A Civilian for Silo

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  And then felt his jaw hit the floor at the view.

  Hole-lee shit!

  He let his eyes do the walking, moving slowly as they roamed from the top of her shining, bouncing curls, over her rack that was snuggled tightly in a ruffled shirt, around her curvy hips encased in skin-tight jeans and down to her bare toes, now coated in shiny pink nail polish. And then back up, catching on both her crotch and her tits.

  She limped slowly towards him only stopping when she was close enough for him to smell her perfume. Reaching up a hand, she placed a finger under his chin. “Close your mouth, big guy. You’re catching flies.”

  He brought his lips together so fast his teeth made an audible click.

  “What’d you get us for dinner?” she asked, blinking her big, frosted blue eyes up at him.

  His dick flexed at the view and he struggled to remember how to talk.

  Hole-lee shit!

  She was fucking hot!

  “Silo?” she asked, waving her fingers in front of his face. “Earth to Silo.”

  “Wha’?”

  “What kind of food did you get us for dinner?” she repeated and he couldn’t take his eyes off her full, shiny mouth as it moved around the words.

  Glancing at the cardboard box, he saw the little white boxes which gave him a clue as to what he was holding. “Chinese?”

  “Aren’t you sure?” she said with a giggle. A sound that went straight to his balls. He felt almost dizzy and somehow knew it was because all the blood in his body was leaving his brain and moving quickly southward.

  “Why don’t I lock up and you take that into the kitchen?” she suggested with a coquettish grin.

  Silo came up out of his fog long enough to nod before stepping around her to do as he was told. Once she was out of his line of sight, he was able to think again but had to force himself not to turn around for another view in order to scope out her ass. If memory served, Shell had a great one: round, firm with just the right amount of cheek jiggle…

  “Thought you might be able to handle Egg Flower soup and maybe some Chicken Fried Rice,” he blurted and then winced. He sounded stupid even to his own ears. But beautiful women always did that to him. Especially when he was sober.

  Depositing the box on the table, he quickly stepped to the pantry and took down his big bottle of Crown Royal, taking a healthy swig.

  “Don’t you want a glass?” she asked from her place by the table where she was pulling out the boxes and bags of their dinner.

  He shook his head and brought the bottle to his lips again, almost choking on the expensive booze as she leaned over a chair, exposing her juicy bubble-butt to his eyes.

  Fucking shit! His dick was so hard it reached his belt buckle!

  “Is that what you want to drink with dinner?” came her next question as she pulled a bottle of water from his older-than-old fridge. It was unfortunate he kept the water on the top shelf. Maybe if he’d stored it in one of the vegetable bins, she would’ve had to really bend to reach it making her top gape and giving him the doubly sexy view of tits and ass.

  “Beer,” he managed to breathe.

  “Sorry, say again?”

  “I’ll have a beer,” he mumbled a little louder, unable to rip his eyes away from her curves.

  She gave him a small frown as she pulled one of the brown bottles out and closed the refrigerator door.

  Christ! How was he gonna be able to eat with all that beauty sitting across from him?

  “Do we need plates? Forks? Or do you usually eat straight from the cartons?” He watched her drop that luscious booty into one of the chairs as she began to open the different boxes. She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Ye-yeah. Why?”

  “You seem a little…weird,” she explained with a frown.

  That word, that one little word again. Goddamn! How many times and from how many people was he gonna hear that motherfucking word for god’s sake?

  Weird, they’d called him in grade school when he was growing at such a rate even his teachers had recommended his grandparents take him to the doctor to determine if he had a glandular problem. When his feet and hands were so big that he tripped embarrassingly easy or couldn’t hold onto smaller things.

  Or the times in high school that a new coach figured a kid his size would be good at sports and then when they’d discovered his lack of coordination, the word had come out yet again.

  Weird.

  While other guys had been able to get girls, had dated, Silo hadn’t had the confidence to even ask one out, knowing from the giggles in the hallways as he’d stumbled past that they knew he was…weird.

