by Amelia Gates
“Tell me what you want, Daisy.”
“You,” I sobbed. “Kiss me, Kash.”
The wet warmth from his mouth spread through my body, clit to navel to breasts, making my spine twist and hips flex as he drove his fingers into me. He stole my breath with his soft, firm lips, forced cries through my throat with his undulating fingers, building my climax with the speed of a freight train, driving me to the crest.
“Oh God, Kash! Fuck, I’m cumming!”
He groaned as I drenched his face, a sound of pure lust and hot desire. While I was still limp in the aftermath of my orgasm he crawled over my body, reaching for the glovebox.
“Watch your head.”
I rolled my head out of the way as he popped the ancient thing open, spilling a chain of condoms onto the floor.
“Those haven’t been here this whole time, have they?” I asked, alarmed. “Coz, you know, those things come with an expiration date.”
He grinned. “Bought them fresh today.” He kissed my cheek, then my mouth, fumbling with the condom as I drank his kisses like water.
I came again as he entered me, strange and familiar. He was the only key for my lock, a perfect fit. Groaning, he wrapped his arm around my neck, anchoring his other fist at the curve of my hip. His, all his. I screamed into his shoulder as he thrust, fast and rough. He was lost to the moment and he’d taken me with him. There was nothing else in the world but the motion of his body and his sweat on my tongue.
That first deep pulse took me over the edge a third time, and as he growled my name into my hair my eyes rolled back in my head and my legs shook, tightening around him. He came and came, until his arms gave out and he was gasping for breath just as hard as I was. Finally, with a trembling sigh, he laid his head on my breast and released his grip on my neck.
“I love you so damn much,” he breathed.
The words hovered somewhere behind my tongue as clarity returned in the wake of satisfaction. I held him close and kissed his hair, hoping it would be enough for now. I wished like hell that I was as certain of him as he was of me.
But as uncertain as my rational mind was, my instincts were blissfully silent. My limbs were molten relaxation, my breath deep and even. Between the warmth of his body and the sound of the rain, my conscious mind didn’t stand a chance. I drifted off to sleep still wrapped around him, all of my thoughts a buzz of white noise somewhere irrelevant in my mind.
Silence woke me with a start. “Oh God, what time is it?”
His only response was a soft, stuttering snore.
“Kash! Kash, wake up.” I shoved at his broad shoulder in a panic and he finally pushed himself up, rubbing his eyes.
“Whashup?” He asked through a yawn.
“The time, what time is it? Oh, no, oh shit. Fuck! My dad’s going to lose it.”
“Mm, hold on.” He switched the car on and squinted at the clock on the dash. “7:48. Dang, really?”
I looked out the window and breathed through the knot in my chest. The storm had dispersed, and sunset’s afterglow was still shimmering on the horizon. I wasn’t late, but I was damn well close.
“We have to hurry,” I said shortly. “Please get me home!”
I started shimmying into my wet clothes. Shoving my legs into my pants was an unattractive and very uncomfortable fit. By the grace of God, I somehow managed to get myself fully clothed. Kash looked down at his naked body, shrugged, and tossed his t-shirt over his head. Naked from the waist down, he turned the truck back onto the road. I stared at him as I shoved my feet back into my soggy shoes.
“What are you doing?”
“You gotta get home now, don’t you? Lights out at eight or whatever stupid thing? It’s gonna take me at least ten minutes just to get down the mountain. I don’t have time to screw with pants.”
I squealed. “What if somebody sees you?”
“They’re welcome to send me a thank-you card,” he said with a smirk.
I laughed, shaking my head in disbelief. “You’re impossible, you know that, Kash Lawson?”
“Impossibly awesome,” he said. He grinned at me and squeezed my thigh. “Anything for you, Daisy.”
