Fast & Loud

by Cheryl Douglas

  I curled my toes and swore as his words carried me away. I felt like I was spinning out of control, caught up in a storm as he swelled inside of me, intensifying the sensation. I was still throbbing as he let out a guttural moan before flooding me.

  He finally released my hands before resting his chest against my back as we both caught our breath.

  ***

  Dex

  She hadn’t said the one little word I wanted to hear. Mine. But I knew she would. It was only a matter of time. She pressed that sweet little ass into me, making my dick stir again, like I hadn’t just had her.

  I kissed her shoulder, smiling when she squirmed. She’d always loved my scruff, but claimed it tickled her soft skin.

  “About tonight…” I knew we couldn’t avoid the topic forever. “You’re welcome.”

  She laughed. “Since when do I have to thank you for getting me off? You used to tell me it was your job.”

  “Still is,” I said, slipping a hand between her legs and cupping her mound possessively. “But I was talking about getting rid of that loser for you. You’re welcome.”

  I knew that guy wasn’t her type. She needed someone who could talk dirty to her, fuck her hard, and lick her good. That guy has probably struggled to get it up and keep it up. The lame fucker. Cora was so out of his league he didn’t even have the right to talk to her, much less date her.

  “You are such an arrogant ass,” she said, slapping my arm. “And if you think that was make up sex, it wasn’t. I’m still pissed at you.”

  “Yeah, right.” I’d take her again and make her forget that bastard’s name. “You keep telling yourself that, sweetheart.”

  She rolled on to her back, pulling the blanket up to hide her perfect tits. If she thought she was punishing me, I was determined to get the last laugh. I tugged at the blanket until it gave way before leaning over and sucking her pebbled nipple into my mouth. She gasped before I pushed both mounds together and divided my attention, nipping, laving and sucking until she was threading her hands through my hair and pulling my head away from her breasts.

  “You’re trying to distract me again.”

  I grinned before falling back on the pillow. “Is it working?”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. “Yes, you bastard.”

  I threaded my hand through hers before bringing it to my lips. “Seriously, you want me to apologize for getting other guys out of my way, but I won’t. You belong with me. To me.” I still hadn’t said the words that might help my case. I was trying to give her more time to adjust to the idea of us before I did, but I knew I’d never stopped loving this girl.

  “Is that right?”

  “You know it is. Tell me another guy has ever been able to do this for you. To you.” And if she started naming names I’d start kicking asses.

  “You know what you and I have is… unique.” She smiled when I laughed. “Okay, our chemistry is off the charts. This should be bronzed,” she said letting her gaze wander down my body.

  “Why, thank you.” I shifted her free hand so it was grasping my shaft. “Maybe we should look into that.”

  “But,” she said, drawing her hand back before giving me a pointed look. “Sex isn’t enough, Dex. If it were we’d still be together.”

  “You wanted me to change. I have.”

  “I know you have,” she said, sounding hesitant. “But in a lot of ways you’re still the same. You proved that tonight.”

  “Yeah, I am. I’m still a jealous son of a bitch. I don’t like other dudes trying to make dates with my woman. Who the fuck does?” I knew I wasn’t being unreasonable. Sure, maybe she’d been seeing the guy before I came back into her life, but I was back now and I wasn’t going anywhere. Ever.

  “I need you to trust me this time around.” Her gaze drifted to my chest. “If you can’t do that it’ll never work.”

  “What?” I never believed she would cheat on me. I did trust her. It was the horny bastards always hitting on her that I didn’t trust.

  “Do you know how much it hurt to hear you accuse me of liking that kind of attention?”

  Cora was a stunning woman. Everywhere she went heads turned. And sometimes guys got grabby, especially when they were drunk. It rarely happened when I was around, but I was sure it happened too often when I wasn’t. And that thought made me see red. No other man had the right to put their hands on her. Only me.

  “Baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Just hear me out,” she said, softly. “You called me a cocktease.”

  I closed my eyes, cringing inwardly when I thought of the arguments we’d had when I’d thrown that word around too freely. I knew she wasn’t, but when she tried to step between me and some guy who was hitting on her I lost it.

  “I shouldn’t have said that. I can promise you I never will again.”

  “I appreciate that, but it’s more than that. I need… more freedom.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” She’d had her fucking freedom for the last three years. I wasn’t going to ask her to marry me again right away, but she would be my wife again. I was sure of that.

  “You used to hate it when I’d go out drinking with my girlfriends or wear short dresses to bars or have male friends.” She shook her head. “I can’t live like that again. I won’t. I need to go where I want, wear what I want, and be friends with whoever I want.”

  I had no problem with her having friends. She could have as many friends as she wanted. But male fucking friends? I clenched my teeth, questioning whether I could concede on that. I knew most guys befriended her because they were hoping to get close enough to drive a wedge between us. I wasn’t stupid. I saw the way they looked at her when they thought I wasn’t looking.

  “So you’re okay with me having girl friends?”

  “Of course,” she said, frowning. “Why wouldn’t I be? I trust you.”

