And he’d made sure he had all that for Luci.
What was he doing?
He had no answer to that.
What he had was Luciana, right there with her hands on him and contentment in her eyes that he did not come home and tell her to call a cab. Instead, they talked things through, worked things out, and he his damned self had taken them to a place where it seemed this could work.
So with nothing else for it, he bent in and touched his mouth to hers before he touched it to her nose, and then he rested his forehead against hers and looked from close into her gorgeous eyes.
Only then did he speak.
“No matter what, baby, know down to your soul you’re the straight up best woman I’ve ever met and know I know that in a way you’ll be that woman forever.”
Throughout him speaking, her hold on him got tighter and tighter.
But when he stopped, she immediately stated, “Then we have nothing to worry about.”
He could tell she believed that completely.
And it scared the hell out of him that she was wrong.
“I . . . cannot . . . believe this,” Luci huffed out, lying flat on top of him, Hap on his back in his bed, her naked body shaking with laughter, which he could feel even though his equally naked body was shaking with the same.
“Not shittin’ you, baby. It was straight outta Footloose, and I won.”
She threw her head back and he felt her hair glide over his arms wrapped around her as she busted out laughing even harder.
He kept it up with her, quietly so he could take in hers while she did it, and when she got some control over it, she asked, “Wh-what happened then?”
“His tractor rolled after he jumped from it so he had to tell his pops who got shit-pissed, hauled his ass to our farm, got in my gramps’s face and demanded both of us be punished for playing chicken on expensive farm equipment.”
She was still smiling, but she couldn’t quite hide the warm concern in her eyes when he brought up his grandfather. She added to that sweetness by stroking his throat with her fingers.
“What did your grandfather do?”
“He assured the guy he’d find a fitting punishment for me, walked him to his truck, watched him drive away, walked up to the house and found me waiting for him in the hall, seein’ as I’d been in the kitchen with Gram listening to all this going down.”
“And then?” she pushed when he didn’t go on.
He smiled up at her. “Then he congratulated me for not bein’ a wuss and jumpin’ off first and asked me if I got the girl.”
Her body started shaking as her face lit up again. “Did you?”
He did.
He also got her virginity.
When you lived in a Podunk town in Iowa, playing chicken on expensive farm equipment for a date with a cheerleader was a sure bet to win the heart of said cheerleader.
As well as other things.
He did not inform Luci of the fullness of that.
“We dated awhile.”
“I’m sure,” she murmured, eyes dancing. “Did he punish you?”
Hap shook his head. “I honored the Cunningham name by keeping my seat and my wits even if it was doin’ somethin’ stupid. Gramps was like that. I figure he learned a lot from the mess that became my dad. That being there were a variety of lessons to teach a kid in any given situation, so he focused on priorities. Winning the girl or holding on to your honor by doing something daring, and keeping your shit even if it was also while doing somethin’ fool and dangerous was more important than any tractor. Even though, if I did something to that tractor being stupid and playing fuckin’ chicken on it, we’d have been fucked.”
“I would agree with him,” she declared.
“Obviously I did too. Especially then.”
She gave him a big smile.
He rolled her off and rolled onto her, liking the feel of her under him just as much as he liked the feel of her on him, he was just ready for the change.
He took some weight into his arm but left the other one free so he could stroke the skin at her side.
In turn she stroked the skin of his back.
And just like he couldn’t believe he didn’t want bacon that morning, because getting it meant he didn’t have Luci in his bed, he couldn’t believe right then he liked the feel of them there, the way they were, more than he liked what they’d finished doing twenty minutes ago.
If this was something that could work, they could always have this. No matter how much time passed, no matter how old they got, no matter if something ugly happened that took away his ability to make love to her, or her ability to give that in return, they could always be skin against skin, laughing in bed, finding some way to hold each other, touch each other.
It seemed like nothing.
And yet it felt like everything.
That noted, apparently, even though he didn’t have lunch and she shared she’d not had much of an appetite after what had happened that morning, they were hungrier for each other than they were for food.
That was why they were naked in his bed and the remains of dinner were still all over his kitchen.
He didn’t even put the skillet in to soak.
Now here they were, in his bed in his nothing-special house, no turn of the head and there would be a wide-open view of the ocean.
And he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered.
He focused on her, head on his pillow, hair everywhere.
“I like you here.”
Her fingers stopped roaming and her arms crossed his back, holding him close. “I like me here too.”
She did. She didn’t hide it. Even if he couldn’t believe it, it was right there all over her face.
He slid his hand up and stroked her cheek with his knuckles.
“They might not like you . . . at first,” he started. “But I’d have been proud to introduce you to my grandparents.”
She tipped her head on the pillow and he knew she was teasing when she asked, “Because I’m a supermodel?”
He wasn’t teasing when he replied, “Yeah. Because you’re a supermodel. But mostly because you’re Luci and they’d get you were that, but eventually they’d get you’d be happy living the rest of your days on a farm if the people you loved were there.”
