Take Me Home (Small Town Bachelor Romance)

by Abby Knox

  “Girl, you make me crazy with those lacy things. Next time, don’t even bother wearing panties, OK?” he breathed out between kisses. She moaned with the feel of his palm sliding down over the lace. He firmly rubbed her heat and she squeaked out, “Oh, Jack…”

  Her breathing grew rapid and her heat was building. He loved how he was the one building the heat inside that petite redhead. He was dying to leave his mark on her, his seed in her, and his scent all over her.

  He saw her matching lacy white bra and wanted it gone, too. He brushed her open shirt off her shoulders and his teeth immediately found her tight, hard nipple. She gasped and ran her hands through his hair, down his back. She was wild with need for him, and thinking of this made his need grow in waves.

  Their lips found each other again and they continued furiously undressing each other until they were both down to their underwear and tumbling back onto her childhood bed.

  Jack was above Maggie, staring down at her body, one hand exploring her breasts while the other stroked her core over the fabric of her panties.

  “You’re so beautiful, Maggie. I wanted you since the second I saw that red hair of yours at the bar.”

  “And ever since you broke Chet’s nose, I wanted to suck your cock dry.”

  Jack’s heart skipped a beat. He adored her frankness, and it made him even hotter and harder for her knowing that watching him kick someone’s ass made her horny for him. When was the last time a woman had her mouth around his sex? It was longer ago than he cared to remember. He told himself it didn’t matter, because Maggie’s sweet mouth was the only one he craved at the moment.

  He slipped his hand under her bra and teased her nipple. She moaned and pulled him closer with her toned thigh around his ass. She was getting more frantic for him. Good, he thought. He wanted her good and wet so there would be no doubt she was ready for his ample shaft.

  Jackson

  Jack was so close to sliding into her depths, when something inside her screamed out.

  Maggie didn’t know what it was, but she had opened her eyes while Jack was massaging her nipples and her core over her panties. Over his shoulder, her gaze landed on the shelf of high school trinkets on her bedroom wall. There was a Show Choir trophy, a track medal, and a small misshapen pottery project. Suddenly the sight of them was giving her a panic attack. The resistance started in her belly and bubbled up into her throat and then spilled out of her mouth. She pulled back from Jack’s kiss and blurted, “No! Stop!”

  She saw his face turn from hot and bothered to worried. “Stop? What’s wrong?”

  All of a sudden, she couldn’t breathe.

  “Maggie, it’s OK. Just breathe.” Jack was now sitting up on the side of the bed and was helping her sit upright next to him, being careful not to jar her shoulder.

  “Breathe, baby, breathe. It’s OK. You’re going to be OK.”

  It took some time, but he sat with her and talked her through it. She eventually breathed in through her nose. It was agonizingly difficult, but she got there.

  When she finally caught her breath, she could barely contain the tears. Don’t cry, dummy.

  Out loud to Jack, she apologized through choked breath.

  He cradled her around the waist and picked up her shirt that he had moments earlier brushed to the floor and helped her put it on. He turned to her and buttoned it up for her as she continued to apologize.

  Then he took her face in his hands and looked her deep in the eyes. His gray blue eyes set his words in iron, and she knew he was telling the truth when he said, “Don’t apologize. Whatever is going on is not your fault.”

  Jack tenderly held her until she didn’t want to be held anymore. Then he gently laid her down on her pillow and covered her with a blanket. He whispered, “Get some sleep. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  But she reached out and touched his arm. “Jack, will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”

  Jack lay down on the bed next to her. It was a tight squeeze on the small bed, but he spooned up against her back, careful not to press his erection into her ass, nor to put pressure on her wound. She appreciated the gesture, even though it was the elephant in the room at the moment.

  She smiled and after some time, she fell asleep.

  When she woke up some hours later, Jack was not there.

  Chapter 8

  Jackson

  Damn, but that woman could make him forget all of his responsibilities, and then some.

  With Maggie asleep, Jack went to the barn to finish his nightly chores. He’d been so caught up in Maggie that he’d done the unthinkable: forgot he was a farmer who had milking to finish and animals to put to bed.

