by Lucy Score
Joey did moan now. This was what she wanted, this feeling of fullness that chased all other thoughts out of her head. There was room for nothing but pleasure and the craving for more.
He was moving now, an achingly slow rhythm that had her head falling back against his shoulder.
“You’re everything to me,” he gritted the words out against her throat, sliding into her until every inch of him was buried in her heat.
She taunted him with her hips, swiveling them and pressing back against him. She wanted him fast and a little rough. Not whispering sweet nothings in her ear, sweet nothings that shot straight to her bruised heart.
His hands abandoned hers for her breasts, cupping them in his calloused palms. The speed she was so desperate for came now. A fast thrill raced through her as she felt Jax’s control slip just a little more.
She bent at the waist, her head dipping between her outstretched arms and hips driving back against him as he thrust harder. The snow outside her windows was forgotten as the heat rose degree by scorching degree.
Exhilaration and anticipation spiked in her. This was what she’d silently mourned deep in her soul all those years. This need tangled with an intimacy so raw she couldn’t tell whether they were two or one. She’d never had this with another man, had feared she would never find it again.
And what exactly did that mean that she had found it again with Jax? But the thought tumbled out of her head when he skimmed a palm over her stomach and then lower to stroke her.
His thrusts were becoming wilder, more erratic. Her fingers cramped on the thin bars that she gripped like lifelines. Sounds of desire—the slap of flesh to flesh, the short gasps of breath—filled the room.
“I need you to come, Joey,” he ordered.
“Come with me,” she gritted the words out. She selfishly wanted to feel it again, that second when two people couldn’t be any closer. She wanted her release to drag him with her, to share the fall and spiral down, down, down together.
The pads of his fingers worked her sensitive nub, swamping her system with a pleasure there was no defense against.
“Jax.” His name was a gasp, a prayer.
“I’m with you. I’m with you.”
And he was. As she felt the first tremors of her release, Jax gave a triumphant shout behind her. He poured himself into her matching tremor for tremor as she dissolved around him. Joey didn’t see snowflakes, she saw fireworks. Bright and bold in the night as she surrendered everything.
* * *
“Jax?”
“Huh?”
“Are you alive?”
Jax took an inventory of his body. It was still there, sprawled over Joey’s bed and part of Joey. His heart still beat. His breath still moved. But he couldn’t seem to find the will to move.
“I think so.”
“Good.” Joey’s voice was muffled by the pillow her face was in. “Am I alive?”
“More or less.” He mustered the energy and rolled over, pulling her with him so she could breath.
“So that’s what it feels like,” she said, stretching lazily.
“That’s what what feels like?”
“The earth moving.” She gave him a sleepy smile.
Jax laughed. “Angels singing.”
“Fireworks. There were definitely fireworks.”
“Fireworks in a blizzard. I like that we can do that,” Jax sighed, wishing she would roll again and nestle into him.
But Joey liked space for her long limbs.
“You know what would make this even better?” Joey asked wistfully.
“What’s that?”
“Another bowl of chili.”
Downstairs they found their bowls licked clean under the coffee table. Waffles wouldn’t meet Joey’s gaze and Valentina looked guilty. Meatball was still licking his chops by the fire.
“I’ll get clean bowls,” Jax volunteered.
Joey went to the back door and opened it. “We’re up to a foot already,” she said, gauging the depth of the snow. The dogs roused themselves to trot through the door for an impromptu potty break. Jax watched as Joey tugged on a pair of snow boots and stomped her way to the edge of the deck to watch the dogs tear around the backyard.
He ladled chili into both bowls and popped them in the microwave.
“Jax, come see,” Joey called from the deck.
Every time Jax thought he couldn’t love her more, he fell just a little bit further. This was no different. She stood bathed in the spotlight mounted on the back of the house. Fat flakes floated down to land in hair the color of chestnuts. The dogs raced a zigzag pattern in the yard in front of her, barking and yipping, sending clouds of snow up to mingle with the falling flakes.
Behind him, the warmth of fire and home. He’d never wanted anything more than this. This was where he belonged. Her world was his and he needed her to understand that, to believe that. But now was not the time for declarations or ultimatums. Joey didn’t respond to either of those. He would find a way to make her see, that he belonged here with her.
Joey laughed as Meatball took a turn too tight and tumbled, sending snow in all directions. She looked back at Jax, her hair tousled from his hands, her color high. Her legs bare between the hem of his shirt that she’d pulled on and the tops of her boots.
“I think we’re going to need some towels for these idiots,” she said jerking a thumb at the dog action behind her.
“I’ll grab some as soon as I do this,” Jax said, crossing the deck to her. One hand wound around the back of her neck. The other gripped her hip. Her lips parted as if she was going to ask a question, but he silenced her with his mouth.
He kissed her under the porch light, under the sky of snow. He moved both hands to cup her jaw, gentling the pressure. He poured his love for her into the kiss so there could be no doubt in her mind. Flakes fell silently, landing in their hair and on their shoulders, and still he kissed her, claiming her mouth in a gentle prison of breath and taste.
