by Zoe Dawson
Fuck.
#
Verity
I couldn’t help just staring at Boone. I’d never heard such a pure, clear, sexy voice before, not even on any recording artist I listened to. Not even Booker’s voice had that quality. My heart didn’t even know what to do with all the stuff that was filling me up. Boone was like a constant set of explosions. One after the other.
Now he was conversing with a blond hunk who was looking at me like I was his own personal ice cream cone on a really hot day. The guy was gorgeous and ripped, taller than Boone by two inches at least, and Boone was six feet two. Wider in the chest and shoulders with a lot more muscle, the guy’s shoulders and biceps were impressive. He was hot, with his golden, wheat-colored hair pulled back in a low ponytail, and ocean blue eyes. His goldenness was a stunning contrast to the dark beauty of Boone. I dismissed the guy in the heartbeat it took me to glance over him.
They left the church, and as soon as the other people who had come out to listen to Boone sing disappeared, Billy Joe grabbed me roughly by the arm and dragged me behind the sanctuary and into the vestry.
“You think you can treat me like this, Verity?” His hand tightened on my arm. “For Boone Outlaw? You’re obviously under his spell. He’s a devil.”
“No he isn’t, and you are being a complete jerk. I’m not interested in you, Billy Joe. We don’t have a relationship. Now, let go of me!” I demanded, trying to pull away from him, but he just tightened his fingers, digging into my skin. “You’re hurting me.”
He shoved me against the wall and pressed against me, his mouth coming down, but it never met mine. Suddenly, he was just gone. And all I caught was a streak of blue, biceps bulging, as all six feet two of enraged Outlaw slammed into Billy Joe, shoving him away from me. He hit him in the jaw so hard Billy Joe crashed into the wall and hit the floor. Then Boone was standing in front of me, his body a tough and muscular barrier between me and Billy Joe. I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing my face against his back. I could feel his rapid heartbeat against my forehead.
“Out of respect for where we are, Freeman, I won’t fucking kick your ass, but if you ever lay your hands on Verity again, all bets are off. I will fuck you up.”
I heard Billy Joe get to his feet. “You’re going to be sorry, Verity. Really sorry, you little bitch! You two deserve each other,” Billy Joe snarled, and his heavy footsteps faded as he left the small room.
Boone turned to me, pulling me against him and burrowing his face into my hair. “Are you all right?”
I nodded. I couldn’t speak. He gently cupped my chin and tilted my head up. His arms tightened around me. He searched my face and held my eyes trapped with his concerned ones. Then with a soft moan, he just slipped his mouth over mine. I wanted to cry, and if I had been able to catch my breath for even a second, I might have—but I wasn’t going to be able to catch my breath, not with Boone kissing me, touching me.
He had magic hands, utterly magical, and the taste of his mouth left me breathless—again. I had nothing to compare Boone to, because he was literally the only boy I had ever kissed, but I knew there was no one who would ever taste like Boone Outlaw, darkly delicious, primal male, answering a need in me I hadn’t known I had until the first time I’d kissed him. I’d wanted him so badly all during that party, even before I swallowed that X. And, after I had, there was no stopping me, not even Boone had been able to stop me.
I’d been enthralled with him, absolutely mesmerized by the heart-stoppingly beautiful boy who had looked up at me sleepily from that truck bed. He was the most fascinating combination of tough guy tempered with a sweet, gentle side that was compelling and made my heart break, not only because I’d discounted him, but because of the secret that burned hotter in my gut with every minute I kept it from him. But I couldn’t tell him. Not now. Maybe not ever.
The ramifications of telling him that I had lied and taken away his choices scared me. I was afraid he would hate me. I didn’t want to lose that special way he looked at me the way I had lost my son. No, not lost, given up.
Given up. Oh, God. If only I’d known then what I know now.
