by Sable Hunter
“I’m so glad.”
“Would you join me for a cup of coffee? I think Saucier will be lecturing for a few more minutes.”
“Of course,” she followed him into the restaurant. The hostess seated them next to the glass wall that showcased a spectacular view of the lake. Presley couldn’t wait to tell Zane about the sailboat whose white sails shown like diamonds in the setting sun. Charles ordered for them and soon they were sipping at the coffee. He stared at her, making Presley the slightest bit uncomfortable. “You were such a good teacher, do you miss it?”
“In some ways I do, teaching students like you made the lower salary and long hours worthwhile. It always bothered me that you weren’t offered a job right out of law school.”
“It bothered me, too,” she admitted with a sigh. “But things happen for a reason.” Truthfully, she wouldn’t trade having met Zane for ten jobs.
“I agree, perhaps our running into one another today is a sign.”
“Do you think so?” she didn’t understand.
“Presley, I have put together some of the brightest and best minds in the state, and I would love to talk to you seriously about joining Maddow & Lawton if you would consider moving to Dallas.”
“I’m flattered, thank you.” She didn’t know what else to say, the future was so uncertain at this point.
“Here’s my card. You call me night or day and I’ll get you moved – all expenses paid. Are you married?”
A deep growling sound behind her caused her to glance back. It was Zane clearing his throat – sort of. “No, she’s not married – yet.”
“Zane, I’m so glad you’re here. Charles this is Zane Saucier, my boss. Zane, this is Charles Maddow, he was one of my law professors at UT.”
“I graduated UT and I don’t remember you.”
“You probably graduated right before I came.”
Why was Zane scowling so? “Charles was a wonderful teacher, but he has his own firm in Dallas now.”
“Yea, I just offered Presley a job.”
Zane moved in behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. Charles looked from him to her and back again.
“Presley has a job,” Zane ground out. “Are you ready to go up to our room, Baby?”
Charles raised his eyebrows and Presley suppressed a smile. Zane was jealous! He was also about as subtle as an earthquake. “Yes, I’m ready.” Holding out her hand, she said goodbye to Charles. “I’m so glad to have seen you. Perhaps we’ll see one another again before the conference is over. And thanks for the job offer, I am honored that you would consider me.”
“The offer is still open; let me know if you change your mind.” The last two or three words were said as Zane propelled her out of the restaurant and toward their suite. “Are we in a hurry?”
“Rex is hungry.” They moved outdoors and around by the pool.
“Do we know where we’re going?” She trusted both man and dog, but it didn’t look like they were headed toward the cabins.
“Yes, I got directions and Rex and I checked in earlier. I cancelled that extra room. Now, we’re in the honeymoon suite close to the water.” Zane knew he was being surly, but he was so jealous he couldn’t see straight.
All right, she was a woman. And women were supposed to be able to calm the savage beast. “I want you, Zane.”
“You have me.” With minimum effort, he opened the door. “We need to talk – soon, but first things first.” Releasing the dog into the room, he shut the door and immediately pinned her to the wall. “You won’t be accepting any other offers, but mine.” Without waiting for permission, he took both of her wrists and held them over her head.
“Zane,” she whimpered, repeating herself, “I want you.”
For an answer, he nipped her upper lip, then soothed the spot with his tongue. “Open for me,” he directed, his heavy thighs pushing between her own. With forearms resting on either side of her head, he held his body away from hers just enough to allow her to breathe. Presley was painfully aroused, her nipples and clit swollen and aching for his touch. She could feel his long, thick cock pressing against her pelvis and all she wanted was to wrap her legs around him and beg him to take her.
Zane’s lips rubbed against her cheek, a hot velvet caress. She turned her head and joined her lips to his. God, she was so hungry for him!
When he heard her breath hitch in her throat, he knew she was as turned on as he was. “You’re gonna spread those pretty thighs for me, aren’t you, Baby? Are you gonna give me what I want?”
