Caine sensed that, and cupping the underside of her breasts, he kneaded them, dragging the tips of his thumbs over the points until she was slippery with desire.
Her head fell back, exposing the column of her neck. Her fingers drove into his scalp, clutching handfuls of his wet hair, her hips lifted, and her legs went around his waist, drawing him flush to her.
Caine licked at her neck, letting his teeth lightly graze the skin, dipping lower and lower until his hot breath teased her nipples. When his lips wrapped around one tight bud, Dixie thought she’d explode, the sensation so intense, heightened by this new connection between them.
Water rained down on them, pelting the hard tile, creating a steamy shelter that soon blocked everything out but Caine’s mouth on her, devouring every exposed inch of her slick flesh.
Her back arched as his free arm went around her waist, and his hand splayed across her ass, forcing her hips upward.
Caine’s hand slipped between her thighs, spreading her swollen lips open, dragging his fingers up and down until he made a wet path of heat. “So good,” she whispered.
Dixie placed her hand over Caine’s, guiding his finger to her entrance, lifting her hips upward until his finger slid inside her. She hissed her pleasure, rocking against his thumb now rasping against her clit in delicious circles. The wet slide of his tongue licking at her nipple, along with his finger driving into her greedy body brought her orgasm, fierce and sharply sweet.
Her chest tightened and her thighs clenched together, trapping his hand between them. Caine found her mouth again, drowning out her whimpers as she came.
Dixie gasped for breath when another dizzy spell left her clutching at his arms.
“I’ve got you. Just hold on to me, honey,” he murmured, placing her hands at his waist.
She gripped his clothes, soaked through and through, hearing the crunch of his wet jeans as he brought her with him to turn off the faucets. Dixie sighed when he lifted her back up and hiked her legs around his waist to exit the shower, leaving puddles of water on the floor.
“Sanjeev’ll have your head.”
Caine chuckled, the deep vibration of it from his chest making her sigh with contentment. “You don’t think this is the first time there’s been water all over the princess bathroom, do you? Remind me to tell you about the three-way we had in here two summers ago.”
Dixie giggled. “Two summers ago you were in the Baltic with Landon.”
“You keeping tabs on me?” he teased, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Like some creepy stalker,” she joked back.
Through weary eyes, she watched as Caine somehow found a fluffy towel and dried her from head to toe, slipping her nightgown over her head then stripping off his own clothes and managing to struggle into her old flannel bathrobe.
The brief glimpse of Caine naked, still hard from their encounter, made her mouth water and her heart speed up, but her body wasn’t cooperating with her libido.
Caine took her by the hand and led her back into the bedroom. “Bed. Now.”
Dixie climbed under the covers, grateful for the cool luxury. Mona and Lisa burrowed next to her, knocking the assorted pillows to the floor as her eyes began to droop.
Caine brought her fingers to his lips. “Hey, tiger, no sleeping until I talk to Ray and make sure you’re cleared.”
He settled behind her, spooning her, sliding her nightgown upward until the heat of his cock pressed into her back. Caine’s hands roamed over the planes of her body, teasing. Lifting her leg, he spread her wide, flattening his palm against her swollen heat, smoothing his hands over the lips of her cleft until she bucked against him, writhing and needy.
Her arms went up around his neck from behind her, thrusting her breasts forward so Caine could slide his hand under her and cup one. “I want to bury my face between your thighs, Dixie. Taste you on my tongue when you come. Lick you until you scream.”
Dixie shivered at his words, arching up and inward against his hot length in response. She reached behind her, finding the solid length of his cock, and pumped it, moving her ass up higher until Caine had no choice but to answer her body’s question.
Right now, in her dazed state, the only thing that was clear was she needed his cock in her, driving away her fears, putting out the fire of revenge and replacing it with his hands, his mouth and his glorious tongue. “Please, Caine,” she begged. “Please make love to me. I need this so much more than you’ll ever know.”