When he felt her knees buckle, he steadied her and broke contact with her mouth.
She laughed nervously. “What the hell was that?” Her voice was a whisper.
Jax grinned and tapped her nose with his finger. “I’ll go get some towels. Come inside before you get frostbite on that perfect ass of yours.”
When she only nodded, he felt he’d won a victory of sorts.
He went back inside and found some rough looking towels in the bottom of her linen closet.
“Are you ready for us?” Joey called from the backdoor when Jax came down the stairs.
They let one dog in at a time and scrubbed them down with towels until they were dry enough to turn loose on the house. Meatball repeatedly licked Joey in the face while she tried to dry his paws.
“He really grows on you, doesn’t he?” she asked as the beagle scampered off to check his food dish.
“Even his farts have a certain charm about them,” Jax admitted.
“Well I wouldn’t go that far.”
They reconvened to the couch with loose muscles and second supper. Jax put his feet up on the coffee table and Joey tucked hers into his lap.
They ate in companionable silence, ignoring three pairs of brown beggy eyes. And when the dishes were done and the leftovers tucked away, they returned to the couch, Jax with his laptop and papers and Joey with her romance novel.
His phone signaled from the coffee table. He glanced at the screen and snorted.
“What?” Joey asked, stretching lazily.
“Carter wants to know how many inches we have here. They’ve got six inches in the hotel parking lot.”
“Tell him that’s what we have here. Otherwise he’s going to text us both incessantly.”
“Lie to my brother?” Jax gasped in feigned horror.
Joey eyed him over her book.
“You’re right. Good call. Lying to my brother,” he said, as he fired off a quick text.
She looked restlessly out the back window at the falling s
now.
“What’s wrong?” Jax asked.
She shrugged her slim shoulders. “I just wish I could do one more check on the horses, but I really don’t feel like wading through a foot of snow between here and the stables.”
“Then allow me to direct your attention here…” Jax said, swiveling his laptop around to face her with a flourish. He opened a browser window and keyed in a URL and then handed the computer over to her.
“What’s this? Hey, that’s Lolly and Romeo!” Joey said, sitting up and peering at the screen in delight. “How did you do that?”
“I set up a couple of WIFI-enabled cameras around the stable and the barn. This way we can keep an eye on everything from the safety and warmth of your couch.”
“You’re a freaking genius.”
“Trust me. It was purely selfish. I knew you’d be dragging me up there in the dead of night and I thought this would be easier and warmer.”
“Look! You got the cows and Clementine in the barn.”
Clementine’s yellow eyes glowed on camera as she stared eerily at the camera.
“Does she ever blink?” Jax asked. “I mean seriously, even on camera she looks like a demon.”
“Leave poor Clementine alone,” Joey teased.
“Poor Clementine? Did I tell you how she tried to attack me through the door of her stall today? Waffles had to rescue me.”
“Poor baby,” Joey crooned.
“That goat has it in for me,” Jax muttered.
“Did you see how much weight those Jerseys have put on this week? Dr. Ames is going to be thrilled when she sees them next week.”
“If we dig out by then,” Jax teased.
“I wouldn’t say no to being snowed in for a few days. It’s nice to not have so many people around all the time,” Joey sighed.
“My pretty little introvert.”
“I thought I was just grumpy.”
“Maybe a little of that, too,” he said, tugging her ponytail.
Satisfied that her animals were safe and cozy despite the active blizzard, Joey turned her attention back to her hardback and Jax took out the folder of his father’s essays. With limited free time recently, he’d only read a handful of the stories so far, but tonight seemed like the perfect time to catch up.
Code Word: Livestock Auction by John Pierce
The title caught his eye as Jax fondly remembered that every summer for years, he and his brothers would be shipped off to Aunt Rose and Uncle Melvin’s home in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania for a long weekend when their parents traveled to the Tri-State Livestock Auction. When they were younger, they clamored to go along with their parents. When they were older, they clamored to be left home by themselves. But the answer was always no.
Every year, like clockwork, his parents packed up and off they went, sale papers and stock stats in hand. His parents never told them much about the auction, and they never seemed to buy anything, but they had always come home happier and more relaxed than when they left. He was curious what kind of experience his father would have that made him want to document the memory.
Even a man so firmly planted in the earth as a family farmer can experience the wistful beckon of wanderlust. It is particularly poignant when everyone around you prepares for beach vacations or lake getaways while you protect your harvest from Mother Nature morning ‘til night.
For Phoebe it was often worse. Managing our books and house, lending me a hand a dozen times a day, all while running herd on one, two, and then three boys meant just about every hour of every day was spoken for.
It happened by accident, our desire to do right by the land, by the boys, by each other, that we forgot about what we might need.
One particularly steamy July night, I came home to chaos.
Carter, in his five-year-old glory, had attempted to glue Beckett’s head to the table—thankfully he had gone with Elmer’s and not any of the heavy duty adhesives I had, until that point, left in plain sight throughout the barn and garage. The dog had rolled in something that smelled like a garbage dump full of dead bodies and apparently had eaten a good portion of it, because he threw it up in front of the stove where Phoebe was making dinner.