  In fact, it wasn’t until he’d joined the Hellions that he’d had sex with a woman he hadn’t paid to be with. Hookers had been his standard form of companionship in his early years and were readily available if a man had enough of the green stuff. One of the rules he’d insisted on from each of the paid lovelies was that they were never, not fucking ever, to use the word ‘weird’ around him.

  “I ain’t weird,” he thundered, shaking off both Shelly’s use and the remembered pain of it. He recapped the bottle of Crown and put it away before joining her at the table. The only goddamn good part about her using it though was that it deflated his dick faster than any other thing he could think of.

  He opened one of the boxes she sat in front of him and reached for one of the plastic forks.

  “Did I say something wrong?” she asked into the quiet.

  “Nope.”

  Silence reigned between them until they were almost finished eating.

  “You didn’t say anything about how I looked,” Shelly mumbled, dabbing her mouth daintily with one of the napkins the Chinese place had provided. And that fucking move almost pissed him off more than anything. She was class and he was weird. Did she need to rub his nose in it?

  “Fine. You look fine,” he growled, scraping up the last few grains of his rice from the box.

  There were a couple of beats of silence that only exaggerated the tension that filled the room.

  She threw the napkin down and slammed her chopsticks on top of it. “Fine? That’s all you can say is fine?”

  Oh, fuck. He knew that tone although he’d never heard it from the beauty sitting across from him before.

  “Thank you for the damn clothes and the, what did Carly call it? Girlie shit,” Shelly yelled. “She and Reese were here for flipping hours helping me look nice, smell nice and damn well feel nice and all you can freaking say is that I look fine?”

  “Now, Shell…” he started, hoping against hope that she wasn’t so into her little mad-on that he couldn’t circumvent it.

  “Don’t you say another damn word unless it’s to tell me how beautiful I look,” she warned with narrowed eyes and a pointing finger. “Because that’s how I flipping feel. Beautiful, Si. Understand? For the first time in a long time, I feel more like the Shelly that was with you before…before…”

  “You do, baby. You look beautiful,” he boomed, trying like fuck to override her voice and prevent her from getting even angrier than she already was. “Beyond beautiful. Like something from a magazine.”

  She stopped talking and just stared at him. “You are such a liar unless you’re talking about Biker Babe Weekly or Field and Stream.”

  “I ain’t lying, princess. Cross my heart,” he said, making the motion over his chest to show he was being honest. “I walked through that door and the fucking sight of you had me speechless.”

  “Bull.”

  “It’s true, Shell.”

  She held his eyes and he could tell she was struggling to accept what he was saying which told him more about what she’d gone through in the time they’d been apart. The old Shelly had known without a doubt that she had been a strikingly gorgeous woman, had reveled in it. Not the new girl, not the hurt one that the docs and other medical staff had tried to help.

  The new Shell needed reassurance about her looks
.

  He reached for her hand that rested on the tabletop. “You are still one of the most goddamn gorgeous women I’ve ever had the fucking pleasure of seeing.”

  She swallowed and glanced down at their entwined fingers before whispering, “thank you.”

  He tried to think of something else they could talk about. Anything that would take her mind off him either being weird or not telling her how goddamn fucking awesome she looked to him. “Did the Honeys do good, get you the right stuff and all?”

  “Yeah. Carly left your credit card and the receipts. They’re on the dresser in my room.” Shelly’s voice was a lot quieter and she seemed to welcome his unspoken white flag of truce. “Reese said to tell you, they didn’t max out the card.”

  Silo smiled at the news. What the girls didn’t know was that the card he’d given Carly to pay for Shelly’s stuff had a motherfucking thirty G limit. Unless Shell was wearing pure gold panties underneath her tight as fuck jeans there was no way in hell they’d gotten anywhere close to the limit.

