I was vaguely aware of my voice, of the whimpers turning to a howl as I came utterly apart. And then Baxter was kissing me. Kissing me. God, the kiss. Like I'd seen his brothers give their women. Intense, possessive, wild. I drowned in it. I continued to shatter through the kiss, and came apart even harder for the kiss, and I was screaming and couldn't kiss him back because I was unable to function for the wracking bliss shaking me, possessing me.
I floated on the pleasure.
Drifted.
Ached.
Throbbed.
Gradually, I filtered back to awareness, and I was in Baxter's arms. My pants were around my knees, and my hair was in my face, and his arm was around my waist and his hand was cupping my head.
I blinked up at him. "Did...did I faint?"
His chuckle was an amused, aroused rumble. "Sure did, sweetheart."
"Oh god, that was incredible." I sighed, shivering as aftershocks rippled through me. "I like this dream."
"Dream?" He sounded confused.
"Yes. I'm dreaming, obviously. I'd never do this in real life." I stood up, and Baxter's arms held me in place as I wobbled unsteadily, my knees trembling; his hands were gentle as he slid the sweatpants back into place. "I'm still on the jet. I don't know how my subconscious came up with someone as delicious as you, but I'm glad it did."
His thumb brushed across my cheek. "Eva, honey. This ain't a dream. At least, I don't think it is." He frowned thoughtfully. "Although, how would I know if I was something you'd dreamed up?"
I straightened, backed out of his reach and caught up against the fence behind me. "No, no-no-no."
His grin was, complicatedly, somewhere between predatory and comforting. "Yes, yes-yes-yes." He brought his fingers to his face, inhaled, and then stuck them into his mouth.
Holy...whoa. Did he just do that? Those fingers, they were just in my...and he just...
"I'm dreaming," I insisted.
He sidled closer to me, pressed his body up against mine. Bracketed my face with both hands, and then clutched my cheeks in his huge rough palms, closing in slowly, and I blinked and blinked and struggled to breathe, and then his lips were brushing mine and I was kissing him.
I was kissing him.
It lasted only a moment. Just his lips, warm and soft on mine.
"That feel real enough for you?" he murmured.
I shook my head. "No. I'd never kiss a complete stranger. Much less...what I just let you do."
He laughed. "Still in denial. I know I'm a lot to get used to, babe, but you gotta face it. This is real." He brought his fingers to my nose, and I smelled my own scent on him. "I fingered your pussy, right here on the street. You screamed into my mouth, sweetheart."
I whimpered. "It's not real. I'm dreaming. I'm on the jet to Mallorca. I want so badly to not be going on that stupid vacation that I'm dreaming about this adventure as a mental escape."
My ability to believe myself was fading, and panic was welling up inside me.
He teased the hem of the Seahawks shirt I was wearing with a fingertip. Then he slid that fingertip along my belly, his touch searing my skin. I kept my breathing slow and even, through sheer force of will, as he skated that single fingertip up the centerline of my torso, higher and higher, dragging the front of the shirt up with it, baring more and more and more skin. And then the curves of the bottoms of my breasts were bared, and I was utterly still, staring up at his molten brown gaze, wondering what he was going to do now. What I was going to let him do now. Because, since I was still clinging to the insistence that this whole business just had to be a dream, I might as well let myself do daring things. Let this big, brutal, beautiful, rugged, possessive, protective man do dirty and forbidden things to me.
He traced up between my breasts, and now they were almost completely bared. I wasn't breathing, and I had to remember to suck in a breath because my lungs were burning and I was getting dizzy.
His touch drew slowly across my torso, to the right side of my body, baring the whole of one heavy, aching breast. My nipple was thick, rigid, and hypersensitive, all but begging for his touch. Which...he gave me. Just not as I'd expected it. Instead of cupping the weight of my breast or caressing it or circling the nipple, or even bending to mouth it--all the actions men in love scenes in movies and books always did--he pinched my nipple. Suddenly, and hard.
I shrieked in surprise and pain, writhing out of his touch and tugging the shirt down into place. "What was that?" I demanded. "That hurt, Baxter!"