  On top of that, something was very wrong. Maggie had freaked out at the last moment before they could have sex. He knew this was too good to be true. He was too old for her and she had finally realized it.

  The truth cut through him like a machete through a thick stand of weeds. It was clear now. It was better if they weren’t together.

  Maybe she would be better off staying with her sister for a while. Maybe what she needed was family to take care of her, not an older man like him obsessing over her. He would bring it up in the morning over breakfast. He would let her off the hook. She would probably be relieved. He would be disappointed, but that was just another sign for Jack to stay on his mission. Hold the line against corporate powers-that-be.

  Besides, who was he that he thought he could handle being a boss to a deeply attractive employee? Not that he couldn’t handle an attractive person reporting to him in general, but one that stoked in him such an absolute animal magnetism—that was different. Mixing personal and professional pursuits didn’t suit him.

  Maggie had obviously been through some things, and she needed him to be professional. Well, today he would pay her what she was owed, and then some, and maybe even pad her paycheck a little, for her inconvenience.

  The fence secure, the chickens fed, watered and settled in for the night, Jack set about milking the goats. He fell into his usual pattern of talking to the animals like a freaking Dr. Doolittle. It wasn’t so bad, doing all this alone. The critters were good company and they didn’t argue with him. Jack didn’t mind growing old—well, older—and being the bachelor farmer with all of the associated jokes that people made. He didn’t care about that. He only cared about making sure his animals were healthy, and taking care of this land. He would continue to be lonely, but it was what it was.

  Jack was so deep in his head he didn’t hear anyone approaching. But he saw a flash of red move in the corner of his eye; he nearly tripped over the milking hoses.

  “Maggie.”

  She was smiling but serious at the same time. How did she do that? “I meant what I said earlier. I can’t let you do this on your own. So, where are my work gloves? Let’s get this done so I can go get some sleep.”

  They finished milking all the nannies in silence, but it was not uncomfortable. It felt right, and the energy between them felt familiar and normal.

  Well, shit, Jack thought. She rejects me, and I make up my mind to do this on my own, and then she has to go on and keep her promises like a real reliable human being. He smiled and wondered where the world ever came up with the notion that Millennials were self-centered, entitled flakes. Because that was not Maggie. He’d thought she’d blown into town on a whim, but she was anything but whimsical. She was proving to be practical and spartan, maybe even more than he was. Jack, with his rainwater shower heads and Italian tile shower stall. His four-poster bed. Who is the real diva in this relationship? he mused.

  As they headed back into the back door and slammed the screen shut in the kitchen, Jack thanked her for her help and announced he was ready for bed.

  “Jack, I hate to do this to you, but I’m feeling a painful need to talk. Make some coffee?”

  Yes, they definitely needed to talk. He sighed as he kicked off his boots, but he did so with a smile.

  Moments later, they were b
oth hunched over steaming cups of black coffee, and Maggie was talking. Jack was listening.

  “When I was in high school, there was a time when Mama Jane brought in a foster kid who had some undiagnosed problems. She took him all the way to Minneapolis for a series of evaluations. Autism and some other issues. Anyway, she was gone for several days. I’m not proud of it, but Lily and I were all between 16 and 18 at the time. I was 16. So you can guess what we did while she was gone. We threw a party here at the house. Everybody was there. Word spread quickly, even though we weren’t the most popular kids in school. Even Chet came. I think he always kind of had a crush on me. I have to admit, he wasn’t terrible to look at, but he drove a fancy truck and walked around like he owned the place. You know, Mama never had much. Even with her foster stipend from the state, she spent everything she had, and then some, raising us. We walked, rode our bikes, and got rides with neighbors, sometimes drove the farm truck into town when Mama didn’t need it. We weren’t fancy people.