My heart pounded with something like guilt. I knew I couldn’t say the same to him, not yet, and it killed me. What was I waiting for? For them to exonerate him entirely? The cops would have to find the real killer to do that, and I knew they were all done looking. Blind faith had never been my strong suit, but I knew I was going to have to make that leap eventually. Because eventually I would have a choice to make. For as long as the real killer wasn’t found, Kash would be seen as guilty in my father’s eyes. Hiding something for a few days might prove easy, but doing it forever…it just wasn’t an option.
I didn’t have time to sort out my thoughts before we were back on my street. Half of it was underwater, but Kash made it through. Before we were visible from the trailers, he shot me a glance.
“Okay Daisy, your choice. I can drop you here and you can be late, or I can drop you at your door and risk having your dad see me.”
I shrugged. “Nobody’s seen this truck in years. Besides, it’s covered in mud and looks like every other truck around here. I’ll just tell them that a regular from the library gave me a ride, it’s happened before.”
He frowned. “If you say so. Just—lie like you mean it, okay?”
“Are you calling me a bad liar?”
“Abysmal,” he said with a grin. It faded as quickly as it had come, though, as a different thought occurred to him. “Guess kissing you goodbye is out of the question?”
I could see my house then, complete with a silhouette in the window. One of them was watching for me, and it was probably Dad. I sighed.
“Looks like it.”
I knew it might have been a little sadistic, but I loved how sad he looked about not getting to kiss me, even after everything we’d just done. I squeezed his hand.
“See you tomorrow?”
He grinned. “Same time, same place.”
I was walking on sunshine all the way up to the house but controlled my expression when I got to the door. Dad was waiting, of course. To my surprise, instead of pounding me with questions, he wrapped me in a big hug as I walked through the door.
“You made it,” he said gruffly. “That was a hell of a storm. Billy’s trailer’s gone. You’re so late, I was worried you were gone too.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, heart squeezing with tenderness and more than a hint of guilt. “I couldn’t walk home in that. I waited it out and hitched a ride with a regular who was stuck at the library with me. I’m sorry I couldn’t pick up your beer.”
He waved that away. “Don’t worry about it, I grabbed it on my way home. There was a deal—anyway. I’m just glad you made it home safe.”
I hated myself for lying to him. Moments like these reminded me how much he loved me, how much pain he must be in still because of Hunter’s death. I couldn’t really blame him for being overprotective, could I? Conflict tore at my heart, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I kissed him goodnight and went to bed, resigned to crying myself to sleep.
Chapter 13
A protective tension rolled through my shoulders when she walked away. I knew how her dad was and knew that even though she was technically on time, she was still later than he expected her to be—and without her usual beer offering to soothe his temper. I waited in the circle until I was sure that she wasn’t in distress, then made my way back to the drive. Pants, I needed pants.
More determined than ever to get her out of there, I started planning out my agenda for the next day and the day after that. Being with Daisy turned out to be such a freaking good determination booster. Having felt her again, her body, her heart, I was reminded of just what I could never lose again. This time, though, I didn’t want bits and pieces of time. I wanted the whole damn thing. I wanted to love her out in the open. Protect her. Provide for her. Make her feel safe and happy and restore her belief in the future. Which
meant there was a fuck load I needed to get done and none of it was going to be easy.
For starters, I needed to find myself a job that paid. The stash of cash that Hunter and I had left in the woods wouldn’t go far without a work history and a clean record, and I could only work on one of those at a time.
I was up until four in the morning looking for work on my phone. I applied to a bunch of places—every place in town that was hiring, in fact—the money didn’t matter to me nearly as much as the experience did. I had savings, a whole lot of them. All I needed was a buffer in my resume to mask the six-year absence from the general work force. By the time I was finished looking for jobs, reading through their requirements and taking note of all the fine print, my eyes were watering and all the words had started running together. But at least I got a couple applications in. Hopefully all that work wouldn’t have me coming up empty handed.
I turned my alarm clock off, too exhausted to even want to consider hearing it go off. Leroy would just have to live without me until I woke up naturally.
My eyes closed gratefully the second my head hit the pillow. My mind drifted through random thoughts the way it always did before I fell asleep. A checklist began to form in my mind from all the scattered to-dos rolling around in my head. Check application status. Fix the wall. Talk to my PO. Do my laundry. Go see Daisy.
