He kissed her, again grinding his mouth down on hers until her lips felt deliciously bruised and sensitive. This was not the tortured, conflicted man who’d taken her to his room in the clubhouse. She tried to match his intensity, but he was so much bigger, dominating her so much, that she couldn’t keep up. Instead, she gave herself over. She raised her arms over her head and grabbed the spindles on her brass headboard, arching up against his body.
When she did, he stopped with a grunt and raised up on his hands, staring down at her. His eyes were hot and wild. She smiled up at him and arched her back again. He grunted—he seemed to have lost the power of speech—and pushed down, lying on her again, taking her breasts in his hands and sucking a nipple hard and deep into his mouth. She felt it in every nerve in her body.
“Oh, God! Show, oh, God!”
Her breasts were big, but they were very sensitive. Most guys seemed intimidated by their size, or something, and tended to fluff them like pillows, maybe lick her nipples if she was really lucky. Few, though, would give one a good suck. Show was sucking as if he thought he could draw sustenance from her. And then he closed his teeth around her nipple and sucked again. She cried out and brought her hands down to clutch his head tight to her. Oh, she wanted more of that.
He stopped and looked up at her, breathing audibly. Coming up on his knees, he took her hands from his head and put them back on the headboard, wrapping her hands around the spindles again and holding here there, his huge, hot hands encircling hers. He gave her a meaningful look. He said nothing, but she understood. He wanted her to leave her hands where they were. He wanted her passive and exposed. Everything in her belly and between her legs clenched, like a cramp, and she felt her panties soak. She nodded. They were apparently beyond language.
Straddling her, his weight on his own legs, he pushed his hands into her jeans and forced open the buttons of her fly in one hard move. Then he grabbed her jeans and underwear together and pulled. She raised her hips and helped him as he scooted down her legs with her clothes in his hands.
He got as far as her knees before he realized that her bed had a footboard, too. After a pause while she could see him figuring out the logistics, he got up went to stand at the end of the bed, then reached over the footboard and pulled her boots off, then her socks, then her jeans and underwear, grinning the whole time. After her clothes were cast away, he picked up her left foot and lifted it high. He massaged it, pressing his thumbs exquisitely into her arch. Then he kissed every polished toenail and put her foot down. The shift in pace, from the rough demand to this sweet caress, made her feel a little dizzy and a lot needy. She moaned and lifted her hips, encouraging him to get back to business.
He stood where he was and took his own clothes off. She watched avidly, thrilled beyond measure to be seeing his sculpted body again. She’d been a little scared by his size that night in the clubhouse, but the kind of scared that had made her wet and squirmy. Now, she wasn’t scared at all. She knew how he felt inside her, the way he filled and stretched her, the way he reached deep. She wanted it. God, she wanted him again.
When he was naked, he stayed at the end of the bed, looking down at her. What? She whimpered, rocking her hips.
“We still okay without a condom? I got ‘em if we need ‘em.”
She laughed. His voice had sounded loud after all the quiet heat. “We’re okay. Get over here. God, get over here.”
He laughed, too, and came back to her. He lay at her side at first and kissed her, gently. No. She wanted what was going on before he’d gotten up. She wanted him desperate and hard.
She bit his lower lip, hanging on for a second, pulling on it. He jerked back and stared hard at her. And then he rolled onto her, letting what felt like all of his weight rest on her, his hands up around hers on the headboard, his mouth insistent on hers, his erection pressing into her thigh. Yes. This was what she wanted. She surged her hips up and ground against him, feeling his cock slide against her skin.
He broke away from her mouth. “Fuck, woman. Fuck.”
He shifted, and she thought he’d enter her finally, but instead, he moved down, nipping and sucking at her skin, over her collarbone, her nipple, her belly, her thigh. He wrapped his arms around her thighs and pushed her legs wide apart, so wide she felt the stretch all the way to her core, and then his mouth was on her, and he was sucking her clit the way he’d sucked her nipples, hard and rough, shaking his bearded mouth against her folds.
