by Jordan Bell
His hands gave him away for what he truly was, a Nebraska man, born and raised in the corn fields, explorer of creek beds, collector of frogs and toads and crickets. Fisherman, hunter, Boy Scout by blood. Those calloused, thick fingers spent many summers detasseling corn and bailing hay. They’d held the reigns of horses and baited fishing lines.
Now those rough hands gripped the steering wheel tight, but not anxious. Nebraska men didn’t get anxious about much, certainly not a little rain, even if they preferred the lights of Broadway these days.
He caught me staring at his knuckles. The blue glow from the console lights made his already indecently blue eyes bright, like they were lit from within, and I had to look away. Anyone who denied Jason King was beautiful to look at was a liar and a jealous fraud. He and his younger brother looked somewhat alike, though Jason was a little bigger in stature.
I’d fallen in love with Jonathan once upon a time, after all. And like his brother, as it turned out, Jason’s pretty was notoriously only skin deep. Beneath the charming veneer was a boy who’d once slept with half the school and at least two teachers if rumor was to be believed. Even if only half those stories were true.
Not that the girls were any better. Jason King should have been the lottery for some lucky Castle girl, if he could have brought himself to choose one. A one way ticket out of this nowhere town and into the big city where money and luxury would never be a problem. Jason got the fancy degree and the wealth and the upscale job, but he never bothered to pick a Castle Creek girl to share it with. Maybe I didn’t blame him. They wanted out so badly they were willing to do anyone or anything for a ticket out.
They. Not me. In high school Jason King wouldn’t have crossed the room to tell me my hair was on fire, let alone screw me in the back of his SUV. And unlike all the other girls in Castle Creek, I did not want to leave. I had no reason to chase him, and no hope of success. I’d only dated Jonathan after we both went to the state university and only got engaged once we’d returned home after graduation. Bailey might have been Jason’s type. I wasn’t sure.
“You’re probably freezing,” he murmured.
“I’m fine.”
He ignored me and took one fist from the steering wheel to click through buttons and knobs on the console until a gust of warm air filled the cab.
“I can’t believe you took a baseball bat to his truck.”
If I didn’t know better, he almost sounded impressed.
I shrugged.
“I was upset.”
“No shit.”
I felt him glancing at me. The vehicle swerved a little and he immediately returned his attention to the road.
“What are you even doing here?” I asked, bitterness clouding my voice. “Home for the big engagement celebration?”
“Not exactly.” Jason paused and squeezed the steering wheel before continuing. “My grandfather’s not doing so hot these days. He didn’t plant much this year. First time in fifty years, actually. I’m helping him get things in order, figure out what to do going forward.”
“Jonathan’s not going to farm it?” The news surprised me, and when I looked at him I noticed his jaw tighten.
“Not by himself.”
I nodded. I’d seen Garton King in town a few times lately and each time he looked more thin and frail than the last. He carried a cane now and looked really pissed off about it.
“So you’ll be here for the wedding preparations.”
“Looks like.”
“Lucky you.”
Rolls of thunder made more conversation impossible, at least that’s the excuse I used. I rested my head against the cold glass and let my eyes go weak watching the drops stream down the window.
We bumped along up my driveway minutes later, and I noted with some displeasure the white sheet wrapped around the second floor turret roof. In my temporary psychosis I’d also forgotten to secure the barn doors or, apparently, shut the back door.
Jason killed the engine and with the windshield wipers stilled, the world all but disappeared outside the curtain of rain. “I’ll get the barn door. You make a run for the porch.”
I snarled like he’d just threatened to set my house on fire instead. “I’ll get the barn door. You go home.”
He ignored me. “Ready? One, two…”
I shoved open the door and the shock of cold rain took my breath away. I struggled out of the cab, my arm screaming when I tried to use the door for leverage, cursing the storm, the mud, the cold, Jason King, and everyone else in the whole world. I used my weight to close the door and made a dash for the porch.
