick nestled perfectly between folds that were warming up and getting slick and ready when she suddenly made a noise that indicated she was no longer half asleep. Her eyes popped open and she stared at me for a minute before her teeth sank into her bottom lip, and she put her hands on my shoulders and pushed back a little bit until I loosened my hold on her enough that she could roll away from me towards the side of the bed. She didn’t have her typical morning scowl and blurry-eyed annoyance stamped on her pretty face. It was nice to know if I woke her up with foreplay her claws stayed retracted, not that it bothered me when she sunk them in.
“That’s Wheeler. I need to answer it. Some crazy stuff went on with my sister yesterday, and he might need to talk.”
I heard her hands patting the floor where everything had landed after our acrobatics on the bed last night. I shook my head to get my thoughts together and frowned at her back even though she couldn’t see my sour expression.
“Can’t you call him back when it’s a better time for you?” I knew she went above and beyond for the people she cared about but there was no missing the way her body responded to mine. She wanted what I was about to give her, half asleep or not.
She looked at me over her shoulder with her strawberry brows pulled into a scowl. I couldn’t tell if it was directed at me or at the interruption. “It’ll just take a second. I have to be there if he wants to talk.”
I scowled right back at her but mine lacked the heat hers had because in her haste to answer the call she forgot to pull the sheet back up and her plump, rosy nipples were poking out at me looking like the most delectable little berries. That was the kind of breakfast in bed I was talking about. My frown quickly morphed into a smirk as I asked her, “What about what you want? When do you get to put your own needs first?”
Her scowl deepened as she issued a breathy greeting into the phone. Maybe she didn’t like me pointing out that she was always putting others first, but at some point the girl deserved to have hers and damn everyone else. I felt my lips pull upwards as I continued to watch her. Her cheeks heated, and she put a hand out to ineffectively ward me off as I leaned towards her. She wanted me to smile. I wasn’t quite there yet but I could grin, and I could do it wickedly and mischievously because I didn’t care that she was on the phone trying to fix someone else’s life. I cared that she wanted me and there was no reason to deny herself, or me. She deserved to come first every now and again … in fact I was going to make it my mission to make sure she came first whenever we were together for the foreseeable future and not just when we were in bed.
“No. Don’t chase after Poppy, Wheeler. That’s the worst thing you can do. If you go pounding on her door she won’t open it.” Her eyes widened as I reached for her and started to pull her back across the bed towards me. She held up a hand and shook her head frantically while I continued to grin at her. I ignored her swatting hand as I rolled her much smaller frame under mine and trapped her with my bulk.
She continued to glare at me as I caught the hand that wasn’t busy with the phone in one of mine and pinned it to the bed next to her. Her wiggling only served to make a space for me between her legs that I immediately took advantage of. I captured one of the plump, pert tips between my lips and used the tip of my tongue to circle around and around. Her whole body went still and I heard her suck in a breath and then assure the tatted-up caller on the other end of the phone that she was fine.
“I just have something caught in my throat. Why are you worried about how Poppy feels? I know Kallie can be intense, but shouldn’t you be concerned with what she came over to tell you and not how the confrontation affected a total stranger?”
I heard a masculine voice rise on the other end of the call and took advantage of the fact that Dixie moved the phone away from her ear to get my mouth on her other breast. I wanted them glistening and wet. I wanted them slippery enough that I could slide my cock between them until the tip touched her lips. That image had me growling around the stiff tip locked between my teeth. The vibration had her legs shifting against mine where I had them immobilized in a different, more restless and less combative, way.
“Uh … what? No, no, I’m listening to you and I’m not taking Kallie’s side. I just think you need to listen to her. What she has to say isn’t going to make the fact she cheated on you hurt any less, but it will go a long way towards both of you finding some kind of closure. I think my neighbor should be the least of your concerns at the moment.” Her words were coming out faster and faster. Instead of trying to wiggle away from me she was pressing her chest up into my mouth as I licked across her collarbone and stopped to suck on the hollow at the base of her neck hard enough to leave a mark. She made a pained little sound and moved her legs more aggressively against mine.
Because I wasn’t done showing her that she should put her wants and her needs before others’ occasionally and because I was enjoying the slow and sweet torture of touching her with-out having the luxury of having her hands undoing me in turn I wrapped an arm across her chest and rolled us so that her back was plastered all along my front. My throbbing dick found a very happy home nestled along the sexy crevasse of her backside. The rounded flesh pressing into my erection had me sucking in a breath that was loud enough to be heard by the person Dixie was struggling to have a conversation with.