The playfulness left her gaze and she held on tighter, not only with her arms but shifting a long leg from under his and wrapping it around his thigh, saying only, “Hap.”
“When I wasn’t thinking today about what an asshole I’d been this morning, I was thinking what you said about Gram last night. About the banana bread. About the high life. And how, back then, I’d get pissed when they’d sit in that little kitchen in that little apartment after dinner, Gramps havin’ his last cheap, crappy beer of the night, Gram drinking one of her cups of tea, and they’d laugh about nothin’. I didn’t think there was anything to laugh about so that shit pissed me off. I knew they felt the loss of the farm. It was bad before it happened. It was bad when it happened. It was bad after it happened. But now I know, eventually they realized there was nothing they could do about it, so they moved on and they had everything they needed right in that little kitchen. No doubt about it, all that sucked. But in the end, they were good.”
“I’m glad you’ve come to realize that, bello,” she said.
“Yeah,” he offered his understatement.
“Do you have other pictures of them?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Will you show them to me tomorrow night?” she requested.
“Maybe, if you don’t hightail your ass out of bed first thing in the morning and instead suck me off or fuck me off so I don’t feel the need to drag you upstairs and drill you even before you’ve swallowed your last bite of hamburger.”
She burst out laughing again, digging her head in the pillow with her hilarity, her limbs tensing around him tight, her body shaking under the weight of his.
<
br /> Hap smiled at her while she did, loving the look, the feel, the knowledge it was him that gave her that, not wounding her, not pissing her off, not doing some shit thing that would lead to her having a bad day.
And again, you got something to give, something that means more than shoes and views to Luci, and you know it. And straight up look at her, she thinks this is gonna work because if you got your head out of your ass, you’d realize it might just work too.
“Are we having hamburgers again tomorrow night?” she asked into his thoughts.
“Hotdogs,” he lied.
“Fantastico!” she did not lie.
Christ.
Luci.
“Should we go downstairs and clean the kitchen?” she suggested.
“No,” he answered.
She smiled but through it asked another question. “Should we go downstairs and get ice cream?”
“Shit yes.”
Her smile got bigger.
He pulled her out of bed before he pulled on his sweats.
She pulled on his tee.
He’d seen her in some incredible clothes, but it was the God’s honest truth she looked best in that.
He was going to hold her hand (yeah, hold her fucking hand) to walk down the stairs.
In the end he didn’t because she jumped up on his back.
So he carried her down the stairs with his hands holding the backs of her thighs, her legs wrapped around his middle, her arms wrapped around his chest, her lips blathering nonsense in his ear, and her weight on his back.
And Hap knew he’d carry her like that across a desert to get ice cream. He’d carry her over a glacier.
He’d climb mountains with her on his back to take her to something she wanted.
He’d do anything to have her blathering nonsense in his ear, giving him her weight . . .
And getting her something she wanted.
The next morning Hap was not woken by the alarm.
He was woken with a hand wrapped around his cock that pulled him to his back.
Before he had his eyes open, he had Luci’s wet mouth around his rock-hard dick.
He then learned something phenomenal.
Luciana swallowed.
After she’d taken him there, she came up over him, gave him her weight and aimed a satisfied look in his probably a lot more satisfied face.
“Better?” she taunted.
Challenge declared.
Challenge accepted.
He rolled her to her back and returned the favor.
When he’d finished her off with his mouth, was on her and looking into her soft, hazy eyes, he finally answered.
“Yeah, babe. Better.”
Chicken and Biscuits
Luci
“BABE, I GOT something to go over with you.”
Luci—sitting beside Hap in his truck on Saturday morning, heading back to the beach and to their talk with Sam and Kia in the afternoon, after having such a delicious day yesterday starting with orgasms and her cooking him breakfast, and ending with Hap making them spaghetti, going through pictures of him growing up, telling stories that did not seem tortured as they had done, then making love before falling asleep—did not want to go over something with Hap.
Especially when whatever it was, he sounded serious about.
She’d gotten him to a good place. If he wasn’t exactly relaxed, he was no longer pushing her away.
She needed this easy, for now especially, as she was uneasy about what Sam’s response would be, but more, what Hap’s response would be to Sam’s response.
And she needed this easy for him so he’d be feeling the good of them together to its fullest before he faced whatever reaction Sam was going to have.
“What’s that?” she queried tentatively.
“Thursday.”
She turned her head to look at him. “Thursday?”
“What I pulled Thursday morning.”
Oh no.
They didn’t have to go back over that. That was good.
Wasn’t it?
She studied his profile seeing clearly it was not.
Merda.
“I’m not sure, caro, that we—” she began.
He interrupted her. “What I said, bringing Gordo into it, was uncool and we both know that. But what it did, making you go back there, talk about him and how you miss him and how you always will—”
“Hap—”
“I shouldn’t have done that to you.”
