“Oh . . . yeah.” I whispered. “Yes.”
Maisy snuggled sleepily at our feet. We had all the time in the world . . .
Or we didn’t, and we just didn’t give a fuck . . .
“We shouldn’t—” Despite his words, he deepened the kiss, drawing it out, applying delicious, knowing pressure that opened me to the gut-melting invasion of his tongue.
I pulled back. “I want you.”
“I’m nothing but trouble,” he whispered. “Especially for you.”
Instead of letting him go, I cradled his jaw with my thumbs and wrapped my fingers around the back of his neck, framing his face between my hands.
We were a perfect fit. I was made for Sky and he was made for me.
The world melted around us—it dissolved beneath our feet—but Sky was solid and strong and he held me like I was the only true thing on this earth.
He held me so tight he’d break me if I didn’t bend for him. I shook with the desire to bend and bend and bend some more. To turn myself inside goddamn out for him.
“Hush.” He massaged my shoulders. Smoothed his hands down my arms. “Are you scared of me?”
“Oh no,” I sighed the words into the air between us, hot with shame. “But I’m such a fucking spaz.”
“Not true,” he laughed softly. “God. The first time I saw you I wanted you so bad—”
I waited. “Yeah?”
He tilted his head, and kissed me, licking, teasing, tasting while he slipped his hands under my arms to caress my sides.
“Hey.” I bit his ear.
“What was that for?”
“Tickles.”
“Oh yeah? What about this?” He swung around to straddle my legs.
Holy cow.
Hands on my shoulders, he looked directly into my eyes. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted the hem of my T-shirt and drew light, scratchy circles on my belly and chest. “This okay?”
“Hell yeah.” Heat and muscle surrounded me. My hips stuttered, my back arched. He rocked into me, pulling my T-shirt off, over my head, kissing his way down my throat to my chest, my collarbone, my nipples.
My spine curled and I groaned deeply.
Sky’s expression stayed neutral but he watched me like . . . I don’t know what. Like I was fascinating. Like I was an instrument he was learning to play, so he touched me, and then he studied my every reaction. I made music for him—with him—soft moans and gasps and sighs.
He scanned my face, from my eyes to my mouth. Back and forth, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to kiss me or look into my eyes while he ground his ass down on my dick.
Oh.
Oh yeah . . . Grinding wins . . .
“Wait.” I wanted to see him. I wanted to touch him, but he was being aggressive, making it about my pleasure.
He was more skilled than me. He had experience, and I was just feeling my way.
Wave after wave of dizzying sensation swept over me.
“Wait . . . Please . . .”
“Shh.” His hot, wet mouth skimmed down my chest. His hands followed, sweeping over my skin, brushing away doubt and fear and modesty, soothing me, gentling me, worshipping me.
Breathless, I offered myself like a sacrifice. Take me. Use me.
“Pretty, pretty boy.” He unbuckled my belt, opened my fly, and peeled my shorts down, good and slow, applying just enough pressure that my dick burst up between us—sproing—damp and hard and glistening with arousal. “Christ. Look at you.”
“What?” Cool air hit my leaking cock, making me hiss with pleasure. Making me move restlessly, already searching for pressure and pleasure and release.
“You’re um . . . well-proportioned. You know that, right?”
“Fuck off.”
Baring your teeth like a narcissistic shark when a dude overreacts to the size of your dick is not cool. But sometimes, it just happens.
“You fuck off, stud-boy.” He finger-flicked my dick and I nearly busted a nut. “Oh, God. Do that again.”
He lifted his brows, but gave me a swat. I gasped with pure pleasure.
“Somebody likes things a little rough.” He did it a third time.
“Ah. Shit.” I bit my lower lip until I tasted blood. “Little bit.”
He crawled back up my body and arched, pressing his hips to mine. His face hovered inches away. When he turned to whisper in my ear, every breath caressed my sensitive skin, giving me gooseflesh.
“I want—” he swallowed, hard, eyes unfocused and needy. Just this side of unhinged. “I want to be everything you need.”
I shoved my hips into his. His hard cock met mine when he shoved back. Muscles clenched, we rutted—hard, desperate grappling that was both painful and exquisite. Ferocious.
“I just need this. I need—” Connection. Belonging. Safety. Love.
I couldn’t say that. Not then.
“Oh God, Sky.” Our gazes locked.
“Wait.” Deliberately, he inched his way back down my body, delivering licks and kisses and tiny, tantalizing bites across my skin. “I need to taste.”
He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t have to.
My cock bobbed—hot, hard, and leaking precum—millimeters from his plump, firm lips. Liquid fire pooled in my belly. My back. Heat spread down my legs.
He wrapped his hand around my cock—
“Stop.” Panicked, I dug my hands into his hair. “Boss will send you away.”
He shook his head. “Worth it.”
So. Fucking. Embarrassing. He didn’t take his eyes from mine as he dove onto my cock, deep-throating me like it was nothing, like he had all the time in the world and breathing was a minor inconvenience or a suggestion he would take, later, maybe. Watching his cheeks hollow as he drew off my aching cock, holding his head between my hands as he did something just fucking dirty with his tongue made my spine sizzle.