“Jesus, Wheeler. Do you really want me to get into all the ways in which it isn’t your business who that was? You have enough on your plate without worrying about me.” She swore softly and turned her head to glare at me over her shoulder as I grabbed her knee and propped it up on the outside of mine. She could play at being mad all she wanted, that pussy that was what dreams were made of didn’t lie. It was shiny and all kinds of perky and eager. Her desire was evident and I wasn’t about to deny either of us the otherworldly gratification we could give to each other. “Listen, I have to go.” She sure did. I curled my hand around her knee and lifted it up so that I could prod her swollen entrance with my cock. Her body pulled at me, tugged at my rigid flesh until I couldn’t resist the lure and pushed all the way into her. She made a strangled sound that I figured Wheeler had to recognize because a split second later Dixie was muttering, “Talk to Kallie. I’ll check on Poppy later. Bye.” The phone fell to the bed as I started to thrust slowly in and out of her.
She was still looking at me over her shoulder but the heat that was angry was quickly switching to arousal. “I’m super mad at you right now.” The words had no force behind them and I couldn’t stop another grin from escaping as the hand that had been using the phone lifted up and bent behind her so that she could hold on to the back of my head as I latched my teeth on to the delicate dip at the base of her neck.
“I don’t believe you. You don’t feel mad. You feel like you want to come. You feel like you need to come.” From this position behind her I couldn’t get as deep. My thrusts were shallow, slow and deliberate. I could feel the way my cock dragged across tender flesh and sensitive nerves. It was delicious torture for both of us but there was no way either of us were going to get off with this teasing, taunting pace. “You feel like you want something just for you, Dixie. Take it. You’re allowed to come first, pretty girl.”
She tossed her head back so hard that I had to jerk my chin out of the way to avoid getting knocked silly. I rubbed my fingers across the gentle swell of her belly, stopped to circle her tiny belly button with my pinky, and then found my way to the spot where we were joined. I slid my fingers through her wetness, spread her slick folds open so I could get my questing fingers on her sweet spot. Her clit leaped at the first press of my fingertips and her entire body arched forward and away from mine as I circled the tender little nub relentlessly. I kissed the back of her neck under the fall of her hair and let out my own strangled sound when one of her clever hands disappeared between us so that every time I moved forward into her heat the base of my cock also slipped along the flat of her palm. She used her fingertip to tickle the ultra-sensitive globes that hung heavy between my legs and I knew I was about at the end of my rope when it came to gentle, playful fucking. I wanted to have an easy touch with this woman who shined so bright but she made me feel savage. She made me want to take, and take, and then take some more. Everything she offered up I wanted more of because I was driven and determined to give it all back to her. I felt like I had something to prove, but I had no clue what that something was.
I played with her clit until I felt her body start to hum and quake around me. I couldn’t finish like this but I had no problem holding her and watching her come apart in my arms while she did. Her head turned and her eyes sought mine out, dark with desire and desperation.
“You want me to come first?” Her voice was just a breath of sound as she panted and moved with me.
“I want you to get what you want, period.” My words had her body clamping down on mine like a velvet vise. Everything about her was a satin trap I never wanted to escape from. I would happily be her prisoner forever.
“Then I want you to fuck me for real, and I want you to come with me.” Well, shit. Just when I thought there wasn’t any possible way she could be any more perfect. I might actually be able to make a relationship work if we never had to leave this bed.
I kissed her cheek and chuckled into her soft skin. “I can fuck you if you aren’t too sore, but I can’t come with you, pretty girl. No more condoms.” We’d blown threw my limited supply last night. It was risky being inside her the way I already was but it was a perilous chance I couldn’t seem to stop from taking.
“Oh.” Her eyes widened and her teeth dug into her bottom lip.
I lifted an eyebrow at her as I pulled out of her welcoming heat leaving a trail of moisture on the inside of her leg. It was a sexy glimmer I didn’t seem able to look away from. Before I could tell her that it was fine, that I fully planned on getting her off regardless of any obstacles in our way she turned away from me, braced her hands on the mattress, lifted her gloriously round and perfectly curved ass in the air, and looked at me saucily over her shoulder. She always looked good, cute and charming, but bent over, that slit between her legs shining and wet and her backside ready and arranged for the taking she had never looked better. Her wild hair slid across her pale shoulders and I couldn’t stop myself from running my fingers along each dip and divot in her spine.