“Yes,” she whimpered. He ran one big hand between her legs and curled his fingers around the crotch of the tiny lace panties she wore and tore them like tissue paper. “Oh, God,” she sighed.
Zane could feel her juices begin to flow and he rubbed her slit, massaging it, teasing her clit.
“Take your cock out.”
Zane couldn’t see her, but he knew exactly how she looked. Presley was flushed, her eyes were glazed with passion and her lips were trembling with pure desire. Granting her request, he unzipped his pants and pulled his dick out and she stood on tiptoe to give him better access.
“Touch me.”
Zane chuckled, his baby knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to ask for it. With cock in hand, he drug the wide mushroom head through the cream in her slit causing her to gasp and groan. When he pushed it over the little speed-bump of her clit, she jerked and pushed toward him.
“Please.”
“Your pussy’s as hot as a firecracker, Angel. How much do you want me?” he asked as he repeated the intimate caress.
“Bad,” was all she could mutter.
“Do you want me to slide in slow? Could I make you scream?”
Pulling one wrist from his grasp, she wrapped her arm around her neck and one leg around his knee. “I’m desperate, please. Fuck me!” she wailed.
Not wanting to disappoint his lady, he fit himself to her small entrance and rocked his hips forward, impaling her. “Mercy!” She was so tight; tunneling into her heat was the closest thing to heaven he’d ever know.
“Oh, Zane,” she laid her head on his shoulder. They were both still dressed and she thought it was sexy as hell. As always, the pleasure was too much. Presley’s senses were swamped with his scent, his sexiness, his extreme maleness. With sure, deep thrusts he took her. She could feel her sheathe contract and ripple, accepting him.
“Look down, tell me how we look joined.” Zane was hungry for more of her; he didn’t want to miss a thing.
Presley gazed down to see them together. “It’s beautiful, we’re beautiful.” He didn’t stop, but continued to pull out and push in. “You are so thick, and I’m stretched open and when you pull out, your cock is shiny wet. I love how it sounds.” When she added that dimension, he pumped harder and focused on the slap of their bodies together, the suction of their union. “More! Harder! It’s just too good!”
She didn’t have to beg, but he loved to hear it. His hunger was overpowering, yet he relished every stroke, every moment inside her tender wet heat. She arched her back and he felt her tits – the tip ends hard. Bending his head, he covered the whole areola with his mouth, sucking at her through the thin layers of material.
“I’m fixing to cum.” She could feel herself losing it; her pussy began to spasm, closing around the hard length of his erection. God, she could feel it all. When he was connected to her in this erotic dance, she felt whole. He was the missing piece of her world.
Zane pounded inside of her, so hard they were jarring the damn door. Good thing there was no one on the other side. “Do . . .You . . .Love . . .Me?” He bit the words out, almost tortured as if her response was the key to everything.
Sometimes there is no room for anything but truth, so as her climax raged out of control, she clung to him and gave him all she had – her love. “Yes, God yes. I love you, Zane.” A rough, low groan erupted from his chest as tremors began to shake his body. Presley just held him tighter as his semen shot up
inside of her body. “I love you, always and forever.” She cupped his head and kissed him, hoping for the impossible.
*****
Zane had slept the sleep of the satiated and happy. Holding Presley next to him, he wondered what time it was. The alarm hadn’t gone off, so he knew it was still early. He rubbed his face against her hair; she was cuddled up next to him like a kitten. Presley loved him. She loved him. What an amazing gift that was. A low buzz from the nightstand alerted him that he had a call. Reaching for the phone, he pressed the button and whispered. “Saucier.”
“Zane, it’s Willow. I have made arrangements with the hospital there in Austin to perform the procedure as soon as your conference is over. Does that suit you?”
His cousin’s tone was professional, but he could hear the underlying excitement. “Willow, this is a miracle. How can I ever thank you?”
“By being happy,” she told him. “I’ve worried about you for so long. Brace yourself, the whole family’s coming.”
