by Anna Jeffrey
“You think you might introduce him to your family?”
“We’re a long way from that.”
“But, hey, if you decide you want to, we can have y’all out to dinner sometime. Your grandmother, too. Make it a family affair.”
“We’re only shacking up, Gavin. I don’t think that calls for a family dinner.”
Sighing, he straightened. At least he had the civility to back off. “Well, anyway, we’ll keep an eye on Grammy Evelyn, won’t we Colleen? Don’t worry about it, okay.”
“Thank you,” Shannon said. “Now will you please let go of the doorknob?”
Shannon’s anger cooled the closer she got to town and she started to think about the position Drake was in every day of his life. Someone always wanted something from him. She was glad now that she had considered asking him for a loan for no more than a nanosecond. She would never do that. She would never ask him for anything.
Chapter 36
Shannon drove to Fort Worth Monday afternoon, packed and prepared to travel to Lubbock the next morning. The sky was gray and bleak and the temperature had dropped into the twenties, but thank God, there was no moisture to freeze on the highway. When she arrived at Drake’s condo, he had just reached home himself. She knew he always walked to and from his office above the deli. With his cheeks rosy from the cold and still wearing his overcoat, he looked handsome and dashing.
That he was glad to see her showed in his eyes. Between covering her face and mouth with kisses, he helped her peel off her coat. “I haven’t had time to order supper,” he said, grabbing her around the waist. He swept her tightly against him and planted a fierce kiss on her lips. “God, I want you. How long has it been? Six months?”
She giggled as a thrill zipped through her. She had anticipated just such a welcome for the whole forty-five-mile trip from Camden. She, too, had been counting days since they had last been together. “Ten days since the rodeo.”
“That makes it almost three weeks,” he said, pushing her sweater up and pulling it over her head. She pushed his overcoat back and slid her hands up his chest, unhooking buttons. He whipped off his coat, stepped into the living room and tossed it across a chair back. “C’mon.” he grasped her hand and led her to the bedroom. They hurriedly shed their clothes and scrambled under his covers.
Without preamble, he moved between her legs, kneeing them apart. “Do I have to use a rubber?”
Indeed, the Hawaii trip had spoiled him. Her, too. “Probably a good idea.”
Swearing, he stood on his knees between her legs, reached for the bedside table drawer and groped for a condom inside it. She couldn’t keep from staring at his jutting penis. It almost had a life of its own.
“Like the view?” he asked, rolling on the condom with trembling fingers.
She watched, fascinated as much as eager. At the moment, she didn’t care whether he wore a condom. She just wanted the hot swollen thing inside her. “Love it,” she answered breathlessly. “Hurry.
He leaned over her, braced himself on one hand and pushed into her so powerfully and completely, she couldn’t hold back a gasp.
“Okay?” he rasped. “I’ll make it up to you later.”
“’Sokay,” she said, so excited by his hunger that she didn’t even miss foreplay.
He heaved a sigh and held himself still for a few seconds. Then he slid his arms underneath her and tightly hugged her to him. “I feel so much better.”
“Are you all right? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Now.” His hands tangled in her hair and he began kissing her and kissing her, declaring between kisses how must he had missed her and what he intended to do to her.
But you’ve hardly called me, she wanted to say, but instead, she wrapped her legs around his buttocks, glided her hands all over his smooth shoulders and back, wanting to touch all of him at once.
He kept kissing her, clutching her head, not letting her turn away even once from his hungry mouth. “I’ve nearly gone nuts,” he said raggedly, pinning her wrists beside her head and capturing her eyes with his “Don’t close your eyes.” He started a steady in and out.
“I won’t.”
His hard thickness stroked every inch of her with mind-numbing friction. Flames of passion licked inside her, all around her, threatened to consume her. She wanted to close her eyes and give in to the sensations raging through her, but she kept her gaze locked with his. “Drake,” she breathed. “I’m so hot. I need you to—”
“This?” He moved up, picked up the tempo, pressed the root of himself against her clitoris with steady strokes.
Tension began to build low in her belly, poised for release. “Yes,” she gasped. “Yes…That’s it…”
He stopped. Not releasing her wrists, he drew a great breath through his nose and pulled out.
“Oh, no!” She squirmed against him. “Drake, I’m going crazy.”
His warm open mouth moved over her breasts. “That’s good…” He drew deeply on her nipple, pressing it against the roof of his mouth and sucking her so hard she felt it at her very core. “I want you crazy…crazy for me…every time….” He moved to the other nipple.
His mouth left her breasts and frantically raced down her belly. “I want to kiss you everywhere.”
And she wanted him to. She let her thighs fall wide and lifted herself to him, offering the tiny magical spot that strained begged for his attention. “Yes, yes. Just hurry”
He parted her with his fingers and sucked her clit full into the hot wetness of mouth. Instantly, she zoomed into a shower of stars. She cried out, but he gave her no mercy. As if he were a hungry babe, he sucked and sucked as so many orgasms battered her, it seemed like one long one. She bit into his shoulder and hung on with her teeth, huffed like an animal, lost in glorious ecstasy she had found only with him.