"Did it feel real, babe?"
I swallowed as realization of what he'd just proven rifled through me. "Yes," I whispered.
He kissed me again, briefly and softly. "Did that feel real?"
"Yes," I whispered.
"So...am I a dream?" He closed the space between us again, pressing his erection against my lower belly and core. "Is this whole thing a dream? Or is it real?"
I closed my eyes. Wake up, wake up, wake up, I told myself. When I open my eyes, I'll be on the jet.
I opened my eyes, carefully and slowly and warily; Baxter stood towering over me, hands grasping the fence spindles beside my face, grinning triumphantly.
"Crap," I breathed.
He laughed. "I'm as real as they come, Eva."
"Crap!" I repeated. "I'm such an idiot. I need--I need to go. I have to go. This was a mistake."
I could still feel his touch. I could still feel the delightful, shivery, erotic quaking of the orgasm, the gentle, skilled circles of his finger around my...around me. His kiss. His lips. His body, hard and powerful, blocking out the world beyond his massive frame. Even at that exact moment I could feel his manhood between us, as improbably massive and hard as the rest of him, and I felt my cheeks flaming from the knowledge that he was aroused because of me, for me.
"Did it feel like a mistake when you came apart in my hands?" he murmured. He pressed against me, and then his lips darted against mine in a tease of a kiss. "Does this feel like a mistake?"
I whimpered again, panicking, overwhelmed, embarrassed, afraid, and most of all...aroused in a way I'd never felt before, and thus confused and terrified at the potency of my need and desire--at the way I wanted him to touch me and do things to me and teach me everything I'd been missing my whole life.
"Yes!" I said, whisper-shouting. "Yes, this whole thing is crazy. I must have been more drunk than I thought to let you...to do this."
I ducked under his arm and trotted away, flip-flops slapping noisily against my feet. I expected Baxter to chase me, but when I glanced back at him, he was leaning against the fence with his huge arms crossed over his chest, an amused grin on his lips.
"Eva?" he called, his voice pitched low.
I stopped, turned back to look at him. "What, Baxter?"
He jerked his thumb at a two-story Victorian house kitty-corner across the street, a house that I vaguely recognized. "That's you, babe."
Sure enough, a hand-carved and painted wooden sign in the yard announced the property as The Kingsley's Rest.
I sighed in frustration. "Crap."
I had to walk past him to get to it, and he knew it.
I tried to hustle past him, keeping as small a profile as possible, ignoring him completely. Baxter just laughed, a genuine bark of amusement.
"Seriously, Evangeline?" He slung an arm around my middle and hauled me up against him, my arms pinned between us, my hands flat on his chest. Which, admittedly was a very nice and masculine chest, and felt wonderful under my hands. "What's the problem, honey?"
"What's the problem?" I yanked away from him, snagging the bag with my things in it, which I'd forgotten. "Everything! You, partly, but mostly just me being an idiot and a reckless, wanton, irresponsible slut." I walked away, then.
He jogged few steps to catch up to me. "Whoa, hey now. Them's fighting' words, missy," he drawled in an exaggerated Old West accent.
"I don't know what that means."
"It means nothing about what just happened was bad or wrong, Evan
geline. It was good. You enjoyed the fuck out of it, and you're allowed to do whatever the fuck you want to do with whoever the fuck you want to do it...unless you're married or in a serious relationship. Which you aren't, are you?"
"No, I'm not married! And I'm not with anyone, although Thomas might have himself convinced otherwise."
"I don't give two shits what your boy Thomas thinks. If you say you ain't with him, that's all that matters."
"No, I'm not with him and never will be." I was nearly at the B and B, now--nearly safe from Baxter, and my own foolish impulses. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"It has everything to do with everything. You're a grown-ass woman, Evangeline. You wanna hang out and drink with some cool as fuck folks till ass o'clock in the morning, you can. You wanna get a little dirty, have some innocent, pleasurable, consensual, adult fun, you can. Your body, your life, your decision."
