Copper Creek: A Sawyer's Ferry Novel

by Cate Ashwood

  “Is that what I said?” I folded my arms across my chest.

  “Guess it’s hard when the dating pool is only ankle-deep.”

  “I do fine, thanks.” I didn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.

  It’s not like I was starving for sex. Just a little hungry. But with Frankie bringing it up, sex was all I could think about. It had been a while—too long—because he was right. I’d all but exhausted the dating options in town, and now I relied on my delivery trips to Juneau to get laid. Only, with everything being so busy with Copper Creek, Ted, my distribution manager, had been the one to take the trips.

  I told myself that the only reason I suddenly couldn’t get the image of Frankie having sex outta my head was because it had been so long.

  It made sense.

  But Frankie was looking at me like he could see right into my brain and knew exactly what I was thinking. I swallowed hard, trying to keep my face neutral. I was being fucking stupid. Frankie knew nothing, and he didn’t affect me.

  At all.

  He leaned even closer, and I could see every individual dark lash as he blinked. “Your best bet’s probably someone from out of town.”

  I wanted to push him away hard enough he fell backward over the desk, but I didn’t.

  “I do just fine,” I repeated, more forcefully this time.

  “But, boss, if you wanted to, you could do so much better than ‘fine.’”

  Frankie

  I was getting so far under Barrett’s skin, he was almost visibly squirming.

  I loved every second of it.

  I should have relented a little, but playing with Barrett was my new favorite hobby, and one I was going to be sad to give up when I went home.

  The jury was still technically out on whether he played my side of the field, but I’d be willing to put the entire contents of my pathetic little bank account on the line to bet that I was right about him.

  There was something about the way he looked at me, like his eyes were always following me. And when I flirted with him, it always got a reaction.

  It was the reactions I’d come to live for after two weeks of working together. He didn’t blush much, which was surprising because when the light hit it right, there was a tinge of red in his dark brown hair. Sometimes he was quick to school his features or pretend he was ignoring me. I always caught it, though, because watching him was my second favorite thing to do.

  I’d spent the morning tackling the last of the filing—there was so much goddamn filing to do. I swore that Barrett hadn’t touched a single thing since Lily left, just tossed everything in there as it arrived, and it was brutal.

  Finally, a few hours after lunch, I’d managed to find a home for every piece of paper in that tiny room. I could see the furniture again. The desktop was clear. The drawers weren’t stuffed full anymore, and I knew that when he opened his cabinets, everything would be neat and tidy and a cinch to find.

  The digitization of it all was still hanging over my head, but with more than a month until I returned to New York, there’d be plenty of time for that.

  I decided instead to spend the rest of the day working on the social side of the job.

  A few minutes before I was set to leave, Barrett came up to check in.

  “Wow, it looks great in here.” He stood in the doorway staring at his desk for what was probably the first time in five and a half months. “What are you working on now?”

  “Well, as I was cleaning up, I came across about a thousand self-addressed, stamped envelopes. I set them aside, and when I was checking out your social media platforms this afternoon—which haven’t been posted to in half a year, might I point out—I realized at one point, you’d offered coasters to people who sent in requesting them.”

  “Yeah, that was Lily’s idea. She was the one who ran all our social media shit.”

  “Duh.”

  “She did a good job, I think.”

  “She did. But she’s been gone for a while, and you need an upgrade. Not having an online presence isn’t doing your sales numbers any favors. And there are so many places you could expand. Why don’t you have merchandise? Or an Instagram account?” He already looked irritated, and I suppressed a smile. “People expect companies to have these things now. Have you noticed a drop in sales since Lily left?”

  “No.”

  “But I’m guessing no increases either?”

  “We do fine,” he protested.

  “I know. I’ve seen your invoicing—which is still a mess. The next person you hire needs to be a social-marketing god. Promise me.”

  Barrett crossed his arms. “Fine.”

  He was so fucking hot when he was grumpy.

  “I discovered something else while I was going through your desk.” I pulled open the drawer and held it up. “This calendar.” I started flipping through it. “Australian firefighters posing with their dogs. Gotta say, Barrett, I pegged you as more of a cat person.”

  “That’s Lily’s.”

  “Sure it is.” I held it up. “This month’s is probably my favorite. Lord Almighty, that man is smokin’ hot.”

  Barrett’s eyes went wide. “Is that today?”

  “Huh?” It turned the calendar back, but Barrett pulled it out of my hands.

  “Shit.” He dropped his hands. “Fuck fuck fuck. It’s the fucking twelfth.”

  “All day,” I joked lamely. “You got somewhere you need to be? You finally gonna get laid?”

  “No.” There was an edge to his voice that had sprung up out of nowhere and left no room for humor. “Quarterly excise tax is due today.” He ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck. “Fuck.”

  “As long as you get it in before midnight, you’re good?”

  Barrett nodded. “But it’s five o’clock now.”

  “That’s seven hours until the deadline. It can’t possibly take you that long.”

  “I need to calculate exactly how much beer we sold in the last three months, then calculate tax on it, which applies at different rates after a certain amount.”

