“I guess Mr. Johnson wouldn’t mind having me there, being as I’m helping him out and all.”
“He’ll be fine with that,” I assure her. “But it’s getting dark out, so we better get to it.”
“Alright.”
We set to work together getting the trailer hitched up, and Ginger doesn’t make another fuss about it.
“Drive on out to the farm,” I instruct her. “I’ll follow you out there.”
“You’ve done enough, Gray. I’m sure you have something else that needs your attention.”
I don’t mean for it to come out the way it does. But it can’t be helped. Not when I see her like this.
“Right now, Ginger, you’re the only thing that matters.”
CHAPTER 8
Ginger
It’s been a while since I let anyone take care of me. It’s not an easy thing to do, letting someone else in like that. Letting them see you vulnerable. But Gray has always been a beacon to me, even if he never knew it.
Those hot summer nights when daddy was crazy, I’d sneak out my window and run to him like he was the only thing in the whole world that could save me. He didn’t know it then. And he doesn’t know now how much I needed him to come and rescue me today.
I was so terrified I couldn’t move. I couldn’t bring myself to go inside that camper, not knowing if Chris was in there or not.
It has to be him.
He took the only things I had left that meant anything to me. It’s an action too cruel to be anyone else. But since I changed my phone number, I haven’t heard from him. So I don’t know how he could have found me. But Chris always found me. Every time I tried to run. I don’t know why I thought it would be different this time. Just because I’m done, doesn’t mean he is.
Justice follows me out to the farm, just as he promised. He speaks to Mr. Johnson, so I don’t have to, and then helps me unload the trailer and get settled in.
It’s late by the time we finish, and the sun has been replaced by the moon in the sky.
“Had any dinner?” Justice asks.
I shake my head. I don’t know if he looked in the empty cupboards in the camper or saw that the fridge doesn’t even work. I’ve been living off of dry cereal for months, but even that costs money and right now I don’t have any.
“Why don’t you come on over to my place and I’ll fix you up something,” he says.
I know that I shouldn’t. I should be strong. I should remember what happened last time he let me get close. But right now, I’m so damn tired. My white flag is waving, and I need a friend. I need a shoulder to lean on.
I need Justice.
It pains me to admit it, but I nod.
He opens the door to the cruiser for me, and I get in. When he gets into the driver’s seat, he doesn’t start the car right away. Instead, he turns to me, and his face is serious. This is Sheriff Grayson sitting beside me now.
“It’s going to be alright, Ginger. I’ll look after you.”
CHAPTER 9
Justice
“How about some Fireball for the fireball?” I ask.
Ginger wrinkles her nose and shakes her head.
“That stuff is nasty, Gray. I would have thought you’d upgraded to something more refined after all these years.”
I set it on the counter and shrug. “It’s an old bottle. Never been opened. I don’t drink the stuff anymore.”
She studies me from across the counter, and I don’t like it. I don’t like the way that I feel with her eyes on me. Like I still want her. Like I need her. Like I’m so goddamn desperate to have her that I’m dragging us back down memory lane, which is exactly what I was doing when I grabbed that old bottle.
She traces over the label with her fingertips, collecting the dust that’s lived there for the past ten years or so.
“An old bottle, huh?” she asks.
“Yep.”
I turn my attention back to the soup on the stove and give it a stir.
“How old?” she presses.
I should lie. I should just not answer her. She doesn’t need to know. And I don’t know why I kept the damn thing all these years. But it’s been a symbol to me, sitting up on that shelf. A reminder of the boy I’ll never be again. Ginger Duke soured me on relationships before I ever had a chance to really get into one.
And yet here she sits in my kitchen, a decade later. Soft and vulnerable and sweeter than peach pie. It’s like I don’t even remember any of that other stuff. It’s like I’m begging her to do it all over again.
“I got it that night,” I admit. “I had a feeling you would come running into the warehouse and ask me to do something crazy.”
That’s the way it always was with us. Ginger never went too long before she needed to do something crazy. To feel that high she got when she was making trouble with me. I used to think it made me special, but now I know better. I was just the closest thing that was willing and available.
She’s quiet for a while. So quiet, I almost wonder if she’s even still there. I don’t dare turn around to look at her. I don’t know why I even told her about that bottle. She probably thinks it means something other than what it really does. She probably thinks I’m still in love with her and now she’s mapping out the nearest escape route.
“I thought you didn’t remember.” Her voice is soft and choked with emotion. “You acted like you didn’t remember.”
This time, I do look at her. Her eyes are shining like she’s on the verge of tears again. And she’s holding onto that bottle with two hands now like it means something.
“How could I ever forget Ginger Duke?”
I try to make it sound like a joke, but that’s not the way it comes out. It’s a little more caustic than I intended, and Ginger flinches at the tone of my voice.
“I suppose you probably couldn’t, after that night,” she says.
I turn back to the stove because I have no desire to have this conversation. And after a few minutes of silence, it’s apparent that Ginger doesn’t either.
“Well, we might as well drink it,” she offers.