“I trust you, Church.” Her eyes pleaded with me to do the right thing. To tell her this was a bad idea even if she claimed to want it but I kept telling her I wasn’t that guy. I wasn’t her Mr. Right or even her Mr. Right Now. I was the guy that was going to take her every single way there was to take her until either of those preferred options showed up.
“You shouldn’t, but I’m lucky as hell that you do.” I fisted a handful of her hair and pulled her head back at the same time I curled my other palm around her hip. I loved that she had a little something there to hold on to. It made her seem less breakable, able to withstand all the things I wanted to put on her.
I leaned into her, curving myself over the tantalizing bow of her back, and pulled her hips back towards mine. She was already wet and ready from my earlier ministrations, so I slid in easily. We both gasped loud and long as I bottomed out, touching places inside of her that made my head spin and had my heart beating erratically. I kept her head pulled back as she rocked into me. I let my lips trail over the side of her neck as I braced myself on the mattress with a locked arm.
I surged into her. Powered myself in and out of her soaking channel as my vision blurred and my lungs burned for air. She bucked back into me, moving against me as violently as I was moving into her. Our bodies slapped together filling the room with the sounds of sex and satisfaction. Thank God I actually knew what to do with her once I finally managed to get a girl naked and under me in this room. I was glad I didn’t have any other experience here to compare to this one. Anything before Dixie would be pale and unremarkable in comparison.
She was already primed and close from the way I’d handled her body earlier. She was moaning low and loud. I took a minute to hope that my dad and brother had already left but if they hadn’t I didn’t care. The noises she made urged me on, begged me to go at her harder, so there was no way I was going to remind her that we possibly weren’t alone.
The arch of her neck was so delectable. I wanted my teeth on it. I wanted my hands wrapped around it. I wanted to lick it and suck on it as her blood pumped furiously through her veins. I could see her pulse throbbing under the alabaster color of her skin and it had my balls tightening and pleasure kicking hard at the base of my spine. I was close and she still hadn’t come first. I needed to get her there and get her there fast.
I let go of my hold on her hair and put a hand between her shoulder blades so that she had to lower her top half to the mattress. She rested her cheek on the wrinkled comforter as I clutched both her hips in my hands and really started to pound into her. I didn’t stop to think that she was still tender from the night before, my only intent was to drive her to the brink so that she was as out of control as I was.
She screamed my name and I saw her hands convulse where they were wrapped in the fabric of the bedding. Her pussy locked down on my cock and engulfed it in waves of liquid pleasure. She scalded me with satisfaction and blinded me with bliss. This was perfection. This was more than I deserved. She was everything and I had no doubt I was bound to ruin her.
That thought was sobering enough that I managed to get it together enough to pull out of her engulfing heat before my own completion hit. I wrapped my cock in my fist, gave it an obligatory stroke that almost wasn’t needed, and watched with a primal sense of accomplishment as I marked her in the rawest and most basic way a man could. She was covered in sweat and sex. She had the sticky remnants of my orgasm glistening on the curve of her still-lifted backside as she collapsed on the bed underneath me. It was an image that was going to be burned into my brain for an eternity. It was the picture I was going to pull up every time I was alone and missing her. I was going to remember that for this second, this moment she was undeniably mine. The proof of it was clinging to her gorgeously speckled skin.
It was my turn to lean over the side of the bed and rummage on the floor for something I could use to clean us both up with. I retrieved my shirt from the night before and scowled when it was my phone that rang and interrupted the quiet moment after the hurricane-like sex that had just consumed us. I swiped the cotton across Dixie’s skin, feeling a little like a teenager scrambling to hide the evidence of what had just taken place.
I felt my eyebrows lift when I noticed it was Dalen’s number on my phone. I sent him a few text messages on holidays and his birthdays when I was deployed after Jules told me he got the boy his own phone. I typically didn’t get a response back, so I couldn’t imagine why he was calling me now that I was under the same roof in the same city as him.
“Did you pocket dial me, kid?” Dixie shifted in the bed next to me and turned her head so that she was looking up at me, chocolate-colored eyes alight with curiosity.
“I need you to come and pick me up.” He sounded funny, not that I knew how he normally sounded but his voice was shaky and missing some of the resentment it’d had last night.