Oh—
“No, no . . .” Oh Christ . . .
Sky, Sky, Sky!
Pleasure like I’d never known lit me up inside and I spilled, sick with dread and shame and still whispering his name, over and over, as burst after burst of pleasure rocked me. As he swallowed every single drop, strangled, helpless cries escaped me. He pulled off, dragging me close for more kisses.
Tasting myself on his tongue fucking broke my heart.
“Stop this,” I practically sobbed the words. “You need the Rocking C more than you need to suck my dick. Things are good for you here. I can’t let you lose that.”
“I don’t care.” He lifted my hands, kissing each in turn, and then he brushed a melting kiss to the tip of my cock before tucking it away inside my clothes again and zipping me up with a lover’s tender touch.
I said, “You have to.”
He sagged, resting the weight of his head on my hip bone. “What I need is you.”
“You need the ranch.” Tangling my fingers in his hair, I tried to soothe some of the tension from his body. “Sterling said if this happens between us, you can’t stay.”
“He warned me off too. He said if I don’t leave you alone, you’ll probably have to go back to your folks. Foz said they’ll even send you to one of those Christian brainwash camps. I came by tonight to tell you this can’t happen, but”—he sighed heavily—“I fucked it up.”
“Oh, Skyler.” Sick with sorrow, my hands shook while I caressed him. “We need to be so smart—”
“I’m strong.” He said quietly. “But I can’t go back to prison.”
“Then we can’t do this. We need to stop this now—” I tried to move. “Get off me, baby.”
In response, his arms tightened around my hips. “No.”
“Nothing’s worth your freedom.” If I wanted him to argue, that was just selfishness. I knew what was right in this situation. We both did.
&nb
sp; Still, he didn’t let go.
I let myself enjoy holding him more than I should have.
“C’mon,” I said gently.
“Don’t go yet. Please.” His heart clattered against my thigh. He turned his head, and spit or snot or tears dampened my jeans.
Wait. Tears?
“Sky—”
“I’m such a fucking fraud.” He choked the words out. “I pretend I’m some baddass but it’s all an act, man. I’m just so goddamn tired of watching my back.”
Once he said the words, his whole body went lax in my arms.
“Do you think you could just hold me for a while?”
“Aw, Christ.” I sighed. “C’mere.”
Without taking my eyes from his, I reached for him.
“I should probably tell you what happened,” he said. “I’ve never told anyone but the lady prison shrink the whole story.”
Chapter 25
Sky
The funny thing about the end of the world is you never see it coming.
Which is what I said in the stillness of the equipment shed, with only Maisy and Rock to hear me.
I admitted the whole truth.
I admitted the thing not even ’Nando knew about me.
“My stepfather. . . He... It wasn’t an accident.”
The color drained from his face. “Tell me.”
“I found him...you know. With my sister. I mean. It was accidental, how it happened. But only because I—” My gut roiled. I had to swallow convulsively to get myself under control enough to speak. “Because he died before I could—”
I closed my mouth, unable to tell a decent man I’d had murder in my heart.
“I don’t understand.”
“Liar.” I accused. “You know what I’m telling you.
He shook his head. “Say the words?”
I blinked back shameful, shameful tears. “I came into the room. Saw what was happening and I— I grabbed that motherfucker. Started hitting him. His head did snap back and hit the wall of her room. That part is true. But I pushed him into the hall. Kept hitting him. He fell down the stairs and I followed him with every intention of beating him to death with my bare hands.”
Looking down at those hands, I could still feel the dull thud of my fists against his flesh. If Rock didn’t see me as capable of such a thing, it was only because he’d never really seen me. Only the face I present to the world.
“Did you push him?”
I shook my head. “He stepped back so he could plant his feet. Take a swing at me.”
I could still see him windmilling his arms, slipping off the landing, falling backwards, hitting his head on the wooden stair rail. The shock on his face looked comical, and for a second, I hesitated. Then I heard that second, horrible crack when his head hit the tile floor at the base of the stairs. I didn’t bother to close my eyes. The sight of him, lying there broken, has never left me.
“So it wasn’t your fault. Not really.”
“You need to hear me.” I thumped my chest with my fist. “There was no way I was going to let him live. None. That’s...something you have to know. Something I have never told anyone. You deserve better than someone who is capable of that.”
“I see.” I couldn’t read his face. Was he scared? Disgusted? He’d probably imagined me as some white knight, charging to my sister’s rescue. Was he now getting the picture of who I really was? A killer? I wanted my stepfather dead. In my heart I murdered him. Those were the facts.
“It was still an accident.”
“Only because it was obvious I wouldn’t have to kill him.” When I’d stumbled down the stairs to finish him off, his cold, hazel eyes stared past me. I’d recoiled from his body in horror. “I’m not... Maybe I’m not the kind of guy—”
“Your mother?” he asked.
“Clueless.” I could still see her face, pale with shock at first and then livid with rage when I told her what happened—why I’d had to protect Luna. “She was so taken in by that man, no matter what he did, it was always someone else’s fault. I was a liar. I was a murderer.”
