RANSOM

by Faith S Lynn

  I keep behind her as she drags me along. Not because it’s hot and I don’t want to get back to work, but because it is hot watching every second I can catch of her ass in these shorts.

  “So what are we working on now?” she asks, coming to where the yard ends and the plowed soil begins. She drops my hand and grabs at her shirt and pulls it away from her skin to start fanning herself. Granted it takes me a minute, but I pull my eyes from her and scan the garden from one end to the other until they land on the water hose at the end.

  “I don’t know about you, but I am still thirsty.” I walk to the pipe sticking out of the ground and raise the handle up halfway. Grabbing the end of the hose, I hold it out to her. She just stands there with her nose snarled, so I drop my head and drink from the cold water that comes straight from the underground spring here.

  I peek out the corner of my eye and spy Sage watching me curiously. She looks so exhausted and overheated standing there. With my hand on the handle I stand up straight and push down on it just enough to leave a small trickle of water coming out, then hand it to her.

  She looks at it for a second then back at me. “Could you turn it up a little bit more?”

  She asked for it right?

  Sage

  I asked for it, but I didn’t see it coming. No more do I get the words out of my mouth before he yanks the handle up as hard and fast as he can. A burst of water comes out and sprays me straight in the face before I can process it’s going to happen.

  “Holy shit, that’s cold!” I scream as I drop the damn thing to the ground. It has so much pressure running though it though, that all I do is make matters worse. It whips back and sprays me again. Lynkin lets out this full on laugh, but karma gets him when the hose twirls a few times, hits the ground, and sends mud flying all over him. It’s my turn to laugh now.

  He puts his foot on the hose, and runs both his hands down his face, and shakes the mud from them. “You think this is funny?”

  I shake my head and cover my mouth in a horrible attempt to hold back my laughter. When a clump of mud falls from his chin and slaps ground with a palpable splat, I can’t keep it in anymore. I laugh til’ my ribs hurt. The whole time, Lynk just stands there waiting for me to gather my wits. Or so I thought.

  “My turn,” he says just before he bends forward, and I see what he was really waiting on. He was just buying time as the water continued to make the ground we were on into one giant ass mud puddle. He scoops up a big glob of gooey soil, grass and all.

  “Oh no you don’t,” I tell him with my hands out. I take a backwards step, but my foot gets stuck and I fall flat on my ass. Lynkin takes that opportunity to swoop in and smack his handful on top of my head.

  “I think I just did.”

  I jump to my feet and bend over, trying to get it out of my hair, and learn fast it’s an impossible task. While I’m bent over I might as well make the most of it. I dig both of my hands as deep as they will go in the ground and come up with a colossal ball of mud. It’s so heavy that the only way I can throw it at him is to granny toss it. I pull my feet apart and look up to where Lynkin is watching me with an amused look.

  “Don’t think I will do it?”

  “I have no doubt you will do it.”

  “Then what’s with the smirk on your face?”

  “It’s because I bet you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from this distance with that, let alone little ol’ me,” he says in the worst impression of a southern belle I have ever had to witness.

  “I’ll take that bet.” I swing my arms back and forth a few times until I am sure I have enough momentum. I pull it back one more good time as far as my arms and legs will allow, and sling the mud forward. I’ve always heard people say keep your eyes on your target and you’ll hit it every time, so I did. Only problem is my target was Lynkin’s chest, and I ended up catching sight of his gorgeous smile. As luck would have it, the advice was pretty spot on.

  He turns trying to avoid it, but it’s too late. I don’t even wait to catch his reaction after the mud splatters across the side of his face. I pull my feet out of the mud and run, only to be tackled face first to the ground. I take a brief moment to thank god that the ground was softened just enough for me to handle the jolt of being smushed between two hundred pounds of solid man and the unmovable earth, before I push him off me and start bombing him with mud like a super-fast catapult.

  Lynkin grabs my hands and twists them behind my back, securing them with just one of his. He grabs my chin and tilts my face towards him with the other. “Beauty, I have to say that you make mud look pretty fucking gorgeous.”

