You couldn’t really call it a master bedroom, because it was barely bigger than the other two, but it did have a connection into the adjoining bathroom, with a closet on each side of the short passageway. I found a heap of clothes in the floor of one closet, and several plaid shirts hanging up in the other one. The easiest way to do this was going to be to carry the whole pile over to the stairway and fling it downstairs, then sort them in the laundry room. After getting the first load started, I cleaned the upstairs bathroom and stripped the bed so I could wash the sheets. The other two bedrooms had no furniture at all, so I just dust-mopped the hardwood floors and went on to the kitchen.
I was right about dishes in the sink. Why he didn’t stack them in the dishwasher until it was full I didn’t know. I rinsed them all out and loaded the dishwasher. That’s when I realized it was far too big for one person. He had a set of eight bowls, and even though every one of them was dirty, the dishwasher wasn’t full. I pulled them out again and washed up the dishes by hand, then went to check on the laundry. By the time Cody came in to wash up for lunch, I had the house sparkling.
“Cody, this is a really cute little house. You could fix it up nice,” I said, while we ate the sandwiches Janet had sent over.
“Not much reason to, ‘less I had someone to share it with,” he answered. His eyes were on mine when he said that, and I got the feeling he was saying something else.
I decided to take the bull by the horns. We’d spent too much time not communicating what we really needed to say. “Who did you have in mind, Cody?”
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t play with me Annalee,” he said. “You know I’ve never stopped havin’ feelin’s for you. Only ones I want to share it with are you and the kids. I’m willin’ to wait, but don’t play with me.”
My eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t mean to play with you Cody. I’m sorry I’m such a mess, and I still have feelings for you, too. But I’m not sure I’m ever going to be normal again. You know, for bed.” I was embarrassed, and I was mad about it. I’d had such a fun relationship with Cody before everything happened. We were never embarrassed with each other. I hung my head, ashamed to look him in the eye.
Cody got up and came around the table to me. He knelt beside me on the floor. “Sweetheart, it’ll all work out. If I have feelin’s for you and you have feelin’s for me, it’ll be okay.”
“Oh, God, will it?” I wailed. “I can’t stand the thought of anyone touching me, or touching anyone. It brings up all the nasty things he did. Cody, I’m ruined. I’ll never be a proper wife to you. I can’t ask you to keep loving me.”
Cody pulled me up out of the chair then, and into his arms. He whispered, “Is this so bad?” I had to admit it wasn’t. “No one asked me to keep lovin’ you, I just did. And no one’s gonna ask you to do anything you can’t do. Ever.”
I gasped. No! He couldn’t give that up for me. What if I never could again? Cody was stroking my hair, which was now shoulder length and worn down. After that ghastly night, I’d had it cut as soon as I could. To my surprise, I felt safe in his arms. I laid my head on his chest and went quiet.
“Cody?”
“Hmm?” He seemed content to just hold me, even though I’d just told him I couldn’t have sex.
“I asked Janey to keep the kids all night. Could I, would it be okay if I just slept next to you? Would that be hard for you?”
He muttered something I didn’t catch, and then said, “No, honey, it would be okay. I’d love it.”
“What did you say before that?” I asked.
“Nothin’.”
“It was something Cody Wayne. I can’t even try if you’re going to lie to me. I can’t be with a liar again,” I said, upset now.
“You won’t like it,” he said mildly. I started to push out of his arms. “Okay, okay. I said it would be hard for you.”
“Oh, you think so?” I challenged. Looking up at him I saw an amused expression on his face.
“Yeah. It. You know it? It will be hard for you. Told you you wouldn’t like it,” he said as I narrowed my eyes at him. But he didn’t seem at all contrite. I suppressed a snort of amusement. Maybe this wouldn’t be so tough after all.
Cody went out to the barn for the afternoon chores, and I busied myself dusting the living room shelves and furniture, then baked a cake for our dessert. I had a chicken to roast for dinner, along with some potatoes and the last of the green beans from the garden, too few to can and too few to serve to the big family at the ranch.
~~~
I was nervous that night, not sure if I wanted to risk my future with Cody if I had a nightmare. At the same time, I was impatient to see if I could get my life back. Cody and I had both changed in the five months since we’d been together. I was an emotional wreck because of Jason Clark, and he had somehow become a grown man. I’d been able to be an equal to the boy with the broken leg that I’d nursed back to health. Now he was someone I could look up to and admire, though he never made me feel less than his equal.
He was considerate, too. He let me go first in the bathroom and made sure I was in bed and covered up before he came in. “Are you sure about this, Annalee? I could sleep in the bed downstairs,” he said.
“No, I’m not putting you out of your bed. If anyone has to sleep down there, it’ll be me. I made the bed just in case. But if you’re okay with it, I really want to see if I can do this,” I answered.
“Do what?” he said, low in his throat. His eyes smoldered in the lamplight.
