by Nicole Snow
My pulse throbs. The rest of the world goes dark and silent. Lost in his smile and two brilliant eyes that shame the stars.
His hands squeeze mine. One drops away, reaching into his pocket, digging. I'm baffled how an epic game changer can be this small. Just a tiny box, wrapped in burgundy purple.
“Red...” Oh my God, is he speaking again? I'm very, very faint. “You're wrong, I think, I hope, because I'm asking you to be my wife. Marry me.”
With a flick of his thumb, earth tilts on its axis. I'm staring into a shiny slice of heaven forged in white gold and diamonds.
A ring. A rite of passage. A journey waiting for me to say the magic word.
“Jesus, Marshal...I...” I can't remember my own name. So I just sink down on the floor, too. I throw my arms around his neck, pushing my forehead into his so hard it hurts. “Of course, of course, of course...yes!”
I'm afraid I'll leave my own body. Good thing his kiss anchors me back in the flesh, and the ring sliding on my finger does the rest. His tongue hits mine and I'm home where I belong, happier than I've ever been to admit when I'm wrong.
“Thank fuck. I'm no expert at this proposal thing..”
“Marshal, it was perfect. You were right, and so is this. Just the speed we're meant for,” I whisper, echoing his words.
His eyes are narrowed now, fixed on mine with a balmy blue peace I've never seen. His next kiss comes with rough fingers in my hair, his other hand in mine, gripping the size eight promise he just made like it's forever.
Because it is.
“You're a bad man, Marshal Howard,” I whisper, once he finally withdraws his teeth from my bottom lip. “But I love you anyway. I'll love you through all the twists and turns we've got coming.”
“Love you, too, Red. Long as I draw breath, long as I've still got a pulse, only you. And darling, nothing's ever changing it. Nothing will steal it. Nothing will rip you away from me while I'm alive and I've still got fire in my lungs, no thanks to you.” His fingers are a vice on the last part.
I believe him.
I trust him.
In him, I've put my faith.
If our story could've ended here, it would've been perfect. But fate had other plans.
We were about to learn its heart-wrenching, bone cracking, soul torching agenda stops for no one.
10
Setup (Marshal)
Having her under me as my moaning, clenching, eager virgin nanny lit my balls on fire. Red turned me all kinds of crazy and took no prisoners.
Maybe that's why I didn't know having her as my fiancé would be nirvana. What the fuck is happening?
I said I'd be a married man. I got on my knees. And now I'm wrapped in the legs of a woman worth forever, lips pressed to hers, sucking every whimper off her tongue as my dick pumps overtime.
It's almost too easy. Too fucking simple for a savage like me.
I expected more torture, more confusion, more heartbreak along the way.
That's gone. Pales compared to the promise I just made, the chance at a normal family, and the bliss in this bed drenching my blood in sweet bourbon fuckery.
Something about that ring on her finger just makes her pussy better.
I know it's because it's mine. Because every time I see it shining in the dim light dancing across us from the open bathroom door, I get chills up my spine, electric shocks urging me to fuck her harder.
It's happening because I want to bring her off in this bed every night.
I want my wife to scream my name, rake her nails down my back, sink her teeth into my darkest ink.
I want her at her softest and her most violent. I want her when she's magic or when we're both on the brink of tears.
I want her damn soul. Tonight, tomorrow, and forever.
And once we're done marking this bed, when it isn't winter anymore, I want to take her under the naked sky.
We'll fuck for the moon and the sun, until every damn permutation of her and I is written in the stars.
“Come harder, Red. Come for me!” I whisper a familiar mantra in her ear. Familiar, yeah, but I've never meant it more than now.
My hips never knew this fire. They never rocked with an urgency and a tense peace, a patience and a fury. They were never a paradox collecting lightning, sending it to my balls, the charge inside them building every time I crash into her so hard the bed's frame ripples.