Oh, it was good. Oh. Oh. “Oh, oh, oh, oh yes. Yes, Show. Oh yes. Please, yes.”
She held on to the headboard and planted her feet flat on the bed, bringing her hips and back and legs up, trying to get him even harder, tighter against her. With a dark growl, he obliged, and then lightning struck the deepest part of her, and she screamed. He stayed on her, forcing the climax to its highest peak, and she screamed again.
As soon as she was able to relax back down to the mattress, he was up, propped on his elbows over her, shoving forcefully into her. It hurt—he was so damn big—but she wanted it, wanted the burn and the stretch. He thrust fast, hard and deep, grunting hoarsely every time, reaching deeper than she knew she was, his head over hers, his hair loose and wild around them, brushing her face as he rocked back and forth, so hard, inside her. She brought her legs up and wrapped them around his hips. He grunted and moved faster, dropping his head to claim her mouth with his wet beard, his tongue tasting of her.
She was going again, all of her muscles cramping in pleasure more intense than she thought she could stand. She let go of the headboard, wanting to feel his back, but he locked his own arms, pinning her and forcing her hands to stay where they were. All but immobilized, she grabbed the spindles again and let the pleasure have her.
She turned her mouth from his, needing more air, sucking it in in huge gulps. As her release washed over her, he grated, “Yeah, again. That’s it. Again,” each word coming on a thrust. Hitting her peak a second time, she bit down on her lip against the scream.
“Don’t do that. I want to hear you. I want it all.” He pushed up onto his knees and dragged her with him, slamming her against his hips. She couldn’t have held the scream back if she wanted to. She was wailing. She’d never come like this. Never felt so out of control, so much a slave to sensation.
She was still spasming hard, not quite done, when he pulled out and flipped her over. She wasn’t a fan of this position; she didn’t like the way it made her helpless and invisible—wait—she needed to catch her breath and stop him. She didn’t like—and he was in her again, oh God, so deep, oh wait.
“Show—ah. Ah.” She couldn’t get the words out to stop him. She could only grunt. His long, thick fingers had her hips in a death grip, yanking her fro as he shoved to. And then, holy God. It felt so good. God. What—how—where—oh God. She was still grunting, but no longer trying to talk. She didn’t know how long she could take this profound intensity, but she didn’t want it to stop. Show was yelling now, incoherently, moving so fast and hard the sound of their meeting bodies was like the beat of a bass drum, and she was screaming again, coming so hard she was sure it was going to kill her. Her vision actually went dim.
“Fuck! Shannon! Jesus!” He froze, his body as taut as a steel cable, deep inside her. And then he collapsed on top of her, pushing her flat onto the bed.
Dazed, sore, and exhausted, buffeted by emotions more powerful than she could manage, Shannon started to cry.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Shannon was crying underneath him. Really weeping. Oh, shit. Show pulled out and shifted off her, lying at her side, brushing her wet hair from her beautiful, flushed face, contorted by her sobs.
“Shannon. Hon—are you hurt?” She cried harder but didn’t otherwise respond. “Fuck. What can I do?”
“No—no—no.” She got that word out in gasps, but Show didn’t know what she wanted. So he stayed put, his hand on her face, feeling worried and guilty.
She took a huge breath and held it. When she let it
out, she was calmer. “I’m okay. You didn’t hurt me.” Her voice was little more that a whisper. “I just—I feel so much right now.” She turned to her side, facing him, and smiled. Such a pretty smile. He brushed his thumb over her lips, and then over her cleft chin, like a little upside-down heart. “You didn’t hurt me. That was…I never felt anything like that. It was amazing.”
Relief overtook him, and he grinned, relaxing at her side. “It was. I went a long goddamn time without. You make it worth it.”
She wrinkled her brow a little and asked, “How long?”
No. Not going to admit that, not lying naked with her. “Long. Leave it at that.”
“Okay. Show?”
“Yeah, hon?” He ran his hand down the length of her silky arm. Her skin was cool to the touch; the room was a little chilly. They were lying on her comforter, but there was a throw at the end of the bed, wadded now by the movements of their coupling. Show sat up and grabbed it, shaking it open and laying it over them both.
