by Zoe Dawson
This time I wasn’t sitting still for it.
I walked up to the bar and Marcy took one look at me and scowled, narrowing her blue eyes at me. Geez, who rained on her parade?
“Have you seen Boone?”
For a minute she just stared at me. Then she marched to the end of the bar and crooked her finger at me. I stared at her for a moment. What was going on here? I had asked her a simple question.
Warily I walked to where she was standing. “Why don’t you leave Boone alone? You’re nothing but trouble for him.”
“What?” I said, a burning rising up into my gut. She was voicing my own doubts. “How is this your business?”
“Boone needs someone like me, not you. Why don’t you just go on your merry way?”
I stiffened. “Do you know where he is? If not, we’re done.”
She folded her arms and I turned around. That’s when I saw him. I started to head towards him when Marcy let out a shriek and grabbed my hair. I turned as she yanked hard, making my scalp sting and my eyes water.
“Let go,” I cried and shoved her. She tumbled backwards, hit a table, and knocked it over.
She came up swinging. A wild roundhouse punch that I was too slow to duck. It connected with my jaw and pain exploded all along the nerve endings, sending the inside of my lip against my teeth. I tasted blood.
I awkwardly blocked another wild swing and ducked another one, stumbling backwards. She jumped at me and we grappled.
People around us shot up out of their chairs, eyes wide with shock. Someone yelled “Cat fight!” above the buzz of conversation. Instantly a circle of onlookers collected around us as we crashed into another table, sending people’s meals flying.
I was just trying to protect myself, my perceptions had become strangely distorted, my vision zooming close up on Marcy and the anger blazing from her eyes. I could hear nothing but a loud, chaotic babble of sounds—screeches and screams and crashing.
But one thought was strong in my head. I would fight for Boone. I was fighting for him. This time no one was going to tell me I couldn’t pursue him or a relationship. This time I wanted to see where it could go.
I was lucky that I had grown up with a brother, because some of the moves I needed came back to me. I pushed her off me, ducked a couple more times and then punched her hard in her nose.
Then I heard a roar in the background, something between fury and a war cry, as Braxton Outlaw barreled into my line of vision, elbowing his way through the onlookers who didn’t move out of his way fast enough. He plunged through the crowd shouting at the top of his lungs, his eyes dark and electric blue.
Then I saw Boone. His mouth was open and he was gaping at us like he couldn’t believe his eyes.
Then he launched himself into the crowd and made a beeline for me. Marcy came at my face with her fingernails, I had to do something. I grabbed her wrists. That only made her madder. She twisted and got one hand free, trying to claw at my face again. I fought her like a wildcat.
I was still trying to fend off Marcy’s attack. The two Outlaw boys danced around us, angling to get a hold of one of us to pull us apart. I would have helped, but she still had my hair in her fist, and my inattention cost me a glancing blow off my cheekbone.
Then Brax saw his opening. He grabbed Marcy by her hair and around her waist, hauling her back. At that point I was seeing stars, and I staggered right into Boone’s arms. He gritted his teeth and cursed a blue streak. My stomach knotted, my breath like two hard fists in my lungs, disjointed thoughts shooting through my mind like shrapnel. God, he looked so good. I hoped I hadn’t hurt him too much.
Brax pinned Marcy’s struggling body against the bar. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!?” he shouted in her face.
She stopped writhing and suddenly settled down. Then she burst into tears when she saw the way Boone was holding onto me, the way he cradled me protectively against him. My scalp was throbbing in time with my cheek and jaw.
“You’re fucking fired. This kind of behavior in my place of business is not acceptable. Get outta here.”
She ran then and was followed out the door by complete and utter silence. Brax turned around and glared at me, then Boone. “My office,” he said. I stumbled when Boone moved and, without even blinking an eye, he lifted me into his arms. Brax grabbed the arm of one of the waitresses. “Clean up this mess.”
