Who Loves Ya, Baby?

by Gemma Bruce

  “If we do this enough, I might show some stamina.”

  She pushed him over. He pulled her down beside him, then rolled on top of her. He fit his hand between them and opened her. Then the head of his cock replaced his fingers. He pushed himself up on his hands and looked down at her. For a moment neither of them moved.

  Julie could feel his cock pressing against her but not entering her. And still Cas didn’t move, just looked at her. She nudged him with her hips, but he managed to stayed poised just at the entrance.

  Julie was about to scream “Hurry, damn it,” when he pushed himself into her, tortuously slowly, until he penetrated an inch and waited for her to close around him.

  He took two deep breaths and pressed another inch into her. She grabbed his ass and tried to pull him all the way in, but he held himself away. When she was considering bashing him on the head to make him hurry, he slid the rest of the way in and pressed his body against hers.

  Julie let out a squawk when he hit something really amazing. He withdrew and hit another spot on his way out. Then in again. And Julie said, “You should ... get a bumper sticker ... that says Bankers do it with interest. Oh, right there.”

  Cas laughed into her mouth and hit the spot again. Then the action took on a life of its own, out of his control or hers. She thrust against him as he quickened the pace, until the bed rocked with their movements.

  A sense of calm seeped over her. Cas shifted her knee to the side, opening her more, letting him deeper inside her. Julie rose mindlessly to the peak and without warning she shot over the precipice. She contracted around him and Cas shortened his thrusts until they were tiny pulses which drove her on and on until she couldn’t catch her breath.

  When the orgasm finally released her and she began to float back to earth, Cas sank himself into her and she rose up again, until they were there together.

  He pumped himself into her. And she drew him in. Clinging to him until he collapsed on top of her, driving her into the mattress. He rolled to the side. bringing her with him. He blew out his breath like a winded runner while they faced each other and held each other close. And together they drifted into a sweet lethargy.

  Julie must have dozed because when her eyes forced their way open, the comforter was lying across them. Cas was breathing deeply. She leaned close to his face and studied him in the moonlight. His eye was swollen and turning blue and his jaw definitely had a bump on it.

  Julie winced. His injuries would be nothing compared to the bashing his ego would take when word got around that he’d been decked by a woman. What was he doing here, playing sheriff? What had happened that could bring him back here and what was keeping him here?

  With a sinking feeling, Julie thought she knew. He must have a portion of the riddle. He wanted the treasure. That had to be it. Building boats couldn’t be all that lucrative. He might need the money.

  Well, she needed it, too. She’d have to find it first and leave town before he knew that she had bested him.

  Another generation of the Excelsior-Reynolds feud. She smiled sadly; too bad for them.

  She and Cas were rescued ten miles down the river, where they were towed to shore. Hank Jessop lifted her out of the boat. Her tiara fell to the ground. There was a whole group of men, come to look for them. Sheriff Jessop, Mr. Dinwiddie, Mr. Baxter and some others, all looking stern.

  Then Reynolds broke through the group, yanked the bandana from Cas’s head and dragged him away. The crowd parted and Julie saw the big black Cadillac waiting by the road. Reynolds pushed Cas into the back seat, then got in and they drove away. When Julie looked back, the men were frowning.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but they didn’t hear. They were already walking away.

  She sat up, tearing her eyes and herself from Cas. He was a stranger, not the boy who had been her alter ego, her twin, her love. She didn’t know anything about him now.

  They were merely playing out an interrupted game of pirates and princess, of cops and robbers, of cowboys and Indians. Cas had deserted her once. He would desert her again.

  Old anger and hurt resurfaced. She tried to push it away. It was too late to be angry at Cas. He’d never had a chance against his father and the cursed tradition of the Reynoldses.

  And she never had a chance against her mill town upbringing. But still she felt resentful. More against her family than Cas’s, strangely enough. Why had Uncle Wes allowed her and her father to live in poverty? Why had she been left to grow up in Mill Town when the Excelsiors had been one of the most prosperous families in the town? Hell, the town was named after them. So why?

