by Lin, Amber
He lost his rhythm, his movements jerky. “Natalie,” he gasped, as a hot splash landed in the back of her mouth. She took it all, swallowed his release, soothed him with her mouth and hands. Even long after the last spurt, when his cock had softened slightly in her mouth, violent shudders ran through the length of his body.
She stood and embraced him, his cheek to her breast, allowing him to use her body. And he did, wrapping his arms around her waist and leaning against her with ragged breaths. Stroking his hair, she whispered things both empty and true. “It will be okay, you’ll see. I’ve got you.”
Chapter Five
Sawyer struggled to catch his breath and figure out what the hell just happened. Right, a blowjob, the best he’d ever had. But he had a sinking feeling that it had been more than that, and he was desperate to get back on familiar ground.
Natalie looked down at him, her eyes bright with nervousness and lust and other things he didn’t want to name. Her body was small in his arms, the contrast between her willowy limbs and his muscled ones stirring something primal inside him.
Him Tarzan, her Jane. Yup, that was familiar enough.
He scooped up her legs, catching her in his arms, and carried her out into the sweeping rain in long strides toward the house. The sound she made was half surprised laugh, half purr of arousal. She was perfect and sexy, and he was ready for round two.
That was all this was, sex. She had initiated the whole thing. So why did he feel like an ass?
He owed her, that’s what it was. He owed her for that amazing orgasm. For coming to check on him when he was a surly bastard half the time—or most of it. And he owed her for her quiet elegance, the sweetness that somehow made this all bearable, if he could just see her once a day. He had about two million ideas of ways to make her come, and he intended to try out at least five of them tonight.
They left a wet trail on the carpet, but he wasn’t stopping for anything. Not for the musty old furniture in the living room or the empty places on the wall where he’d torn down the photographs. He hesitated at the thought of Natalie in his father’s bed—his bed now—but he didn’t have a choice. Natalie needed to dry off, and she deserved a soft, warm place to do it. Even if he had been willing to let her leave tonight—unlikely—it wasn’t safe for her to drive the deeply rutted roads in this storm.
In the bedroom, they tore off their wet clothes and met at the mouth. Their hot kiss spread through his whole body, her skin burned him wherever he touched her, everywhere. Her skin was pale, her caramel hair dark and slick from the rain. Her lips were full and red, from kissing him, from going down on him. He felt a pang in his chest, looking at her, but the throb in his cock was more familiar.
“Is it...am I okay?” she stammered.
He realized she was self-conscious, that he had been staring.
“You’re so pretty.” It came out hoarse and inadequate, but maybe that was for the best. This was sex, and she was pretty, beautiful, a goddamned dream. “Lie back on the bed.”
And obedient too.
He loved the way apprehension and eagerness warred in her expression. He loved how her legs fell apart at his touch. Her pussy was like the rest of her—delicate, soft, and sweet. He ran his tongue from bottom to top, lingering at her clit.
She tasted like rain, like nothing at all, until he drew her moisture out. He craved her feminine flavor, wanting to imprint it on his memory like a brand, something to remember on a future rainy night in some godforsaken part of the world, away from this, bereft of her. She strained up to his mouth in rhythmic undulations that drove him wild, but he clamped his hands over her thighs and held her down, determined to deliver the same amount of pleasure she had given him.
He lapped at her as if he had forever, because he did. Rain lashed the window, the pitch black and steady patter creating a kind of sex cocoon, where there was only him and her and all they could do was fuck. He slipped his fingers inside her, steeling himself against the wetness and warmth. He ran his fingers along her slick walls, stroking, searching. There. Her hips bucked and a choked gasp escaped her. Again and again, he rubbed that spot, flicking her clit with his tongue.
Her fingers scrabbled at his head, but his hair was still military short. There was nothing for her to hold on to, nothing for her to do but grasp and want and plead “oh, please” until he closed his lips around her clit and sucked, because—God, yes—anything, everything, whatever she wanted he would give to her.
He rocked her through her climax, even though he was almost dying. He held back from spilling on the sheet only through sheer force of will, and when she collapsed, replete, he was up, ready to enter her.
“A condom,” she moaned.
“Shit, you’re right.” He could have cried. “I hate that you’re right.”
He yanked open the drawer by the bed. Empty. He should have known that. He hadn’t stocked this place with anything, only emptied it. And he hadn’t had any reason to buy protection, but even in his ambivalence over returning home he wouldn’t have traveled condomless. He stumbled off the bed and found his wallet, dumped its contents on the floor. Expired? God hated him, that was the only possible explanation. Hard, hurting, he stumbled into the closet and rifled through his luggage. Natalie’s laughter was a small balm to his frustration, but, Christ, if he didn’t find something soon—aha!
He rolled on the condom as he stalked over to the bed and mock-growled. “Care to share what was so funny, little girl?”
She tried to adopt the proper serious expression. “I’m sorry. I’ve just never seen a man running while naked. And you’re so very...well endowed.”
He was between her thighs now, nudging at her entrance. “So you think you can placate me with dick compliments?” He nuzzled into her neck. “You might be right. Let’s hear another one.”