He turned to the crowd as I passed him, snuggled up in Boone’s arms. “Sorry, folks. Just a little misunderstanding. Everyone’s meal is on me tonight. We’ll get this all cleaned up and get you some more food. Bear with us for just a moment.”
Boone went through the kitchen doors and stopped briefly, asking softly for ice. The girl he’d asked nodded and gave me a quick glance. I was still reeling, so she seemed to wobble a little as my vision went wonky. I closed my eyes, trying to clear my head. Next thing I knew, Boone was sitting down holding ice against my cheekbone, his arm tight around me.
The door slammed and I heard Brax shout, “Is she the fuck okay?”
“I think so,” Boone replied, his voice subdued. I suspected he didn’t want to rile Brax up any more than he was already.
“What the fuck was that about?”
The door opened and then I heard Booker’s voice. “Brax, calm down. People are saying that Marcy attacked Verity out of the blue. Just jumped her.”
Kee-rist! Fucking A. Boone, I’m blaming you. A cat fight in my bar. Geezus, this will be all over town in like fifteen minutes.”
I stirred then and struggled to sit up. “Wait a second!” I said vehemently. “This isn’t Boone’s fucking fault.”
I covered my mouth and swallowed hard. “Oh, God. I said fuck. Oh, God, I said it again. I’ve never said that word. Ever in my life.”
Both Booker and Brax looked at me like I was an adorable little puppy who couldn’t keep out of trouble. Brax’s features softened and he strode forward. “Well a little fuck never hurt anyone,” he said.
“Are you really all right?” Booker asked.
I looked at him, then at Brax. A giggle escaped my lips. Then I laughed. Then I couldn’t stop. The whole thing was surreal. The preacher’s daughter in a barroom brawl, and right after I had a knock down drag-out with my parents.
Then Boone said, “I guess this wouldn’t be a good time to see if you guys wanted to go frogging this weekend with Henry Ducet?”
I doubled over and laughed harder, choking.
“Geezus,” Brax and Booker said together.
Chapter Twelve
Verity
“Where are you taking me?”
“Home,” Boone said. He looked so unhappy, and I felt terrible.
“No, Boone. I’m not going home.”
“Don’t argue with me, Verity. I’m a fucking train wreck. It’s best if you get far away from me.”
“I’m the train wreck! Is that what you really want?” I asked, my voice quivering.
He hit the wheel and then hit it again.
He braked right in the middle of the road. It’s a good thing we were on a road that didn’t have a lot of traffic.
“No. It’s not what I want. I fucking want a chance, but every time we turn around, some major shit’s going down. You have second thoughts. I saw that in your eyes this afternoon after you spoke with your daddy.
“I know.”
“Then why did you come looking for me tonight?”
I couldn’t seem to breathe, so I just pushed open the door and ran to the edge of the swamp, but tonight it gave me no comfort.
The moon cast a silvery sheen on the trees and the mist crept soft and white across the surface of the black water.
I had hoped to feel better with the fresh night air, but it was heavy and warm, without a breath of breeze. Folding my arms against myself to keep from shaking, I just stood there. My stomach knotted with anxiety, and I battled the weakness. So many years of being weak. Trying to live up to an ideal that was impossible.
I had fall
en so far from who I had been.
And, I was glad. I was so, so glad. Bring on the bar fights, the backbone I had grown, and most definitely bring on Boone Outlaw!
He stepped out of the shadows, into the silvery light, his hands in his pockets, his broad shoulders sagging. He looked beat, drained. Part of it was that he’d been sick and was still recovering, the other part was me. The flu had sapped his energy and I had put that fatigue in his eyes.
“Why did you come looking for me tonight, darlin’?”
“It wasn’t so I could make a spectacle of myself in front of Suttontowne and you,” I said, wryly.
He smiled and inched a little closer to me.
He leaned in, burying his nose into my hair, pressing his mouth against the skin just under my ear and I rested against him.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to be told not to care about you, Boone. I don’t want the illusion of you. I want you. I didn’t know who you were. All that time. All that time I wasted, when all I had to do was say no. But I never had the courage to go against my daddy.”