  And the fear and shame she had struggled so many years to suppress rose up again. She pushed away from Cas.

  He mumbled, “Hm?” in his sleep.

  “I have to go.”

  Cas shook his head against the pillow.

  “Smitty’s been inside all afternoon.”

  “I’ll—” A huge yawn cracked through his words. “Walk you down.”

  “No, stay here.” She kissed him and pulled the comforter up to his chin. Cas settled back to sleep.

  When she was dressed and downstairs again, she stopped to look around the room. The ships floated along the wall like a miniature armada, tattered and broken, like both their lives.

  She touched one of the sails. If only he could have stood up to Reynolds.

  And you? The voice was so real that she turned around. She knew it came from her, but she wanted to smack it anyway. Yeah, she’d become a cop as a talisman against her sense of powerlessness. To help others who were powerless.

  She loved her job. And she had walked away from it because she had let herself be bullied. Just like Cas. Let her own insecurities make her an outsider again. She had no one to blame but herself. The thought blindsided her.

  Well, no more of that shit. She’d find Wes’s money and start over somewhere else. And no one and nothing would drive her away again.

  She left the wall of ships and looked at the rest of the room. There was a fireplace with a new couch facing it, and in the space below the stairs, a drafting table and a desk with a laptop computer, and beside it, a stack of neatly arranged folders.

  She listened for a minute, and hearing Cas’s steady breathing from the loft, she picked up the top file and opened it. Bills. Not just Cas’s, but Charles and Marian’s, too. And they were pretty damn large. All marked Paid in Cas’s neat handwriting. He was supporting them. Damn them. Damn them for their inability to change, damn them for what they did to Cas and her. Damn them for what they were doing to Melanie.

  She put the folder back and looked in the others. None of them revealed any riddles. The last one contained several pages of detailed sketches, drawn freehand at all angles, not mindless doodles, but sophisticated studies of masts and rigging and keels. She could feel his soul on the page and she had no right to see it. She quickly shut the folder and saw the corner of a piece of yellow tablet paper sticking out from under the ink blotter. She carefully pulled it free.

  “What are you doing?”

  Julie froze, slowly turned around, shielding the yellow paper with her body. “I, uh, was going to leave you a note.”

  Cas frowned. His hair was sticking up behind his cowlick. His eye was swollen shut. He was completely nude and his cock was beginning to swell. She might have to fuck him to save her secret, then winced that she could even be thinking of such a thing. It was cheap. It was underhanded. It was such a white trash thing to do.

  “Why?” he asked. “Saying what?” He looked at her suspiciously; tried to see around her, but she sat back against the desk and began inching the paper toward the edge of the blotter.

  “Thanks for a lovely evening?”

  Cas didn’t crack a smile.

  “And to apologize for starting the brawl.”

  “Oh.” He stepped toward her; she stood up and managed to push the corner of the paper beneath the blotter before wrapping her arms around Cas’s waist and giving him a heartfelt kis
s.

  He fell into it, pulling her hard against him.

  “I can’t stay.”

  Reluctantly, he let go and followed her to the door.

  “I did have a lovely time,” she said, kissed his cheek, and stepped out into the night.

  Cas stood in the doorway, watching until the Volkswagen was out of view. Then he went back to the desk and turned on the work lamp. No note begun. All his folders were in place, but Wes’s riddle was barely caught under the ink blotter. It was still folded, but she might have had time to read it, before replacing it. Because she had replaced it.

  He picked it up. Read it for the hundredth time and still made no sense of it.

  No doors there are in this stronghold, yet thieves break in and steal the gold.

  A stronghold. A bank vault? It might contain gold. But bank vaults had doors. Thieves. His father? Cold tendrils of fear wrapped around him. How much had Julie read?

  It wasn’t until she’d let Smitty out, given him a treat, and gotten a beer from the fridge that Julie sat down at the oak table and spread out her riddle before her. She had only managed to see a few words of Cas’s before he’d interrupted her. Door, stronghold, gold.