I had been so frightened when I discovered where having wild sex with Boone Outlaw had landed me. Just barely nineteen and pregnant. Terrified and alone in a new city, without the comfort of my momma, whom I had missed with a pain so sharp it was still there. I think my momma would have supported me. It wouldn’t be my momma who judged me or looked at me with that disgusted, shamed look. No, it was my daddy who would look at me that way if he learned that I had been carnal with Boone and birthed a child out of wedlock.
He would be just as freaked to learn that I still had carnal thoughts about Boone. That I wanted him even now. But there would be no more mistakes. I was on the pill. And I had already decided that I wanted to be with Boone again. I wanted him to participate one hundred percent, to make the choice to be with me and remember every moment of it.
Boone was everything I had never had, everything I wanted to be—wild, free, not living by anybody’s rules.
His face in the moonlight when I’d taken him inside my body was something I would never forget. The pleasure, the intensity of his eyes, even glazed with drink and drugs, the soft sounds of his groans as I took him in uncontrollable thrusts, the X heating my blood and my core until I couldn’t think, could only want and want and want.
I wanted like that now, and there was no drug in my system except Boone. He was the only drug I needed.
That’s when my plans took a nosedive and everything just went to hell inside my head, jumbled up into a crazy, mixed up chaotic muddle.
He pulled his mouth from mine. “Come with me to Lafayette. I have to give this lady my plans for her English garden.”
“What? But that’s a business meeting.”
“I’ll just tell her you’re my assistant,” he said, “I don’t want to leave you here right now.”
“I have to help Lindsay with lunch.”
He looked at his watch. “That’s three hours from now. I can easily have us there and back with time to spare. Come with me, darlin’.”
There wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be. “Yes,” I said.
Chapter Ten
Verity
“You’re staring at me. Is that because you think I’m a savage for socking Billy Joe in church?”
He was heading away from the church, and the relief of getting away from there was making me feel a bit giddy. The expansive cab of his truck was just as neat and tidy as his house and bedroom had been. An interesting side to the most reckless of the Outlaw brothers.
His question was so far from the truth that I laughed, still staring at him. He glanced at me again. I shivered remembering the anger in Billy Joe’s eyes and the hostility that poured off him. “Billy Joe got what he deserved. He doesn’t have any control over me. I was only thankful you were there to stop him.”
I felt different because of Boone’s example. He never apologized for his actions. Just did what he thought was right. All these years, I’d made myself small, let my daddy discount me, make me less of an individual and more of an extension of him. I’d stifled who I really was to fit myself into his mold of the perfect preacher’s daughter.
I decided that now it was time for me to be who I was. To figure out what I wanted out of life, and to take it and mold myself in my own eyes. Not in the eyes of my daddy, or even in God’s eyes. Although I did love both. No, I was ready to become who I really was, and it wasn’t some shrinking, bite-her-tongue jellyfish.
The thought of telling my daddy still terrified me, but even more terrifying was telling Boone.
“Then why are you staring at me. Is it my amazing good looks?” he said, ever-so-conversationally.
“You say that like you’re kidding, Boone, but you are drop-dead gorgeous. You must be aware of that. You had them hanging on the bar at Outlaws when I was there, panting to get your attention.”
He shifted. “I guess, but drawin
g girls by the way I look doesn’t really interest me.”
“There you go, making me change my opinion of you.”
He shot me a quick glance full of trepidation. “What does that mean?”
“It means, I have so many regrets. That’s why I’m staring at you. Regret for what I’ve done and regret for what I didn’t do.”
“Why don’t we just leave the stuff from our past in the past? It’s over with. Starting fresh seems to me to be a better idea.”
“There’s always baggage.” The toe of my foot hit his iPad and it flashed on. I reached down to retrieve it and got caught on the first photo. “What’s this?”
He looked over at the device and said, “That’s my portfolio.”
“May I?”
“Sure. I show it to everyone, no reason you can’t look.”