She gasped as he pushed inside, halfway. “So big,” she managed, her eyes rolling back.
“You already said that one.” He pulled back and thrust in again, a little deeper. “Try again.”
He felt her moan right down to his balls.
“I loved the feel of it in my mouth.”
“Shit.”
“So thick and warm. And the skin was so soft. I can still imagine it on my tongue. Did you taste yourself when you kissed me? I love the shape of it, the size—it’s perfect. Almost too big. That’s the perfect size.”
Ohhh, shit. She had turned the tables on him. She was under him, spread open to him, but he was the one close to begging. His hips moved without his consent, sliding in to the hilt. They set up a rhythm, spurred on by her breathy moans, and he was along for the ride, out of control.
He sped up, practically drilling her into the bed. She wasn’t teasing him anymore with her hot, dirty words, only gasping on each thrust, her mouth gaped open, her eyes glazed over. It was the sight of her rapture that pushed him over, and he couldn’t hold on, couldn’t wait.
He grabbed her hips and ground himself into her. It was painful but as necessary as breathing. He had to be inside her, all the way, just there, a little deeper, rocking through his climax. Breathless, he collapsed on top of her, gratified to feel the clenching aftershocks of her own release around his spent dick.
He wasn’t so much worried about the way his body twitched and shivered after an orgasm of that force and intensity. No, what concerned him was the unfortunate clenching of his heart as he looked at her, flushed and sated in his bed. What really worried him was the desire to see it again and again, every day, until death did them part.
With limbs made of lead, he forced himself off her. Made himself walk to the bathroom to clean up. Stared at himself in the mirror and thought, What the fuck?
By the time he came back to the bed, she had wrapped her body around a pillow and gone to sleep. She seemed so sad there, so lonely, but that couldn’t be right. She knew everyon
e in town, was friends with everyone. He was the outcast, the prodigal son no one wanted back. He curled around her, pulled her close and tumbled into a dreamless sleep.
* * *
Natalie woke to the whir and clatter of a car engine. It wasn’t a pretty sound. But then, her old Taurus wasn’t a pretty car.
Her dress was rumpled and damp in some spots, but she slipped it on anyway and made her way downstairs. Outside, Sawyer had a pieces of wood shoved under the back wheels while he gunned the gas. The wheels spun, buried almost halfway in the mud. The car shuddered and jerked until he released the gas and punched the steering wheel. “Damn!”
So that answered the question of whether he wanted her to stay. She felt sixteen years old again, rejected again. But he couldn’t walk away from her this time, and it seemed she was stuck too. She looked over to where his tires were half-sunk into the mud. She suspected there was supposed to be gravel here to prevent this kind of thing, but it had all washed away over the years.
Steeling herself, she said, “Sawyer?”
He looked up, his eyes darkening with an unnamed emotion.
She fidgeted. “Guess the car’s not working.”
Without a word, he flipped off the ignition and got out.
“I can call someone. Joe Peterson has a tow hitch, so—”
He crushed her in a hug. Her nose smooshed against the white undershirt he wore, and nothing had ever felt sweeter.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered. “Just don’t.”
“I’m not looking at you.” At least her muffled voice obscured the way her voice cracked.
“And don’t cry.”
Or maybe it didn’t. But she wasn’t going to cry. She just needed time to process. It wasn’t every day she had sex with the man who had been her first love. In all honesty, she still loved him, in a distant, hypothetical sort of way. She loved him the way she might love a piece of art—she didn’t expect it to love her back. Only last night she had begun to think maybe...but clearly that wasn’t going to happen. They’d had sex. Now it was over.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“It wasn’t you I was worried about.”
Inside the house, she lifted the phone to call Joe. The line was dead.
“Do you have your cell?” Sawyer said, following her inside.
“Er, no. I know it’s weird, but I don’t have one.” The sad truth was, she’d never seen a need. She spent all day in the diner. “Can I use yours?”
His eyebrow lifted. “I don’t have one either. I usually pick up a disposable when I’m stateside, but ever since... Well, I don’t expect too many phone calls.”
What a pair they made, both of them stuck in the past. No cell phones or any of the other flat-screened electronic devices. He flipped on the TV, but it fuzzed despairingly before he turned it back off.
“So I’m stranded here.” She frowned. “An abandoned farmhouse, a woman forced off the road by a storm—you know, this could be the start of a horror movie.”
“In broad daylight?”
“That’s the twist.”
He looked skeptical. “Listen, if you really need to get to town, I can probably get you there on the tractor. It’ll take the better part of the day, and we’ll likely get pretty muddy, but it ought to get us through, unless the water’s really high.”
She bit her lip, thinking of Gram and the nursing home in Austin. They were most likely too far away to be affected, and well equipped with generators anyway. Still, if Gram called... But she wouldn’t call. Not when she didn’t even remember who Natalie was.
Since her parents’ car crash, for as long as Natalie could remember, her grandmother had been an unwavering source of support. Even after a long day working in her diner, Gram had always been quick to supply a hug, a few profanity-laced words of encouragement and, once, a shot of whiskey in her junior year of high school after Natalie had been publicly dumped by Sawyer.