“What’s your name?”
He grinned. “Showdown. Showdown Ryan. You know that.”
She grinned back and grabbed his beard. It was a thing she did sometimes, wrapping her fist under his chin. It was intimate, somehow, and he liked it. “Your mama named you Showdown?”
“No. My mama named me Robert, but even she calls me Show.” His smile faltered as he heard what he’d said. “Well, she did. When she remembered. Now, she calls me Robby, like when I was a boy. That’s who she thinks I am, when she knows. Even looking like I do, to her, I’m eight.” He was just chock full of personal talk tonight. He didn’t mind. He felt open and relaxed in a way that was new. What they’d just done, what they’d shared—it blew his damn mind. He felt connected to her. Too early for that, he knew, but true nonetheless.
“Alzheimer’s?”
“They say no. Dementia. Not sure how it’s different. She’s up in a home in Springfield. I see her a couple times a month. She knows her Robby about half the time. Other times she’s scared of me. It’s a crap shoot.”
“I’m sorry. That’s hard. What about your dad?”
“Dead. Almost twenty years, now. Heart attack, about a year after he lost the farm. I moved them in with me, but Pop left himself back on his family’s ground, and he just stopped one day, like a watch running down. Mom started losing her head right about when she lost my pop. She wasn’t even sixty. By the time I married Holly, she was a handful. When Daze was coming up on two, Mom hurt her. Didn’t mean to, just didn’t know who she was. Didn’t even know she was a kid. Beat her with a broom, trying to get her out of the house. Like she was some varmint who got in. Scared hell out of Holly, bruised Daze up pretty bad. That’s when I put Mom away.” He rolled onto his back, contending with the memory.
“God, Show. Your life. God.”
That was pity, and he wanted none of it. He pushed his arm under her and brought her close, settling her against him with her head on his chest. “Your turn. Been spilling my guts all night. I hardly know anything about you.”
She tilted her head, and he looked down into her eyes. “Well, you don’t have to teach me to shoot. I’m a country girl. It’s been a long time, and I’m rusty, but I learned to shoot when I was a kid.”
He grinned. She always dressed so nicely, was always made up, her nails and hair perfect, that the thought of her shooting cans off a fence surprised and pleased the shit out of him. “You don’t say. What’d you shoot?”
“Remington 30.06. Mossberg. And a Colt.”
“Nice. Nothing semi?”
She laughed. “Uh, no. We were just shooting cans, or animals, not robbing banks. I was okay with a bow, too, though.”
“Good to know. Gotta get you out, see what you can do. What other secrets you got?”
Her smile faded for a second, but then came right back. He caught it, though, and remembered that odd distance that had come up when they were in his house—there was something. But he didn’t push. She’d tell him when she could. Sometimes you needed to keep your secrets. Instead, he asked, “Where you from, country girl?”
“Karville—a little town in the Bootheel. A lot like Signal Bend, except it didn’t have the Horde to look after it. It doesn’t even exist anymore. I mean that literally. The main drag was razed about three years ago.”
He’d thought he’d heard the Ozarks in her voice, just slight, but there—like the way she said “hill” for “heel.” He gave her a squeeze and pressed his lips to her head. “That’s rough. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I left when I was eighteen and never looked back. Didn’t really affect me much when it was gone.”
Show tried to imagine not loving the place you were from. The story of Signal Bend had been a tragedy for most of his adult life—loss and pain, violence and poverty. People had left town in droves—they left voluntarily, or they were driven out—until there were only these few hundred people left, clinging to a memory of the town as it had been, to the only world they knew. He himself had lost as much as anybody. More. But his love for this place was sunk deep in his marrow. It was home. Nowhere else ever could be.
But he thought of Daisy and how he’d known she wouldn’t stay, how she was meant for bigger things than this little wide spot in a forgotten road. He could see Shannon, so smart and gorgeous, packing up and driving out of her own little town, heading to college, to the city, to a life big enough to hold her. And he knew enough of her to know she’d found that life.