“It’s just fact,” she said softly. “And you would not feel the way you do about me if it wasn’t.”
“Yeah, I know,” he replied. “And you got a lifetime of that. A lifetime of that loss. I don’t need to be forcing it to the surface.”
“Bello—”
“I loved him too.”
She shut her mouth.
“You know that. I miss him too. Not like you, I get that. But I just want you to know I feel that, for me, for you, and I’m there even if we’re like we are right now. I’m there when that hits you, however you need me to be.”
Luci stared at Hap’s profile unable to speak.
She would not be able to do that. If the shoe was on the other foot, he had lost a wife he adored and was moving on with Luci, but he continued to mourn his wife’s passing in his way, she would need him to do that inside himself. To hide that from her. She was too possessive. Too selfish. She knew that about herself, even if she didn’t like it. She’d want to be a bigger person, a better person, and she might be able to hide her feelings from him to give him what he needed, but it would hurt.
She’d never offer it, as Hap would say, straight out.
But he meant it.
He meant every word.
“I would not be able to do that for you,” she blurted.
He glanced at her before looking back at the road. “Sorry?”
“I would want to, but I would find it difficult to support you in that way.”
“Seein’ as that’s not the way it is, you don’t have anything to worry about,” he replied.
That was not the point.
She didn’t belabor the point.
Dio, but she loved him.
“May I ask you something?” she requested.
“Shoot,” he invited.
“If it was the other way around, not you losing a woman you loved, but if I’d found you first, not Travis, and I had lost you, how would you feel if Travis and I found each other?”
“I’d want you to be happy.”
Not a moment’s hesitation.
Not one.
“Do you say that because you know how I was with Travis?” she pressed cautiously.
“I say that because I’d want you to be happy,” he repeated. Another glance to her before he looked back at the road. “Baby, why do you think I’m right here and you’re right there?”
Luci turned her eyes out the windshield but not her attention.
I’d want you to be happy.
Dear Lord, she was going to cry.
“Luce?” he called.
She swallowed and stated, “I would find it in me to support you through the loss of a woman you loved, however you needed me to support you.”
“Honey, look at me,” he urged, taking up her hand, pulling it to his thigh and holding it tight.
She looked to him and he must have felt it because he didn’t take his eyes off the road when he resumed speaking.
“That’s not where we are. As sweet as that is, we’ve got what we’ve got. That’s enough to deal with. There’s no point to this conversation because we are where we’re at and not anywhere else, and we got enough on our plates. It serves no purpose to take it anywhere else. You found Gordo. You lost Gordo. You want me. I’m right here. That’s where we are. Let’s just find our way through that minefield, yeah?”
You want me. I’m right here.
What did that mean?
“I just want you to know that the Hap you had before we started banging didn’t g
o anywhere,” he went on, a teasing tone now in his deep voice. “I’m there for you, babe. To eat your breakfasts and put up with you tellin’ me I was hot even when I was sixteen and had shit for brains and a farmer’s tan,” he gave her hand a squeeze, “or however you need me to be there for you.”
“You were a very handsome young man, caro,” she retorted.
“I was full of piss and bullshit and didn’t learn a woman could have an orgasm until I was nineteen and the woman I’d just banged laid into me for being a selfish fuck and kicked my ass out of her bed. So thanks, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Luci was now staring at his profile with a different reaction.
“You didn’t know a woman could have an orgasm until you were nineteen years old?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“Incredibile,” she whispered.
“Nothin’ incredible about it.”
“That means more ‘unbelievable,’” she shared.
“Ah,” he murmured, now grinning.
“I’m very glad this woman kicked you out of her bed, Hap.”
That made him roar with laughter.
She enjoyed watching him do that, and further enjoyed him doing it holding her hand, his fingers tensing around hers with his humor, but the minute his laughter turned to chuckles, she asked, “Did your grandfather not teach you these things?”
“Babe, I grew up on a farm. We had a couple of cows when I was younger, always had dogs. When I was maybe nine, one of our dogs went into heat, the other one was rutting with her and Gramps said, ‘That’s the way a baby’s made, boy.’ He didn’t sound comfortable, even with just that. For me, I had no clue what he was talking about, but I knew I didn’t want anything to do with the whole business. That was the beginning and end of my sex education until the not very comprehensive shit they shared in sex ed at school. That is, outside me hitting thirteen and finding a titty magazine under my pillow. I don’t know who was behind that, Gramps or Gram. Whatever, it opened a whole world for me because I didn’t even know I could have an orgasm until I jacked off to that magazine. I had no idea what to do with the hard-ons I’d been getting. One look at a pair of tits, it hit me. Thank fuck jacking off came naturally.”
Luci laughed softly but she did it feeling something good and right fill her belly that had nothing to do with Hap being funny.
Loose Ends Page 12