I sat up with a start, swearing a blue streak. How had I forgotten about that? I had an appointment with my parole officer first thing in the morning. My release had come with a whole lot of complicated stipulations that I didn’t quite understand, and he was the man who would inform me of them in layman’s terms. Groaning, I rolled over and turned the damn alarm back on. Guess I would just have to face the music on three hours of sleep.
My eyes had only been closed for a second when someone started beating my door down. There was another sound, too—a blaring electric scream that made me want to stick my head under the pillow.
“Kash! You dead? Kash! Get out here! I’m gettin’ complaints, boy!”
I peeled my eyes open, ready to tear Leroy a new one. Blinding sunlight changed my mind real quick—that was my alarm clock going off. Panic ripped me out from under my covers and landed me on my feet. The damn thing had been going off for a whole forty-five minutes! I ripped it out of the wall and threw it across the damn room.
“Useless piece of—yeah, Leroy, I hear you! My bad! Damn it, damn it, damn it.” I didn’t have time to change. Hell, I didn’t even have time to breathe. I shoved my sockless feet into my shoes, grabbed my keys—my wallet was still in my pocket—and bolted out the door. My clothes smelled like mildew from the damn truck and my jeans were spattered in mud up past my knees. Fantastic first impression.
“Hey, where you think you’re going? Historical society’s gonna be here Monday, you still got work to do! You hung over or something?”
“P.O.”
It was all I needed to say to have him shut the hell up. Leroy had spent a lot of time in and out of jail in his younger days and knew the consequences of missing an appointment like this. They weren’t pretty. The thought of returning to prison kept my foot pressing a little too hard on the accelerator, and even then, I barely made it to my appointment in time.
The guy who would be my P.O looked like an accountant and his face was pinched like he was always smelling something foul. That disgust deepened when I walked in and sat in the chair.
“Mr. Lawson,” he said flatly.
“Mr. Breaker. Good to meet you.”
His big, fishy eyes blinked at me slowly. “No need to lie, Mr. Lawson. You want to be here about as much as I do.”
“Seems like you’re in the wrong business.”
He pursed his lips and sat down across from me, lacing his fingers on the desk. “My business,” he said, “is keeping Danton safe from criminals like you, Mr. Lawson. A criminal doesn’t just stop being a criminal when they’re released from prison, but of course you know that. I am the babysitter. The person assigned to your case for as long as the county decides it is necessary.”
I grinned. “My momma said I was too old for a babysitter when I was six. You’re about nineteen years too late.”
He sniffed. “Your ‘momma’ was clearly mistaken. I’ve looked over your case, Mr. Lawson, and I must say I’m impressed by your rather reckless tenacity. Seems like it was just a matter of time before you’d end up in prison.”
I leaned back in my chair, wielding my grin like a weapon. “Thanks,” I said, “it’s always good to meet a fan.”
“It wasn’t a compliment, Mr. Lawson. You were—erroneously, in my opinion—cleared of a large crime simply because you admitted to a slightly smaller one. Do you know how many people die from drug misuse? You should have been classified a murderer a long time ago. The fact that it was enough to get you released on time served blows my mind.”
I shrugged. “Not my call. If you have a problem with it, take it up with the judge.”
“I have,” he said acidly. “Since there was no drug evidence admitted, the case had to be dismissed. But that doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. My role in your life is to keep you firmly within the rule of the law. You start cooking meth, I’ll know about it. You shoplift, I’ll know about it. You go five miles over the speed limit and you’re goddamn right I’ll know about it. You will be a model citizen, or I will pack your ass right back to prison where you belong. Do I make myself clear?”
I thought about it for a good, long time, just to make sure I understood him clearly. Okay, so I didn’t need to, but I did want to see how far his mouth could twist. When it had reached maximum torsion, I sighed. “Model citizen, got it. Now I need specifics. How often do I need to see you? How do I transfer to a different babysitter if I move out of town? How long will this arrangement be necessary? I swear I’m a big boy, I tie my own shoes and everything.”