“Just sleep next to you, Cody. That’s all I can handle, I think. Do you mind?” I felt bad even asking him. This was a bad idea, that I hadn’t thought through.
“I don’t mind. Would you let me hold you?” He was almost growling now. I couldn’t decide whether the flutters in my belly were from fear or arousal. I seemed to remember them from months ago.
“That’s okay, if you let me go if I ask you to. Can you do that, Cody?” I knew that holding me to his bare chest in my thin nightgown would be a trial for him. Cody was only twenty-two, for all he was a businessman and had matured over the two years since I’d met him. I knew all that, and yet I let him hold me, selfishly, so I could learn just how damaged I was.
“I can do anything I need to, for you,” he answered. Then he climbed into bed with me, rolled over on his side and pulled me to him.
A thrill of fear went through me, and then I smelled his scent and everything shifted. I remembered this; cheap soap and clean man scent, the sweat of the barn showered off before dinner. And a unique musk that was all Cody. He didn’t smell anything like Jason, whose smell was equal parts expensive cologne and adrenaline. Cody’s scent meant comfort, and love, and exciting, beautiful, hot sex. The urge I feared was gone forever exploded into my chest like dynamite, followed closely by the joy of realizing that I wasn’t ruined after all.
I snuggled closer to Cody, unwilling to show him this complete about-face until I understood it myself and accepted it. Feeling his erection against my lower belly, I stopped moving, almost stopped breathing. “It’s okay, Annalee. We don’t have to do anything about it. You’re safe with me, I promise,” Cody murmured. “Go to sleep.”
His voice sounded like he was almost asleep, so I stayed still to let him drop off. But I wanted to think. I took a mental checkup of my body and how it felt physically. My right shoulder was still a little tender, but the doctor said it was healed for all intents and purposes, and I could bear Tali’s weight on it, though not Al’s. The bruises were gone, faded to nothing after a couple of weeks. The torn tissues in my vagina had healed quickly, too. After six weeks, the only physical evidence of my ordeal was the slight tenderness in that shoulder, and the shorter hair that I’d never grow to full length again.
The emotional evidence was still cropping up at the most awkward times. One of the hands was named Jason, and every time someone said his name, I flinched. The poor boy was ready to change his name now, since everyone made a fuss over me when it happened. It h
ad somehow all been wrapped up in Al’s accident, too, so I couldn’t see a snake or even a picture of a snake without screaming and dodging. But what I’d feared the most, that my sexuality was gone forever, had been suddenly and completely erased with that first scent of Cody just a few minutes ago.
Happy now, I smiled and nuzzled into his neck, closed my eyes, and went to sleep.
Sometime later, Cody shifted, and I woke up. He seemed restless, so I eased myself out of his arms, prepared to go downstairs to sleep if he didn’t settle down. I couldn’t help but watch, fascinated, as the undershorts he wore as his only bedclothes tented. “Annalee,” he murmured.
“Yes, darling?” I answered. But he was asleep.
“Annalee…beautiful. Want…love.” Cody was talking in his sleep, and as I watched, his hand slipped into the waistband of his shorts and brought out his erection. I drew my breath in sharply. I remembered now, his large cock and how I’d loved to look at it, stroke it, even take it into my mouth, before. His hand was stroking, but a quick look at his face convinced me he really was sound asleep, and dreaming—of me!
“Fuck, thas goo’” he said. My body was reacting in ways that amazed me. As I watched with my eyes half-closed, the lust that filled me made me feel that the last five months had never happened. My nipples were drawn into tight, tingling buds, and moisture was gathering at my core. My mouth filled with saliva. Would he even know it if I moved over him, replaced his hands with mine, or with my mouth? What if I had a flashback? And yet, I doubted I would. I’d never felt these sensations when I was with Jason, even when he insisted I suck him off. I was indifferent to that, but my whole body wanted Cody in a way I hadn’t felt in months.
Gently, I took him in my hand when his was at the top of its stroke. I used my fingertips to lightly stroke his sac, eliciting a groan of pleasure. A glistening drop of pre-cum decorated the head of his penis, and I remembered that one of my favorite things was to catch that first drop on my tongue. My tongue flicked out to capture it, and before I could think what I was doing, I took him with my lips and tongue. “Mmmmmm,” came the soft sound that I couldn’t suppress. My eyes were closed, and I was in a sort of ecstatic trance, remembering and enjoying, not thinking about now or what had happened, but dwelling in the beautiful past.
I don’t know exactly when he woke up, but after long minutes while I suckled him gently, a big hand came down to stroke my hair. “Annalee.”
This time, I knew he was awake. I gave his shaft one last swirl and strong suck, and let him come out of my mouth with an audible pop. “Ummmmhmmm?” I said.
“Baby, are you awake?” he whispered.
“Ummmmhmmmm.”