"But this...it's not--it's not me!" I whirled on him, shouting out loud now. "I don't do things like this. I've had sex exactly five times, all with Thomas, always in the dark, in a proper bedroom. I've never even been kissed in public! And now, suddenly, I'm letting you pull my pants down and touch me intimately, in public, on a sidewalk, where anyone could see? I should be checked into an asylum!"
"It's three in the damn morning, Eva. Who's gonna see? And who cares if they do? They don't know you, and it's not like you're a local who has to see any of these people again anyway. Not to mention, I was blocking anyone from being able to see anything anyway. In case you hadn't noticed, I kinda make a better door than a window."
"I don't know what that is supposed to mean," I muttered. "You and your odd phrases."
"It's not odd, it's--" he cut himself off with a laugh. "It just means I'm kinda big, and kinda hard to see past. I was in front of you. We were pushed up close. My body was blocking anyone's view of you, or what I was doing. Anyone who happened to even be awake to see us woulda just seen two people makin' out, gettin' a little cozy. They wouldn't have seen any of your bits, or what I was doing to you."
"Oh." I glared up at him. "Still. It's the principle of the thing. I don't do this sort of thing. I'm the daughter of a former United States Senator. I'm expected to behave a certain way. With decorum, and decency. I'm expected to dress conservatively and appropriately. I do not consort with--"
His gaze went hard and angry as he cut in over me. "With guys like me? Yeah, got it. Message received, princess."
"No, that's not--I just meant strangers, Baxter. It had nothing to do with what type of person you are."
"Suuuure, sweetheart," he said in a sarcastic drawl. "Keep telling yourself that. If your daddy and your precious Thomas caught you with me, something tells me they wouldn't be pleased."
"That's not my concern, and Thomas isn't my precious anything!" I stepped closer to him and poked his chest. "It's not like that. I am not, have not, nor will I ever judge you for who you are. It seems to me you're doing an excellent job of judging yourself, Baxter, and me."
"How the hell did this get turned around on me?" He poked my chest right back, directly between my breasts, which managed to be oddly non-erogenous, surprisingly. More...accusatory. "You're the one acting like you've committed a crime or some stupid shit. You got finger-banged, and you had a killer orgasm. And you're welcome, by the way--that's how that shit should feel. You should be proud of yourself. You're getting out of your fuckin' shell, experiencing new things. Living for yourself, instead'a for what your mom and dad think or want or expect."
"I do not have a shell."
"Say cock, then."
"No. Choosing to not engage in vulgar speech has nothing to do with whether or not I have a shell."
"Then touch me. Do something crazy. Kiss me. Invite me in. Flash me your tits. Something you, as you've been insisting, never do."
"What's that going to prove? You get touched or kissed or flashed, and all I get is embarrassed. A lopsided deal, if you ask me."
"Just body parts, princess. Nothing embarrassing about it." He untied the strings of his shorts. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours. How about that? I'll even go first. Just to show you there's nothing weird or embarrassing or crazy about it. When two people are attracted to each other, it's totally normal and natural for them look at and touch each other intimately, as you put it."
"Baxter, you don't need to do that. You're missing the point of what I'm--" I stopped talking abruptly, my breath leaving me in a shocked huff, as Baxter dragged down his shorts to bare his manhood. "Oh--oh my...wow. Um...wow."
He was massively erect. Thick, pink, and straining. Enormous. I felt faint just looking at it. And a little tempted to touch it, just to see what something like that felt like in my hand. Instead, I clenched my fists behind my back.
"Put it away, Baxter," I said.
"Why? Don't you like it? Don't like looking at it? It's a pretty nice one, I've been told."
I sucked in a deep breath, and tried to keep my eyes on his, but my gaze kept wandering back down to the absurdly big, absurdly straight, absurdly incredible monster between his legs. "That's not the point."
He inched closer. Too close. Within reach. My hands shook and I clenched them even harder behind my back. "What is the point then, princess?"
"I don't--god, I don't know." I closed my eyes, the only way to stop seeing that thing. "You're confusing me."
" 'Cause you live in a shell. A box. A cage. Whatever you want to call it. You don't know how to get out there and take what you want out of life." He was whispering now, and he was so close I could smell him and feel his heat, and if I opened my eyes or let my hands unclench and move between us, I would be touching him. "Life is short, princess. You gotta just...reach out and take what you want."
