by Rye Hart
Her hips start grinding and she takes all of me in. Her eyes roll into the back of her head yet again as she moans louder, wet and wild atop me. I grab her hips and buck her a little. She cries out with delight. I slide my thumb into her mouth and she sucks eagerly, now opening her eyes to stare into my own.
This woman is my kind of wild. I love it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: SAM WASHINGTON
I’ve never ridden a man like this in my life, but if I stop, I feel like I’ll die. I grind down on him harder and he meets my body by thrusting his into mine. I press my hands into his chest to get better traction as I ride him. He places both hands on my breasts and begins rubbing at my nipples. I pull my top off as he tears at my bra, both of us desperate for this. He bucks a little harder when he sees me fully naked and spread on top of him.
I feel so free. I can feel myself getting close to climax and I think he can feel it too. He doesn’t want it like this though.
He pushes me off and stands quickly. We’re both still for a moment panting and staring at one another. Suddenly he pulls me to my feet and turns me around. He pushes me against the wall and slides my legs apart by pushing his knee in between them. I feel him rub himself along my inner thighs. There is a stinging smack. He just spanked my ass.
“Do it again,” I say, nearly out of my mind with desire.
Hugh spanks me again, harder, then grips the back of my neck with one hand. He puts his chest against my back, pressing me into the wall. The weight of him makes me pant, but my breath quickens when I feel the tip of his cock slide into me from behind. I let out a cry and he slowly pulls back. He eases in again, slowly, giving me time to adjust.
He continues to mount me as I arch my back. His grip on my neck tightens as he thrusts it in so deep that I have to rise up on my toes to take it. One of his forearms remains around my neck, holding me in place as he fucks me.
“Are you okay?” he whispers hoarsely in my ear.
“Yes,” I say, barely able to get the word out. “Don’t stop.”
He takes a grip of my hair, pulls my head back slightly, and thrusts in deeper than before. Over and over, he pounds away at my backside. I am lost, oblivious to everything but the sounds and sensations of our bodies. Again and again, he slams into me, cupping my ass in one hand one moment, then reaching around to play with my clit. I’m pinned against the wall and couldn’t escape even if I wanted to.
A low groan rises up in me as my body shakes.
“Hugh,” I cry out. “Hugh!”
I come hard as he pounds away, then once again before the exquisite convulsions of the first have stopped. This is all I have ever wanted to feel. Consumed. Taken away. Outside of myself, yet inhabiting myself in a way that I never could have understood without Hugh inside me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: HUGH MADDOX
Watching her come like that has me on the brink. I’ve got her from behind, still inside of her, still moving. But I need a change of pace.
I give her a moment to catch her breath as I pull out. I kiss her back, running my fingertips along the backs of her thighs to see if she’s still game. I keep kissing and she starts to breath harder, becoming aroused yet again.
Good girl.
I turn her around and lift her up against my torso. She stares into my eyes in total disbelief. As she tightens her arms around my shoulders, I slide into her once again. We stare into each other’s eyes, her mouth hanging open, her breathing going deep just as I go deeper too.
Her arms lock around my neck as she draws herself tight against my torso. She holds my gaze as I continue to lift her, up and down, on my cock. Her eyes are almost daring me to try and stop. I can’t. And I never will. Sam’s mine now. And this is just the beginning.
I pause to kiss her neck and ears. She meets my mouth with her own for a lengthy kiss. She looks into my eyes and in that instant we both know what this is. And it’s far more than I ever imagined possible for myself.
I want to kiss Sam. I want to smash her. I want to eat her alive. Instead I’ll fuck her into oblivion. I give it to her fast and hard and delight in watching her eyes roll into the back of her head yet again. The sensation is too much for her and she goes limp. She dangles in my arms as I move in and out of her. Her moans start again and her grip around me tightens once more.
I tighten my hands on her hips and she knows what’s next.
I push her against the wall and hold her still as I feel myself coming.
“Do it,” she says. “I want it.”
I put my hands on either side of her, pinning her arms against the wall. I notice the tendons of my forearms bulging. It goes on and on and then she’s coming one more time as my anguished shout takes us both over the edge.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: SAM WASHINGTON
We stay there, standing, panting, cooling off, for a couple of minutes. He withdraws and I am reminded that this will all end. All stories do. But whatever happens next, it will have been worth it.
Hugh puts an arm under my knees and princess carries me out of the room, up the stairs, down the hall, and tosses me onto his bed. “Don’t you move,” he says. “You’re sleeping with me in my bed.”
He leaves, locks the doors, closes the curtains and returns, getting in beside me and turning out the light. “Turn over,” he says.
I give my back to him and he snuggles up against my ass. He reaches over and laces his fingers through my own.
I want to thank him for giving me the best orgasm of my life.
But he is already snoring gently in my ear.
The rain continues to fall, buying us more time.
I must have had the longest and most soothing rest of my life, because I didn’t wake up until the next day.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: HUGH MADDOX
The rain has cleared up this morning. Shit. This means she might leave soon. I hope that doesn’t make me sound too much like Norman Bates, but this woman is a treasure. I allowed her to oversleep. She deserved it. I’m not sure what happened last night, to either of us, but it’s the kind of memory that could sustain me for the rest of my life.