I started browsing through the images, and as each one sailed past, Boone’s talent evident in each project, my chest tightened even more and tears that were hot with remorse pressed harder and harder against the backs of my eyes. Then I got to something that wasn’t part of his portfolio. It was a portrait of me, my face pensive, leaning against a window frame. He’d drawn this on his iPad? A tear slipped out, dropping onto the screen. After that, I couldn’t hold them back. I closed the device and set it in my lap, and then turned to look at him again. The pain, the longing were all tying me up in knots.
“Boone,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry that I caved to peer pressure, sorry that I let this town dictate to me who I could and couldn’t talk to, interact with. Sorry that I didn’t find you last summer. Sorry for…” My voice died, my guilt shutting off the sound.
He glanced over at me, then his face got all concerned and he pulled the truck over, into a secluded spot so that we were sheltered from the road.
“Verity. What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
“Because I wanted to talk to you every day. I wanted to satisfy my curiosity. I was attracted to you, only I kept denying that because I had to be a good girl.” It all came pouring out of me. In the past, I might have worried about being foolish, but I didn’t think I was wrong about Boone, and that made it ten times worse, because right this minute I was more sure about him than I had ever been about anyone in my life. “I had to be perfect. And, you were Boone Outlaw, the bad boy with a bad reputation that you didn’t deserve. But who can do that? Who can measure up to being perfect? Who would want to?”
I covered my face with my hands and he unclipped my seat belt, dragged me into his lap and slipped his arms around me. It felt so good. So amazingly good.
“Why, Verity? Why me?”
I dropped my hands and looked up into his earnest face. “Because we were both handicapped by where we lived and who we were. Because we gave in and gave up because we were scared and young and stupid. Because you looked so lost. As lost as I felt, and I thought maybe you and I, we could find our way together.” I had such a sucking black hole in me. I needed to heal it, close it up because it hurt so much, and drained the life and hope right out of me. And this was only the first step.
His proximity soothed me, but also made it hard to concentrate.
“Is this the part where you’re going to apologize all over me?”
“I’m serious, Boone.”
“I can see that. I’m trying to hold onto my sanity here, Verity. I’m trying to keep my hands off you, my mouth off you. I’m trying to…give us time to see…”
I covered his mouth, his lips soft and firm against my fingertips. I leaned into him, my face close. Then replaced my fingers with my mouth and kissed him with all the longing I had in me. Breaking off, with just a hairsbreadth between us, I whispered, “The last time we were together, we both didn’t make that choice. Now that I know you better, I’m making that choice now. I want you, Boone. I can’t say it any plainer than that. I have wronged you in many ways.” I pressed my mouth against his again, consuming him the way this feeling for him was consuming me. Could this be another mistake? Maybe, but maybe my mistake had been not trying hard enough to find him.
I hated to think my fear dictated so much of my life, but it did. How to overcome that? Maybe with Boone I could. I had lost so much to the fear, and yet it still dominated me like a live thing. I had to know if there was something between us. I felt it strongly. “But I won’t waste another minute pretending that I don’t want to be with you.” I brushed my lips against his, slipping my tongue out to taste him. “Not another minute.”
His chest heaved against mine, I could feel his hard-on as it grew beneath my hip. I remembered what he’d looked like naked and in a daze—twice. Heat suffused me, heating my blood. I wanted to see him in the hard light of day. The clearness of his eyes, the decision shared between us.
“We’re in my fucking truck,” he growled and moaned at the same time, pressing his mouth fiercely against mine every time I took it.
“I don’t care. What difference does it make where we are? This isn’t about location. It’s about discovery.”
“I don’t have any condoms in here.”
“We don’t need them. I’m protected.”
“I think we should…think…about this,” he groaned before his mouth slammed down on mine.
And with that admission on his lips, sealing that plea against my mouth, I felt that heart-wrenching, sucking black hole lose some of its power over me.