  Here we are, knee deep in mud and I am thinking about being naked with him. I mean, really? You have to have it bad for someone when you’re thinking about doing them in the mud. Can you imagine the places it would end up?

  Lynkin leans into me and my heart picks up its pace. Just as I feel his breath against my lips, one side of his face turns up into a grin. Cold, wet, and grimy mud slides down the side of my face and into the collar of my shirt. I purse my lips together and close my eyes. Even in the midst of a mud battle, my lust for Lynkin wins over natural instincts.

  “I’m sorry. Did I get you even dirtier?” I open my eyes just so I can narrow them at him. “Here, let me help clean you up.”

  I try to move away, to get up and run, but he still has me by the hands. The cold water pours down my head and over my body.

  “Lynkin! What in holy hell have you done to my yard?” his mother screams as she makes her way off the porch. “And poor Sage.” She assesses my appearance, clad in mud, as she shakes her head. “Boy, I know I taught you to treat a woman better than this.”

  “She started it!” he replies to her, pointing his finger at me.

  “I just asked for some water!” I counter.

  “Don’t you dare throw blame on her! She’s your company.”

  “I’m not twelve, Mom.”

  “Then stop acting like it. Real men tell a woman when they have feelings for her.”

  Did she just say that he had feelings for me? I look to Lynkin as he responds.

  “I am a real… Wait… what?” He jerks his head towards me, and our eyes connect. I know that he is processing his mom’s statement before he answers because I am too, but I didn’t expect to see the dismissal of it so quickly. He looks back to his mother and says, “Oh no. It’s not like that, Mom.”

  It’s astonishing how much sting and hurt comes from that short sentence. If I hadn’t still been next to him I wouldn’t have caught him saying the next words under his breath, “It can’t be.”

  His eyes are sad, but serious. One side of his mouth turns up into a remorseful half-grin. He puts his hand out to help me up, but I don’t take it. Instead, I put my hands onto the ground to pull myself up. It takes a little bit more effort because I slip and lose my balance a few times before I get completely upright.

  “Come on, sweetheart. I’ll take you inside, get you in the shower, and into some clean, dry clothes,” Lynkin’s mother says, placing a hand on my shoulder to usher me towards the house.

  I tip-toe and do my best to not leave a trail through Chrissy’s clean house. I keep my arms pulled in as close to me as I can so that I don’t rub any mud off on anything. When she stops at a door and opens it to reveal the bathroom, I look back the way we came and see a few spots on the shiny hardwood floor.

  “I am so sorry, Miss Conner. I tried to be careful,” I apologize.

  “Oh, please. You do realize that the man that did this to you is my son, right? Now imagine him as an eight-year-old boy.” When I raise one of my eyebrows at her she assures me, “Those little specs of dirt are nothing compared to some of the things he has dragged through here. Now, go on in there and get washed up. There will be clothes sitting on the counter when you get out.”

  “Thank you, Miss Conner,” I say stepping into the bathroom.

  “You’re welcome.” She stops halfway through shutting the door, �
��And Sage? You are making me feel like a little old lady. My name is Chrissy.”

  I shower quickly and dry off. True to Chrissy’s word, there is a pair of plaid pajama bottoms and an old band shirt sitting on the counter. I pull the pants up to my waist only to realize they won’t stay up, and there is no drawstring on them. I look around on the sink and in the drawers for a safety pin, but come up empty. I turn to the shelf under the window and start looking in the small baskets on it. I nearly have a heart attack when something walks across the window.

  I let out a small scream before I realize its Lynkin. Luckily, he is far enough out that he doesn’t hear me. He is shirtless and soaking wet, and I can’t help but to watch as he walks the rows of plants and grabs the vegetables that are ready to be picked. The muscles in his back pull tight and cord around each other as he twist to grab something then turns back to place it in the bucket.

  I could watch this all day long. There is one thing that can toss cold water on anyone’s dirty thoughts though, and that is a parent. “You ok in there, sweetheart?”