  Well, at least one thing was clear. The treasure was valuable. Too bad she hadn’t been able to read it all. It might have solved her half of the riddle. As it was, it only made it more bizarre.

  She added the words to the bottom of her riddle about the Crystal Fountain.

  “Jeez, Wes. What are you trying to say?” Crystal fountain. Golden apple. A stronghold without a door ...

  “Arrgh,” she said, and Smitty looked up from his dog chew. She crossed her arms on the table and lowered her head to them. “I need another clue, Wes. You made this too hard.”

  Chapter 10

  Julie huffed up the hill toward the gazebo in the predawn darkness. It had turned into winter overnight and she’d had to exchange her jeans jacket for Wes’s orange plaid quilted coat. The sleeves were rolled up twice and the work gloves she’d found in the pockets swallowed her stiff fingers. But the pièce de résistance was the wool cap with ear flaps that she’d laughingly put on in the hallway and was now glad she’d overcome her fashion scruples to wear outside.

  Smitty ran back and forth across her path, nose to the ground. He picked up a stick and brought it to her only to snatch it away again. Then he dropped it on the ground and trotted over to the juniper bush and lifted his leg. Steam rose into the cold air.

  Smitty might think this was a lark, but for Julie, the novelty of getting up at dawn was beginning to pale. Not to mention that she was nervous as hell.

  With Maude in Plattsburgh, she was flying solo, so to speak. But she’d done her homework and she was as ready as she’d ever be.

  “You stay out here and behave,” she told Smitty as she opened the mesh fence. “After I feed them, I’ll let them roam free, uh, free range, or whatever.” Not that anyone, even a chicken, in their right mind would want to spend too much time out in this weather.

  As she walked up the ramp, she had a horrible image of finding twenty flash-frozen chicken carcasses inside the gazebo. Wes hadn’t mentioned heating. “Shit,” she said and quickly opened the door to the gazebo, getting a whiff of godawful odor.

  Fifteen hungry and very alive chickens surrounded her. It was warm inside, and for the first time, she noticed the quiet whirr of the generator that ran the heater.

  Thank God, she thought as the chickens waddled down the ramp. Within seconds, she was the only occupant of the fetid space. She quickly gathered the eggs. Only four today. Which was fine with Julie. She couldn’t eat eggs every morning; too much cholesterol.

  She followed the chickens out, broke the film of ice on the water dispensers and refilled them with fresh water. Checked the feeders and got a pan of scratch out of the shed.

  As she broadcast the kernels of corn and grains, she conjured up Wes’s list of names and descriptions of each bird. The roosters were easy. There were only two. Ulysses, a giant leghorn, and Bill, a small red bantam. The females were more difficult. She knew Ernestine, but it would take a few days before she could distinguish the rest. A lot of them looked the same.

  Smitty watched obediently from the other side of the fence, panting clouds of vapor into the air, while the sun gradually rose above the foothills behind him, leaving an aureole of gold around his coat.

  Gold, thought Julie. What am I doing feeding chickens when I should be looking for gold ... for my inheritance?

  She looked past the clearing and into the woods. Thought about treasure and hiding places. Which made her think of Cas’s riddle. Which made her think of making love to Cas.

  They’d gone at each other twice in the three days she’d been here. Normal people would have taken things slower, gotten to know each other. But not her and Cas. They just banged away like there was no tomorrow.

  And for them there probably wasn’t. Not here anyway.

  A sudden shriek brought her back to the present. Ulysses was flapping at a speckled hen and pushing her away from the feeder.

  “Hey, stop that,” cried Julie and hurried over to intercede. “That’s not polite, you beast. Ladies first.” Ulysses spread his wings to their full span and spit at her before turning his attention back to the hen. Julie jumped between them and quickly lifted the hen out of range. She looked her over and said, “Mamie, right?” The hen cocked her little chicken head and Julie smiled, then realized she was holding a chicken. She hurriedly set her down at another feeder.

  “Wow. I just picked Mamie up and survived. Am I a natural or what?” She turned back to Ulysses and pointed her finger at him. “Don’t mess with me.”