  Using his own napkin to clean his mouth and hands, Silo decided to open a conversation he’d been planning on having as soon as Shelly seemed strong enough to participate in. “Since it looks like we’ll be living together for a while, maybe we fucking need to get some ground rules in place.”

  “Ground rules?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You mean like, are you a messy guy leaving wet towels all over the bathroom floor?” she asked with a canted eyebrow.

  “Yeah, like that and no, I don’t,” he replied with a cocked grin. “How about you? Am I gonna have to fucking wade through a bunch of panties on the rod in order to take a shower?”

  “Is that a deal breaker, Si?”

  “Abso-fucking-lutely!”

  “Then, no. I won’t hang my beautiful new delicate lacy underthings in the shower to dry since you don’t like them there,” she replied, but her voice was sultry and challenging. And it caused the devil in his pants to again sit up and take notice of the woman across from him. Lacy, huh?

  “Can’t stand to see hair in either the fucking sink or shower,” he stated baldly and just as challengingly.

  “And I can’t stand remote hogs.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, Si. You hog the remote for the TV and there’ll be trouble,” she said with a chin jut.

  “Princess, have you even seen a fucking TV in this place?”

  She started to blink and turned her head to look into the front room. “Erm…”

  “No, you haven’t because I ain’t fucking got one.”

  “You don’t have a TV?” she asked breathily, turning her surprised eyes back to his.

  “Nope.”

  “But that’s…that’s…”

  “What? Weird?” he asked derisively. “My nana was a teacher and my grandpa a rancher. Neither one liked spending their down time that way. Said it rotted your fucking brains.”

  “What do you do for entertainment then?” she asked, her tone still showing her shock at his revelation.

  “Work on my bike, read, listen to music as I do things around the house.”

  “Read?” she questioned but Silo didn’t like it. Was she really that shallow that she thought a biker couldn’t read?

  “Yeah, I do.” So fucking what if he sounded defensive! “Like true crime and mysteries. What about it?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she breathed dropping her eyes. “I’m sorry if I offended you. It’s just that in this day and age, almost everybody has a TV.”

  “Yeah, well. I ain’t fucking ‘everybody’,” he intoned making quote marks with his fingers.

  “I’m getting that,” she admitted with a rueful head shake. She glanced around the table and began to stack the boxes. “Since you brought dinner, I’ll clean up.”

  Covering and stilling one of her small soft hands, Silo corrected her. “The doc said to stay off your ankle until Friday. Why don’t you go to bed and I’ll get everything fucking situated.”

  “I’m kind of tired of being in bed, Si,” she admitted and he watched her cheeks take on a rosier hue but he didn’t know why.

  “Want a book, baby?” he offered, with another quirked grin.

  She looked around the rooms open in view and sighed. “Well, if that’s what’s on offer, sure!”

  And Silo felt a full smile pull at his face only to receive one back in return.

  Chapter Seven

  Pushing the shopping cart with his elbows, in a crouched-over stance that almost made his back hurt, Silo corrected Shelly’s choice of pasta. “No, princess. The generic shit is fucking cheaper and is just as good.”

  “That’s not true! Everyone knows that the no-brand stuff clumps together and tastes like schoolroom paste!” He eyed the flushed beauty in front of him, noting the electricity in her eyes—something which had been missing until they’d hit the grocery store—and her waspish tone.

  She’d goddamn insisted she go with him, claiming she was going stir crazy being stuck in the house all day with nothing to do but read and he’d understood. But a dude would think she’d show a little kindness, a little fucking sweetness to the guy who rescued her from death-by-boredom!

  “Don’t fucking matter, Shell. Get the cheaper kind,” he’d patiently stated for like the forty-third time since they’d been shopping. Even though she’d been stuck at home all day with nothing whatso-fucking-ever to do, it had taken her an hour and a half to get ready to go. A fucking hour and a half for god’s sake! But then, he really couldn’t find fault after she’d done herself up because of how good she’d looked when she was finished.