His breath hitched against my skin at my words.
“You do now?”
“I don’t know. I just couldn’t sit there when I had promised to go out with you. Not after seeing you spend your afternoon and how many countless hours on that play equipment. And the heartfelt declaration of a little boy with a pure heart who said he loved you.”
I turned to look at him. “Take me to your house. I’m not going home.”
He took my hand and led me back to his truck. “Who can argue with a peach pit?”
I stopped and pulled him against me. “Do you want to argue with me anymore?”
“Fuck, no, Verity. I want to take you home and hold you and be with you without all this fucking madness making us crazy.”
“You make me crazy, ever since I got back, from the moment I laid eyes on you. You’ve always generated such intense emotions.”
“I’m not supposed to admit to that shit, Verity.”
“What shit?”
“Emotions.”
“Right, guys don’t get to cry or be human. Isn’t that what you said? They just have to be strong.”
He laughed softly. “Right. The man code. Never show weakness.”
“But here’s the thing, Boone. That’s when you’re in the company of other men. When you’re with me, I want you inside out.”
He dropped his head, his voice husky. “You’ve already got that, Verity. You turn me inside fucking out.”
“Good,” I said softly. “That puts us on even ground.”
“There’s nothing even about this ground.”
Our gazes met and my heart jumped and did cartwheels in my chest. Just like in his truck this morning, we connected and he held me in thrall. I wanted to spend a lifetime learning the light and dark of his eyes. I didn’t think a lifetime would be long enough. He trembled with the power of our bond, and that rocked me. Rocked my world. Rocked me to the core.
‘Darlin’,” he growled, and there went my heart again. “Come here.”
He folded his arms around me and I pressed my face into the hollow of his neck, breathing him in. It felt so good to be held to let someone else be strong for a minute or two. Ironic that someone would be Boone.
It was easy to be with him when everyone else faded away. My daddy, Billy Joe, his brothers, even Aubree and River Pearl. I just needed Boone like I’d never needed anyone before.
Once inside his house, I didn’t even get to take a step. He pushed me up against the door and crashed his mouth into mine. His lips were like wet satin in the dark, traveling over my mouth in a wild, hot slide.
Wasn’t there a saying that history had a way of repeating itself? It seemed that was true, because here I was, engaging in the craziest, most sensual thing I’d done since this morning, and before that in the bed of Boone’s truck. Getting hot and naked with Boone Outlaw. But there was a vast difference between that truck bed and now.
Now I knew Boone. He’d let me in, and instinctively I knew that Boone wasn’t as bad a bad boy that he’d been made out to be. He had just pushed back at the negative wave that was always being pushed at him. I loved his sensitivity, and that he went all mushy for a little boy with a dead daddy, but Boone also stood up to Billy Joe without hesitation. All those actions just added up to one hot, sexy, heart-wrenching package. I didn’t think I was going to get enough of the way he handled things.
The way he’d handled Henry, the friendship they had, made me think in a private place inside me how wonderful he’d be as a daddy. That wounded, sucking black hole still open and raw inside me threatened to overwhelm me. Boone had a right to know. How dare I let my fear stand in the way of that?
But my fear was as black and as consuming as that hole. And now I was terrified of something else. Terrified of telling him about our son and watching that change what we had right now.
Boone let his breath out slow and easy. “You tie me up in knots and you make me crazy. I don’t think I’ve had a clear thought in my head since you came back.”
“You do the same thing to me, sugar.”
He pulled me against him, and I was immersed in his embrace, lost in his kiss. As he popped the button on my shorts, continuing to kiss me, he dragged the zipper down. His hand slipped inside of the denim, searing on my hip, then around my butt cheek as he cupped me and pulled me against his groin. His tongue slipped inside my mouth, and when I sucked on him, he groaned. A burning glide later, his hand was against my pelvis, delving into me, finding my throbbing, wet core. Impatiently, he pushed my shorts down off me.
His touch unleashed a host of needs that had lain dormant until this morning. Now they leaped and twisted, wild with the prospect of freedom.