Dammit. I don’t want the memory.
I want her.
Night after night.
Until she begs me to stop.
But damaged goods is more than she deserves.
In an attempt to push the thought of Sam leaving out of my mind, I begin to cook breakfast.
Fair’s fair, as we agreed last night.
Jesus.
Even the thought of it gets me hard. I have to tuck my suddenly interested dick into the band of my sweat suit so it doesn’t bump the hot frying pan that is currently full of sizzling eggs.
“What’s cooking?” she says, appearing at the bottom of the stairs. She’s glowing and I my heart beat begins to quicken at the sight of her.
“Eggs and bacon,” I say. “Coffee. Brought them up from downstairs. Thought we might try a normal meal away from the chamber of horrors.”
She bites the back of my shoulder and puts her arms around my waist. “What’s this?” she says, feeling my poorly concealed erection.
“The usual.”
She giggles.
God, that sexy giggle again. It would haunt me for the rest of my life.
We sit and eat.
“So the rain is cleared up,” she says. I can’t read her tone. She could be disappointed, bored out of her skull, or sleepy. “Does this mean you can take me through a fabulous walk in the woods and tell me all about what my boss calls the ‘animal sanctuary thing?’”
“What do you mean? I haven’t heard of anything like that.”
“Oh. She said she heard that someone was cutting down forest to make an animal sanctuary, but that would mean displacing all the animals that were already here. Nothing like that?”
“Nope. Sounds like someone’s pulling her leg. Or she was pulling your leg to get you out here. I’ve got a better idea, though. Why don’t you let me take you into town, buy a couple of things, and then we’ll take
that walk in the woods?”
“Won’t the townspeople be terrified to see a big badass like you stomping out of the forest?”
“I doubt that very much. They see me about every four days, weather permitting.”
We drive to town after breakfast. Sam hadn’t seen it yet but I had a bronco parked out back. There’s a small road between the trees that you can’t see the beginning of unless you know how to spot it.
She holds my hand the whole way down.
On Main Street in Wahay, I nod and wave at people because they do the same to me. No one cares who I am here. They don’t know my past. Or if they did, they wouldn’t make a big deal of it. Simple. Lonely - I have to admit now that I’ve met Sam - but it has been simple.
I mainly need to buy supplies to reinforce any damage the storm might have done. I leave Sam in the car while I go into a hardware store and come back out with a new pack of shingles, some sealant that would keep rain out of the cracks, and a new whetstone. I also buy her her own hatchet, since she liked the throw I did at Jarom so much. I figure I can teach her how.
But she’s staring at her phone, muttering to herself.
“Everything okay?” I say, sliding into the driver’s seat.
“I forgot I had a phone,” she says. “Believe it or not, it’s absolutely full of messages from people wanting status updates about my story. Oh shit.”
“What?”
She holds the phone up so I can take a look. “This is from my friend Lacey.” The message says, I SEE YOU, YOU LITTLE SLUT! “It just came in,” says Sam.
Before I can say a word, someone appears at Sam’s window and starts pounding on the glass. Sam looks at me and mouths I’m sorry to me before rolling down the window.
“Hey you!” says a woman who can only be Lacey. “Why don’t you both take me to some fancy restaurant? I’m fucking starving.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN : SAM WASHINGTON
For about five minutes I’m excited to see Lacey. So much has happened and she’s the only one I want to talk to about it all. Then the novelty wears off and I realize how good she looks. I remember how she is with men. I start to dread the moment when she asks to come back and see the cabin, which will surely lead to her seducing Hugh and leaving me in the lurch.
I also have a ton of messages from Trinity wanting to know why Jarom is so “despondent.” Apparently he returned to New York and set up a massive pity party that is the cause of much speculation at the humble headquarters of The Inner Eye. I don’t respond. I can’t believe how good it has felt to not have my phone, and to totally forget that it exists. Hugh told me that he liked the simplicity of life out here. I can see how a certain kind of person could get used to it.
Maybe I’m that type of person.
Lacey builds a wall of words as she eats breakfast, not even noticing that we don’t order anything. She gapes at Hugh and compliments him on his beard, his arms, his shoulders, his thighs, his boots, his Bronco, and his fine eye for journalistic talent. “You have no idea how badly Sam here has needed someone like you,” she says. “She has been a total wreck.”
“I have not!”
“Tell me more, Lacey,” says Sam.
“Oh, hey,” says Lacey, ignoring him. “Sam, how’s the thing going? You know, the uh…” She raises her eyebrows and rolls her eyes back in her head.
“Now this I’ve got to know more about,” says Hugh.
“Don’t you dare,” I say. Something about my tone sinks in, because Lacey lets it go.
“So when do I get to see the famous hermit cabin?” she says. “Hugh, I’m assuming you’re the fighter that she came out here looking for. What does that make you, Sam? Like, a treasure hunter?”
“It makes me bored with this conversation. Hugh, let’s get out of here. We’ve got to work on the story.”
Lacey wipes her mouth daintily with a napkin. “I can’t wait. I’ll ride with you two.”