He stiffened behind her, his thick thighs pressing into hers, the crisp hair of them brushing against her smoother skin. “I want to touch every part of you, lick every inch of you, drown myself in you. But you belong to someone else. Walker,” he grated the name against her ear. “I don’t make love to someone else’s woman, but Christ if it isn’t killing me to keep from doing it.”
She twisted her neck, pulling his head in for a wet, deep kiss. “I made Walker up. Make love to me. Now,” she begged with a whisper.
He growled a chuckle, gripping her tighter, stroking her tender clit. “Say it, Dixie. Tell me what you want me to do.”
She was so turned on, so fragile, so vulnerable the words flew from her mouth with ease. “I want your cock in me. Hard. I don’t want you to ever stop. I want you to make me come like you’re the only person who can do it. Do it, Caine, please, please do it.”
“I want to watch, baby. I want to see you touch yourself,” Caine ordered, cupping her ass, rolling his hands over her skin, dipping between her wet thighs, dragging that wetness to his lips and licking his finger. “No one tastes like you, Dixie. No one,” he said before positioning himself between her thighs and driving upward.
Dixie buckled then, stifling a scream of raw, uncensored pleasure, coming almost instantly—her need was so deep—with Caine not far behind.
And then he was moving away, running a warm cloth over her, toweling her dry with hands that nurtured as she burrowed beneath the warmth of the comforter.
Some of the last things she vaguely remembered were Caine signing off with Ray, a brief kiss to her temple, and his secure arms around her with her cheek resting on his chest.
But the very last thing she remembered was she and Caine lying next to each other just the way she’d always meant for things to be.
Fifteen
Caine’s feet pounded against the pavement, sweat pouring in familiar rivulets down his chest and along his belly. Fall was coming, but summer wasn’t leaving without a fight. Thick humid air rushed at his soaking wet skin, his thighs and calves straining to meet his goal even though they burned.
His iPod blaring Nine Inch Nails in his ears, he ran the track at Plum Orchard High. It was too early for the kids to be there for practice, leaving him with the track and his thoughts to himself.
Running helped him think. And he had a shitload of thinking to do.
Dixie was going to kill him—no question about that, and rightfully so.
Caine didn’t know what made him do it the first time, or the second time, or even now as he was contemplating the third. He just knew he was eating Dixie up under the cloak of anonymity.
He’d gone along with this damn contest with the idea he’d nail her with his anger at every underhanded, low-down dirty opportunity afforded him. Not very golden boy of him, he mused, but the lingering effects of the end of their relationship left seeing her again a bitter pill to swallow. One he did his best to remind her of like some kind of damn tyrant. It was his fail-safe against falling for more of her bullshit.
It was his wall.
Because of the bet.
She’d called him her judge and jury, and the arrogant ass he’d been kept him from seeing that until just the other night when he’d finally apologized.
Dixie had once shredded his idea of what his life with her as his wife could have been. Sh
e’d taken the woman he’d created in his mind and blown her to shit.
That was when he realized some things never changed. Dixie was always in it for the win, and in the process, fulfilling a long overdue wish from their two families.
She didn’t love him—she loved to brag about winning him. She always got what she wanted, but back then, he’d decided, he’d be damned if she’d get him. Not a chance he was marrying a woman who wanted to hang his head on her wall like some trophy. No matter how much he’d loved her.
He’d kicked himself over and over after he left Georgia and moved to Miami. He’d watched Landon indulge Dixie all through her teenage years—through all of her heartless shenanigans. They’d argued about it more than once. But Landon had seen something in Dixie no one but him saw, and he’d done what he’d always done, remained friends with both of them.
When they’d both come back ten years ago, and the older, allegedly changed Dixie caught his eye and every other aspect of him, he’d finally become a believer. He, like everyone else, began to worship at the altar of Dixie.
He’d called himself all sorts of asshole for not seeing through her bullshit in the same way he had when they were kids.
