Shelter ~ Jay Crownover

by Crownover, Jay

  A cock was a cock, but I liked the look of Sutton’s more than most. I was particularly charmed by the fact that he seemed genuinely surprised by his reaction to me. I’d spent my adult life being told by men that I made them hard, that they wanted me and desired me. And while there was no denying Sutton and I had chemistry in spades, he never even hinted that he was affected by me, that he was drawn to me. The fact he couldn’t hide his attraction to me seemed to shock him, but he wasn’t embarrassed by it. Nope, he was grinding that stiff flesh into my softness, leaving no doubt that if things were different, he could do more than make me dizzy and my knees weak. I wanted him inside of me. I wanted him to fill up all the places that had been left cold and dark when he told me to leave. I wanted to know what it felt like to get close to this man who was so skilled at keeping everyone at arm’s length.

  The hand that was caressing my chest skipped over the swell of my breast, the back of his fingers lingering long enough to brush over my rigid nipple. The contact made me moan against his mouth and wantonly pushing my chest out. It was far more than I ever thought I was going to get from him, but it wasn’t nearly enough. His fingers stopped to rest on the curve of my hip, his thumb finding its way under the hem of my tank top so that it could rub soft circles on the skin above the band of my jeans. The gentle touch had my body clenching and throbbing in an almost painful way. My thighs quivered and I could feel my body heating up and going soft. When I shifted my legs to find relief, I could feel how wet and needy Sutton’s kiss was making me.

  His tongue swirled against mine. Tasting. Taking. Leaving behind his distinct flavor and a longing that made my breasts feel heavy and my heart pound erratically. I circled an arm around his neck, fingers disappearing into his soft hair. The golden-colored strands were soft and silky in my hands. I was right about his hair looking better than mine when he finally washed it. The style wouldn’t work on a lot of men, but on Sutton the shaggy, wavy locks added to his wild and rugged appeal. He looked like a man who couldn’t be bothered to worry how his hair looked, and I liked that about him. I liked that he had things on his mind other than his appearance. So much of my life before I’d been attacked had been focused on how I looked and how my looks made my life easier. Afterwards, I realized how superficial it all was, how I needed to have something else to bank on. I was done coasting and it had taken a tragedy to make me finally shift gears out of neutral.

  His teeth dragged across my bottom lip, taking a moment to dig in before he soothed the sting of the bite with the stroke of his tongue. There was an edge to this kiss, something in it that was different from any other kiss I’d ever had. It was a kiss that would linger long after the man who was delivering it was gone. It was a kiss that I would compare all other kisses to, and sadly, I knew I would find the others lacking. No one kissed like Sutton Warner. No one had the intensity and deliberate dedication to explore every nook and cranny of my mouth. Not a single damp crevasse was left untouched, and when he pulled back we were both panting, our eyes glazed and our faces flushed.

  The hand he had resting on my hip moved so that his fingers skated over my stomach. He paused when he encountered the rest of the scars that were hidden there. The wild light in his eyes, the glow of desire that made the green go dark, faded and he took a step back, forcing my hands to drop from where they were still holding him tight. He ran a hand over his face. His fingers still on the lines that were lifted and raised on top of my flesh.

  “Doesn’t seem very fair.” His voice had dropped so low I could barely hear him and the look in his eyes told me he was drifting away, disappearing, even though he was standing right in front of me.

  “What doesn’t seem fair?” I wanted to reach for him. I wanted to offer my mouth up again and start pulling off clothes. I wanted to touch his scar the way he was touching mine. I wanted to put my mouth on it and try and replace the bad memories with ones that were far more pleasurable, but he took another step back, severing our connection and leaving me cold where a moment ago I felt like everything inside of me was on fire and burning out of control.

  He shoved his hands through his hair and moved across the large kitchen so that he could prop himself against the counter next to his abandoned sandwich. “It’s not fair that after everything you went through, you ended up with more scars than I did.”