“That’s fine,” says Hugh, and I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking. Is he into her? Is everything we’ve done just a fling for him? I mean, I knew--we both knew--that it wouldn’t last forever, I think, but is he discarding me in front of me?
Soon we’re headed back to the cabin with Lacey chattering a mile a minute. She thinks there are too many trees. She’s worried about mosquitos. Does Hugh have any sunscreen? How does he make sure he never gets lost? How often does he take women back to his “lair?” What’s the tallest tree in the world? She has also recently heard on a podcast that trees can talk to each other and she seems legitimately anxious that they might all be gossiping about her.
Hugh takes this all in stride. He doesn’t say much, but he responds when she talks to him, gives me nudges with his elbow when she really gets going, and it all seems fine. Normal enough. But I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong.
When we get to the cabin she screams her head off and races around, saying it’s the most perfect place she has ever seen.
By the time Hugh locks the door behind us she has already found the wine and poured three glasses. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I’ll be entertaining enough to pay you back for the wine.”
I bet you’d like that I think, feeling petty and jealous, though nothing has really happened yet.
I take Lacey up to my room--I’m already thinking of it as my room--when she says she has to pee. As soon as we’re up there she closes the door and locks it. “So what’s going on?” she hisses. “Are you two fucking? Oh my God, he’s so hot, and I think he looks really familiar? Who do you think he reminds me of? I can’t figure it out. He’s so hot! You’re so lucky!”
I’m obviously not responding the way she thinks I should, because she suddenly sits back, crosses her arms, and says, “Do I smell bad or something? Why are you making that face? You are totally weirding me out, are you mad I came?”
“No, it’s just...we’ve been doing so well that I--”
“And now what? It’s all ruined because I’m here? I just wanted a little break. I mean, it’s not like I expected you to get me a trophy for flying out to surprise you, but I thought you might enjoy it. I didn’t know I was getting between you and the love of your life!”
“He’s not the love of my life.”
“Why can’t you just be happy? You said you wanted a guy. You needed a new boyfriend after Owen. At least you got to come out here and bang this hottie. Are you saying it might turn into more?”
I’m not sure where the anger comes from, but I want to say whatever I can to shut her up right now.
“I’m just here to do a story and that’s that! You think some lumberjack can turn my head just because some fucking coin collector cheated on me? I’m finishing the story and I’m out of here. Case closed!”
My voice has gotten so much louder than I meant it too. That’s when I notice the shadow under the door. Two shadows, cast by Hugh’s feet. Now they’re moving away slowly.
He obviously heard everything I just said. Fuck.
CHAPTER TWENTY : HUGH MADDOX
Lacey is a fucking trip. Gorgeous, probably fun for a night or two, but a fucking trip and a headcase. I would be bored with her within a week. Sam was so much more my speed. And I thought I was hers.
Then I decided to take coffee up to surprise them and I find myself eavesdropping on a conversation that I never should have heard.
But this is my fucking house. I have told Sam things about myself that I barely even admit to myself. And she tells her friend that I’m basically nothing to her? That I’m just some story?
My first inclination is to knock the door down, kick them both out, and tell Sam that if she ever prints one word about me or my whereabouts that I will sue her ass for slander.
I feel more let down than I do angry, though. I can’t believe my ears. Maybe I’m being overly sensitive. Maybe she’s having a bad day or Lacey is bringing out the worst in her. I don’t know. But I do know that I wasn’t going to stick around for the rest of the conversation. I went out b
ack and started hitting the bag.
Eventually, maybe five rounds in, Sam stepped out onto the deck.
“Are you okay?” she says.
Wham. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
“I know you were outside the door.”
“Why shouldn’t I be outside my door?”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
Wham.
“Sam, I don’t know what you mean. I’m not sure you know what you mean. But I know what I heard and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’m really fucking disappointed in you. You were great but I have opened up in a way that I never thought I could. I’m grateful to you for it. But if you think I’m just some story? If you’ve just been baiting me, letting me use you to butter me up for a story? Then you can fuck right off and forget you ever knew me.”
Wham.
I can’t hit the bag hard enough. Can’t outstrike the pain. She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Lacey’s gone,” she says. “I sent her away. Will you take that walk with me?”
I give the bag one last knee to what would be an opponent’s midsection and I step back undoing my wrist wraps as fast as I can. “Okay. But after that I want you to go. I thought there was more to you. But what do I know? I’ve certainly been wrong before.” I walk away and turn back around. “Oh, and I get to choose where we’re walking to.”
I stalk off, knowing I sound petulant, not really caring. Such as it is, I have made a new life for myself out here. I get dressed, put on a sweatshirt and pants. As I move through the house it’s obvious that Lacey really is gone. Maybe I’m being too hard on Sam, but I couldn’t control my anger.
I realize that one of my problems with what I heard is that I’m fine being nothing—I took myself out to the middle of nowhere and vanished. I made myself nothing, invisible, a ghost, and I did it on purpose. And I know what it’s like to be told I’m everything. Those heady days at the top of the fight game were fucking exhilarating and I wore it well while it lasted.