She finished, still panting and wanting. She gripped a fistful of his hair, pulling him up. “Drake….Come back up here.”
His mouth crawled back up her body and he pushed his penis into her again, hooked his forearms behind her knees and pushed them high and wide, pinning her. He hammered into her, the powerful strokes lifting her buttocks off the mattress. The need exploded within her again and her deepest muscles convulsed against him. His own release overtook him and he came hard, grunting and growling and puffing. She hung onto him, wrapping him tightly in her arms. He seemed to be in such a state, it was the least she could do for him.
When it was over, he eased down on top of her, his chest heaving. He was drenched with sweat. So was she. “That damn near killed me,” he rasped, clasping her hands beside her head and interlocking their fingers.
She had never felt so thoroughly possessed.
Something was wrong.
When she had recovered enough to speak, she said, “Oh, my God, Drake. That was so scary.”
“Don’t say that,” he mumbled against her neck. “It was good.”
She couldn’t have done less. “I know. Scary good. I love it when you want me that much. You were so hot.”
“You were, too.”
“That’s scary, too. What’s wrong with us? With me , that you can do that to me?”
“Horny,” he said.
But there was more to it than that. She just didn’t know what. “Was it just sex or are we calling it something else?”
“Sex. Down and dirty.” He turned to his side, hauling her with him. “I wanted it to be dirtier. I wanted a repeat of Hawaii. I wanted to shove my cock clear up to your heart. I wanted to make you come a dozen times in a dozen ways. But so long without you caught up with me and I couldn’t fool around. I had to get right to the point.”
Something was definitely wrong.
But all she could think of was how much she adored him. She smiled and traced his lip with her fingertip. “You certainly made your point, cowboy.” She giggled and stretched her smooth front against his hairy one. “Wanna do it again?”
“Later. The sweet stuff comes next. Valentina boug
ht a can of whipped cream.”
Shannon laughed. “You are awful. After the mess we made with that chocolate mousse, I don’t think—”
“What, you don’t like whipped cream?”
She traced the bow of his brown brow with her fingertip. “I love whipped cream, especially in all the right places.”
He kissed her, hard and quick. “Lets get up and eat. We need our strength. I’ve got some canned soup around here somewhere and some crackers.”
They heated chicken noodle soup and ate in front of TV. Soon afterward, they returned to bed. After playing games with the whipped cream and exhausting each other a second time, they drifted to sleep with him spooned behind her and her tangled in a web of his hairy arms and legs and thick bedding. She had never felt more sated or been more comfortable. Or been happier.
She awoke in the night, cold and dreaming and whimpering. About what, she didn’t know. Only half-conscious, she felt him pull her closer. She pressed her cheek against his arm, her back and bottom against the source of heat, felt him push her hair away from her neck, felt his warm lips near her ear. “You’re okay. I’m here.”
“Cold,” she mumbled.
He pulled the covers over her and she slid back into the dark blue, floating in semi-consciousness, aware of nothing but warmth and caressing and fingertips lightly fondling. She distantly felt him push her leg up, felt his fingers stroking her opening. She was ready to take him again. “Drake?” she said drowsily.
“Hm?”
She felt him shift, then he was inside her, thick and hard and hot and filling her and she felt more than warm. She felt complete. She sighed.
His hand pressed against her belly, he began to move inside her. Slowly, rhythmically. So exquisite it became a part of her dreamlike state. Instinctively, she moved with him, her body in tune with his. Soon, his knowing fingertips were stroking her where her flesh stretched around his penis. Lust! Need! Heat so intense she could barely stand her skin. Yet, she shivered. “Drake, Drake—”
“Shhh,” he breathed against her ear, holding her still. His arm came around her and his fingers found her clit and with a soft sigh, she came.
Then he stiffened and pulled her even more tightly against him. She barely heard him grunt, but knew he had climaxed, too. “Stay inside me,” she mumbled. “Don’t leave me.
“I won’t. Ever.”
They drifted back to sleep.
Daylight came. He was no longer inside her, but they were still closely bonded. Something
was different. She had thought sex couldn’t get more passionate than it had been in Hawaii, but the only word she could think of that applied to last night was the word “desperate.”
“Morning,” he said softly.
She smiled. “Morning.”
“Last night was awesome. I can never get enough of you. I want you even in my sleep.”
She continued to smile like a loon. “Me, too.”
“We need to get going. The plane will be ready to fly at ten.”
They hit the shower and stood front to front in a tight embrace as glorious warm water poured over them and steam fogged around them. Emotion hung between them. She could feel his heart pounding against hers. He didn’t say what was on his mind, but she sensed the weight of it. Her own chest couldn’t have felt heavier if a boulder had lodged in it. It felt almost like sadness, a lot like surrender.
She had read somewhere that women were usually the first to say “I love you.” She had never said those three words to any man since her marriage to Kevin Barton, couldn’t recall if she had said them to him. This morning, they were on her tongue, but she feared the result of forcing them out of her mouth. She wondered how many times Drake had ever said them. He must have at least once. He had been engaged.