  I swallowed, hard, and wrapped my arms around myself. I stared at him unblinkingly and whispered, “You almost died. What happened to me was terrible and scary, but it was nothing compared to the fear I felt when I realized you had been shot. I watched the light go out of your eyes. I felt you stop breathing. You went cold, but all the blood you lost was so warm. It wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop it. These scars are nothing compared to yours.” I waved a hand to indicate his rumpled appearance and gaunt, recovering frame. “And I think we both know you have twice as many scars on the inside as you do on the outside. People can’t see the marks that were cut into you the deepest. Your soul looks a lot worse than my stomach does, Sutton.”

  It was only a fraction of the things I wanted to say to him, but I wouldn’t get the chance to get into the rest, because just as I was opening my mouth to tell him how sorry I was for everything, Brynn burst into the room, arms full of grocery bags and an unexpected guest hot on her heels.

  Rodie also had his arms full of grocery bags, which he promptly deposited on the counter next to Sutton. The sheriff gave his friend a once-over, eyebrows lifting at the flush on Sutton’s face. “Glad to see you’ve decided to come back to the land of the living. You look better than you have in months.”

  Sutton grunted and took the bottle of water Brynn offered him as she started unloading the groceries. “Rodie was pulling up to the gate when I got home. He mentioned that he wanted to talk to you. I wasn’t sure if you were going to be up for visitors yet, but I’m so happy to see you’re up and around. You really had all of us worried, Sutton.”

  He narrowed his eyes at the chipper redhead and didn’t say anything. I decided to change the subject before he could drag the mood in the room down. “How was your coffee date?”

  Brynn blushed prettily and reached up to push some of her fiery hair off her forehead. Her gaze danced nervously between the two men who were now watching her with open curiosity. I could have kicked myself for not picking a less personal subject to steer the conversation toward.

  “It was fine. He’s very nice.” She lifted a shoulder in a shrug and let it fall. “He’s from Texas so he doesn’t know about my mom and everything that went down with Boyd. He doesn’t think I’m a gold digger or a homewrecker, so it’s easy to spend time with him. I’m not constantly wondering what gossip he’s heard about me or if he only wants to spend time with me because he thinks I’m a sure bet.”

  Both the sheriff and Sutton scowled at the young woman. “If anyone says that shit to you, you let me know. Your business is your business. No one else needs to be sticking their noses in it.” Rodie nodded in agreement at Sutton’s proclamation but didn’t argue that people tended to talk even when they didn’t have anything important to say.

  Brynn sighed and moved toward the groceries. “People always talk. I’m used to it. I know what happened and I know what would have happened to me if Boyd hadn’t stepped in the way he did. I don’t regret the choices I had to make. I’d do it all over the exact same way if I had to.” She hefted a bag off the counter and gave Rodie a questioning look. “I need to start dinner. We have two big groups of guests I need to feed. Can I have my kitchen back?”

  The sheriff nodded and hid a grin. “Sure thing.” He inclined his head in Sutton’s direction. “I need to talk to you for a minute.”

  I asked Brynn if she needed any help and she waved me away, telling me the prep work helped her relax. I was headed in the direction Sutton and Rodie disappeared when Brynn’s soft question stopped me in my tracks. “Did you see the blonde woman who was with the group Lane rode out with this morning?”

  Surprised, I dipped my chin d
own in a slight nod. “I did. She was kind of hard to miss.” At least her boobs had been with the way she was poured into her Western Barbie outfit.

  Brynn muttered something I didn’t catch and moved to tuck her long hair behind her ears. “She’s his type. He likes flashy and temporary.”

  “She’s a lot of men’s type.” It was the truth, but I didn’t think that was the case with Lane. I was pretty sure his type was the natural beauty who was standing directly in front of me. “But not all men. You can’t blame him for looking at everything she’s putting on display. She does it to get a reaction.”

  Brynn sighed again. “I guess that’s true.” She gave herself a little shake and forced a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’ll see you at dinner. It’ll be nice to have Sutton at the table with all of us again. It’s been too long. We all missed having him around.”