  “Anyway, so we had this party. Somebody brought beer. Of course. I had never touched a drop. But I had had a few by the time Chet started talking to me that night. Somehow we ended up in my room with the door closed. He wore me down. He asked me to go to his senior prom with him, because wouldn’t I, a poor little foster kid, just love to go to prom in a fancy truck? He even offered to pay for my dress, everything. I had to admit, three beers in, feeling emotional and hormonal as a 16-year-old, I was pretty into the idea. Chet being my date, I could take it or leave it. What I really wanted were the fancy dress and flowers and to dance around and feel like a princess. Then Chet started in with what it would cost me. Well, I’ll give you three guesses as to what he wanted in exchange for a perfect prom night. And he wanted a deposit that night in my room, if you get my meaning.”

  Jack’s blood started to freeze and boil at the same time, if that was even possible. “That little shit. I hate that guy.”

  “Oh, I’m not finished,” Maggie continued. “So he starts kissing me, and it’s not terrible. I didn’t have any feelings for Chet, but it was my first kiss, so it was pretty exciting. But it turns out I was pretty naïve. He wanted a blowjob, right there in my room, in the middle of the party. With my sister right outside the door. As we were kissing, he undid his pants and took my hands and made me touch him. I didn’t resist at first. I was a little tipsy. Then before I knew what was happening, his penis was out. I stared at it and then looked at him, like, well, what are you expecting me to do with that?”

  Jack’s stomach was in knots listening to this story. How could anyone take advantage of a sweet young, inexperienced Maggie?

  Then he remembered that this story took place less than five or six years ago, and his stomach churned.

  She finished the story. “I needed to look at something else because all of a sudden I felt very uncomfortable. I didn’t know it at the time, but sometimes when bad things happen when you’re drunk, you sober up right quick. Yeah, that was me in that moment. I looked away, I didn’t want to look at his penis. I instead focused on my little ceramic art project on the wall shelf. I sort of latched on to that, just to look at something else. I had never seen anyone’s dick up close before—what the hell was he expecting me to do? Well, I figured out pretty quickly that what he was expecting me to do was to go down on him. He started pushing my head down, and I resisted. When he finally backed off, he said I could forget about prom, because obviously we were not a good match. The real end of that story was that he told—or implied—to everyone at that party that I had in fact given him a blowjob. And it was a terrible blowjob at that.

  “The next week at school, everyone stopped talking to me and even to Lily. All except for Charlie Bryson. I heard through the grapevine that he and Chet got into a fight in the school parking lot. Rumor on that was, Chet was talking smack about our whole family and Charlie had had enough. I always thought that was very neighborly.”

  Jack gritted his teeth. “I’m feeling a mite neighborly right now. You mind if I head over to the Easleys’ right now for some face time with old Chet?”

  “If you mean fist-to-face time, as tempting as it sounds to give Chet a good knuckle sandwich just for the hell of it, let’s hold off and let karma have her way with him from here on out.”

  “I don’t know if I believe in karma.”

  Maggie winked. “She’s a bitch.”

  “She’s also slow as molasses in winter. Knuckles get the job done faster,” said Jack.

  Maggie shrugged, acknowledging his point as fair, and took a deep sip of her coffee. She picked up the carafe and warmed up her cup. “I have to believe in karma, because that’s the only way the universe is going to make up for what happened with Alex.”

  Jack bristled. He hated the fact that he was going to hear about another asshole in this world who did Maggie wrong, but on the other hand, he loved listening to her talk and he loved finding out more about her. He accepted her offer to warm up his mug of coffee and he settled in for the next tale of woe.

  “The real trouble started when I went to study art history at the University of Iowa. I was in love with the art scene down there, I was having such a good time, and I didn’t see it coming. I met Alex at a concert in the park one day. He was doing sound for his friend’s band. He saw me dancing—and I admit I was a little high at the moment—and he walked up and started talking to me and we hit it off. We sat up all night after the show and talked about art and music. Those were the best times. Alex knew how to talk, and well, you know I can talk.

  “Anyway, I fell pretty hard. Soon after that I was spending nights at his apartment, and then before the end of freshman year I was fully moved in with him. I never came back to the farm, except for Christmases. I was barely there, always itching to get back to school and my studies and my boyfriend. After Alex and I graduated, he said he had a job waiting for him in Chicago, as well as an apartment.