As he drove them to the airport, he keyed into his cell phone and told someone to pick up a fast breakfast for two and put it on the plane. By his clipped orders, she could tell he was strung as taut as a banjo. Was he worried about his deal in Lubbock? Or was it something else?
She thought back to how anxious he had been yesterday, too, even before what had happened in bed last night. Something was going on with him. Was whatever was causing his anxiety why they’d had such powerful sex? She cautioned herself to be open-minded. He would surely make himself clear soon.
When they boarded the immaculately clean plane, she saw a big McDonald’s sack sitting on one of the seats. No gourmet breakfast this morning and no steward to serve it. He scowled at the sack and mumbled an oath.
After nothing but chicken noodle soup and crackers for supper, she didn’t care if it was cardboard. She was famished. “It’s fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with McDonald’s.”
After they were airborne, he let down the Formica-clad table between their chairs and began unpacking the sack of food. He handed her a breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee. “Breakfast of champions, he said.
“Egg and sausage. And a biscuit. What’s wrong with that?”
They ate in silence. After they finished, he folded the table back into place and moved to the seat beside her. He held her hand, but he stared out the window.
The flight was short. Just before they landed, he told her his plans. He would inspect windmills already under construction on his family’s land and sign leases for more. Then he would meet with the Lubbock company that wanted him to invest in wind turbine engine construction. He wanted her to see the wind farm, wanted to know what she thought.
After the smoothest flight in her limited experience, they stepped out of the plane into chilled air, bright sunshine and a brilliant blue sky. An upbeat attitude fought through the doldrums. Looking across the landscape toward the distant horizon, she had never seen land so flat. Or so treeless. “Hunh. That must be why they call this part of Texas the high plains.” She smiled up at him.
He gave her a quick kiss on the temple. “You’re too smart.”
“I know. I get it from hanging out with you.”
The murky mood of earlier seemed to have brightened.
A rental car, a white SUV, awaited them. As they left the airport and started away from
Lubbock, the windmills that heretofore she had seen only in pictures became the view. Tall columns topped by three giant turning blades. For as far as the eye could see, they filled the landscape and the skyscape, marching off into the horizon. “Wow,” she said. “There must be hundreds. I can’t even count them. I had no idea.”
He seemed to be as fascinated as she. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
He drove them miles out of Lubbock, passing vast flat and barren fields, marred only by more windmills.
“This is it,” he said, driving off the highway onto a dirt road. “The Lockhart cotton farms. What do you think?”
In front of her lay more unplanted fields of red earth and a closer view of the windmills. He behaved as if he sincerely wanted her opinion. And she didn’t have one. She kicked her brain into gear. “Can you still grow cotton with all of these things here?”
He nodded. “We’ll soon be planting. The windmills won’t interfere.”
The windmills’ sleek minimalist profiles presented a sort of beauty against the brilliant winter sky. Some of the blades turned lazily, while others spun at a pace. The capriciousness of the wind, she supposed. “What if the wind doesn’t blow?”
“The wind always blows here. Only a major shift in the jet stream would change it. Too much wind is the more likely problem. Either way, the energy company that’s doing this says they’ve got it handled.”
She had now been around him enough to recognize skepticism. “You don’t think this is going to work, do you?”
“I don’t know. We started this about seven years ago. The first phase is finished and the leases are paying off. But I can’t keep from thinking of the facts. They’ve been doing this wind and solar shit for thirty years. Spent billions. And they’re no closer to making it work on a grand scale than they’ve ever been. I’m afrai
d it’s kind of like hunting unicorns.”
“They don’t make electricity?”
“That’s not the issue. Nobody seems to have an organized plan. There’s no support system. No practical way to deliver the energy they produce with consistency. A universal collector and transmission system is so expensive to construct, it might not be possible, even for the government.”
“So the answer to my question is you don’t believe in it.”
“I haven’t made up my mind. I haven’t seen any data that makes me think we’re even close to replacing oil and gas or coal with wind and solar energy. My dad keeps reminding me that there’s no green energy that will get a seven-forty-seven off the ground. And he’s right.”
“But that isn’t true. Grammy and I watched a TV show about a thing in space that’s entirely solar-powered. It’s up there now.”
He gave her a frown. “I must have missed that, but it’s bound to be experimental.”
She smiled, hoping to add some humor to the mood. “That’s because you don’t watch enough TV. The stuff you hear about green energy is that it’s all good.”
He shook his head. “All I know is these wind and solar companies are going broke every day, even with government help. My dad also keeps reminding me that it’s all political. He calls it a money-laundering scheme for politicians. They have to talk it up to the public. Otherwise, the bastards might get lynched for how they’re wasting taxpayer money.”
“But aren’t they putting people to work? Isn’t that one of the goals?”
He shook his head again. “Compared to oil and gas companies, the number of people employed by green energy companies would fill a teacup. And the payrolls don’t come close to oil and gas. These turbines you’re looking at right here?” He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the horizon. “Pennington Engineering stood up the windmills, but the turbines were manufactured in China. No American worker earned a dime.”