  I hummed a noncommittal response and slid out of the room. Sutton was shaking hands with Rodie at the doorway and promising him he would call if he heard anything. There was a deep furrow in his brow and tight lines around his mouth when he shut the door and caught sight of me. I still wanted to talk to him, to clear the air, but now was obviously not the time.

  “What was that all about?” The question was out before I could consider whether it was my place to ask. After all, I was just a guest here, one he had kissed the hell out of a few moments ago, but still. I had no claim on him.

  “Alexa hasn’t shown up for work the last two days. She’s an alcoholic so that isn’t entirely unusual, but no one has seen her or heard from her since we kicked her off the ranch. Burke hasn’t even seen her.” I didn’t know who Burke was and my confusion must have shown on my face. He swore under his breath and put his hands on his hips. “Burke runs the Big Horn, the bar you found me in the night you got to town. If you’re an alcoholic, Burke tends to be your best friend. He serves you just enough and makes sure you don’t drive home drunk. Alexa usually spends her lunch hour at the bar. So, if he hasn’t seen her, then something is up. Rodie went by her apartment and said no one opened the door. He wanted to know if I’ve seen or heard from her, and if she’s tried to contact Daye.” He shook his head. “Alexa and I don’t talk. Not that I was in any shape to deal with her the last few days.”

  “What are you going to do?” I didn’t like the idea that he was still somehow responsible for the awful woman who had threatened him when he was vulnerable. It didn’t seem fair that he was worried about a woman who was determined to make his life more difficult, but it was sweet.

  “Give her a call. If she doesn’t answer, I’ll ask Cy to stop by her place on his way home and check things out. It’s probably nothing. She’s been known to black out for extended periods of time. She also likes to drink and drive, so maybe she got picked up in another county. She’s not exactly reliable.” He said it with bite, but I heard the faint hint of concern underlying the aggravation in his tone.

  I wanted to reach out and touch him but he was shutting down and closing himself off from me. He’d open the door and let me sneak inside for just a minute. Now he was slamming it in my face.

  I curled my hands into fists at my sides and told him, “We still need to have that talk, Sutton.”

  He stepped around me, muttering over his shoulder, “I can think of a thousand better things to do with that mouth of yours than talk, Em.”

  He was gone before I could come up with a retort.

  The sad thing was, I would happily let him do a thousand dirty things to my mouth without complaint. But it hurt to know that he only wanted to do them so he could distract me. He was doing everything in his power to prevent the conversation we had to have. He didn’t want to hear what I had to say and I felt like I was choking on the words the longer I had to hold them back.

  The stubborn cowboy spun me in circles, and as frustrating as that was, at least I was finally getting somewhere. I wasn’t going anywhere until we hashed out our history, and I was absolutely going to tell him that his kisses were never going to scare me away. If anything, they made me more determined than ever to stick around and see this thing through to the bitter end.

  Someone by My Side

  Sutton

  Daye sniffled and shifted where she was curled up next to me in the borrowed bed. I’d been trying to soothe her to sleep for the last hour, but her restlessness and unease proved to be persistent. She was trying to cover up the fact she was crying by hiding her face against my shoulder. I’d watched the poor kid shed more tears in the last couple of weeks than she had in her whole life.

  Three days had passed since Rodie showed up to tell us that her mother was missing and there had still been no word from Alexa. Cy swung by her apartment each day, and every time he reported the place was still empty and looked like Alexa hadn’t been there for a while. Daye hadn’t heard from her mother either, and while it wasn’t unusual for Alexa to drop out of sight when she was hitting the bottle particularly hard, it was unheard of that she completely ignored her child. Alexa didn’t keep in touch with Daye out of some sense of motherly devotion; she did it because she knew rattling my daughter and keeping her on edge aggravated me. I was court-ordered to let Alexa speak with her daughter when she called. I’d been warned more than once about parental alienation, even though that wasn’t what I was trying to do. I just wanted my daughter insulated from the worst of Alexa’s decisions. I’d been told by my lawyer not to interfere. It was the one thing Alexa got to hold over me in our custody arraignment. I couldn’t deny her contact with Daye, so she used those calls as a tool to manipulate and control me. Rarely did a day or two go by without my ex reaching out to our daughter. She treated it like a game, and even though she wasn’t particularly loving or caring when she called, Daye had noticed the silence and had started asking probing questions.