#
Boone
With whatever brain cells hadn’t been swamped by Verity, then doused in testosterone, then overwhelmed by a raging need, I fired off one thought. I wanted something more from her.
I pulled away from her. “I really want to get naked with you. I do, but I’m trying to…” she kissed me again, trying to shut me up. I got lost for a few minutes in the softness of her mouth, but then a cell fired again. I was down to one.
“Verity,” I said, pushing at her again.
“Boone, you think too much.”
“No, wait,” I said drowning as she went for the buttons on my shirt. “Tell me something about yourself. Make it quick.”
“What…Boone, please,” she said, her brown eyes pleading.
“Non-negotiable,” I managed. It was nothing but blowing air. A total and bald-faced bluff. All she had to do was touch me and I was burning up and going down in flames.
“Seriously?”
I nodded.
She started to kiss my neck, and all I had to do was slip my hand underneath that pretty white dress with the scalloped edges that looked so good against her tanned thighs.
She took a deep breath. “I made this dress. I want to be a fashion designer.”
“You made this dress?” I said, trying to breathe around the imprint of her palms on my bare chest. When had she unbuttoned my shirt? She was a resourceful little peach pit.
“It’s really pretty on you, but I think you’d look beautiful in a grain sack.”
She stilled and just stared at me with that look girls gave you when you were being especially cute or sexy or a stupid male. It was the same kind of look she’d given me after the last note of “Grace Like Rain” had died. Like she wanted her hands on me and had decided that melting all over me was a really good idea.
I couldn’t, wouldn’t, and didn’t plan to argue with that. No. Wait. That one cell was still functioning, just barely and my dick groaned, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Then she moved, straddling my lap, cupping my face. “Boone,” she whispered. “Boone.”
That was it. Just my name, like she was trying to understand who I was by saying it in that breathy voice that made my one remaining brain cell start short-circuiting. Her face softened and my heart felt tight in my chest, like something was squeezing the hell out of it.
“It’s been a year,” I said “And yet one look at you, one whiff of your scent, and it might as well have been yesterday. I’m so distracted by the constant raging hard-on I’ve had since laying eyes on you in Outlaws that I can hardly think straight. So, getting you
naked and burying myself as deeply inside you as I can, for as long as I can, until I can get myself back under control, sounds really good to me. Then, and only then, might I have a prayer of regaining my sanity. But I’m still not sure that’s going to work.”
She raked her nails over my pecs and across my nipples and I arched my back and my hips rose uncontrollably against the hot, sweet center of her. “You made the pattern for this dress and everything?” Apparently, that was one tenacious brain cell.
This time she groaned. “Boone, really? Oh my God, you’re killing me. Please, please stop thinking and just be with me. I’ll tell you everything about my dress you want to know and all about my designing as soon as I have you the way I want you.”
“Oh, fuck….fuck, Verity. I want you so much.” One of the straps of the dress slipped a bit over her creamy shoulder, and that was kinda it, my one last remaining cell gave up the ghost. And my dick screamed, it’s about fucking time!
I slipped my fingers underneath that precarious lace and tugged it off her shoulder, my mouth going to the creamy skin there. I breathed in the irresistibly sweet scent of her skin, so powerfully feminine, and my head swam with the way she jacked me up. Her face went into my hair and she slipped the fingers of one hand into it as my mouth moved up her throat.
Groaning at the incredible feel of her pressing down on my dick, I could feel my jeans getting uncomfortably tight. I pushed the other strap with the tip of my finger, and it slipped off without a protest, whisper quiet, right down her arm. I dragged at both straps and the bodice slipped away, baring her breasts to me.
I made a soft sound in my throat and she moved her hips against me in response. That scent, the way she smelled, made my head swim. She was exquisitely beautiful, her breasts full, soft globes, her nipples darker than her skin.
I took her ribcage in both of my hands, and arched her back, watching her face as she rubbed against me, her nipples tightening into tight, sweet knots.