by Cora Brent
And just like that the arrogant, domineering sex fiend was gone. Deck brushed my hair back and kissed my forehead. His eyes were tender as he raised himself up a few inches and looked at me. “You okay, sweetheart?”
I wrapped my arms around him, kissing his shoulder and shutting my eyes as a strange ache in my chest grew. “Yes. I don’t think I’ve ever been better.”
“Jenny,” he whispered and bent down to lightly kiss my breasts before moving to brush his lips across mine. “You changed everything.”
My hands roamed everywhere, exploring every stunning swell of muscle. I would never get tired of this, of him. “No, I don’t want to change you, Deck. I think I might just want to love you.”
The sound that came from him was close to pain as he dipped his head to my chest and rested his chin over my heart. I was embarrassed, wishing I’d just kept my damn mouth shut. What the hell was I thinking tossing a word like ‘love’ around? Deck hadn’t made me any promises and I’d never said that word before, not to anyone.
He’s laughing at me. He’s laughing on the inside.
“I want to love you too, baby,” he said in a soft, muffled voice. Then he sat up, gave me a penetrating look and rolled the comforter around our naked bodies. Deck leaned back into the bed pillows, possessively cradling my head to his shoulder.
“Turn off the light,” I yawned, reveling in the feel of his sweaty skin against mine.
But he balked. “No fucking way. It’s the middle of the afternoon and I’m sure as shit not done hitting that hot pocket.”
I tried to keep a straight face, exasperated by his crudeness but undeniably excited that he wanted me so much. “My god. You and your rampaging sex drive.”
“Which you are only barely acquainted with, angel.”
“Deck.”
“Yeah, Jenny darling?”
I sighed. “I’m happy.”
He took a long time to answer. His arms encircled me a little more tightly and he rested his chin atop my head. “I am too.” Then he gave me another tender kiss before continuing. “I don’t mind telling you that I wasn’t looking for this. So many times I found myself surrounded by women who didn’t mean more to me than a nickel found on the sidewalk and yet I was as solitary as anyone ever was. That part of me was dead, I thought. The part that needed a connection that lasted more than a few sweaty minutes.” He paused. “You know every time I’m with you it occurs to me at least once that the best thing I could do would be to walk away. But I can’t. Damn, I just can’t.”
I swiveled, wanting to look at him head on before answering. “You’d damn well better not walk away. Because I may not be the worldliest woman you’ve ever come across, Deck, but I do know that if you leave I’m not going to just let you go. I will not just move on to some simple-minded boy with the charisma of a doorknob. This is where I want to be.” As I turned I stopped shielding myself with the blanket. I let it fall. Deck’s eyes flickered down over my chest.
“You don’t even know what you are,” he said with an odd note of wonder.
“Yes, I do. Right now I’m yours. “
He smiled and shook his head briefly. “Not what I meant. You’re perfect.”
“I’m pretty far from perfect.”
Deck shoved the rest of the blankets away. “That’s what makes it so painfully fucking true.” He seized me as my legs wrapped around his body. We faced each other like that, intertwined.
My fingertips roamed the sculpted contours of his face, lingering over his full lips. Rough as he was right now, Deck could have easily competed with the most head-turning celebrity who ever swaggered across the big screen.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, and I could feel his arousal growing between us.
“Funny,” I answered. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
His eyes smoldered. “Remember what I told you a few minutes ago?”
“Something about a hot pocket.”
Deck rubbed my thighs. “You know, you’re gonna be some kind of saddle sore tomorrow.”
I braced my palms on his shoulders and moved up and down, wanting him to enter me like that. “I can take it.”
Deck grabbed my hair in one fist and kissed me until I was reduced once more to a trembling heap of lust. Then he pulled back and with a wicked grin flipped me right over so I was lying on my stomach.
“Damn right you’ll take it,” he chuckled right before he was inside of me again.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
DECK
This girl.