  She was always so rational. So reasonable. I hated it. “You only say that because you haven’t seen them. They’re hot.” I was being a prick and I knew it, but I wanted her to feel some of the fierce jealousy I experienced on a daily basis being with her.

  “They’re hot,” she repeated. “And that’s supposed to make me feel… what? Insecure? Is that what you want, Dex? For me to be insecure? Jealous? Miserable in this fucking relationship again?”

  “No!” Christ, this was backfiring. Why couldn’t I just learn to keep my big trap shut?

  She threw the blankets off and started running around the room, collecting the clothes she’d tossed off in her haste to get naked for me.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, sitting up. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “Home.”

  “Fuck that, Cora. You can’t just walk out every time we fight.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” She shook her head as she shimmied into her snug pantsuit. “That’s all we ever do is fight! It was like that when we were married and clearly nothing has changed.”

  I couldn’t deny we’d had a few disagreements, but that was normal. We were still working things out, establishing some new ground rules for our relationship. “You’re not leaving.” I got up and grabbed my boxers.

  “You can’t stop me.” She slipped into her heels and grabbed her purse. “And if you were smart you wouldn’t even try.”

  She had me between a rock and a fucking hard place, I realized as I grabbed a pair of sweats from a drawer. I couldn’t let her go and I couldn’t stop her. If I let her go she’d go home and stew about how much we still fought, coming to the conclusion that we’d never be compatible. If I tried to stop her, she’d lose her shit and claim I was trying to control her again.

  “I’m still in love with you, that’s gotta count for something.” I knew the truth was the only way I could hold on to her now. Her eyes softened immediately as she stepped towards me.

  “Dex…”

  “Sssh,” I said, placing a finger over her swollen lips. “I need to say this.”
I held both of her hands in mine, hoping I could make her see how much it cost me to admit my shortcomings. “When we first met I thought there was no way a girl like you would give a guy like me a second look.”

  “You were wrong about that,” she said, sounding amused. “I seem to recall a second, third, and fourth look before you finally offered to buy me a drink.”

  “I knew the deal,” I said, intent on revealing things to her I never had before. “You were a good girl looking for a bad boy. Someone to show you a good time, to make you feel things you never had before. It was just supposed to be physical, right? Until it turned in to more.”

  She didn’t respond and I knew I was right.

  “You didn’t expect to fall for me, but I knew after that first kiss that I was gonna fall for you. Hard. And I did. You may not realize it, but you really messed me up, Cor.”

  “How?”

  “You made me crazy.” I looked up, holding her hands against my chest. “I thought about you all the time. Every second of every day.” I couldn’t tell her that back then because she would have thought I was some obsessed stalker. “I wanted to know what you were doing, where you were, who you were with.”

  I wasn’t sure I was helping my cause because hearing myself recall the truth made me sound pretty fucked up.

  “I knew you were too good for me.” It pained me to say it, but it was true. She was a fine Merlot. I was draft beer. She was centerfold gorgeous. I was biker tough. We didn’t fit together. But I wanted us to. I needed us to. “I kept waiting for you to figure that out.”

  “I never saw it that way,” she whispered, curling her hands around my neck.

  “You may not have, but every guy who saw us together did.” I felt the familiar surge of rage when I muttered, “I saw the way those fuckers would look at us, wondering how the hell I landed someone like you. They wanted to take you away from me. And I wanted to bust them up. Every last one of them.”

  I’d never opened up to her like this, not even when we were married. I kept up the tough guy persona, letting her believe that jealousy was just a part of my personality.

  “No one could have taken me away from you. Don’t you know that?”

  Her voice sounded so sweet, so loving, as she tried to reassure me. It almost made me believe her. “You can’t say that. You don’t know who might have come along and turned your head.”

  And I’d known I’d have only had myself to blame when she left me. I let things get out of hand until the paranoia and frustration got the best of me. And her. She couldn’t take it anymore. She couldn’t handle living under a cloud of unfounded suspicion. I got that. Yet here I was doing it all over again and I didn’t know how to stop myself. I was my own worst enemy when it came to this woman.

  “Are you listening to yourself right now?” she asked, stepping back. “One minute you’re telling me you love me and the next you’re saying you can’t trust that I’ll go on loving you.”

  “Do you still love me?” I was terrified to ask, but I had to know.

  “Would I be here if I didn’t?” She gestured to the bed. “Sex is a big deal to me. I don’t sleep around. And I never would have slept with you again if I didn’t think we had a chance of putting things back together again.” She sighed, sounding exhausted. “But I don’t know how to make you believe me. I can’t make you trust me. And it doesn’t seem to matter what I say, you’re determined to be overprotective and wary of everyone I meet.”

  I couldn’t let her leave like this. I knew if she did there was a good chance she wouldn’t come back. “Tell me what you need me to do.”

  “I already told you,” she said, her voice softening. “I need you to trust me. I need my freedom. I need you to believe that I’m not going to stop loving you, no matter who I meet.”

  That was a hell of a lot easier said than done. “I’ll work on it.” That was all I could promise for now. I just hoped it would be enough.

  She nodded. “I’ve got some work to do too, Dex.” She patted my chest. “And some things to think about.”