She’d been the same old Dixie—cruel and manipulative, hiding behind the word changed. His pride and lack of good judgment had taken an ass-whooping, and there was nothing he liked less than feeling as if he’d been had. So he’d licked his wounds far enough away to stay sane and suffered through any mention Landon made of her when he had to.
But since they’d met up again, the cat had grown tired of toying with the mouse. Dixie wasn’t the same damn mouse anymore anyway.
She was a gentler mouse, a mouse with a conscience. One who protected her friends and stuck up for the underdog.
He didn’t know what had brought about the change, but change she had. Though he’d sure like to know what made someone as vindictive and calculating as Dixie turn into Gandhi.
He’d watched her take on the Mags, defend Emmaline, make dinner for the women of Call Girls without asking—or rather, expecting—a single thing in return. She’d put up with the jokes and constant reminders of some of her more widely known hijinks with a smile and a good-natured nod of her head.
Sometimes he wondered if she did it because she felt as if she deserved some sort of continual punishment. As though Dixie thought it was everyone’s rite of passage to take a bite out of her as payment for her cruelty.
Yet she suffered the wrath of her past everywhere she went like a trooper. She strolled into Madge’s every day, head held high, back straight and sat on a stool where she ordered Danish for the girls coming off the night shift with a smile on her face and a kind word for anyone who bothered to ask how she was.
If Dixie heard what everyone was saying about her, and most didn’t even bother to say it behind her back, she ignored it. It took guts to come back and face that kind of ridicule. Desperation and her sad financial state aside, Caine had to give it up to her for lasting as long as she had.
And then there was last night. Hell if he understood that Dixie. Not a sign of retribution. No defense in place for attacking Louella and the other Mags. Just her firm resolve that she’d been wrong to solve the problem with her fists instead of her words.
And tears, tears that ripped his guts out. Bruises that made him want to make everything better with his hands—his mouth. Scratches he wanted to make disappear.
The vulnerability in her eyes and in her body language said she needed someone to lean on—even if it was only for the moment. That Landon’s death, this crazy phone-sex challenge, the worry her debt had brought had all begun to crush her, and she was fighting to keep her pretty head above water, said something about who she’d become.
That was the Dixie he was crazy about. The Dixie he couldn’t keep his hands off.
He slowed to a more manageable pace, dragging a hand over his jaw and kicking up dirt.
Shit. He’d just admitted he was still crazy about her.
That brought him to a slow walk toward the bleachers. He dropped down on the hard metal, wiping his forehead with a towel before draining his bottle of water.
Leaning back on his elbows, he gazed out at the track, one he’d spent hundreds of hours at with Landon and Dixie. In the stands, just hanging out, drinking their first beers, watching Dixie cheer.
They’d been an odd dynamic—the three of them, both of them sharing separate friendships with Landon. But Dixie had always been a part of his memories.
Now a piece of that dynamic was gone, and today, when he needed someone to throw his thoughts at, he missed that dynamic more than ever.
His phone chirped, signaling a text. Digging it out of his duffel bag, he hoped like hell it wasn’t his secretary back at the office in Miami. It was getting harder and harder to keep everything on track being so far away.
Caine shaded the phone with his hand, scrolling to the latest message.
Buck up, buttercup! Decisions, decisions to be made, my friend. Choose wisely. Choose for keeps.
Caine smiled at the phone, his chest tight with missing his best friend. “You son of a bitch, Landon.”
* * *
Catherine rushed to her the moment Dixie stepped foot into Call Girls. “Dixie! Mercy, girl, you should be at home resting.” She made a face and groaned when Cat cupped her cheek to assess Dixie’s black eye and swollen cheek.
Dixie attempted a smile, though the muscles in her face didn’t much like it. “Hey, stranger. How’ve you been? Studying hard so we can all call you Miss Bachelor’s Degree?”
“Forget about me. What are you doing here?”
“Working.”