  Not wanting to lie to her, I explained that her mother was missing and everyone was looking for her. I made her promise to tell me if Alexa reached out to her without going through me first. At first the little girl seemed indifferent to the fact her mother was unaccounted for, but as anxiety and worry grew in the adults surrounding her, she picked up on the tension. She had already been quieter and more reserved since I’d returned home, now she hardly wanted to leave my side and clung to me like I was in danger of vanishing into thin air like Alexa. I hadn’t spent a night alone since coming back from the days lost in withdrawal.

  I twined one of her curls around my index finger and bent my head so I could kiss her on top of her head. She always smelled like sunshine and strawberries. She was the best thing I had ever done in this life and I wanted to kick my own ass for how close I’d come to screwing it all up. She was the one person in this world I’d promised myself I would never let down, and I’d come damn close to letting it happen.

  “It’s okay to be scared and sad for your mom, baby girl. I’m worried about her, too.” I wrapped my arm around her thin shoulders as she burrowed deeper into my side.

  She gave a little hiccup of a sob and muttered so softly I barely heard her, “Sometimes she would leave me alone for a long time. I would cry because I didn’t know if she was coming back, but she always did.”

  I bit back a dirty word and fought to keep my anger at Alexa’s negligence at bay. Being mad at her for her lack of parenting skills wouldn’t help anyone and wouldn’t get us any closer to figuring out where she had gone. “I’m sure she’ll show up this time, too, Daye. Your mom has some problems that have nothing to do with you. Sometimes she lets those problems get the best of her and she doesn’t make great decisions.”

  Her blonde head popped up and her eyes, shiny with unshed tears, peered at me questioningly. “Do you have the same problems as Mommy?” She bit down on her lower lip and moved her eyes away from mine as pain sliced through my chest. “You left me, Daddy. You always promised me you would be there and you weren’t.”

  I brushed my fingers over her cheek and nodded solemnly. “I know, Daye. Your old man messed up, but you have to know I
would never leave you on your own. I couldn’t be here for you, but your aunts and uncles love you just as much as I do and they won’t let anything happen to you. They’ll always take care of you when I drop the ball. You are never alone. I’m always honest with you, baby girl. I had some different problems than your mom. I didn’t handle them in the right way. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Your dad was hurting pretty bad, worse than anyone knew. I forgot I had to be strong for you. It’s a mistake I won’t make again.” She was still crying but now her tears were silent and her eyes were wide and considering. “Do you believe me?”

  “I don’t like it when you smell like Mommy.” The words were an innocent accusation. Alexa always smelled like whatever bottle she’d just gotten to the bottom of and apparently, I’d been drowning in the same scent as of late. “I don’t like it when you sleep all day and can’t do things with me. It hurt my feelings when you went to stay in the other house.”

  It was like a fist to the gut. She already had one parent who was a drunk, she didn’t need another one. She was worried I was going to turn into Alexa, forgetting about her, leaving her on her own and disappointing her. I’d been right on the cusp, so close to going over.

  I pulled her into a tight hug, squeezing her until she giggled and squealed, trying to get away from me. “Your dad was a mess, Daye. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to see me that way, especially you. It’s my job to take care of you, worry about you, and make sure you’re safe and happy. I wasn’t in any shape to do those things and I didn’t want you to know I was falling apart. You already got saddled with a mom who needs some work, I didn’t want you to be burdened by your old man, as well.” It was a lot to process for a barely six-year-old, but I wanted her to know exactly where my head had been. If she had questions I would answer them honestly and lay it all out for her. I needed her to know that my recent stumble had nothing to do with her. That she was completely innocent when it came to the sins of both her father and mother.