The screen door had battered itself against its frame until it hung slightly askew. My grandmother was surely rolling in her grave that I’d been so careless with her home.
In the distance I could make out the shape of the red barn, but couldn’t see Jason. I shouldn’t hate him. He didn’t cheat on me. But he was a King and all Kings had serious entitlement issues that made them impossible to trust. Jason and his father had at least been honest enough to pack up and leave for the big city where their kind fit in with the other sharks.
I shuffled into the kitchen, ignored the trail of rain and filth I dragged in with me. Tomorrow. I’d clean everything tomorrow, but not tonight. Tonight I was all full up on exhaustion and embarrassment and there was no room left for tidiness.
Mystic slunk out of her hiding spot underneath the red dresser I used to store towels and Tupperware. She met my feet and immediately backpedaled when she realized the floor was now covered in water. She backed her butt up to the rug under the sink and mewled pitifully.
My shoes squeaked when I stopped in front of the mess of mint green peanuts and the open blue box. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think.
I was still standing there when the broken screen door opened noisily and Jason King let himself into my kitchen. I could hear him behind me, the dripdripdrip and squeaksqueaksqueak of shoes on wet wood.
He walked past me and disappeared down a hallway towards the guest room, bathroom, and conservatory. I had no idea what he thought he was doing, but whatever pistons should have been firing in my brain weren’t, so I just stood there. The bathroom light went on, the water too. When he returned minutes later, he had an armful of towels in his hands.
“I don’t think I’ve been in your grandma’s house since I was like, eight. Your birthday party, I think.”
He shoved the white box and peanuts down the island carelessly like they weren’t dangerous to touch and set his stack of towels down beside them. I watched as he shook out the top towel and casually wrapped it around my shoulders. I stared up at him as he rubbed the water away from my arms. I didn’t stop him though his actions confused me. Was he trying to be nice? Did he think I was an invalid who couldn’t even dry herself off? He seemed preoccupied with his work so I didn’t answer him.
“How long?” he asked quietly.
“Excuse me?”
“Since your grandma passed away.”
I scowled. Like salt in open wounds, this one. I shoved his hands away and took the towel into my hands to wipe my face and press ineffectually at my sopping hair that hung in dirty blonde cords down my back.
“Three years. She died three years ago in January.”
While I dried off, Jason slid the stools out from the island and positioned them one in front of the other. I watched, dully curious. Outside a flash of lightning preceded a crack of thunder that shook the glasses in my cupboards.
“Sit,” he instructed, a demand but delivered gently. I slid onto the stool and he sat in the one directly in front of me, our knees touching awkwardly. He unfolded the first aid kit he’d stolen from beneath my bathroom sink. When he tried to take my injured arm, I jerked away from him so hard I almost slid off my stool.
“I’m not a child,” I repeated. “You need to go home, Jason.”
“Stop being obstinate. You can’t bandage it with one hand.” The corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk. “Although it migh
t be amusing to see you try.”
I scowled and unfolded my arm towards him so he could get a good look at the wound. It was positioned right along the back of my forearm where I would have had a devil of a time trying to see, let alone bandage, accurately. Conceding hurt.
“You don’t seem to like me much.” He wet a cotton ball with an antiseptic cleaner and began methodically cleaning around the wound, making his way carefully towards the cut itself. I tried not to look, each tender touch causing me to wince in pain.
“I don’t even know you. Even when you were here, you were never from here.”
“What does that even mean?” His blue eyes raised briefly to meet mine, his easy mirth almost as infuriating as his help.
I motioned with my free hand towards the front door. “I know your reputation, Jason King. You were never a small town boy.”
In a flash of bright blue light his mirth evaporated. His full mouth pulled into a frown, but I couldn’t see his eyes.
“I thought you said you didn’t know me.”
“I guess I know enough.” He didn’t answer me and I wasn’t sure if that meant I was right or I was wrong.