Why she was back in a little town like Signal Bend, then, was a mystery. Maybe her secret was wrapped up in it.
“What about your family? Where’d they end up?”
She sighed, and he could tell he was getting into territory she wanted to avoid, but she answered him. “I have an aunt and uncle living in one of those golf retirement communities in Arizona. I…don’t talk much to the rest of my family. I keep up with them a little online.” She rose up on her elbow and looked down at him, her hand resting on his chest. “Don’t ask about that, okay?”
Her expression was so vulnerable, tears still glimmering under her eyes and on her lashes, her hair mussed from their sex, that it hurt to look at her. He lifted his hand to cup her cheek. “Okay, hon. You tell me when you can. I won’t ask.”
She nodded. “Thank you.” Still she looked down at him. “You…scare me…a little.”
“What? Why?” He didn’t want to scare her. He thought she’d handled his story about Daisy and Holly without fear, and that was the worst thing he had.
“You make me feel—a lot. More than I’m used to.” She lay back down on his chest, and he held her close. “I know that’s not very articulate, but I don’t know a better way to say it.”
She didn’t have to say it better. He knew exactly how she felt. Hell, she’d made him feel anything at all again. “You said it fine, Shannon. You said it fine.”
~oOo~
Show woke early, just past dawn, and his first thought, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, was a happy one. Shannon was still curled in his arms, sleeping quietly, tucked under her thick comforter. Deep in the night, the room had gotten so chilly that the throw he’d covered them with had not been enough, and they’d gotten all the way in bed, under the covers.
He didn’t want to get out of this warm bed, curled up with this beautiful woman, and trudge across the cold room, but he needed to check his phone, and he needed to get a sense of the weather. Then Shannon sighed and stirred in his embrace, her knee grazing his cock, and he decided the cold day could wait. He rolled her onto her back and hovered over her, watching her wake slowly from sleep as he ran one hand over her smooth, warm skin.
When she blinked her eyes reluctantly open, he leaned down and kissed her. “Morning.”
“Mmm. Morning.”
“What are your feelings about morning sex?” He knew she could feel his feelings about it pushing against her leg.
She smiled. “Usually I like to pee first.”
He push
ed his hand between her thighs, over the neatly trimmed, pale red hair. She was hot and already wet. “Yeah?” He rubbed over her clit and then pushed a finger inside her. She gasped and moaned, squirming under him.
“Usually, yeah.”
“Now?” He pushed a second finger into her. She was beginning to pant.
She spread her legs. “No.” She pulled on his arm, and he rolled onto her, grabbing his cock and sliding easily into her. “Oh God,” she whispered.
He felt her clamping down around him, pulling him into her, holding him tight. “Shannon,” he murmured in her ear. She whimpered and arched at the sound of her name.
~oOo~
Nobody was going anywhere. Not for awhile. That thunder and lightning they’d heard the night before had portended very bad weather. It wasn’t even Thanksgiving, but there was a foot of snow on top of an inch and a half of ice. Signal Bend was socked in good. Don Keyes had sent out word to the Horde that he had his plow on his Jeep and was picking up Havoc and working his way to his farm implement business, where the town plow was garaged. Havoc would drive it and get the roads clear—they had no expectation that the county crews would ever make their way this far out, not before the snow melted on its own—but nobody else would be moving much for the day.
The sky was still heavy and threatening, but the forecast called for no more than flurries continuing through the day. Show had started a good fire in the parlor fireplace, and now he stood at the front window, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand, and enjoyed the way the snow and ice had turned the world into a sparkling, silent, perfect slice of peace. He hated winter, because it forced his bike into the garage, but he loved snow. He’d loved taking his girls out in it, crunching bootprints through the crisp, white blanket, building snow forts, lifting them out of their angels so they’d be perfect. Then they’d go in, and Holly would feed them homemade soup and grilled cheese sandwiches while their wet clothes and boots hung dripping on the back porch. With the girls between them, things had always been okay with Holly. She’d put on a decent front for them with her feelings about him.
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