by Tessa Bailey
“No,” River whispered, sliding her hand down his corrugated stomach into the opening of his jeans, finding his outrageously full erection and teasing it with light fingertips. “I want you to put yourself in my mouth.”
He stuffed a hand over his mouth to catch the erupting groan, those hips rocking in rude jerks toward her touch. When the guttural sound died down, he reached out and snagged her jaw. “Let’s get one thing straight first.” Excitement flashed in River’s blood when he got in her face, bringing them nose-to-nose. “You miss me begging you, River? Know this. Each moment I’m awake, every part of me begs for—”
Confusion invaded at the cracking of Vaughn’s voice, at his visible attempts to gather himself. It didn’t make sense. Or maybe it made perfect sense. Maybe the attraction had only ever been physical. In that moment, she could convince herself that suited her just fine. She’d worry about the rest later.
Unwilling to stray from the heat they’d kindled and venture into the dangerous territory of her memories, River ambled backward and slowly removed her T-shirt, pulse stuttering like crazy under Vaughn’s perusal. His manhood stood, proud and brutish, in the opening of his jeans, one of his hands hovering an inch away, as if he needed to stroke himself but held back. “Tell me you’re sure,” he demanded.
She continued her languid retreat, falling onto the couch and pulling her hair back into a ponytail, the way he’d always asked. With that gesture, no other words were necessary. Vaughn wrapped a masculine hand around his length and obliterated the distance to River, straddling her thighs, looming over her in a kneeling position. So familiar, but not. The stakes made it different, but the lust… Oh God, the lust, never having faded, had caught them both in an inescapable trap.
“We need that pretty ponytail, don’t we, doll?” His fist rode in a tight squeeze up and down his erection, turning it a deeper shade of ruddy tan, right in front of her panting, parted lips. “So I can tear your mouth away when you get too keyed up. You get so excited you forget to breathe sometimes. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” River whimpered, flicking her tongue out to swipe the tip. His taste. It was in her blood…and her blood responded to the long lost perfection, pumping, thrilling toward Vaughn. “I need it. Please.”
Circling her neck loosely, Vaughn pressed the back of River’s head against the cushion, making sure to drape her ponytail over the back of the couch. For access, River realized with another aching shiver of longing. “Remember the first time you sucked my dick?” His head fell forward, shook side to side. “You didn’t know if you would like it, so we held off. And held off. Until I started dripping in my jeans every time you licked an ice cream cone, or put on that cherry ChapStick. Fuck.”
There he is. There’s that filthy man. Always lurking. Warmth rose up around her like a lazy river, lapping at the notch between her legs. River’s hands drifted up her bare stomach to pinch at her nipples, mesmerized by the self-pleasuring hand working overtime. “You always do this.” Her voice shook. “You talk until I go crazy.”
Vaughn dragged the head of his arousal across River’s damp lips. “You love every dirty word. The seam of your jeans is already dark blue.” Before River had a chance to respond, Vaughn took advantage of her open mouth, easing his hard flesh inside. “Oh fuuuuuck.”
River tightened her lips around him and drew back on a long suck, encouraging him with a moan to give her more, but he tugged out of her mouth instead. “Vaughn—”
He took River’s ponytail and lifted, snapping her spine straight and arching her back. “I asked you a question,” he rasped. “Do you remember the first time?”
She took only the smallest pause before she answered. “Yes.”
As he wrapped the ponytail around his fist, an answering knot wound itself in River’s belly, a delicious, twisting binding that yanked tight when Vaughn spoke again. “You called me in the middle of the night to say you were ready. You know how fast I drove to get to your unfucked mouth?” He dipped the head of his arousal past her eager lips, moved the pulsing flesh back and forth, before slipping back out. “You might have started slow, doll, but by the time it was over, I had to dig your nails out of my ass.”
Vaughn’s hips rolled forward, pushing his erection to the back of River’s throat with a closed-lipped groan.
“Who’d have thought the town sweetheart would have no gag reflex, huh?”