Goddammit, I never saw it coming but now that it’s here I’m sure as shit not sorry. Jenny slept peacefully in my arms and I had no idea what time it was because I didn’t want to move and risk disturbing her.
Two weeks had now passed since that fateful day when Jenny came looking for me in Emblem. Every day was a wild hurricane of passion. Jenny wasn’t timid at all; she kept up to speed just fine and demanded her own pleasure until I was on the brink of being worn the hell out.
Shit, I’ve been out-fucked.
The idea made me laugh a little and she stirred in her sleep. I sifted her long red hair through my fingers and thought about things other than sex. I thought about her proud sarcasm and the way she made me laugh. Jenny wouldn’t stand for being anyone’s fool; that was for damn sure. But she was a whole lot more than a hot body and a feisty mouth. We’d needed this time together to really connect and our long nights of sex and sweat were mingled with tenderness as we shared the details of our lives, hungering to know one another better. It was intimacy, something I’d never really had before.
Jenny had listened carefully when I told her the short, sad summary of my time with Amelia. We’d met, we’d impulsively married without understanding one another at all, and it was a disaster. Even though I could scarcely remember the way Amelia du Pray Gentry looked when she smiled, I would grieve her forever, always wondering what I could have or should have done differently to prevent her from being lost. But it was time to stop heaping penance on my back and keeping myself apart. It was time to be better.
For her part, Jenny was reluctant. She would brighten considerably when speaking of her sister’s family and the brother she had lived with in California. She adored her nieces and her nephew and she hoped one day to be reunited with the rest of her siblings now that the religious community of Jericho Valley was disbanded. But there were still a lot of holes in her heart.
“Never,” she’d answered when I asked her if she would ever willingly see her father again. He was serving a long prison term for a wide range of federal charges, mostly relating to the unseemly business practices of the corporation tied to the Faithful order. It hurt to hear the bitterness in her voice.
“Never is a long time, baby.”
Jenny’s expression hardened. “Never is what he deserves.”
I couldn’t argue with her; some things should never be forgiven. One night she’d screamed awake from a nightmare and then sobbed in my arms when she talked about the kid. Reese. He’d only been a boy. He had also been her friend, and for a few rebellious moments he’d been her lover, before he was left to an unbearably cruel fate. It was a horrible history to endure.
But it was the subject of Jenny’s mother that left her the most confused. She and her mother had not spoken in three years, and for a long time she didn’t even know where the woman was. Since the Jericho Valley Faithful had scattered, some of the members had apparently wound up in a similar community in Utah but Jenny and her sister Promise apparently chose not to find out if their mother was among them. Then a chance visit to a Scottsdale mall had answered that question. Jenny knew where her mother could be found now. She just hadn’t decided what she wanted to do about it yet.
I was too lazy to reach over and check the time. Right outside the door a couple argued over where to go to breakfast. The room was reserved for only a few more days and then I would need to figure shit out. Returning to Emblem wasn’t an option. If I stayed in T
empe though I’d need to find something more permanent. I still hadn’t made Jenny any promises and she hadn’t asked for them. But I knew that I wanted her with me and that every time we woke up together I’d fallen a little deeper into a hole I didn’t want to climb out of.
At my side Jenny groaned and placed a soft kiss on my chest. “Is it time to get up?”
“Depends. Don’t you have class?”
She opened one mischievous eye. “I’d rather have you.”
“You do have me.”
Jenny smiled as she’d smiled at me a hundred times before, each one lighting up a corner of my heart that had been very dark for a long time.
“It’s Saturday, anyway,” she said cheerfully and bolted out of bed, striding toward the bathroom with a wink and a wiggle of her cute ass. I waited until I heard the sound of shower starting, then I jumped in there after her.
“Don’t say that wasn’t an invitation,” I muttered as I went to her with my dick straight out.