  Chapter Eight

  Dex

  I’d been thinking about Cora all morning and by lunch I knew I’d never make it through the day without seeing her. I jumped out of the truck, a paper bag from the deli in hand, but I stopped short in front of the glass door when I saw she wasn’t alone.

  Bryan-fucking-Johnson. What was he doing here, sniffing around my girl again?

  I opened the door and Bryan stepped back, putting some distance between himself and Cora. “Hey, buddy? What are you doing here?”

  I wasn’t his buddy and I didn’t have to explain to him why I had the right to see Cora whenever I damn well felt like it. Rein it in, man. Don’t let your temper fuck this up for you again.

  “Hey, Bryan.” I forced a smile as I dropped the bag on the table. “I had to bail before I could give Cora that quote yesterday. What about you?”

  “I had a couple more questions for her about the job,” Bryan said, watching me scan the messages on my phone like I didn’t have a care in the world. “I promised her a quote yesterday, so I didn’t want to make her wait any longer.”

  I chuckled. “We are contractors, after all. It’s not like she expects us to be on time.”

  I winked at Cora, relieved when she smiled back. I was playing this right. I could tell she was happy that I wasn’t making a big deal of Bryan’s presence. And it actually felt good not to bust an artery for a change when I saw another dude sniffing around her.

  “You brought me lunch again?” she asked, gesturing to the bag. “You’re spoiling me.”

  I was just about to make a comment about taking care of my girl for Bryan’s benefit, but I bit my tongue. “I haven’t eaten yet either.” I nodded towards the bag. “There’s plenty, man. If you want to join us?”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got to get to another job.” He shook my hand before turning to Cora. “I think I have everything I need,” he said, as she walked him to the door. “And I can promise you’ll get that quote later today.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks, Bryan.” She locked the door before turning to face me.

  “He couldn’t have emailed to ask those questions?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “He had to make a special trip over here to ask you in person.”

  She laughed, wagging her finger at me. “I was just about to compliment you on how well-behaved you were, Myers. Don’t blow it.”

  “Hey, that reminds me. You kept my name.” I stepped forward, blocking her path. “Why?”

  “I was wondering when you were going to ask me about that,” she said, taking a deep breath.

  “Well?” I felt bad for calling her out, but I needed to know.

  “I told myself I was doing it for professional reasons.” She rolled back on her heels, putting a little distance between us. “But honestly? Cora Myers is who I’d become. I wasn’t the same person I’d been before we got married so it didn’t feel right to take back my old name.”

  “Huh.” I smiled as her words sunk in. She was telling me that our relationship had changed her, just like it had changed me, and she didn’t want to go back to the girl she used to be before she met me. Damn. I liked that.

  She smiled as her fist connected with my gut, catching me off guard. “Do you have to look so smug about it?”

  I grabbed her, pinning her arms as I hugged her, making her sway back and forth as she giggled, trying to break free.

  “I thought about what you said last night,” I said, when she finally stopped resisting. “And you were right.”

  “I was?” she asked, her eyebrows disappearing beneath her side swept bangs.

  “Yeah, you were.” I released her, brushing her hair off her face as I held her captive with my eyes. “I had no reason, no right, to distrust you. The problem was mine, not yours, and I’m really going to work on it.” I raised my right hand. “Scout’s honor.”

  “If you were a Boy Scout I’ll parade down the street naked right now.”
/>   Thankfully I hadn’t been. “I mean it, Cor. I get that I was wrong and I want to make it right.”

  “You can’t change the past. Neither of us can. All I’m asking for is a clean slate and the benefit of the doubt.” She stood on her tippy-toes to kiss my cheek. “And today was a really good start. So thank you for that.”

  Making her happy made me happy, so even if I had to bite my tongue so hard I drew blood, I would. "My pleasure.” I turned in a slow circle. “So, tell me about your plans for this place so I can give you a ridiculously low quote and you can quit stringing those other poor bastards along.”

  “Oh no, you don’t,” she said, trying to keep a straight face. “Business is business. You’re going to give me a fair quote. I wouldn’t want your crew to get cheated.”

  “I always take care of my crew,” I assured her. “Don’t worry about them.”

  She stepped in front of me when I shifted to walk past her. “So you wouldn’t make a profit on the job. Is that what you’re proposing? Because if it is—”

  I kissed her because sometimes that was the only way to shut this beautiful woman up. And I’d been wanting to ever since I walked in and saw her wearing skinny jeans, a white tunic tank, and flip-flops. She looked cute and casual, reminding me of all the times we’d lounged around the house watching TV and ordering in.

  I missed those days. Not just the sex that inevitably followed our quiet evenings at home either. I missed curling up on the couch with her, holding her hand, sharing a bowl of popcorn, and teasing her about some romantic comedy she was using to torture me.

  “I know your angle,” she said, planting her hands on my shoulders. “You were trying to distract me with that kiss. Well, it won’t work. I—”

  “I love you.” I grinned when her mouth fell open. “What? It’s true.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “And you’re reminding me why I fell in love with you. But you’re so stubborn.”

  I stole another kiss. “I know. That’s why you’re going to let me have my way, because you know you can’t win this one.”