Gram got older and Natalie took over more shifts at the diner, then all of them. College plans fell to the wayside, but that was how it should be: family helping family. Even the Alzheimer’s diagnosis hadn’t shaken her sense of purpose. Gram had been her caretaker most of her life. Natalie would return the favor.
Except it had been more than forgetfulness, more than agitation. There were fights, every night. Her grandmother hadn’t been herself, Natalie understood that, but the insults and threats still hit their mark. Then Gram begun throwing things, scratching, hitting.
Natalie had thought she was successfully hiding the bruises until the sheriff sat her boyfriend down for a talk about southern hospitality—a fancy way of saying Joe had confronted him about it. Said boyfriend didn’t take the accusation lightly and, to her regret, fists were thrown. The truth had come out, and the people in town had stepped forward with their love and support and whiskey. She had enrolled Gram in the nearest dementia care facility with a full-time nursing staff—almost sixty miles away.
And now Natalie was here in Sawyer’s kitchen, unable to care for Gram, unable to care for Gram’s business. She sat down heavily in a kitchen chair. “I hope the diner’s okay.”
Unlike last night, his powerful body was relaxed, at rest, but even now his gaze was watchful. “You may have lost a few windows. Insurance should cover the damage, but they won’t come out while utilities are down, and I’m guessing most of the town is a mess. We must have slept through the worst of it.”
Right, sleeping.
Guiltily she remembered waking up in the dark and feeling him, hard as stone, against her leg. That couldn’t be comfortable. Morning wood, sure, but in the middle of the night? That couldn’t be healthy. She was really just the Good Samaritan of bedmates, then, for slipping it into her mouth, again and again, until he climaxed and groaned her name.
She remembered also, with an ache between her thighs, waking up again with him behind her, his cock inside her, everything rough and dirty and not polite at all, and how she’d loved it, how hard she’d come, crying out “oh, God.”
His eyes had darkened, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Well, what’ll it be?”
From behind again definitely, but he wasn’t talking about sex. “I guess I’ll stay here until the phone lines come back up.”
“Good.” He paused, seeming oddly unsure. “There isn’t someone who would worry about you? I mean, did you tell someone you were coming last night?”
Had Lucy really mouthed do it, do it at her when she and Joe came into the diner yesterday morning? And drawn the sketch on the back of their receipt, the one that had seemed anatomically impossible? “Yeah. That happened.”
Sawyer’s face was blank. “What?”
“I mean, she’ll figure it out. Lucy will. You remember her? She’s Joe’s sister.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Right. Joe again.”
“They come into the diner pretty much every morning. So if I’m not there or in my apartment, she’ll know I’m...somewhere else?”
His expression was unfathomable, until he said, “Stop cleaning.”
“Oh!” She glanced down and realized she had been straightening a stack of mail. “Sorry.” She set down the unruly pile and patted it. “It’s a habit.”
“There’s coffee in the pot while you wait.” He pushed off from the counter. “I’m going to check on a few things outside.”
“Okay,” she called to his back, as if her cheery tone could offset her awkward blush. “I’ll make breakfast.”
When he grunted in what she assumed was assent, she tackled the pile of dishes in the sink with a sigh of relief. He hadn’t given her much to go on. Would he have preferred her to leave? But anyway, she had managed to find a comfortable role here after all. The dishwasher, the cook. The one who served breakfast and then faded into the background.
>
* * *
Sawyer banged his thumb as he drove a nail into the tarp, trying not to think of a certain sexy woman cooking in his kitchen and focused instead on getting the roof of the barn cleared of debris and covered before the damn thing caved in.
He had enough saved up from his tours to patch this place up, and that wasn’t even counting the nest egg he’d been shocked to find in his father’s bank account. They’d lived on rice and beans and a TV that had been ancient when Sawyer was born. What had the man been saving for?
Except for the harvest, his ornery, wiry old man had run this farm by himself. Sawyer was physically stronger, more capable, better trained at strategy and tactical maneuvers, and yet for all his labor, the farm was a complete wreck, not close at all to being ready for planting. It felt like a puzzle, a challenge.
“Damned prideful bastard,” he muttered, though he wasn’t sure who he was talking about.
After the barn was secured, he went to check on the irrigation. Sure enough, it was broken too. The three-foot-deep trench that skirted the field should have been lively with running water after the flash flood last night. Its purpose was twofold: to supply water to the roots within the field and to keep the plants from drowning. Instead it was full of still, glassy water, while the field itself was a muddy slosh. One more downpour and it might overflow right into the house.
He followed alongside until he found the blockage. Some animal must have built its den here, judging by the packed pile of debris and excrement floating nearby. Was it any wonder he hadn’t wanted to be a farmer? Now he’d have to shovel all this shit out and hope he didn’t find a drowned rabies-infested body inside. Whatever it was should have known to evacuate when the water started rising, but on principle Sawyer doubted the intelligence of any animal that lived here, including himself.
The hard work was therapeutic, though, allowing him to work off some of his earlier annoyance. Joe Peterson, seriously? He was a tool. And obvious too, hanging around the diner like that.
So Sawyer had gone to the diner every evening. That was different. A man had to eat.