  Ulysses strutted past her without a look and resumed his inspection of the feeding troughs.

  Julie turned to see Smitty watching her. “Okay, so I’m talking to a rooster. I talk to you, don’t I? Big deal.” She walked over to the fence. “If I let these chickens into the yard, you better mind your manners—no chasing, no herding, no eating. Got it?”

  Smitty thumped his tail.

  “Good.” Julie opened the gate. A little bantam hen, Hilary, hopped past her and high-stepped straight for Smitty.

  “Stay,” Julie warned him. Then her mouth fell open as Hillary rose in a flurry of wing feathers and settled onto his back. Smitty didn’t move, but looked at Julie with such a surprised expression that she laughed out loud.

  “That is so cute,” she said. “Don’t scare her.”

  Several other chickens cautiously followed Hillary out of the pen. Most just continued to feed, while Ulysses marched up and down the rows, and Bill perched above them observing the proceedings.

  Julie took the eggs to the house, poured herself a cup of coffee and returned to the porch steps. She was supposed to let them out twice a day, and she couldn’t in good conscience leave them to face the elements alone. There were predators out there.

  So she sat on the steps and watched Smitty and Hillary bond. Soon, Bill hopped down from his perch and wandered outside. Julie felt a peck at her boot and looked down. Ernestine rolled in the dirt at her feet. Then she hopped up the steps, cocked her head at Julie and jumped into her lap.

  Julie froze. Ernestine puffed out her feathers until her head disappeared and she began to purr. Julie began to absently stroke Ernestine’s neck. It was amazingly comforting to have a chicken in your lap—as long as she didn’t leave any steaming presents behind when she left.

  Don’t even think about getting attached, Julie warned herself.

  “What am I going to do with you guys, Ernie? I can’t really keep you. I have to get a job and I don’t think it’s going to be raising layers. I’ll have to move to a larger town and hope I can get a good reference from the NYPD. I may have really fucked up by leaving. But there it is. Never let people make you feel small, Ernie.”

  Ernestine cooed; Julie continued to stroke her head. Out in the clearing, Bill joined Hillary on Smitty’s back. The sun rose into another clear
day, and Julie’s coffee grew cold as she sat on the steps and felt contented.

  Cas awoke to shining sun and for a moment he thought he was on the water with Julie beside him, the light sparkling off the crests of the waves. But he was alone. And the light was glinting off the dresser mirror.

  He rolled over and grunted. His eye hurt, his whole face hurt and his back and a few other parts. Then he remembered why. A fight at the Roadhouse. Julie had decked him in front of half the men in town last night. Of course, she’d more than made up for it later. But he was going to have to take more ribbing from the bar’s regulars. Well, he thought philosophically. At least it will take their minds off chicken thieves.

  But he was wrong.

  When he walked into the police station twenty minutes later, Lou and Edith were both sitting behind the dispatcher’s desk, their blue-curled heads bent over a magazine. Simultaneously, they looked up. Simultaneously, their eyes widened and their mouths opened. Then without a word, they tilted their heads toward the bench that sat along the front wall, their curls moving like identical cotton candy.

  Cas slowly turned his head toward the bench where Henry Goethe and Elton Dinwiddie sat with their hats in their hands, scowling at the brims. They stood up and Cas’s stomach sank.

  “No more robberies, I hope,” said Cas as he stepped toward them.

  “Not yet,” said Henry in a gravely voice. “But Elton and I got to thinking that maybe there’s a ring of thieves in this town.”

  “Chickens and electronics?” asked Cas.

  “You got a better explanation?” asked Elton.

  Cas considered the possibility as he watched Elton’s cheek work on a plug of tobacco. Do not spit on my floor, Cas thought and asked them if they’d like coffee.

  “We’d like our property back,” said Elton, getting ready to spit. Cas nudged the wastepaper basket toward him.

  “And we want to know what you’re doing about it,” said Henry, taking up the demand while Elton hacked into the trash can.