River moaned around the flesh invading her mouth, her hands gliding up the hips that pinned her to the couch. She circled them around to Vaughn’s backside, reacquainting her palms with the swell of his taut, rounded male cheeks, stroking her nails downward and enjoying his almost violent shudder. Her ponytail was snared in Vaughn’s fist, and he used it as a rein, holding her against the cushion and making sure she didn’t follow when he reared his hips back.
“Fuck yeah. Right there, doll. You stay right there. Let me sink it in until I can’t no more.” Accent thickening, he growled through a stilted headshake as he started to pump. “I used to think if someone walked in while I was halfway down your nineteen-year-old throat, they wouldn’t believe you’d begged for it. But you did, huh? After that first time, you would pout until I took my cock out and let you play.”
River lifted her gaze to Vaughn, barely able to see past eyelids weighed down with lust. Without seeing her own reflection, she knew exactly what he saw there. Something she couldn’t hide, even with their confused situation—trust. He’d never pressured her as a young girl into anything. So whether or not he could be trusted with her heart, she gave over her body fully.
And it pushed him over the edge, that unabashed trust. She saw it in the loosening of his jaw, in his thorn-ridden intake of breath. The glide of his hips grew unsteady, even as his erection grew irresistibly swollen in her mouth. “Ah fuck, Riv. Keep looking at me, okay? Please?” He stopped sliding out of her mouth then, simply pressing in tight and rotating his hips, every inch of him beating in her mouth, her throat. His big, muscular body became racked with shudders, saltiness greeting the side of River’s throat. “Jesus, Jesus Christ,” Vaughn gritted out, his grip fierce on her ponytail. “Nothing sweeter. Nothing better than this little mouth. Missed it. Missed that tongue, those teeth, that throat. You taste how sore I’ve been?”
Once Vaughn’s shudders of pleasure subsided, they didn’t spare a second, both sets of their hands attacking the button and zipper of River’s jeans, lowering it with a metallic zing so Vaughn could drop back down to the floor and shove his hand inside. Work-chafed fingers made her panties seem like an annoying formality, yanking them down enough that Vaughn could rub the pad of his thumb on River’s clit. Fast, so fast. Aggressive. Sensation slugged her in the center, making relief that had been secondary mere moments before a necessity. Now…now relief was life.
“Faster, more, more…more.” River spread her thighs wide to give Vaughn room and he took it, sliding her full of those gloriously male fingers. Pumping them into her sex without gentleness. Exactly what she needed. Exactly. “Yes, Vaughn.”
“You’re making me hard again. Fuck.” He pressed his forehead against River’s inner thigh, face screwed up with obvious pain. “No relief. It just never ends, never ends, never…”
He trailed off when River began contracting around his fingers. His head lifted, lust, awe, eagerness battling it out for precedence on his face. River’s muscles slung tight, pleasure rushing through, over, around her. Her fingers tunneled into Vaughn’s hair, tugging, patting, combing, River having no control of them or idea of their intention. She only knew the atomic bliss that came from having her body satisfied so brutally by a grateful man. Grateful because she’d let him use her mouth. Let him treat it like his personal pleasure device, something that never failed to excite her femininity. Through half-closed eyes, she watched Vaughn fall forward and kiss her stomach, trailing his tongue through the valley of her belly button, traveling sideways to nip at her hipbone.
Finally, Vaughn’s head fell into her lap, rest
ing, even as his lethargic fingers attempted to right her panties, his breath still on the shallow side. “What do we do, doll? You told me no messing around. And I’m trying not to screw up this chance.” He smoothed his big hand up and down her thigh, warm air from his mouth feathering her bare midriff. “But I don’t have the strength to say no when you encourage me. I never did. It’s too fucking good when we give in.”
River hated the reminder that she was sending mixed signals. One second she pushed Vaughn away, the next it was a race to get his pants off. Truthfully, she didn’t know if impulse control was possible with Vaughn. Or maybe…maybe getting physical with him would provide closure. She didn’t know. But if he stayed any longer, they would be at it again. No question. And she would be twice as confused when it ended. “I better get to bed. Marcy wakes up early.”