I was so close to freedom. If I only had the courage to let everything go.
We found his bed, and when he came down on me, he was completely naked. That boy could shuck his clothes faster than a gator strike. I took a breath, soaking up the scent of him all around me in his sheets, on his pillow, and the hard, tactile stimulation of him.
Just Boone.
He slipped off me and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp. At the sight of the flex and give of his back muscles, I reared up and pressed myself to his back. Kissing the silky nape of his neck, his hair tickling my nose, soft, smelling so fresh and clean, then his shoulders, running my hands over the hard muscle of his chest to his thick, ridged abdomen, and on to the hard heat of him. I’d really liked touching Boone there.
“Verity,” he groaned, thrusting his hips, and arching his back. His head fell to my shoulder, giving me access to his throat and jaw. I took advantage and pressed my mouth there, open and needy, his stubble rough, the salty taste of him delicious on my tongue. Gripping him gently, I ran the hard heat of him against my palm, gloving him. I guess I hadn’t been sure how he would feel—certainly not like satin, the head of his hard-on even softer.
He grabbed my wrist, his chest heaving, his breathing ragged. “Even though that feels fucking fantastic, if you don’t stop, you’re going to jack me off right now.”
I groaned into his back. It shouldn’t be such a turn-on the way he talked to me, so raw, but it was honest and it felt intimate. I liked it. A lot.
But I wanted one more slide, and he was powerless to stop me as I tightened and pushed my hand all the way to the base. “Geezus,” he panted. “Geezus.” He rolled his head. “Fuck me.”
I pressed my mouth to his ear. “Yes, please,” I said, loving that I held all six feet two inches of hot and bothered Boone Outlaw in the palm of my hand.
He laughed softly, the rumble vibrating against my palm, which still caressed those enticing muscles. “You’re killing me, darlin’. Fucking killing me so good.”
I let go, and I think we both knew if I had decided I wanted to…jack him off…I could have.
He moved then, all power and hot, bare muscle, pushing me back and climbin
g over me, stripping my panties off me.
His hands fumbled at the buttons on my blouse. I grabbed his face and kissed him and his hands paused on me as I distracted him completely. I loved the way he threw himself into each movement of my lips over his succulent mouth. “Boone,” I whispered.
He sank into my kiss, devouring me, then he pushed my shirt away, and the cool air felt good on my skin. But it was soon replaced with his hot mouth, open and hungry for my skin as he sucked, kissed and licked his way down my neck to my shoulder. He curled his fingers in the edge of my bra and roughly pulled the cups down. I gasped and groaned at the feel of his tongue stroking along my collarbone. Then he squeezed my breasts, plumping up my sensitive nipples, and he suckled and licked each crest in turn, over and over as my hips pushed against his hot, fully aroused body.
I sent my fingers into his hair, loving the feel of him and the delicious sensations he aroused. They swept through me in waves, rendering me incapable of doing anything more than experiencing—the rasp of his tongue against my nipples, the tug of his lips as he sucked at me, the play of his musician’s fingers over my rib cage.
He pushed inside me and I was caught off-guard by the sudden, penetrating thrust. His hands pressed into the mattress on either side of me. He made a soft ah sound and then groaned deeply. Oh, my, God…I arched my back and he pushed into me again a little desperately, kind of like he’d lost his control.
Oh, my, God. Boone out of control was even sexier.
The temperature in his room jumped at least fifteen degrees.
He did it again, his hips thrusting as he arched his back, groaning all the way. His chest lifted, the thick muscles across his chest and shoulders drawing tight, his biceps taut as he pressed his hands into the mattress. He was so gorgeous to look at and felt so amazing with his slow, sensual slide into me, almost like he was trying to resist. The wave of pleasure was so intense, I came, hard.
He cried out and his hips bucked in three short, hard thrusts, electrifying me, taking me higher, until I…until he slowed it down again, pulling out of me, kissing me and slowly working his way down my body with his mouth.