It had been a long day for me, as well, sweating and bleeding over equipment too old to see it through one more season and fields that were hell bent on being destroyed by drought and those Goddamn spider mites.
I walked into the house and saw the woman I love, the woman my heart beats for, one second away from a justified meltdown. I saw her take a breath, a shallow shaky one, pull it all back in, order the boys upstairs to the bath and the dog outside so she could clean up the mess for no other reason than to be prepared for the next disaster. Our suitcase was by the front door, packed and ready for the Tristate Livestock Auction the next day, and dinner was burning on the stovetop.
I did what I’d learned to do living with a fiery, mule-headed woman who would stubbornly stay the course despite the rocks ahead. I walked into the kitchen, turned off the stove, and poured Phoebe the biggest glass—this time a mason jar—of wine I could find. Then I turned my attention to cleaning up whatever carcass Pancake had retched up.
After a few healthy sips, Phoebe went upstairs to check on the boys, and I started to think. When was the last time we’d had a vacation, just the two of us? The livestock auction certainly didn’t count and every other road trip or winter vacation happened with three boys in tow.
Maybe it was time for a change?
The next morning, we packed up the car and drove the kids to Phoebe’s sister and brother-in-law’s place in the Poconos. And then instead of driving to the auction, I took my wife to the Jersey shore. Her face lit up when I pulled up in front of the shabby bed and breakfast I’d desperately booked the night before. And it made me feel equal parts hero and fool, wishing I had done this years ago.
We spent the next three days lazing on the beach, eating in restaurants that would have horrified our PB and J kids, and pretending we had all the time in the world to do the things we wanted.
We never went back to the auction. Every year after that, the Livestock Auction was code for freedom. It became a tradition that I booked the trip and surprised Phoebe with the destination. We counted down the days to our next adventure together, not as parents or farmers or even adults. But as partners in crime. And crime it became.
This year, with an iffy harvest on the horizon, we stayed close to home to explore the Finger Lakes. The summer was hotter than ever and despite the ice-cold air conditioning in our hotel room and the crystal blue waters of its pool, something crazy took hold of us.
Maybe it was the oysters we shared at dinner. Maybe it was the heady feeling of freedom on our first night away from home. Whatever it was, we found ourselves jumping off a dock on Cayuga Lake at midnight. Naked.
It was as if, between the moonlight and the lake waters, all sense of responsibility and propriety was washed away. We were two souls, enjoying the romance of the moment unhindered by societal and familial roles. Splashing, playing, teasing.
I’d learned long ago that actions spoke louder than words with my Phoebe. A man could say “I love you” ‘til he was blue in the face, but send her out on the porch with fresh lemonade while I do the dishes or surprise her with a ridiculous and completely sappy bouquet of flowers picked in the fields and she heard me loud and clear.
This particular night the only thing we heard loud and clear was “Come out of the water, now,” as spoken by the annoyed state trooper over the loudspeaker of her car.
In our midnight fun, we’d somehow missed her arrival. She stood on the dock, sweating in full uniform, between the discarded piles of our clothes. A consummate professional, we couldn’t tell if she was surprised that she was rousting two forty-year-olds from the cool lake waters.
She handed us our clothes without a hint of a smile, and while I tried to shimmy my way into my underwear, Phoebe babbled on about escaping our three children and our lives at home.
The trooper nodded silently, taking notes in her notebook. She took our licenses back to the patrol car and we dressed quickly, vacillating between laughter and embarrassment. Would our first arrest be for public nudity? In Blue Moon Bend it was a perfectly respectable thing to be arrested for. The community had hosted a clothing-optional Summer Solstice party until the late seventies.
The trooper returned, licenses in hand. She turned them over to us and we waited for the punishment to be meted out.
“I have two kids under the age of two at home,” she said.
And with that, she turned and got back in her car and drove off. No ticket, no citation, no order to appear in front of a judge.
Phoebe and I laughed ourselves silly the whole way back to the hotel where we had to perform a soggy walk of shame past the front desk. It was worth it, every single second, to share that with my wife.
Even now, years later, I can say the words “Cayuga Lake” to Phoebe and we’ll both be transported back to that night, that taste of freedom, that brush with the law. The excitement of a single spontaneous moment.
It’s made us better partners and better parents. As we can easily remember the lure of the moment, the siren song of adventure, and the sting of reprimand. Now, when the boys get caught doing something so stupid you have to wonder if they’ve had a head trauma, I remember Cayuga Lake and the Livestock Auction and I know what it’s like to want to jump head first into freedom.
Jax cleared his throat, trying to dislodge the emotion that clogged it. He’d never be able to put into words what it meant to him to have access to his father like this. Unfiltered by a father-son relationship, just his true words on paper painting a picture of his parents that he’d never had before.
“Everything okay?” Joey asked, over her open book.
He looked at her and smiled. Everything was great. And maybe he’d take a page out of his father’s book and surprise Joey with something besides whispered words of love tomorrow.