With the site cleaned, he carefully applied ointment to a gauze pad, then taped it down like he’d done this before and knew his way around a wound dressing. More evidence of a careless, country youth. In the deep heat of summer, we all learned there was nothing a good rinse with the garden hose couldn’t fix. Unless you were dead and dying in a ditch, you’d live to fight another day. Only grandmas made sure we did up the bandage right and that was only if she caught us in time.
“Jonathan was wrong,” Jason said quietly after a long, stretched silence. “What he did to you. It wasn’t right. I don’t doubt what he and Bailey have is love, but he should have been straight with you. I told him that as soon as I heard what happened.”
Jason’s voice, so sorry, so full of pity, stabbed me right up under the rib cage. He pressed the bandage tape in place and I flinched, harder than was necessary, and looked away to hide the tears that pricked the corners of my eyes.
“You have no right feeling sorry for me,” I murmured into my shoulder. I didn’t want to watch him be nice to me. “Not like you’re such a role model towards women.”
He didn’t meet my eyes. “I’ve made my mistakes, but I’ve never cheated on anyone before. There’s no excuse.”
I squeezed my eyes shut real tight and when I opened them again, all I saw was the Tiffany blue box on the counter top, its puffy satin pillow peeking out. I could see the linen invitation balanced out the edge of the box, taunting me.
He set my arm down into my lap and maybe it was my imagination that his fingers lingered against my cold, damp skin. He felt unbelievably hot, like a furnace kept on too long and too high in the dead of winter. He evaporated the cold right off me.
A rumble of thunder, a flash of light, and rain enough to beat back the devil. It was his voice that drowned out the rush of blood in my ears and the near constant screaming I’d heard somewhere at the back of my mind since the day I discovered their ugly secret.
What I didn’t want to hear was his sincerity or his encouragement. I didn’t want his pity or his comfort. I didn’t want to be the girl who needed that from anyone. It made me feel too much like a victim.
“He deserved it, Cass. Tell you the truth, you were - ”
I made him stop talking by kissing him.
I snaked my wounded arm across the nape of his neck and kissed him like some kind of crazy person who goes around doing crazy things like kissing strange men. I drunkenly pressed my mouth to match his, and for a whole lifetime he didn’t react. He sat stock frozen still, unresponsive to the urgent crush of my smaller lips against his.
And then all at once his spine softened and his mouth accepted mine, turned a half degree to capture it more fully. His hands found my thighs and stroked them up and back down to my knees. He leaned into me, action not reaction.
The screaming in my thoughts cut off under the flooding sensations of mouth and hands and heat. All at once, like a light switch, and Jonathan and Bailey and that day in the barn vanished with the noise and all I could feel was Jason’s burning, wet body and the sound our mouths made when they pressed and came away to breathe.
4
____________
His fingers dug roughly into my sides and mine into his hair, his shoulders. I clawed at him to move closer and he answered by scooping his hands down my sides to my hips and lifting me across our knees into his lap. I resisted but he was stronger and somehow I balanced in his lap, my toes hooked on the bottom rungs of his stool, our bodies pressed impossibly into the space of one. His arms were so strong, one wrapped across my lower back, the other over my shoulders and buried in my hair. For a moment, just one moment, I worried about my weight balanced precariously on his legs, but he squeezed me tight against him as if he could read my thoughts and they vanished with the next kiss.
Jason tasted like rain. I licked his lips, his tongue, his teeth, until he growled softly and tightened his hand in my hair and held me still so he could plunder my mouth with his tongue. He kissed me hard and for a long, long time and I was powerless to stop him and too delirious to mind. Everything left me in that kiss, the anger, the fierce sense of betrayal, the humiliation and defeat. In the hollow space where my heart had once been I felt the stir of hunger, a growling, animal thing ravenous from famine. I sank my fingers into his shoulders until he moaned against my mouth, a sound of pain or pleasure I couldn’t tell and didn’t stop to ask.