“Oh, Skyler.” Rock looked sick.
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“You were just a kid,” he said gently.
“Not that day. I know what I felt. I wish I was a better person. I wish —”
“You will never know what you would have done if he’d been alive when you found him at the bottom of the stairs.”
“Of course I know. I told you. I’d have killed him.”
“You don’t know that. You think you know, but because fate intervened, you can’t really know for certain. You may have been willing to kill. But maybe at the last moment, you wouldn’t have done it. Maybe you were only tested.”
Like Abraham, he meant. Would the biblical father who’d loved his son so dearly have gone through with it? Even for his God? “I wanted him dead. That’s the same thing as killing him.”
Rock shook his head. “No. If that were true, we’d all be guilty of murder at some point.”
“Is this a joke to you?’
“No, you idiot.” With a broken sound, Rock wrapped his arms around me. I accepted the solid warmth of his body. I breathed in the earthy, sunshine-and-shit scent of him. Someone should bottle that and just call it home. “I’m deadly serious. You do not know what you would have done for certain. Not then, and not now.”
“I would have fucking put him down, Rock. As if a deadly spider was crawling on my sister’s blankets, I’d have killed him. Please don’t make me out to be something I’m not.”
“So you took a plea, rather than—”
“My mother and Luna didn’t need the added shame of a humiliating trial.”
“Christ. As angry as I get with my dad—”
“I can never go home.” My mother made that crystal clear. “But Luna’s got a solid future. I took a plea and none of it came out. It’s up to her if she wants to tell her story.”
He took my hand. “You did what you had to do.”
“I was an idiot about it,” I admitted. “I’d have done far less time if I’d cooperated with the authorities. I should have turned myself in, but instead, I ran. I resisted arrest. All of that cost me. I should have—”
“You’ve done your time.” He gave me a little shake. “You’re out. You’re free.”
“Not quite, but someday.” God willing. “Someday. Can I ask you something? Do you think God will be satisfied with that?”
My question was for the preacher’s son. Not Rock, since he said he didn’t believe anymore. I was baptized Christian but I also had my share of jailhouse superstitions.
Divine retribution can’t be very effective. You only have to see how many times we incarcerate the same men over and over to know the truth about that.
I said, “Every con I know is innocent in their own mind.”
“Wish I was like that.” Rock laughed. “I don’t even have to do anything to feel guilty as hell.”
“The criminal mentality must be tough for a preacher’s boy.” I buffeted his shoulder with mine. “Nobody ever believes they’ll get caught. Or, if they get caught, it’s always someone else’s fault. Some other dude did it.”
“You’re not like that.” Rock’s expression was doubtful.
“Sometimes I am.” I admitted. “But I was mostly talking about my friend ’Nando.”
Rock’s expression was thoughtful. “I don’t think God’s an accountant tallying up this offense and that good deed on some big ledger.”
“People say murder is the only unforgivable sin.”
“Only God can judge you. Once you’ve done your time society says that’s that. My dad has a prison outreach, and–”
His watch alarm sounded, startling us both.
“’Scus
e me.” Gently, he pushed me away, leaving a warm, sweaty Rock-shaped spot on my chest. “I have to take my meds at specific intervals. Timing them is important.”
“Sure,” I busied myself picking up Coke cans and crushing them into unnecessarily small aluminum pucks. I caught Rock peeking at my biceps so I posed for him, shamelessly, arms on the back of the chair, legs spread wide, package on full display.
That earned me a blush and a chuckle.
God, I’m such a tool. Someone should just come along and put me out of my misery.
I could not take my gaze off Rock.
Could. Not.
He shined too bright. He was too big. Too real. Too much to take in all at once.
Just looking at him hurt my eyes.
“We’re one helluva a pair.” He dug a pill keeper out of his backpack. “All the shit you been through? It’s a wonder you’re not bitter as all hell.”
“Says the man who got hit by fucking lightning.”
For a second, we stared at each other. I mean, it was hard to say which of us had been dealt the worse hand. Normally I didn’t think like that. Compared to some, I’d gotten off easy.
“You know what?” he said. “I don’t want to win a crap-luck competition.”
“Me neither.”
After a good laugh, Rock rubbed his hand over his five-o’clock-now-next-day-shadow. I had the almost irresistible desire to see if I could light a match on it. Finally, he came back to me, and the boneless whisper as our bodies met was music and magic all at once. My fingers tangled in his clothes and hair.
“You feel that?” I asked about the chemistry between us. “I can’t keep my hands off you.”
Rock’s mouth quirked. “Like Elena’s kissing salt and pepper shakers.”
I blinked, hoping he’d expand on that.
He tapped his lips. “Magnetized.”
“Ah.”
He kissed me, thumbing my jaw for entry and more and deeper. I opened, sucking gently on his clever, clever tongue. Passion arced between us, unpredictable as a downed electrical wire. I loved looking at him. His blue eyes, the way his nose crinkled when he smiled, the masculine curve of his jaw, the kindness he showed me—I committed all of it to memory. His scent . . .
My Cowboy Freedom Page 20