She’s already got the shot glasses out when I turn around. Like she wants to get rid of the evidence. Like if we make this bottle disappear, maybe all of the memories from that night will too.
I don’t protest, so she cracks it open and pours us each a shot, sliding my glass across the counter. She doesn’t wait for me to drink. She just slams the shot back and squeezes her eyes shut before she makes a noise in her throat.
By the time I pour her a glass of water, she’s already on her second. And it’s apparent that some things never really change. Ginger wants to make trouble with me again tonight.
“You have some catching up to do,” she taunts. “Remember it gets better after you’ve had a few shots first. Then it almost tastes good.”
I laugh and Ginger smiles. And I wonder if she knew that her smile always wrecked me. The girl doesn’t have an unpretty thing about her. Her ass, her tits, her face and her hair… they always could draw attention. But it was her smile that did me in. It was so rare to see a genuine one on her face, and those she saved for me.
Or at least, I liked to think so.
I take two shots to catch up with her. By then, Ginger’s already on her fourth.
“Easy there, tiger.”
She comes around the counter like a panther, all smooth and sleek, and her cat eyes are focused on me.
“What are you gonna do about it, Sheriff?” she scoffs. “Is it illegal to have a little fun now?”
Her palm comes up to my chest and rests on the buttons of my uniform. She toys with them while she peeks up at me from beneath her lashes, testing me.
“I bet all the girls want to know what you’re packing,” she says. “Don’t they, Gray?”
I don’t answer her, but I don’t need to. My dick is saluting her through the confines of my trousers, and if she were to look down, she could see it herself.
“I bet they all want to
try to catch you and keep you,” she continues. “The big, bad Sheriff of Oak Grove. Do you play dirty with them too?”
She slides her palm down my chest, and I capture her wrist in my hand before she takes this any further south.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ginge.”
She rolls her eyes and laughs. “Sure you don’t. Sure you don’t know what you do to them. What you do to me. What you’ve always done to me.”
It’s a lie. I know it’s a lie. It’s too sweet to be anything else from the lips of this temptress. But that doesn’t give me the willpower to stop her when she stretches up on her toes and kisses me.
My body is rigid in every way when she presses her softness against me.
“Do they know that I got to kiss you first?” she asks.
She doesn’t let me answer because she captures my lip between her teeth and tugs.
I don’t know what’s gotten into her, but my dick likes it.
“Does that count as assault, Sheriff? Are you going to arrest me now?”
I try to step back and get some distance so I can think this through. But right now, my cock is so hard it could break ice, and she’s all over me. In my head and my chest and even in the air around me, wildflowers and cinnamon on her breath.
She reaches around me and turns off the stove, and then she captures my hand in hers, toying with my fingers.
“What exactly does a girl have to do to get in trouble with you, Sheriff?” she asks. “Because I know you aren’t as straight edge as you pretend to be these days.”
When I don’t answer, she reaches for the hem of her tee shirt and tugs it up over her head, tossing it onto the floor beneath. I swallow and try not to look at her glorious tits smashed together in that black bra, but my eyes keep drifting south, and Ginger smiles because she has me and she knows it.
With a flick of her wrist, she has her bra undone too, holding the cups in her palms while she looks up at me coyly.
“Too much?” she asks.
“Ginger…”
The rest of the words get caught in my throat because she drops her bra, and all I can see is the perfect soft globes of her breasts. But she doesn’t stop there. She flicks the button of her jean shorts and tugs down the zipper. Hooking her fingers into the loops, she looks at me in challenge. Daring me to say no.
I should.
I should do a whole lot of something right about now. But all I can think about is finally plunging into the warmth of her body and fucking her until my dick runs dry.
She smiles, and it’s evil. There isn’t one vulnerable thing about her right now as she shimmies out of her shorts and panties in one fell swoop. She’s naked in my kitchen. My gut is on fire from the liquor, and my cock is on fire for her.
But this can’t happen.
It just can’t.
That’s what I’m going to tell her. Only, it isn’t what comes out of my mouth.
“You’re a bad girl, Ginger Duke.”
She smirks at me until I toss her up over my shoulder and smack her ass. She squeals and then bobs up and down as I carry her down the hall to my bedroom.
“You want to play bad cop?” I ask her.
Her answer is a breathy yes.
I toss her onto the bed face down and climb astride her, capturing both her hands in mine. She’s giggling until I slap the cuffs over her and secure her to the bed frame. When she yanks her hands back, her wrists jar against the metal of the cuffs.
“Best not do that if you don’t want bruises,” I tell her.
“Justice?”
Now the humor is absent from her voice. She’s nervous. And that’s the thing about girls like Ginger Duke. They think they know what they want.
I grab a handful of her flaming locks and turn her face into mine as I bend over her. I take her mouth by force and grind my hard on into the soft flesh of her ass. I want to take her there. I want to take her everywhere. But I will only allow myself to fuck her once.
One and done.
Just so she can see what she’s been missing out on all these years.