  “That shouldn’t take any time at all,” I started, then realized that Barrett’s ancient way of doing things left very little room for automation when it came to things like calculating totals.

  “It takes hours. I usually set aside one day per quarter to get it all done, and never on the day of the deadline.”

  “You don’t have one master log of all your invoicing?”

  “I do, but each amount has to be calculated individually.”

  I shook my head, in total disbelief. “You’ve been doing it that way for years? What the fuck, Barrett?”

  He ignored my question. “You’re done for the day. You can head home.”

  I shook my head again, already regretting what I was about to say. “I’ll stay and help you.”

  “You don’t have—”

  “Two people means half the work. We’ll get it done, but next week, we’re overhauling all your shit. All of it. I can’t believe you’ve been in business as long as you have and you don’t have a better fucking system than this. Especially if this is something you do every three months. This should take you half an hour, not the entire day.”

  I couldn’t tell if I’d overstepped, but frankly, I didn’t really care. Barrett was stuck in a rut in a lot of ways, and I was going to do everything I could to shove him out of it.

  “Fine.” He softened his voice. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. So where do we start?”

  It was a little after midnight. The tax calculations had taken long enough that I’d entered that realm of punch-drunk where everything was a little hazy around the edges. I was exhausted, so tired that my body felt sluggish, but being with Barrett this late was nice. I didn’t want to go home.

  Besides that, I didn’t know how I was getting home. It was too late to call Gage or Holden to pick me up, and it was more than a little out of the way for Barrett.

  “Thank you for your
help,” he said. “I don’t know if I’d have gotten it in on time without you.”

  “You’re welcome. I meant what I said about fixing everything, though. You seem to love doing things the hard way when life could be so much easier and more enjoyable for you.”

  He was quiet for a minute, and I thought maybe I’d pissed him off again.

  “You want a drink?” His voice wrapped around me like a blanket, and in that moment, I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted more than him.

  “Yeah. A drink’d be good.”

  Barrett tucked away the last of the paperwork into a file folder and slid it under the keyboard on his desk before we made our way downstairs.

  Copper Creek was bathed in darkness, with the exception of the lights hanging over the bar. They cast a soft glow over the warm wood and threw shadows against the wall. We might as well have been the only two people in Sawyer’s Ferry—hell, the only two people in all of Alaska.

  Barrett stepped behind the bar and reached for a glass. “You know what you want?”

  A flame of brazenness lit in my belly, and I moved forward, swinging my hip to the side to clear the corner of the counter. “Yeah, I have a pretty good idea.”

  He turned, glass still in hand and a confused expression on his face. With his other hand on the bar, he watched me as I slowly cut across the space between us. I stopped short of touching him, just an inch or two between us. We were both frozen, our gazes fixed on one another, and I waited for a sign from him that I hadn’t just imagined this—that there was something between us, some sort of chemical connection that pulled him to me just as intensely as I was drawn to him.

  He swallowed hard, his eyes still locked with mine.

  I didn’t do this. I didn’t do “straight” guys, but from the way Barrett was looking at me, I knew he was anything but.

  Still, closeted guys—guys so deeply steeped in denial they had themselves convinced they didn’t want another man—it was more trouble than it was worth.

  But Barrett… there was this fucked-up, impossible-to-forget connection that I couldn’t ignore. No matter how hard I tried to pretend I didn’t want him, every cell in my body screamed the opposite.

  Just this once, I decided the risk might be worth the reward.

  Hell, there was a chance this would go sideways as fuck in about thirteen seconds, but I silenced the sliver of doubt in my head and reached out.

  Barrett didn’t move.

  He didn’t move as I hooked my finger beneath the soft cotton of his Copper Creek T-shirt. He didn’t move as I grazed my knuckle across his belly. He didn’t move as I sank slowly to my knees in front of him.

  Barrett

  I couldn’t fucking breathe.

  Frankie was so right fucking there, close enough that I could feel the phantom sensation of his body pressed against mine.

  And then he wasn’t right fucking there because he was on his fucking knees.

  Frankie was on his fucking knees, looking up at me like he’d never wanted anyone more than he wanted me.

  And I couldn’t fucking breathe.

  “What are you doing?” I was frozen in place. I couldn’t have moved if the whole goddamn building was going to collapse down on me.

  It felt like it might.

  “You know what I’m doing.” The words were spoken in a hush, the smoothness of Frankie’s voice made rough with lust. The attraction and need were written on his face, and I counted the overwrought beats of my heart as he slowly reached up and undid my jeans.

  Everything happened in slow motion—he slipped the button through the hole, slid the zipper down, and with one easy motion, tugged my pants over my hips. They pooled at my ankles, and I stood there, drenched in uncertainty.

  I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. I couldn’t believe the over-the-top flirting hadn’t just been for show. Because here we were, and my cock was leaking through my underwear, precome soaking the thin fabric. I was still struggling to draw air, and Frankie was looking at me like a cat who’d cornered a bird.

  But the question was, was I going to fly away, or was I going to let myself get caught?

  Beats of time ticked by, and I was rooted firmly in place.