  “Um, yeah. Just finishing up,” I holler back. I look at myself in the mirror. With one hand I run my fingers through my still wet hair while the other holds up my pants. I hear her footsteps heading down the hall away from the bathroom door and wait a few more seconds before I decide to walk out. With my head down, I unlock the door handle, and open it up to see a pair of bare feet on the other side. Following them up the lean, toned, and naked legs. Ok, so he has boxer briefs on, but the way they are sticking to his body is leaving nothing—and I do mean nothing—to the imagination.

  “It’s a damn shame,” he says with a deep southern twang.

  “What’s that?”

  “That I didn’t make it in here ten minutes earlier. Then maybe we could have shared another shower.”

  “It’s not like that, remember? Besides, we came here to help your mom, I just wished I was out there to help you finish up.”

  “Were you watching me?” I open my mouth to object but he cuts me off and walks me back into the bathroom. “You were.” He leans forward so his breath tickles my neck as he talks. “Did you get hot and bothered? Did you touch yourself and imagine it was me that was doing it?” he ask as his hand travels up my inner thigh til’ he reaches his mark.

  I lean back against the counter as he rubs me through the cloth pants. My arms go around his neck, causing my bottoms to fall to the floor, leaving less clothing between him and me. He grabs my ass, picks me up, and sits me on the counter. I pull him into me, wasting no time with pleasantries. Neither does he as our mouths meet and tongues collide.

  Just kissing Lynkin, I feel more passion than I have ever felt with Richard. Not that I don’t love my fiancé but being away from him for this amount of time has made me realize that I’m not in love with him. With Lynkin, everything is like a sensory overload. Him touching me, kissing me, hell just the way he looks at me sometimes sends me over the edge.

  He grabs the bottom of my hair and pulls so he can deepen the kiss. I wrap my legs tight around his waist and run my hands down the front of his chest until I reach the band of his briefs. When I run my hand in beneath them my hands feel gritty against his skin. I break our kiss and look down at my hands to find them again covered with mud.

  Then, what Lynkin said to his mom earlier comes back to me. ‘It’s not like that. It can’t be.’

  Lynkin

  We went from this really amazing make-out session to her shoving me away and walking out the door, leaving me wondering what the hell happened the whole time I’m in the shower. She didn’t so much as look in my direction as she hopped off the counter, grabbed her pants from the floor and put them on, then walked out the door.

  I wrap the towel around my waist, walk to my room, and grab some old clothes. Once I’m dressed I walk to the kitchen to find Mom showing Sage some kitchen basics. I watch how Sage is so kind and loving towards my mom. She respects her, and I know it is because I told her how strong she is. I still can’t help the small amount of peace that it brings me to see that they like one another. Even though the sparks that Sage and I have with each other will be forced to end. No matter how strong they may be, we can’t be together, not really.

  I have been thinking about letting her go. She can go back to her old life and what she is comfortable with. I can only hope that she realizes that she deserves better than even that. Better than that asshat of a man she calls her fiancé.

  “…up there?” I hear the tail end of whatever it is mom asks me.

  “What?”

  “Open up your ears. Now, do as I asked you and reach up on top the cabinets for me and get the flour bowl.” She reiterates.

  “How many times have I told you that you need to find a different place for this?” I scold her, but still retrieve it and place it on the counter for her.

  “And how many times do I have to tell you that when I get more room in this kitchen, I will find a better place for it. Until then it is just fine where it’s at.”

  Knowing I am fighting a useless battle, I walk to the other side of the island counter, grabbing a piece of bacon as I walk by. Taking a big bite of it I ask, “Breakfast for supper?”

  “That’s right, but if I see you steal another piece of bacon, I will walk right out of this kitchen and leave you to fend for yourself.” I toss the last bit of the bacon strip into my mouth and hold my hands up. “Why don’t you make yourself useful while Sage and I get these biscuits in the oven and fix the leak that’s under the sink?”