“Teresa, too?”
“I think so.”
“Well, I’m not going to complain. I’m too blessed to complain.” He kissed Presley on the cheek.
“Will Presley be there?”
“She’s in my arms right now; of course she’ll be there.”
“Good. I’ll talk to you between now and then. Okay?”
“Anything I need to do to get ready?” He didn’t know if there was a drug he needed to take or something.
“Don’t eat twelve hours before the operation, that’s all.”
“Have you talked to your neighbor again?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I gotta go, Zane. I’ll see you in a few days, and hopefully you’ll see me too,” she rang off with a giggle before he could question her further.
“The operation’s been scheduled?” Presley shifted in his arms.
“Yea, I don’t know what to think.” He was very still as she caressed his face.
“I think you should be thrilled.”
“I’m scared,” he confessed.
Presley turned in his arms to face him. “Don’t be. This is an answer to prayer, a miracle you weren’t expecting.” Her words were brave, because she was scared, too.
“Will you be there with me?”
She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Of course, I’ll be with you, if you want me.”
“Oh, I want you,” he stroked the smooth skin of her shoulder. “You told me you loved me last night. Did you mean it?”
“Yes,” there was no denying something so important. “You mean more to me than anyone ever has. I am the luckiest woman in the world to have had these days with you.”
Zane had to bite his tongue. He was ready to propose. Marriage to Presley was what he wanted more than anything; he couldn’t envision spending the rest of his life any other way than with her, but he needed to wait. “No, Baby, I’m the lucky one. You’ll never know how lonely my existence was until you walked into my life. You’re my miracle.”
Waiting to propose was imperative. Zane understood that Presley felt insecure because of the imperfection of her lip. So, if he proposed before he could see – she would always wonder if her appearance would have made a difference in his decision. If the possibility of recovering his vision weren’t on the table, he’d be on his knees in a heartbeat. But is he was going to be able to see soon, he wanted to look in her eyes when he said the words and make sure she knew that he loved her – just the way she was. Presley was beautiful, of that fact there was no doubt in his heart.
Chapter Nine
“Here’s your coffee, Sexy.” Presley held the warm cup by the rim and bottom so he could clasp the handle. Looking as good as Zane did should be against the law, her eyes devoured him. His perfectly toned, tanned body contrasted with the white sheets.
“Thank you, my love.” He had been deep in thought, but looked up toward her face and smiled.
“What are you thinking about?” She sat down beside him, enjoying a moment of quiet time.
Zane ran his hand down the wealth of her hair. The texture was so silky; he smiled remembering that she had described the color as dirt. Soon he would know the true hue and he couldn’t wait to see it. A ripple of fear crept up his spine. When all of this started, he had warned himself not to get too worked up about this procedure. What if it failed? Oh, he knew his cousin was a magician with a scalpel and her attitude about this was that it was a done deal. But what if it wasn’t? He would be crushed. And Presley would be disappointed, too. He knew that. “I’m just enjoying being with you.” And that was true. “We’ve got a lot to do today.”
“Tell me.” She knew they had the last two presentations to get through at the conference, one was on fracking and the other was on imminent domain. Both he could do in his sleep.
“I’m waiting on a phone call from Marcus; I called him yesterday and asked him to do a work-up on the McCoys. I thought it would be smart to know more about them before we jumped completely on their band wagon.” It wasn’t that he didn’t believe a guilty man deserved a defense, but there was more at stake here than a single case. A man was dead and another man was accused of his death. Right should prevail. And if an innocent man had been falsely accused of this murder, there was even more injustice to be conquered.
“I can understand your concern. They seem like upstanding citizens, but we really don’t know anything about them.”
“To complicate matters, at least for me, these men and their sisters might be tied to Aron and his brothers by more than a common surname. The McCoys are family to me, and if Heath and Philip and the others are part of that family, I think we all ought to know.”