“Red, what did I just say?” Growling, I pull her cinnamon locks, tilting her ear to my lips. “What the fuck did I tell you, woman? Come for me right now.”
It's the last nudge she needs. Time freezes and her pussy constricts on every inch of me, heated and convulsing.
Pure heaven. She's perfection itself, arching her back like a good girl, ass up, my balls slapping furiously on her clit.
Her face dives for the pillow, muffling her screams. My ears devour every shrill whimper, just like my eyes feast on her coming this hard for me.
I love this woman when she's at her finest, prim and shy and put together. But I love her even more when she's completely undone.
Love her, love this, so damn much I can't even hold it.
I seriously fucking can't.
My dick burns, throbs, and swells inside her. A few more rough strokes and my fingers jerk her hair. I bury myself to the hilt and let go.
Come roars out of me like madness itself. Her sweet cunt works to wring me dry, clenching harder at my heaving cock.
I can't remember the last time I had a nut like this. It's never been this good.
I'm coming in the woman I'm going to marry for the first time, and it's fucking magic.
“Sadie!” Her name is the last thing on my lips in the storm. It sets my skin on fire, blinding hot, taking me apart to my soul and rebuilding everything from the bones up.
I'm a different man once I'm able to feel my hips again. I'm still hard, even if I've gone numb, and I thrust another harsh O into her before I'm fully spent. I turn her over for the finale. Both my hands go in hers, pinning them high above her head. She responds with the tightest legs I've ever had pressed to this body, ankles digging in my calves until I give it up a second time, losing myself in her delicate heat all over again.
“That. Was. Amazing,” she says later in bursts, a smile on her sly little lips. She's perched over me, hand on my chest, a flicker in those dark green eyes tempting me to go one more round tonight. “And it's really the start of something, isn't it?”
I grab her hand, bring it to my lips, and kiss until I think I've left burns. “Damn right. It's the start of something beautiful, Red, and it's gonna be forever.”
Forever. Can it really be? The reward for putting my deepest, darkest fantasies about tearing Jackson Kelley apart to bed?
I don't know, but it's in my head the next time I'm in my shop. It's a painfully frigid January day, zipping near zero. The wind chill is a whole lot worse.
I'm under two layers of flannel, adding an extra log to the stove every hour, hands stuffed up an old Buick job for Sheryl's boy. It's his first car. I wouldn't have taken on something this easy for so little pay, normally, but she's always been good to me, treating Mia and me like human beings every time we visit her diner.
I wish like hell I had a piece of that dangerous cherry pie with my coffee right now.
Nothing like what I'd give to have a little peace and quiet, though. A void without the steady thump in my psychotic ears coming from the corner. It's the ammo box, and it's all in my head.
Three angry, bloodthirsty ghosts straining to get out. Who the hell can blame them?
I let them down. I didn't kill him when I had the chance. To have a wife and family, I fucking have to, and it's shredding me.
It's only been two days since the storm. Less than forty-eight hours since I got down on my knee, popping the most important question in the world.
She heard the crucial part. But I also asked the universe, God, whatever you want to call it for a second chance.
I know what t
he woman I'm marrying said. As for the rest...
I try. Strain my broken thoughts, trying to work on this car, without seeing Adam's severed hands in mine, or Zane and Erik screaming, armor piercing rounds blown clean through them.
My friends died so I could live. Me, and the sick fuck who still needs to pay for his crime.
“I haven't given up, you assholes!” I scream, spinning around, hurling my wrench at the floor. The clatter temporarily shuts up whatever's wrong inside me. “Give me some time. Let me figure this out. There's got to be another way. Clean, legal, some slip to bring the fuck to justice without outright killing him.”
That pounding in the box has stopped. Rather, my mind can't fabricate it anymore.
Time to step away. I walk to the frosted window facing my house. Growling, I swipe the ice off, chip away a little circle to see into my living room.