  Good enough to grab and impale on the high hard that had been riding him from the moment he’d gotten home from work.

  Hole-lee shit but it was getting more and more fucking difficult to keep his hands off the gorgeous woman living under his roof. No matter that it took her for-fucking-ever to get ready to leave the house.

  Silo rubbed a hand over his face.

  When he got ready for the day, it took him fifteen to twenty minutes. And his weekly grocery shopping took him twenty to twenty-five minutes tops. So why the fuck were they already an hour into it and their shopping cart was only half-filled?

  Because the former spit-fire, right in the middle of one of the larger chain supermarkets on the other side of town, argued.

  All. The. Freaking. Time.

  And.

  Over. Every. Motherfucking. Thing.

  He let out an audible sigh, allowing his eyes wander over her.

  Actually, the clothes Carly and Reese had painstakingly picked out were not the kind of stuff the old Shelly would’ve worn, but Silo liked them a hell of a lot better than the shit she used to wear; suits that hid her wonderful curves and blouses that buttoned all the way up to her chin. The items the Honeys had chosen were more casual, fitted and showcased the girl’s incredible body. The distressed jeans cupped her luscious ass and slid down her thick thighs even as the berry-colored t-shirt with the barely there sleeves pulled tight across her generous chest and briefly touched the waistband of the jeans.

  Shelly looked good both dressed in her fancy shit and Montana’s version of casual.

  Maybe a little too good with the sharp interest that she received by any man within glancing distance.

  “For the love of Christ, princess! You gonna argue over every goddamn thing?” He knew his voice carried both over and around the aisle but he was already so fucking tired of shopping he couldn’t see straight. “Just fucking pick one and let’s damn well get on with it.”

  “Fine!” she shot back dropping the package of the $3.99 shit into the cart even as his eyes located the $1.99 box of pasta he thought was just as good. When you slammed spaghetti sauce over it, what was the fucking difference anyway? He silently questioned.

  “You gonna tell me what the fuck crawled up your butt or am I gonna have to guess?” he finally asked after a couple of steps as he followed her down the wide aisle. He was d
one trying to work out what had Shelly’s scrap of panties in a bunch. Sure, she probably had her reasons as to why she seemed to be on edge but to his mind, she needed to work that shit outta her head in order to start healing on the inside.

  She stopped dead-center in the middle of the aisle and shot him a glance over her shoulder. “Up my butt?”

  “Yeah. You heard me,” he challenged on a chin lift. If they had to have it out in the middle of the grocery store, so be it.

  She turned to fully face him, crossing her hands over her curvy breasts and shooting out a hip.

  It was a feminine stance that Silo had learned over the years meant trouble was on its way.

  Shelly didn’t change his opinion as she took in a long breath in order to reply. “What is up my butt, Mr. Kettering, is that you decided that I didn’t need my credit cards, my bank card or to replace my phone.”

  Wait…what?

  “That you, in that almighty and twisted brain of yours, told me I couldn’t replace them, shouldn’t replace them and would be, in your freaking words, a goddamn moron to even consider doing so!” She was so mad he could see her arms involuntarily moving with the heaving of her bodacious chest.

  “But, Shell…” he started until she brought a palm up to face him.

  Man, she was really pissed. So pissed that she opened and closed her mouth several times before her voice actually hit the air. “You do not, DO NOT, get to tell me what to do!” she announced imperiously, her voice every bit as loud as his had been.

  He eyed her as his mind raced. Didn’t she know…couldn’t she understand? “Shell? Princess? Whoever is after you will and can find you if you replaced them,” he uttered, his volume only a shadow of its former self. Why hadn’t he given her the reasons for the denial at the time she’d asked him? She was obviously used to being in charge and seemed to hate that he’d told her no. Or was it that she was so fucking spoiled that telling her ‘no’ was like waving a red flag in front of her face?

  A face that was now pale and held the ‘o’ position that her mouth seemed to fall into frequently.