That smart little mouth of hers won’t be so smart by the time I’m through with her tonight. This much I can guarantee. I’ve waited ten years to get inside Ginger Duke, and I’m not about to blow it all in a few minutes of half-assed fucking. I’m going to torture her and drive her insane first. I’m going to give her a taste of the bad medicine she craves so much.
And I start by smacking her ass.
She squeals again when my palm comes down on the pale flesh and tries to wiggle away from me.
“Jesus, Gray that stings.”
I pay her words no mind, and she continues to curse me like a sailor as I smack her until the round globes are raw and red. Now every time she sits down tomorrow, she’ll be thinking of me.
“Had enough, princess?” I ask.
“Yes,” she cries out. “Please, Gray, I want you.”
Oh, how I love to hear her beg. How long I have waited for those words. I can’t help it. Because she’s been such a good sport, I’m going to reward her. I slide off of her and hoist her up so that she’s on her knees. Face down and ass up, just the way I imagined her so many times.
Her pussy is wet and warm and so ready for me, and even that is pretty. There really isn’t an ugly thing about her.
I have to resist the urge to plunge my cock balls deep inside of her right now. I grab her thighs between my palms and squeeze to hold her in place as I lean forward and take the first lick.
So. Fucking. Good.
I bury my face between her thighs and Ginger cries out. Her mouth has nothing but praise for me now. I fuck her with my tongue and make her come twice before she finally collapses on me.
“Gray,” she moans. “Please, Gray.”
Now it sounds like she’s begging me for mercy, but there’s none to be found here. I flip her over so that her arms are crossed, and her tits bounce when I shift her body to the way I want it. My fingers move down between her thighs, and she cries out again, shaking her head.
“I can’t.”
“You will.”
But not yet.
I give her a break by unzipping my trousers and freeing my cock from my briefs. It’s swollen and painful, leaking already when I climb up and bring it to her lips.
“Only good girls get to suck,” I tell her. “Are you going to be good now, Ginger?”
She looks up at me with soft eyes and nods, licking her lips.
“Yes,” she says. “Whatever you want.”
The head of my cock nudges against her lips, smearing the pre-come over the pillowy flesh and onto her tongue when she opens her mouth. She draws me inside and bobs her head up and down awkwardly, her arms still pinned above her.
I like seeing her this way. I like her vulnerable to me for a change. It gets me so hard that I almost blow my load in the first few minutes. Ginger knows it too, and I don’t like that she knows it. Her power over me is back. And I don’t know how to stop it.
I don’t know how to temper this need inside of me. But I know the only thing I can do right now is give into it. I grab her by the hair and pull her face away from my dick. She whimpers when I lean down to kiss her, and then release her.
I move between her legs and push them up, baring her pussy to me. With my hands cupped behind her knees, she is wide open for me.
Soaking wet.
And my cock can’t resist any longer.
I rub against her arousal and then slowly bury myself inside of her. When I reach full hilt, we both groan. My fingers find her clit, and I toy with her while I move in and out of her slowly, rocking back and forth with just the slightest shift of my hips.
So. Fucking. Good.
Ginger is in a frenzy. Thrashing against the bed, the handcuffs rattling against the frame. She keeps begging me for mercy and then begging me not to stop. She comes again, and it’s violent. So much pent up need and frustration, and I know mine will be the same. In the back of my
mind, I’m aware that I’m fucking her raw. No condom. No anything.
I’ll have to pull out.
I’ll have to come on her belly, or something.
That’s what I keep thinking as I drive into her warmth, over and over again, sucking her tits into my mouth. But it wells up inside of me, and the man in me likes this game. The risk. The danger. The high that Ginger and I always chased together.
When I feel the molten lava barreling through my cock, I don’t pull out at all. Instead, I bury myself balls deep.
And I give it all to her.
CHAPTER 10
Ginger
I wake up with a hangover deserving of my age. And when I roll over, I’m only further reminded that I don’t bounce back the way I used to, because every bone in my body aches.
The bed beside me is empty, and the scent of Justice still lingers on the pillow. I breathe it in and smile when flashes of last night play on in my head. For so long, I had coveted the idea of Justice Grayson. I had fantasized about what the dark, mysterious bad boy would be like in bed.
But it was nothing like the real thing. Nothing could ever compare to the real thing.
He was electric. Intense. Intoxicating.
And he wasn’t the only tall drink I imbibed in last night. The empty bottle of Fireball still rests on the nightstand, and I know I didn’t imagine that we actually finished it off. I was hell bent on getting rid of whatever that bottle represented to Justice, and it looks like my mission was accomplished.
Steam billows out from the master bathroom, and I know Justice is in there beneath the hot spray.
Two things run through my head at once.
The first is the idea of joining him in there, where we can’t hide our feelings beneath the cloak of an alcohol induced haze. The second is what the hell am I doing?
I don’t know what I was thinking.
When I sit up, I’m paralyzed with doubt. I’m naked in Gray’s bed. The only boy that I ever truly loved. The only one I ever felt safe with. But we aren’t teenagers anymore. There is history between us. Real history. And there is bad blood, that despite what Gray says, he hasn’t forgotten.
Drawn to Him: A Romance Collection Page 40