…
It was the vision of River climbing into bed alone that did it. Another one zoomed in right behind, too. River sleepily preparing breakfast for herself and Marcy in the kitchen. Soft, smiling, sweet. Home. He was supposed to be there. A cutout shape where his body should have been since…always…moved right along River in the shifting images. His life. He wasn’t going to keep climbing out the window of his life. Hope—bright and alive—found the dead center of his stomach like a falling meteor.
He’d come to Hook for scraps. Come to collect any small piece of home and family River could give. But he wanted—needed—it all now. All. He wanted the love of his life back. Wanted the freedom to sync their hearts again, so bad his blood soared to his head, making him dizzy and determined at the same time. Hell, they were already pounding in time together, it was only a matter of earning the right to acknowledge it, and have River acknowledge it, too.
Even though his fighter spirit yearned to pin River down, shove their chests together until she heard the identical beats, common sense had apparently decided to show up. They were adults now, and irrational actions could hurt his chances. He needed to give River time. Time to prove he was the man she’d always needed, but had never gotten. Looking at her now, he could see River’s withdrawal, the uncertainty in the way she moved. And while that reaction to their intimacy—intimacy so vital to Vaughn—seared him in agony, it was warranted.
He didn’t move right away, but eventually stood, guiding his semi-erect manhood back into his boxer briefs, zipping over the swelling ridge with a barely concealed groan. “I can see you starting to regret letting me touch you, and Jesus, I hate it.” He swiped a hand over his mouth. “I want more…time with both of you, Riv. More than anything. But I need time with just you, too. To talk. Can you give me that?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, a shiver of hope dancing across her features, giving him some in return. “Depends what you want to talk about.”
Vaughn shifted in his boots, aching to go forward, to lay everything on the line and accept his sentence. But he staved off the urge, knowing he had a long way to go. So much to prove. “Just think about it.”
As he walked out River’s front door, he threw one final glance over his shoulder, memorizing the way she looked hugging her elbows, so beautiful, so unsure. I’ve got to win her back. I’m done seeing her unsure of me. Vaughn trudged to his truck beneath the harsh glow of the streetlights, but his heart remained in the house, his identical cut out brushing his teeth alongside River, breathing in the scent of her hair as he fell asleep.
Chapter Twelve
Vaughn’s hand shook around the glass of Jack Daniels. It hadn’t stopped shaking since Afghanistan. Since the day he’d lost a dozen friends—good men, better soldiers—lost some of his hearing, hell, lost his mind, too, maybe. The sound of a stool scraping back sent Vaughn’s heart shooting up into his throat, but he disguised it with a cough and drowned it in whiskey.
Yeah, some of his functioning brain must have shaken loose in the explosion. Why else would he be sitting in the Third Shift while River waited for him at the motel? River. Honest, loving, beautiful, pure white sunlight River. How could he touch her with soiled, shaking hands? How could he look at her without cracking in half? She deserved more than a rotting corpse of a man. Christ, he’d been a shitty choice for River since the beginning, but trying to keep her now—with his head so fucked up—would be a criminal act. He couldn’t, could he? Could he?
She would make it all better. He knew she would. Two years she’d waited for him while he completed his tour. That had to mean something, right? Maybe he wasn’t a waste of oxygen if River would wait, even though he’d left in the first place hoping she wouldn’t.
Go. Just go to her. She’ll heal you.
Vaughn didn’t know where the permission had sprung from, but he couldn’t move fast enough once it had been issued. He threw money onto the bar, all but diving from his stool—
“Vaughn. Welcome back.” River’s father appeared to his right, a strange expression on his face, as if he was forcing himself to be polite. But how the older man felt—how he’d always felt—was right there in his eyes. “Where are you headed?”