Jenny’s skin was already flushed from the hot water and she stood beneath the steamy spray, naughtily slipping a hand between her legs right in front of me. I watched her fingers disappear into the tight place I’d already had a damn good time exploring. She moved her hand back and forth while I nearly lost the ability to stand up. Oh yeah, and Jenny thought that was just funny as shit. Her laughter rang out and she started double clicking the mouse even faster. “So join the party, Declan, before it starts without you.”
I stepped into the shower and knelt at her feet as I pushed her hand away. “Don’t ever threaten, honey.” The steam was fierce and the force of the hot water punished my back.
“And what will you do about-oh god, Deck!”
She was done talking. My mouth was on her, tongue already inside. She could play her sassy card as much as she pleased but I’d already learned how to melt her. I got it done quickly, massaging her hips with gentle pressure as my tongue lashed at her core without mercy while she pressed my head against her pussy. This was hot as fuck as I wished I could see her face when she reached her breaking point, moaning and shuddering like an old fashioned whore.
Finally I let her go and stood up. A little unsteady, she leaned against the tile of the shower stall for a minute. I waited until she caught her breath and then closed her hand around my dick to let her know I was still expecting something. Jenny offered up a playful grin before sinking to her knees as water soaked her long hair. She’d grown into a regular face-fucking expert, teasing every sweet spot, and I took full advantage of her mouth until I was almost there. Then I pulled back, came all over her wet tits and watched it all wash away.
“Deck,” she whispered and I pulled her up, kissing her until the water turned cool, stopping only when she began shivering.
The Ocotillo Diner was where I’d taken Jenny the first night I’d come up to Tempe to hear Creed sing, the night she’d found me in the bar and I’d sworn I would finish what I had started. But just as I found myself once again only a bare inch away from cracking it all open, everything had changed. So instead I’d brought her here and over plates of greasy food in the middle of the night we’d had our first date. That was what Jenny decided to call it anyway. Since then we’d been here often enough to think of the Ocotillo as ‘our place’. When we walked in, the waitress waved. It felt good to slide into a familiar booth beside the woman who had me spinning in every way. After Bea took our order, Jenny set the laminated menu down and gave me a penetrating stare. She asked a question that must have been on her mind a lot lately.
“What now, Deck?”
She wasn’t talking about what would happen after breakfast or tonight or even next week. She was asking what it meant that we were together and whether it would last. Of course I’d thought about it. I wasn’t the careless boy I had once been and Jenny wasn’t Amelia. She had been through hell and was coming into her own as a strong, triumphant woman. And me? I was done being a goddamn garden tool. But although I wouldn’t be hiding in the desert anymore and skanking my life away, I had to give her an honest a picture as I could. She deserved to know what she was getting so she could decide if she wanted it or not. I cleared my throat.
“Jennetta, I don’t know if I can ever be the kind of guy who lives in the same house for thirty years and cheerfully watches the decades pass.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not asking you to-“
“Stop,” I said, silencing her with a kiss. “I wasn’t finished. I mean, I don’t know if I’ll ever be the fabled family man. I remember that dude your sister married. What was his name again?”
“Grayson,” she answered with a frown.
“Yeah, Grayson. Now I barely know Grayson from a hole in the earth but it wasn’t tough to see that he was completely at ease with where he was at.”
“And you’re not? You’re not at ease, Declan?”
Bea brought us a pair of coffees and gave Jenny a motherly smile before moving on to her other customers.
“I’m at ease today. Jen, what I’m trying very badly to say is that I may not be Prince Charming or even his third cousin twice removed. But I know you are what I want.”
Jenny smiled wistfully out the window. She calmly took a sip of her coffee and set it down. “I know that,” she said calmly. “When I ask it’s just because I need to hear it again.”
“You can ask anytime.”
“Okay, I will. What now, Deck?”
I dropped my hand to her knee. “Now we’re going to go borrow Creed’s pickup truck so we can deliver a pair of cribs. After that, you name it. Whatever your pleasure is, that’s what we’ll do.”
She perked up. “Pleasure. I like the sound of that.”
“Nympho.”