  Frankie reached up, running his finger along the hard length of my erection. He swiped his thumb against the head of my dick with just barely enough pressure for me to feel it. Without thought, my hips moved forward, my body seeking more pressure.

  Frankie grinned, and in an instant, he’d pulled my briefs down, leaving my cock bobbing in his face.

  “You want me to touch you?”

  I panted.

  With an open palm, he reached for me, letting the weight of my balls rest in his hand.

  Fuck, his skin was warm, and I was suddenly filled with so much need. The intensity of it made me dizzy. Without taking his eyes off me, he inched forward until his lips were right there.

  His breath tickled my skin and made me aware of how easy it would be to lean forward, to take what I needed.

  “Do you want this, Barrett? Do you want me to suck you off?”

  I heaved a strained breath, the edges of my mind working into a panic, but all I could see was him, his mouth inches from my cock. I was so hard I ached. I had never been that fucking hard.

  “Do you want me to make you come?” he asked, his words caressing my skin.

  My response was nothing more than his name on a ragged whisper. It was all I could manage.

  He pulled back, gave me a smile that made my stomach fold in two, then opened his mouth and took me all the way down his throat.

  “Holy fuck.” The glass slipped out of my hand, falling to the floor and shattering against the concrete, but neither of us seemed to give a shit as Frankie pulled off, running his tongue along the underside of my cock as he did.

  He didn’t get far before diving back down. He was unrelenting, and I was close to coming within seconds. It took everything in me to hold back, struggling to keep my orgasm from slamming into me before I was ready.

  I needed more, needed to draw this out a little longer because this might never happen again, and nothing had ever felt as good as Frankie’s mouth on me.

  He skimmed his hands along my legs, running his palms from my thighs to my ass, kneading the muscles and pulling me with more force into his mouth. I canted my hips, rocking in time to the rhythm he set.

  The blowjobs I’d received in the past had been done obligingly and always with some reservation. They’d been gentle. Somewhat tentative.

  There was nothing fucking tentative about this. At all. Frankie seemed to want this as much as I did, and he tackled the task with dedication. So, when he grasped my hand, moving it from where it was balled in a fist at my side to the back of his head, I took it as permission.

  I slid my fingers through his curls, overloaded with the sensation of the softness of his hair, the heat of his mouth, and the tight pull as he sucked me.

  Tugging gently, I tested the waters, and when Frankie groaned around my cock, sending vibrations through me, I snapped my hips forward, pushing deep. For a moment I thought he might gag, but he took it all, moaning like that was exactly what he’d been waiting for.

  I pulled back and did it again, over and over, fucking into his mouth, and every time, he took me down hungrily.

  With the porn-star sounds Frankie was making, it would have been easy to believe this felt as good for him as it did for me, but way too soon, the pleasure built to a point where I couldn’t hold back any longer.

  With a raspy “Fuuuck,” I came, my vision darkening around the edges. It took a second to come back down—I was lost in the bliss of it as I emptied into his mouth. Frankie swallowed what I gave him, his hands tight on my thighs, and I used that grip to anchor myself.

  I took a shuddering breath, and he pulled back, wiping the corner of his mouth with his thumb where a tiny drop of come had escaped.

  He stood, suddenly too close to me, even though I’d wanted him a wh
ole hell of a lot closer a moment ago.

  “About time that happened.” There was so much self-satisfaction in his voice, and I could barely look at him.

  My dick was still wet with spit, the dampness making me shiver. I tucked myself back into my pants and zipped up, turning away so he wouldn’t watch. There was glass everywhere.

  I was in pieces too.

  What the hell had I just done?

  My guts twisted at the thought, the memory of Frankie sucking my dick as fresh as it got.

  “I should get this cleaned up,” I said, thankful that my voice wasn’t as shaky as my legs.

  “I’ll help.”

  “No. I’ve got it. You can head home.”

  That was met with silence, but I couldn’t care. What did he expect to happen? Did he think I was going to drop to my knees and return the favor?

  The thought of it made my stomach turn over.

  “I don’t suppose there’s a cab company in Sawyer’s Ferry.”

  My mind flashed to Wade, who’d been in the paper the week before for wrapping his car around a tree. He’d lived, but the car hadn’t. “Not anymore.”

  “Great.” He sounded dejected, like someone had just trampled all over him. I guess I had.

  “I’ll take you.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “How the hell else are you going to get home?”

  There was silence again.

  “Go get your stuff. I’ll clean this up, and then we can go.”

  I needed a minute to breathe, to think, especially if I was going to be trapped with him in a truck for any length of time.

  From behind me, I heard Frankie’s footsteps retreating. I took a fortifying breath, then grabbed the broom from the utility closet. Thoughts flew through my head like leaves in a windstorm.

  Way too soon, Frankie appeared beside the bar again, his cheeks still flushed pink, his lips still swollen… lips that had been wrapped around my cock not ten minutes before. I shut out the image.

  “Ready?”

  He nodded, his eyes trained on me. I knew he was trying to figure out exactly what the hell was going through my head, but even if he’d been a mind reader, that would have been impossible. I had no idea what was going through my head.