There's Mia inside, sitting on the couch with Red. They're laughing, pointing at something. The huge orange blur leaping onto the ottoman a second later tells me everything.
It's Whiskey, and I've never seen the greedy furball so happy. If a cat could smile, it'd look like him squealing for another treat, snatched from the ample supply of two giggling ladies who really shouldn't be indulging him.
Damn if there's not something wrong with my face. I was worried about my head, my mental health, a minute ago for seeing ghosts. Now I have a new reason.
I'm smiling, too.
Grinning like a slack-jawed idiot at the scene inside, which ought to be ripped from a Christmas card. Best part is, it comes alive when I wrap up for the day, and finally drag myself inside to wash the grease and oil off before dinner.
This is my life. Not the one I deserve, maybe, but the one I'll do anything to keep.
It's hard as hell to let go, but I can't be judge, jury, and executioner. Not if I want to be a husband, a father, and a good man.
If justice demands blood, it's a mortal threat to the forever I swore I'd defend with my life. And if it wants to upend everything, then I'm not the man to serve its sin.
The winter drags on. It's been weeks and nothing's resolved. I've buried myself in morning coffee blacker than the void, happy family dinners and weekend breakfasts at the kitchen table, and sex so good it makes me forget how to sign my own name the next morning.
It's finally warming up, too, thank Christ.
The late February thaw makes the streets muddy. I'm coming home, tires kicking up dirt, an empty flatbed and a fat envelope of cash in my glove compartment, two rebuilt tractors lighter since I dropped them off this morning one town over. Doesn't get more satisfying.
I stop at the mailbox before I pull into our driveway, holding the envelope in my hands I'm about to stuff inside. I finally broke down and got it together this morning, a sympathy card I picked up at the drugstore last week, while Red was busy helping my little girl pick out candy.
I didn't want them to see. Hell, I want this thing out of my sight ASAP. It's rocket fuel for every sick, disturbing thing I'm trying to forget. If missing it wouldn't tear a fresh hole through my heart, I wouldn't be sending it at all.
It's like my eyes have x-ray vision. They can see through the envelope to the short words written inside, underneath three crisp hundred dollar bills.
Dear Mrs. Folwell,
This won't bring him back, but he's been on my mind a lot lately. I know it's tough when it's his birthday. Erik would've been twenty-eight this year. Hope this is enough to get that old boat running by your beach house. Take the money and send me another letter if it isn't.
I'm not trying to buy peace of mind. The first few times it didn't work, I stopped expecting miracles, even if it helps keep the bitter acid churning in my stomach from causing an ulcer.
It saves my brain from re-living the last crude jokes I swapped with that dark-eyed kid, before I watched his lifeless body hit the ground in front of me. His tags didn't even survive the air strike. I'd say it's a small mercy his death was quick, before the blinding hellfire incinerated everything, but that's never been the fucking truth.
There was no mercy.
Just a stinging cancer in my soul every time his birthday rolls around, and I send his mother a card, a tradition we started the first year after his death. If she didn't write me such kind Christmas notes, I'd stop.
But I can't, damn it. I'm the last person on earth who remembers her only son, and misses him. We share that strange, mystical bond. Nobody else hurts today like we do.
February 21st. An infamous day of heartache that'll stick with me for the rest of my life.
The rest of this life I've sworn I'll live clean, without any killing.
Live well. It's the best I can do to make sure Erik Folwell didn't die for nothing, I've decided.
Since I swore off ending Jackson's wretched life, it's all I can do.
I park my truck, pushing the letter out of my head. Stepping inside the house, I instantly notice the eerie quiet. Then Red's voice explodes from the living room.
“Jesus, dad, will you please calm down? Start over. What's wrong with her?” Her voice pricks my ears.
I move, thudding through the house, wondering what the fuck's happening. And where the hell is my little girl?
I find Mia sitting near the screened in porch on the side of the house, a Dr. Seuss book in her hand, and a fat shaggy tabby pressing his chin against her elbow. She looks sleepy, but there's another emotion I don't like pinched on her tiny face: worry.