“You know where.” Familiar defensiveness stabbed Vaughn from the inside, but it was dulled now by greater tragedies than merely being disrespected. Life and death tended to put things into perspective, so he forced himself to soften. Even though River’s father had clearly loathed him from day one, almost to a confusing degree. Almost as though it went beyond Vaughn dating his daughter. “Look, I thought your daughter might move on if I left. She didn’t, though. She didn’t. And I can’t…I’m not a bastard who can leave her sitting somewhere, wondering where I am.” God, just picturing it choked him. “I’m going to do better by her—”
“You can’t.” River’s father picked up a cardboard bar coaster and tapped it against the worn wood. “You’ve burned all your bridges in this town. There’s no way for you to provide for her. You’re holding her back by not ending it, dammit.”
Vaughn’s lungs were on fire, but he had no choice other than to stand there and take the verbal beating. In some sick way, maybe he even wanted to hear it, knowing the sentiments were well deserved.
“I’m not a rich man, either, Vaughn. But I can give her something you can’t.” He removed a stack of folded papers from his jacket pocket, the top piece stamped with a county seal, just above an address he recognized well. A deed? “When she finally sees sense and goes to college, the way I never did, she’ll have a house to return to, if she chooses. A house. Can you give her that?”
Jesus. No. He couldn’t. In this town, you didn’t get handed property. It was passed down—if you were lucky—or earned through sweat or blood. He’d lived above an abandoned stationary shop with his uncle, sleeping on a pull-out couch. A safe, warm house was a dream to him—something to aspire to, but unrealistic. Could he take that opportunity away from River?
No. Never. Vaughn fell back into the stool and signaled for another drink, the world having gone dark around him. My life ends here.
Vaughn had only been asleep for an hour when the pounding on his motel room door started. He jackknifed into a sitting position and reached for his weapon, a move that had remained a constant throughout his three different walks of life. Street trash, soldier, security specialist. The coolness of Vaughn’s Walther PPS greeted his palm from its position on the bedside table; his feet landed on the tightly woven carpet without a sound. At least his sleepless night hadn’t robbed him of his physical abilities along with his mental ones.
Not entirely sleepless. He’d dreamed of the bar. The deed…and the gut-wrenching decision that had come after. If he wanted to earn River’s trust back—and he did, more than life—she needed to know what really happened that night. But how did he tell someone he’d lied right to her face, that he’d never stopped loving her—not for a single damn second—but in the course of trying to do the right thing, he’d inadvertently caused life-altering heartache on both of their ends? How did he confess to a lie that had left River a single mother, doing the hardest of jobs alone?
If R
iver hadn’t hated him before, she would once she knew. He’d let outside forces keep them apart, when he’d sworn to her countless times he wouldn’t. At the very least she would resent him for making such a monumental decision without her consent, or even a conversation.
Vaughn shook his head to clear it of the debilitating memories and approached the motel room door, double-checking the safety was off as he went. Without moving the cheap polyester curtain, Vaughn peeked out through a gap—and found Duke staring back at him from the other side of the window.
With an irritated grunt, Vaughn replaced the safety and unlocked the door. “What the fuck.”
“Good morning to you, too, sweetheart,” Duke returned, ducking beneath the doorframe to enter the room. “Nice digs.”
Vaughn shrugged. “Beats a sleeping bag in the desert.”
“Barely,” Duke returned, but they exchanged a look, ghosts from overseas floating briefly across their lines of vision. “How’s things with River? You two are the talk of the town. Will they rekindle their star-crossed romance or won’t they? Everyone is on the edge of their seats.”
“Were you always this much of a smart ass?”
“Yes.”
The bed groaned beneath Duke’s mass as he dropped onto the edge. When he merely crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow, Vaughn cursed under his breath. “Things are…good in some ways, complicated in others. I met Marcy.” He felt his mouth bend into a smile and didn’t bother trying to dampen it. Not the way he once might have. “She’s amazing. I wish I…”
“Spit it out.”
He threw his friend a look, wondering why being bullied appeared to be the only way talking came easy. “I wish I had more right to feel proud.”
“You’ll get there,” Duke rumbled.