Catherine made a face at her, distorting her pretty features. “Oh, Dixie, nothing’s more important than your health. Two days off won’t break you.”
“Nay, I say. Two days off could be the deciding factor between survival and poverty. You don’t want to see me out there livin’ under the old bridge by the creek, do you? Besides, I don’t need my eye to talk.” Though, it would certainly help if her tailbone wasn’t on fire.
Catherine grabbed her hand and led her into her office, motioning her to sit on one of the chairs next to her. Her eyes were full of sympathy and concern. “So the girls told me everything about last night. I was worried something just like this would happen. I told Landon as much, but I’ll never forget what he said when I expressed my concern.”
Dixie knew what Landon would say. No one knew the kind of discrimination and disapproval that PO could throw at you like Landon did.
Cat puffed out her chest, raising one eyebrow and smiling a cocky half smile in Landon fashion. “He said, ‘Kit-Cat, never you worry. If those buncha nosy old biddies with sticks up their hemorrhoid-filled asses give you or the girls any trouble, Dixie’ll look out for you. She’ll have your back. Nobody knows how to handle those women like my Dixie-Cup.’”
Dixie’s chest grew tight again for the umpteenth time. Landon had had faith, more faith than she deserved. She gulped, looking away from Catherine’s intense gaze and focusing on the pictures on her desk of a beautiful, chubby little baby boy with sandy brown hair. “He said that?”
“You bet he did. Landon would be so proud of you, Dixie.”
Dixie deflected another rush of tears by snorting a laugh, dropping the bag of Tupperware filled with homemade split pea soup for the girls on her lap. “You think he’d be proud I wrestled Louella to the ground like some kind of caged animal in front of Plum Orchard all over a silly microphone? Oh, and let’s not forget my panties. Most of the town saw those, too. I think Landon would call me unladylike, not heroic.”
Catherine shook her dark head, her eyes glittering. “Don’t diminish what you did, Dixie. Why do you do that? You did something good, something right, and it makes me mighty glad you’re on our team.”
Good Dixie. Brave Dixie. Caine’s words last night, coupled with LaDawn’s and Marybell’s, and now Catherine’s, were too much. All this praise made her uncomfortable. She’d done two whole things right in her life to this date. That didn’t deserve praise—it deserved an about time.
She needed to escape before she couldn’t breathe. “Is that all you needed? My shift starts in five minutes and I’d like to catch up on what I missed yesterday.”
Cat leaned forward and grabbed both of Dixie’s hands, her eyes deep and serious. “Look at me. You’re a good person, Dixie Davis, and I don’t give a coon’s ass if you don’t want to hear me say it out loud.” Letting go of her hands, she smiled and leaned back. “Now, before you go, first, holy smokes. Did your line ever ring off the hook last night. Yay for you—lots of lonely men lookin’ for advice. Second, you have a visitor. If you’re not up to visitors, say the word, and I’ll send her on her way.”
Dixie’s stomach reacted with a jolt. “A visitor? Friend or foe?” she asked weakly. She’d need to take kickboxing classes before she could go another round with a foe.
“I’m callin’ friend, because she was lovely and sweet, but then after last night and that mean old Louella, you never can tell with the people in this town, can you?”
“Who is it?”
Cat hesitated for only a moment. “Jo-Lynne Donovan. She’s waitin’ on Caine, but she asked to see you while she did.”
Perfect. Ding-dong, Caine’s mother calling. Yet, her own mother would never forgive her bad manners if she didn’t speak to Jo-Lynne, even if they weren’t actually speaking to one another because of her. She blew out a rush of air and gathered her things. “Where is she?”
“Waiting in your office.”
Even more perfect. Her ex-almost-mother-in-law was sitting in the office where, as a joke, LaDawn had turned Dixie’s screensaver into a floating penis shaped like a rocket ship. She closed her eyes for a second to get a second wind, then popped them open with determination. “Then to the lion’s den.”
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