Absently, Presley rubbed his knee. She was deep in thought. “Do you need me to stay here with Adam and help with this case, or is someone else coming with him?” From what she could tell by the plans he had been making in the last few days, Zane was including her more and more under Adam’s team. Although she would rather have worked strictly with Zane, she was savvy enough to understand that her growth as an attorney would be better under the tutelage of someone whose bed she was not sharing. Zane was looking after her; she couldn’t deny that fact at all.
With care, Zane set his coffee cup on the bedside table. “We both will be involved in this case. I promised Heath McCoy that I would personally oversee it. But I’m selfish, Presley. I need you with me. If I weren’t about to go under the knife, I would ask you to stay. But my life is turning upside down and you are my anchor.”
“Zane!” She threw herself on top of him and he grunted playfully as he caught her close. “I have been so afraid,” she confessed with a hiccupping sob.
“Afraid? Of what?” If there were dragons to be dispensed with, he was ready to do battle. “Are you crying?” He pulled her head up so he could test for tears. Finding tell-tale moisture, he proceeded to kiss it away.
“I’m so ashamed,” she whispered.
“What in the hell do you have to be ashamed about? You are the sweetest woman on the face of this earth.”
“I’ve been more worried about what you would think when you saw my face for the first time than I was about the dangers of your operation.” She buried her face in his chest. “I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, hey, none of that nonsense.” He lifted her up in his lap so he could kiss her properly. “I don’t need to see your face to know what you look like.”
“You don’t?” Presley didn’t understand.
“No, I see you in my dreams every night.”
Presley forgot to breathe. After years of hurtful words bandied about by careless people, Zane was healing her heart. “I only pray that I never, ever disappoint you,” she whispered against his warm, hard chest.
“Disappoint? Now you listen to me, Sweet Doll . . .” From the tone of his voice, she was about to get an earful, but the call he was expecting brought his lecture to a halt. “Saucier.”
All the time he talked, he held her in h
is arms. She could hear most of the conversation, so she knew that Marcus had emailed his report. Slipping from his grasp, she got her computer and opened their email. Just like he said, there it was. Before he could tell Marcus thank you and goodbye, she had the document ready to read to him. “I have it.”
“Good, read it to me. He said that most of the information was readily available and he also contacted a few folks that used to work for them or knew them back over in Louisiana.”
She could tell that Zane was anxious about what the report would reveal. “Okay, here it is.” She began to relate facts and observations about the McCoy family. “Heath, Philip, Jaxson and Tennessee McCoy, as well as their sisters, Ryder and Pepper (Penelope) McCoy are children of Christian and Carolyn McCoy. Christian’s father was Isaac McCoy who was married to a woman named Phyllis, but according to the records, Phyllis was Isaac’s second wife. His first wife was named Sarah.”
“Isaac McCoy, seriously?” Zane laughed. He loved it when a mystery began to unfold. “Okay, go ahead.”
“Phyllis and Isaac moved to southwest Louisiana after World War II. They began to amass land and formed one of the bigger cattle operations in the south. Isaac also invested heavily in oil and gas refineries. Their son Christian inherited all of this and passed it on to his family, but hurricanes and the BP oil spill took a toll, so the family decided to move their headquarters and their operations to Texas.”
“Heath has taken his knowledge of the oil and gas industry and the money he amassed from it and invested heavily in alternative energy. The conference that you are attending is a direct result of his efforts to move our country away from a dependence on foreign oil and find ways to harness more environmental methods of generating energy, such as wind, solar and water. Heath, as eldest, is the rock of the family. Christian is still alive, but he has taken a back-seat and given Heath full rein. They lost their mother in Katrina and they lost their home which sat only blocks off the Gulf. After the storm had devastated both their lives and their surroundings, they were all anxious to go somewhere that didn’t have so many hard memories. Heath has pulled it all together. He has made sure each brother has had every opportunity to develop their talents and strengths. Canyon of the Eagles is one of the ways that the family has incorporated making money with preserving the environment.”