“What's going on, honeybee? Come to daddy.” I pick her up, placing a calming kiss on her forehead. “You okay?”
I study her eyes, peering into them. She smiles softly, nods, and maybe it's not as bad as I feared. The anxious thump in my chest throttles back a notch. “Story time, daddy. Sadie had to get the phone.”
“How long?”
She shrugs her little shoulders. I hold her tighter, chastising myself for expecting her to become an overnight expert at telling time. Whatever Red has gotten herself into, she's too young for this.
I kiss her on the forehead again, holding her in my arms while we trundle into the living room. Red doesn't even acknowledge my presence, standing in the corner by the window, peering across the darkening fields while her dad's voice rattles over the phone.
“Just get over here, please. I need the help.” I can't tell if Peter Kelley sounds frantic or defeated. Both, perhaps. “She's asking for you. Jackson wants to call the paramedics, but we know how that goes...”
“Well, yeah! This time, I can't blame her. She's upset. You won't tell me what's going on, and why my stupid brother came by in the first place, freaking her out. Tell him to leave for starters.”
“Sadie...it isn't like that. Look, if there's ever been a time to have a family talk, it's –“
“Now. Yeah, yeah, I get it dad. Give me twenty minutes. I'll have to bring Mia because Marshal isn't home yet. This better not scare her.”
I'm standing behind her the whole time. The cat brushes against my ankles. I guess he feels the tension slowly strangling us, too.
“Okay, whatever,” her father says, his voice strained. “Just, please, get over. I'm afraid, Sadie.”
“Don't be. We'll figure this out,” she whispers, her voice softening. “If he's being an ass, dad, please just tell me. He shouldn't be in the middle of this anyway – hello?”
Her arm drops, the phone hanging limply in her hand. I clear my throat before she turns around, and the panic in her sweet eyes intensifies. “Oh, crap. You scared me. How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough, darling. Come here.” I shift Mia to one arm and pull Sadie into the other. I hold her tight, devouring her worry and confusion, wishing like hell I could keep my family like this forever.
“Talk to me. Why the family circus?”
“It's mom. She's...having a nervous breakdown or something. Again. I don't know.”
I tighten my hold. Mia runs her little hands through Sadie's hair, and for a second, we
pull back and smile. I put my little girl down, returning my hands to my fiancée's waist.
“Let me drive you. No barging into the thick of it, I promise. I'll crank up the heat and wait in the truck with Mia. Take all the time you need to sort this out.”
“Marshal, no. It's my problem. Family business.” Her little hands go plush against my chest. She's pushing me away, but the desperate spark in her eyes say something different. “I can handle this alone.”
“Your family's my family soon. At least in theory, right?” I raise an eyebrow.
Her cheeks burn hot and her gaze drops. “True. Okay, but let me scope things out first when we get there. This could get ugly. If Jackson's there like he's supposed to be...”
I don't let her finish. I just run my hand up her neck and push her into a long, sultry kiss. Then my eyes pound strength into hers. “Then I'll be a good boy, Red. You have my word. I'll give the prick space, no contest.”
She manages a thin smile, walking past me into the kitchen to grab her coat. She's waiting by the door by the time I follow, Mia in tow. I stop to help her small arms into her new purple jacket. “What would I do without you?”
“Dunno, darling. But that's not something worth fretting over. I'm here forever.”
“Back, I said. Last warning! Don't you dare come another step closer, Jackson Winstead Kelley.” Mrs. Kelley is screaming at the top of her lungs. I'm parked in the driveway, giving Red one last look of sympathy before she heads inside. I try to hide my worry.
She slides out of the seat, closes the door, and stomps through the snow.
I look over, glad I remembered Mia's earmuffs. She's lost in her tablet, a new game I bought her just yesterday, something where she flings pissed off birds around with a sling.