He broke the kiss first, jerked my head back with my hair and layered his delicious kisses up my throat. I moaned, purred where he kissed. His teeth raked my skin where he sucked and licked and kissed at me. His hands sank and squeezed, pulled me in inches closer until we fit together like paper dolls. I wrapped my legs and arms around him and we couldn’t have been closer. Not without stripping off our clothes.
My thoughts dismantled when I tried for language, something to anchor me from losing control, but then his tongue stroked the soft curve of my throat and I couldn’t remember my own name.
I could feel the size of his erection trapped between us, impressively squeezed by his zipper and my jeans. I lost my head a little and rolled my hips intentionally into his and it was so lecherous and immodest. He stiffened in my arms and released a soft hiss against my collarbone and I felt such pleasure at catching him off guard. Like there was any chance I might stop touching him like this, he tightened his embrace, and bore me back down into his lap. There was hardly enough clothing between his straining erection and the dampening space between my legs and we both knew it.
My crazy head had no plans or forethought but to kiss Jason King everywhere, to taste him, to stretch the silence in my head as long as possible. As long as he’d let me.
So I squeezed my thighs around the outside of his and rode him slowly, until I’d driven him raving mad, until he was pulling at my wet clothes, until he stroked his hands down my buttocks, over both wide cheeks and back up, caught the edge of my shirt, and pulled it from my skin with a wet, sucking pop.
We broke our kisses so he could strip me of my shirt and suddenly I was so cold gooseflesh broke across my arms and shoulders. He responded to my sudden vulnerability by holding me, by stroking his hot hands across my shivering body, over the swell of my heavy breasts through my bra, down my back and hips. His fingertips scraped across my jeans noisily like he wanted to rip them off as he had my shirt.
I made the mistake of opening my eyes to see him gazing down at me, our foreheads touching. We shared breaths, panting, and wild-eyed. I could feel his heart hammering against mine
“Cassidy…” he panted and his voice, his beautiful voice so full of need and want and guilt. In his voice I heard a question: should we do this? Is this the worst idea ever? It woke me up and I didn’t want to see those cosmic blue eyes staring at me like that in the dark any more.
“No. No talking.” I breathed heav
ily and rose up again to kiss him, to crush his mouth with mine, to drag at his shirt, to get his goddamn buttons undone before I lost my mind. “Don’t say anything,” I murmured against his mouth.
He didn’t argue. He grabbed me against his body as if I wasn’t as big as I was and lifted me in his arms off the stool. Somehow he lowered me to the kitchen floor and somehow I gave up on the buttons of his nice shirt to tear it over his head and toss it into the shadows behind me, broken buttons tinkling across the hardwood floor like coins.
We tangled like teenagers to get our clothes off. The rain made my jeans mercilessly difficult. He swore, but between us we got them off, the delay only making us crazier.
Jason caught a nipple between his teeth, tugged until I gasped. He suppressed my surprise by covering it with his whole mouth and lathing it with the flat of his tongue. He sucked and kissed and touched me into oblivion. I squeezed my eyes and let go, let him have me without pretense and promise. I wanted to feel him fully and wouldn’t be sated until he was inside me.
Somehow in the frenzy we freed his erection, only just, and he managed to get a condom from his wallet and put it on even as I clawed at his shoulders, sat up to kiss him while he rolled it on, afraid of what would happen if I stopped touching him even for a moment. Jason was obliging and seemed as needy as I felt, though even in my lust-drugged mind I didn’t know why he could possibly need me when surely I wasn’t the only girl who’d torn his clothes off in her kitchen since he’d been back. Certainly I wasn’t the first salacious girl to come on to him like her life depended on his kiss.
As soon as the condom was in place Jason climbed on top of me and there was nothing slow or romantic about the way he pushed my thighs open and guided his member between my legs. I wished I could see it, how big he was, selfishly how big I’d made him, but when the fat head came in contact with my slick sex, coherent thoughts vanished. I threw my shoulders back, gripped his arms, and tensed.