She threw a sugar packet at me. “Prude. Besides, I wasn’t talking about anything filthy. I’d much rather spend the day lounging around with a bowl of potato chips and finishing the latest season of Zombie Death.”
“Where do I fit into that?”
Shit, that sweet smile did me in every time. “Go ahead and fit in wherever you can, Deck.”
Creed and Truly looked like they’d finished hitting the skins about three seconds before we knocked on the door of their apartment. Creedence was red-faced and still yanking on his shirt while Truly sat on the sofa and furiously adjusted her sex-ravaged hair.
“You’re early,” Creed grumbled but he stepped out of the doorway to let us through.
Truly, ever the cheerful hostess, recovered her wits and set a plate of cinnamon rolls in the center of the kitchen table.
“Stealin’ her for a bit,” she winked as she pulled Jenny away from my side and guided her to a seat at the table where I could hear Truly brightly dominating the conversation.
“Keys,” said Creed and tossed them in my direction.
“I’ll have it back in a few hours.”
He shrugged. “No hurry.” As Truly and Jenny dissolved into giggles in the next room Creed glanced over at them and then back at me.
“Don’t say it,” I warned.
He raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t about to say nothing. You’re confusing me with bigmouth Chase.”
The sofa creaked dangerously as Creed sat down. It threatened to give way altogether when I joined him. We’d never spoken directly about what had gone down in Emblem several weeks earlier, although I knew Chase had told his brothers all about it. But Creedence didn’t seem like he was about to bring it up now. He relaxed and answered questions about music while shooting fond glances to his beautiful Truly, who had apparently discovered a new hobby involving tea leaves and was trying to read Jenny’s fortune.
“I’m not very good at this yet,” she was saying. “Something about a tall, dark and handsome man.” Truly glanced up from her tea leaves and winked.
Jenny pretended to look me over critically. “Yeah,” she said. “He’ll do.”
Truly frowned into her leaves. “I could be wrong. Maybe instead this means you’ll be getting a dog in the near future
.”
Jenny beamed. “I like dogs.”
I nudged Creed. “Is this a female code or some shit?”
He snorted. “Hell if I know.” When Truly rose from the table he held out a muscled arm and she went to him eagerly, snuggling in his lap within seconds. Jenny apparently decided she didn’t want to be outdone so she jumped on me and kissed my neck. I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed, inhaling the clean scent of soap and sporting an instant stiff one as I was reminded of this morning’s shower scene.
“Behave,” she whispered.
“No,” I argued, snapping her bra strap. “You like dogs, remember?”
“Only if they know when to be obedient.”
“I guess you’ll have to domesticate me.”
Jenny nodded to Creed and Truly, who were both watching us avidly “What do you think?” she asked Truly. “That sounds like a chore.”
Truly nodded seriously. “Gentry men are tough to tame. I recommend a thick leash.”
Creed shifted and growled into her neck. “What the hell? You challenging me?”
His girl just laughed. “Don’t I always?”
He pulled back and stared at her lovely face. “Every day,” he said solemnly.
Jenny and I said our goodbyes a minute later when it looked like Creed and Truly were going to return to doing whatever it was we’d interrupted. Jenny’s happy mood was infectious and I was enjoying the simple fact of her company as we headed to the department store. I’d ordered the cribs a week ago, when Cord finally got over his grumbling and let me know which ones Saylor wanted.
As I loaded the boxes into the back of the truck, my mind drifted back to the very brief point in time when I had thought I was going to be a father. For those short few weeks I’d been stunned, unprepared, anxious. I’d already recognized that the girl I’d carelessly married wasn’t right for me, anymore than I was right for her. Then, even before I’d gotten used to the idea of the child, I was faced with mourning its loss. And I did. I could remember it now, the sorrow I’d felt.
“Hey you.” Jenny placed a gentle hand on my back. I must have been standing there beside the truck, gazing at nothing, for at least a full minute. She wrapped her arms around me and let me hold her in silence for a while. It was exactly what I needed to do.