“Oh, God,” he said then. He pulled me to him and kissed me, pushing his tongue into my lips for entrance. My mouth fell open to him and he plundered it as he had months ago. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but his erection swelled even more and became even harder as he kissed me, his hand drifting to my breast. With a groan of pure desire, he rolled me onto my back and attacked my breasts with his lips, tongue and teeth, ravaging each one before moving to the other, and back again.
“Baby, is this okay?” he gasped, after tearing himself from his assault. “God, I’ve never wanted anything like I want you right now. But, if this is too much, tell me. I can take it.”
“Don’t stop, Cody,” I moaned. “I want you, please.”
He didn’t argue, only went back to the exquisite torture he was visiting on my breasts. When I thought I would explode without his touch at my core, I bucked into him to signal I wanted his fingers inside me and on my sensitive bud. Instead, he scooted down to lave me there with his tongue, which did send me into powerful contractions centered at my most sensitive spot and spreading outward. My empty vault clutched at nothing, and then his fingers were there, absorbing the muscular contractions.
The orgasm went on and on, as if I had stored up all that I should have experienced in Cody’s arms since he’d left me for the rodeo and then let them loose at once. My cries of pleasure echoed in the near-empty house. When at last I relaxed, Cody gathered me in his arms and kissed me fiercely. “Baby, thank you.”
“Hey,” I said with the smile of utter satisfaction, “I should be thanking you.”
“What happened to change your mind?” he asked, nibbling on my earlobe. His erection brushed against my hand, and I seized it and squeezed. His breath hitched.
“This happened. Cody, did you know you masturbate in your sleep?” I asked him.
“What? Come on, Annalee, you can’t ask me that,” he said, embarrassed I thought, as he flushed in the moonlight that streamed from the uncurtained windows.
“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. You said my name, and I thought you were awake, and then you just reached in and freed this big ol’ thing and started in. It got me so hot I had to get in on the action,” I said, trying for lightness to distract him from the real issue—that I was apparently cured of my reluctance to be close.
“No way!” Cody exclaimed.
“Way!” I said, imitating the teenagers on TV. “You looked so delicious, I just had to have a sip, and then it was all over for me.”
“Well, it ain’t all over for me, in case you didn’t notice,” he remarked.
“Oh, I noticed! But that’s not my fault,” I teased. “You distracted me.”
“I’m gonna distract you over my knee in a minute.” I instantly sobered, and so did Cody. It was going to take a while before we could joke like that. He wilted immediately.
“Cody, baby, let’s just see if we remember how to do this together,” I said.
“I’ve got no condoms,” he protested.
“That’s okay,” I said. I didn’t care, with him. I’d have his babies, a whole bunch of them if he wanted. I bent to take him in my mouth again, the fastest way to bring him to full hardness. When he was there, he rolled on top and gently, with the tenderest care, entered me for the most beautiful consummation of our love that we’d ever had. My first orgasm exploded almost immediately, and then another minutes later.
“You’re cheating,” he whispered, as he drove into me for his release.
Tears of joy streamed down my face as I held him, still twitching, inside me and hugged his body to me. “I want it in the wedding vows,” I said. “I get at least three orgasms for every one of yours.”
“I’ll be sure to remember that. Hey, did you just propose to me?”
“I guess I did,” I said, making an effort to squeeze him with my internal muscles one more time.
“Yes!” he yelped. “I’ll marry you, but for the love of God, stop that!”
Chapter 18
There was only one reason to delay the wedding, and that was because of Al’s hospital bill. We were pretty confident that a jury would award me damages that would pay my own bill, in a civil trial against Jason. But it was getting late in the year, and I needed to move over to the little ranch before winter set in, and Cody wanted to go ahead and get married.
Charity seconded the motion, since she already had a wedding planned. So, just three months after I would have married Jason, I married the love of my life instead. I should say we married him, because my little flower girl Tali and ring bearer Al stood up with us and when the justice of the peace asked if I took Cody to be my lawfully-wedded husband, all three of us said, “I do.” Then we went home, to our own house on our own ranch.
Two weeks later, Jason was sentenced on the criminal charges. The judge who pronounced sentence gave a long explanation and said he’d like to sentence Jason to the maximum fifty years for my rape, which was one of the worst cases he said he’d ever seen. But then he said he was concerned that because it was a first offense, the sentence would be modified on appeal. So instead, he sentenced Jason to twenty years.
That just about sealed his fate for the civil trial. There was no question of guilt; the jury just had to decide how much to award me. I was hoping for and expecting an amount that would cover
my hospital bill. What I didn’t expect was a punitive damages award of one hundred thousand dollars for pain and suffering. One of the jurors would tell me a long time later that it would have been more, but they didn’t know how much his house was worth.
It was more than enough to pay off Al’s hospital bill, though, and leave us with enough money to fix up the house real cute, with a nursery for the new brother or sister that Al and Tali would be getting sometime next August.
I never thought life could be so good.
THE END
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