“I gotta go get Elma Mae from the hospital and bring her home. Aren’t you at school?” I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and reached for the pants I’d carelessly dropped last night.
“Forget about it. I should have called Dad. I don’t know why I thought you would show up when I needed you. You never have before.” Sucker punch. I sucked in a breath through my teeth and rubbed a hand over my face as the kid hit me with a shot that took more out of me than any of the bullets and shrapnel that had ripped through my skin.
“I’ll come get you, Dalen, but you need to tell me what’s going on so I can tell Jules. I’m not going to get between you and your dad my first day home.”
“He’s your dad, too, asshole.” My little brother wasn’t pulling any punches. “I’m at the Stop N’ Save on route 12. I skipped my first class with a couple of other guys on the team. There was an assembly on something stupid, so we slipped out and decided to grab something to eat at the gas station.” He swore and I heard his voice shake when he went on. “I was waiting for my buddy Drake to come out of the store. He’s old enough to drive, so I was chilling by his truck when these guys in another truck pulled in and blocked us in.” He cleared his throat and I felt my blood start to boil and fury flare to life blazing and explosive inside my veins. “They started saying some really ugly stuff, Dash, really ugly. I thought they were giving us a hard time because we were kids. I figured they maybe supported a rival school and were pissed we had Lowry colors on.” He sounded like he was crying and I wanted to level the entire fucking town in order to make him stop.
“I’m on the way. Are you okay, Dalen?”
“They messed me up, Dash. I mean I’m a big dude and I take hits day in and day out on the field, but there were three of them.”
“Son of a bitch. Do you need to go to the hospital?” Dixie gasped and bolted up next to me. She put a hand on my arm and patted the muscle that was locked in a battle-ready position. I would rip anyone that hurt the kid apart limb from limb. I would make them suffer in ways they couldn’t imagine. I would hunt them down and run them to ground if it was the last thing I did.
“No. My face is busted up. Split lip, couple black eyes, and my knuckles are busted open, which is going to piss coach off. I tried to call Dad but he got a call out to the Holler and won’t be back in city limits for another hour. I told my buddies I would find my own way home. I don’t want them in trouble for skipping school. Coach will bench all of us for the next game if he finds out.”
The Holler was a trailer park way out in the boonies. It wasn’t easy to get to and the people that called it home weren’t easy to deal with. Jules was going to be pissed when he found out what had happened.
“Hate to break it to you, kid, but once the old man catches sight of the damage done he’s gonna want to talk to your friends. They’re witnesses to an assault. I’m headed out the door right now, so sit tight.”
He mumbled a sullen agreement as I turned to look at Dixie, who was also climbing out of the bed, her curls clasped in a hand to hold them away from her face.
“I gotta go get Dalen. The kid is in bad shape, and I need to call Jules so I can fill him in. Can you go get Elma Mae and get her settled at her place? I know that’s asking a lot.” She nodded without hesitation and grabbed some clothes from the pile I’d brought in from the laundry room last night.
“Of course I’ll go get her. I hope your brother is okay.”
I clasped the back of my neck and squeezed the thick coils of tension that were suddenly there.
“He’ll be all right. The redneck assholes that fucked with him won’t be able to say the same thing. I’m glad he called me. Surprised but glad.”
She paused and gave me a serious look as she covered her nakedness with her bundle of clothes. “Of course he called. He’s giving you the opportunity to show up because he wants you to prove that you still care about him the way he still cares about you. You were his idol and he’s giving you a shot to reclaim your position as his hero. He could have called the police, in fact he probably should have. He could have called a friend’s parent or another adult he trusts, but he called you. Don’t screw this up, soldier. This is a mission you cannot afford to fail.”
She was right about most of it. She was wrong about me being any kind of hero.
A hero wouldn’t have bolted when things got tough at home. A hero wouldn’t have let the man he idolized and adored grieve alone for the second woman he’d loved. A hero wouldn’t have abandoned his little brother with no explanation and no justification. A hero wouldn’t make love to the woman of his dreams over and over again knowing he was going to end up doing irreparable damage to her heart. A hero wasn’t terrified to let himself fall in love, because all real heroes knew that pain was unavoidable and it was the suffering that was optional. Hell, half the guys I served with had those very words inked on their skin somewhere. It was a reminder that I didn’t just choose to suffer, I embraced the suffering until it was the only thing I could feel aside from duty and obligation.
I had been many, many things in my fairly short and most definitely exciting lifetime but a hero wasn’t one of them.