He grinned. I didn’t like it. It split his face too far on either side, and for as big as his mouth was there were still too many teeth in it. His eyes narrowed into little black slits, glinting in the sunlight. The man was a natural born predator.
“Oh, you won’t be leaving,” he smiled, “I have your address at the motel. That is where you will be until I decide otherwise, and you certainly won’t be leaving town.”
He leaned back and flicked one of those silver ball toys on his desk, making it click in an irritating rhythm. “As far as how long we’ll be playing—well, that is entirely up to me and the judge. You’ll have to prove to me that you are, in fact, rehabilitated.” He chuckled softly as he caught a ball in mid-air and pulled it back, letting it fall again to knock into the others harder than before.
“I take it you aren’t real easy to convince.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment. Finger on his chin, bullshit on his mind. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve graduated a few convicts early. One in 1992, one in—hm. No, I guess just the one.”
“And how many did you send back up the river?”
“Oh, I’d have to check my files to tell you that.” He smirked at me, then frowned. “Unfortunately, for your case, there is a maximum time limit. Barring any future incidents, you’re mine for the next ten years.” His face split like a jackal’s. “But of course that’s flexible. As I said, it’s on me to keep this town safe. If you can’t abide by the rules, well—we’ll just have to extend that maximum.”
I ground my teeth. “Right. So you’re here to make sure I don’t—what, exactly? As far as I know I was cleared of the murder charge and never officially convicted of any drug charges.”
He nodded. “Mm-hm. Yours is a bit of a strange case. See, me and the judge, we aren’t convinced that you didn’t murder the guy. What was his name? Fisher? Tanner?”
“Hunter.”
“Right, Hunter. I knew it was one of those redneck names. You would have to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that someone else murdered the kid before your parole agreement could be re-evaluated. Since I’m pretty sure you did
the deed, that isn’t going to happen. Of course, with the drug history, you would also have to convince us that you no longer profit from the malicious destruction of other people’s lives. If you just happen to come into a little more money than I think you should have, I will open an investigation on your ass so fast you won’t even have time to say, ‘but I inherited it.’”
My thoughts were coming in slowly, in perfect balance. I was currently breaking some civil laws by working on that building without an electrician’s license. I had pocket money from Leroy, all of which was under the table. My truck’s registration was seven years out of date. And I was more than going just 5 mph over the speed limit on my way here. The ice I was skating on seemed to be getting thinner and thinner.
I cleared my throat. “So I assume I’ll be expected to get a job.”
“Oh, yes. You’ll be expected to work forty hour weeks—I charge a $200 a month fee, which is standard—keep your clothes clean—”
“Wait, hold on, back up. I have to pay you to watch me?”
He smiled coldly. “Yes. You will also be required to pay for your own drug tests, which will be performed at random, up to four times a month. You will have a twelve hour window in which to get them done.”
“I see. So if I work 9-5, I’ll have to go get my drug tests done on my lunch break. How nice of you.”
“Did you expect to be comfortable, Mr. Lawson? You are a criminal. An enemy of the good people of Parson County and Danton proper. You are and will be expected to work hard to prove to me that releasing you was not an act of war against civility.”
I pressed my hands against my thighs to keep them from curling into fists. I wanted nothing more than to smash this guy’s face into the floor repeatedly.
“Now then, as I was saying. I expect you to maintain your address at the motel. I expect you to get a full-time job and show up for every shift. You call in sick, you better be in my office with a doctor’s note that same day. I expect your clothes to be clean, your body to be showered, and to see you in church on Sunday. I want proof of all of it. I expect you to be in my office every single Friday with rent receipts, paycheck stubs, and the Sunday flier. You get a car, I want a copy of the registration and the insurance. You start getting claustrophobic in that room, tough shit. You better come in here on your hands and knees begging me to let you apply for something roomier.”