  I look over to where Sage has her hip leaned against the counter and her arms crossed. Her gaze is on the floor, and she looks as if she feels out of place, which is odd. I bet she has never felt out of place a day in her life, but the more I think about it, I know she hasn’t had anywhere near the relationship with her parents that I have with my mom.

  “Fair trade.” As I walk by Sage, I nudge her and give her the biggest smile I can to try and make her feel more comfortable. Instead, she looks more irritated.

  Over the next hour, Mom shows her how she makes her homemade fluffy biscuits and the best damn sausage gravy south of the Mason-Dixon line. The whole time she told her stories, and not just any old stories. Nope. They were all about little old me. I didn’t say anything, though. Not even when Mom told her about me running around the house for a week straight in nothing but my underwear because I was so sure I was superman’s son. I didn’t say anything because Mom was making her laugh and Sage’s laugh is just like her: beautiful.

  I go to make my plate as soon as Mom sets the food on the table and she scolds me, “I swear by all that’s Holy, son. It’s not going to kill you to wait until after grace has been said.”

  I think she does her very best to make that the longest grace that has ever been said around any dinner table, just so that I have to wait longer to eat. She was always the best at trick punishments. Sage and I spend the rest of dinner listening to Mom go on and on about all the bad things going on in the world. I’ve told that woman countless times that she needs to quit watching the news, all it ever shows are the bad things people do, never anything good. The television networks get more ratings off the bad than the good, and they feed on that.

  She switches from telling me about a memorial service that happened somewhere into a more close to home subject. Literally, a subject sitting in her home. My heart stops and I am sure she can see the sweat already beading up on my forehead. I grab my napkin and put it in front of my mouth to spit out the food in my mouth. Suddenly, the food doesn’t taste as amazing as it did.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t already told me about your boss’s poor daughter being kidnapped.” She pauses and looks at Sage. “I hope she is alright, wherever it is they have her.”

  I sink a little lower in my seat.

  “How could someone be so cruel as to kidnap someone’s innocent daughter? And only to get rich quick. Whoever it is should be ashamed,” she says with a tsk.

  “May
be he had a good reason for doing it. He could have been doing it to support his family,” Sage speaks up. I look at her silently asking why she would defend me, and she straightens up in her chair as if to solidify her statement.

  “Family doesn’t have to have money to be supported.”

  “But money does pay the bills and buy the food,” Sage says back. Did she just talk back to my mom? I wait patiently for my mother to reach across the table and pop her mouth.

  Instead she just says, “Love, dear. Love can conquer all things. It conquers poverty and riches, distance, race, and sex. It is the most powerful thing that was ever created. God wouldn’t have given us such power if he didn’t mean for us to use it. There were other ways for this person to get through whatever lays in his path, he didn’t have to resort to such drastic measures.”

  “It’s a nice thought.”

  “Love?”

  “Not love, the thought that it can conquer all.”

  “One day, you will know the kind of love that I am talking about. You will see there is nothing as important as the love that someone holds for you.” my mom explains.

  The room gets completely quiet for a very long, very drawn out minute.

  “Well Momma, it’s time for us to get going,” I say as I stand up. I start picking up dishes from the table and Sage follows my lead.

  “Leave the dishes, I’ll get them,” Mom says as she follows us into the kitchen where we set the plates on the counter.

  “We can help before we go,” I tell her.

  “It’s fine, baby. Besides, what else am I supposed to do?” She finishes with a wink and turns towards the sink. I go back to the dining room and grab some more dishes. When I come back into the kitchen she is standing there waiting on me with her hands on both hips and a dish towel thrown over her shoulder. “Both of you have helped me plenty today. Now get your butts on out of here.”

  We do as she says and walk out the door. She follows us to the front of my car, gives Sage a hug, and whispers something in her ear. When she pulls back, Sage gives her a small smile. Then Mom turns to me and gives me a hug. “Remember, always do the right thing. I love you.” Holy shit. She knows. No, she can’t know, there is no way. She pulls away from me and walks away. I am still standing there pondering how in the hell she could have found out when she turns back to me at the porch. She just smiles and taps the side of her head.