  “The thing I remember now is, he didn’t explicitly ask me to come with him to Chicago. What he said was, ‘You’re more than welcome to come with me.’ Looking back, that should have been a red flag, right?”

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t read much into things, but go on.”

  “What he should have said, or what I should have waited for him to say, was, ‘Maggie, please come with me!’ Right? I mean, why didn’t he insist on it? He knew he had me in the palm of his hand and I would follow him to the end of the earth, even if it meant I would fall right off the edge like a lemming. Which, I guess I kind of did.”

  Jack was so tired. So totally exhausted, but he really wanted to hear the end of this story.

  “So I moved with him to Chicago that summer after graduation. It turns out the apartment he had waiting for him was a walk-up in a really shitty neighborhood with four other people who I did not know. Not that it would have stopped me, but it would have been nice to have been forewarned. And the job he supposedly had was working as a roadie for some B-rated band that I had never even heard of. So, he was home for three days with me in Chicago and then he was on tour. He wasn’t even doing entry-level work in sound engineering. ‘Babe, this is how you get started, I have to get my foot in the door somehow.’ He might be right, but still, it would have been nice to know this ahead of time. And I suppose I should have asked more questions.

  “I was totally on my own in a strange city, looking for work in the art world. Months earlier I thought I was ready to conquer the world, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I applied at every museum, from the biggest to the smallest, and I completely struck out. Nobody was hiring, nobody even needed any volunteer docents who had no experience. So finally, at the end of the summer, living alone and miserable without my boyfriend, I accepted a serving job at the diner around the corner from our apartment. The boss liked me and gave me all the extra shifts I wanted. I started saving up enough tips that I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I thought I might actually have enough saved that I could get myself a studio in a slight
ly better neighborhood. I set money aside to afford admission to every museum in Chicago, and in the little free time I had, I visited all of them. I figured if I visited all of them, often enough, maybe I could get work as a volunteer at some point. I mean, even the tiniest basement galleries. I didn’t pass up any opportunity. Did you know in the Polish neighborhood there is a basement museum dedicated to the history of the accordion?”

  “No, I did not know that.” Jack smiled. God, what a woman. What persistence and planning, despite some truly shitty circumstances. How could he keep himself from falling completely head over heels for her?

  “But I was really missing Alex, and everyone in this apartment was weird and sullen and did a lot of drugs. Like, a lot. Not just marijuana on weekends and cocaine to stay awake. I mean, they were into everything, and pretty soon there were some truly shady people hanging around. I needed to get out, and I called Alex to tell him I was really nervous, could he wire me some money? I just needed a little bit to get out and put a deposit down on a sweet little basement studio in Hyde Park. But he turned the tables on me. Turns out, Alex had pissed away all his roadie money as fast as he was making it. It was the end of the summer, the tour had ended, and he was now on his own in Upstate New York, he said. He needed money to get back home. Desperate to see him again, I wired him some money. And do you know what happened?”

  “Let me guess,” Jack growled. “He didn’t come back to Chicago.”

  “Oh, he did. But he wasn’t the same. He was ‘over the rat race,’ he said. As if he ever worked a job that could even be considered part of the rat race. He never went back to work. Not that fall, not over the winter. Pretty soon I was paying for his rent and mine. I didn’t like him leeching off me, but I told myself it was better than him being gone and leaving me alone with these people. Then he got offered a job to do roadie work with a different band, and he needed cash to get to New York to kick off the tour. I said, no way. Get a job. I can’t keep paying for you. Then, all of a sudden, Alex was gone and my stuff went missing. I ended a 12-hour shift at the diner only to find my backpack in the break room had been rummaged through. My phone, laptop, CDs were all gone. I ran home and found all my clothes were gone—my boots, my shoes—everything was gone. Even my fucking mattress. I questioned the housemates, but they were so out of it. I finally got ahold of Alex and I called the police. It was taking forever to get the police to do anything, and all Alex had to say to me was, ‘New York is expensive, babe.’”