"I'm not touching your...your--I'm not touching you, Baxter."
He chuckled, and I felt him move, letting his shorts snap back into place, covering him. "You want to, though."
We were in the middle of the street, dead center in the middle of an intersection, underneath a flashing yellow traffic light. All the lights in the windows of the buildings around us were dark, and the moon above was a bright waxing half-moon, and there were a countless million stars twinkling and gleaming. It was cool out, with a steady breeze ruffling my hair. A cricket chirped, somewhere.
"What I want is to sleep. I was up at six this morning, and I've flown across the entire country. I ran away from my father and his bodyguards, and then I watched a brutal fight happen and I got blood sprayed all over me, intentionally, and then I was assaulted, and then I watched you brutalize the men assaulting me, and I think your brother murdered them...and then I met your entire family and they all know what happened to me, and your sisters-in-law seem to think I'm part of the gang now or something, and I don't even have any real girlfriends that I trust and I'm an only child so I don't know how to be part of a group like your family even if I wanted to be, or could be. And then--and then you...I let you touch me in public and you kissed me and you showed me your...your thing, and I'm confused and overwhelmed and exhausted and I don't know what I want, except that I want to lay down and have it just stop being today for a little bit."
Baxter sighed, and brushed my cheekbone with his thumb, which seemed to be a favorite gesture of his. "Go sleep, babe." He then stepped back, dropping his hand to his side, and when I hesitated, he jerked his chin at the B and B behind me. "Go on. You'll see me tomorrow."
I sighed in amused irritation at his presumptuousness. "I will, will I?"
"You will, will you."
I laughed, despite my irritation. "Good night, Baxter."
"Good night, Eva."
I went inside, turning the knob as silently as I could, and made my way up the stairs to my room, stepping softly, and closed my door behind me. It wasn't until I'd climbed into the bed still clothed that I realized at some point I'd stopped insisting he stop calling me Eva. And then I realized I kind of liked his nickname for me, and all the terms of endearment he call
ed me. Presumptuous, and a little sexist, perhaps, but for some reason, I didn't mind.
I'd expected to fall asleep immediately, but I didn't. My eyes were burning, but they wouldn't stay closed, and then when they did, all I saw was Baxter. His body, the lines of his muscles, the craggy perfection of his jawline. His manhood. His eyes, hot and chocolate brown and intense. Seeing me far too clearly.
When I fell asleep, I dreamed of him. Of touching him. The dream, when I woke up abruptly with my core throbbing and my breasts aching, only served to reinforce that what had happened had been real. Almost too real, maybe.
I did eventually fall asleep again, and Baxter was there once more.
3
Baxter
* * *
I was in the dining room of the Kingsley's B and B by ten, which I felt wasn't too early or too late, given the lateness of the night before. It was empty, everyone else staying there having eaten and gotten on their tourist way by then. So, I sat and sipped coffee and chatted with John and Bev, discussing the changes to Ketchikan over the last few years, and sports, and the weather. Unlike most of my other brothers, I'm naturally garrulous and have no problem making small talk, and I can make it charming. When you're built like I am, and have my somewhat brutal-looking and rugged features--as women I've known in the past have thus described me, mind you--you have to fight against stereotypes; people tend to assume because I have twenty-inch biceps and I shave the sides of my head, and because of the scarring to my face and knuckles from all the fighting that I must be a meathead mouth-breather capable of only the most basic of verbiage, like "ugh" and "punch" and "Bax hungry."
This one time, in Calgary, after a game, I was in a bar hitting on this chick, buying her drinks and such, prepping to chat her up and see about taking her back to my place for a few hours. She gets her drink, gives me one up-and-down scrutinizing look-over, and then starts talking to me in a loud voice using small words, like I was a dog or a child, or like some assholes talk to people for whom English is a second language. I hadn't even spoken to her, only bought her a drink from across the bar and made my way over after the bartender pointed me out as the buyer. I told her to go fuck herself in French first, to make a point, and then in English.
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