Heart of Dixie (Moreover #1)

by Ruthie Henrick

  I’d been quick at my task, and focused, and hadn’t paid much attention to what lay on the bottom shelf, but now it stopped me cold. A four-pack of disposable razors—one missing—a pair of reusable insulin pens, and a couple of prescriptions. No big deal; the guy wasn’t ancient, but he was no spring chicken. Everyone had old antibiotics laying around. The razors and needle kits hit the trash—there was no good reason to hold on to those. The meds, though; that I had to share.

  “Hey, Dixie, this you have to see!” I stepped through the doorway and met her in the hall. “Your dad drove two counties over to get his Viagra. Just got it refilled, too.”

  I followed her into her room, which was trashed, pushed aside a bag of chocolate and mint layered candies that gave me a clue to her decorating scheme, and took a seat on the bed. She rushed across the room and slammed the closet doors closed, then spun with her back against them.

  “What if those were sex sheets on Elsie’s line, Dixie?”

  She scrunched up her nose. “That’s disgusting.”

  A laugh escaped me. “As a perfectly healthy male of the species, I beg to differ. What’s disgusting about it? That a man in his fifties could still get it up, albeit with a little chemical assistance, or that you have a mental picture of your father naked and in the throes of passion?” Her cheeks went rosy.

  The little devil riding my shoulder cackled in my ear and urged me to cage her in, each fist filled with a plastic pill bottle and holding up the wall on either side of her. I lowered my mouth to her ear so my words vibrated throughout her body. “I’ll have you know, princess, when I’m fifty, I intend to still be skinny dipping in the pond, fucking my woman in the shower, and giving her nights of pleasure that will make her wonder what she ever found so special about her twenties.”

  “Jesus, Deke.” Her head fell back as the words crawled out of her throat and a crimson flush crept up her chest. Her hands found my shoulders and latched on to handfuls of my T-shirt. I nosed my way along her jaw and let her scent lead me down to her collarbone. Her skin was warm where I lapped at it with my tongue, then pressed my open mouth against it and sucked. A low growl ripped from her throat. It was urgent and primal . . . and fucking hot.

  My lips found the skinny strap of her top and shoved it toward her shoulder. It drifted over the edge and fell and left the fullness of her breast exposed above the support of her lacy bra. I nibbled a path over the textured lace that left me aching for more.

  “Dixie, we never made love here in your room, in your bed.” The idea of it had me slipping over the edge as well. My hands were still locked against the closed closet doors, trapped there by the plastic bottles locked in my fists. I gave them a short heave and they landed atop the mattress. It left my palms free to bracket Dixie’s face. Her hands lowered until they wrapped around my waist. I lowered my mouth to hers for a quick taste and ground my stiff cock into her center in case she had any question about where this was headed. “But today won’t be the first time.” Her hooded gaze widened. “No condom on me, babe. I’m only wearing gym shorts. No pockets, no wallet.” I even left my cell phone out with Blake. “We need to move this party.” Her eyes grew heated.

  “You can’t do that, Deke.”

  I lowered her top and wrapped my lips around a puckered nipple. She bucked off the wall and further into my mouth. I let the rigid flesh glide off my tongue and out of my mouth. “Can’t do what, princess?”

  “Can’t tease me like that.” Her breathing was choppy, restless. “I’ll take care of it.” Take care of it? What does that mean, take care of it? But her hands were coasting up and then down my sides, and then burrowing under my shirt until she was plucking at my nipples. I reached behind my head and stripped the soft cotton off. Her lips latched onto me like a barnacle, and the mystery was forgotten.

  I yanked off her flimsy top in record time. Her breasts filled my palms through the thin fabric of her lingerie. I rocked into her again and got a low growl in response. Her hands moved up my chest, to my neck, to my scalp. Her lips were close behind. It was stimulating. And erotic. My blood raced through my body like fire. She could continue all night.

  I took her lips again and sucked her tongue into my mouth. “I want to love you, princess. I want to make memories with you. I want you to think of me when you go back to California and—”

  She pushed me away and ran out the door. “Dixie?” Fuck! Maybe I should have paid more attention to taking care of it. Had I pushed her too fast? Too far? I took a step after her, but got no further than the doorway before she shoved me back into the room. I landed on the bed. On my back. Staring into her laughing eyes.

  She beamed as she dropped her skirt to the floor and crawled to straddle me. “I said not to tease me.” She tossed a handful of multi-color condoms onto the bed like confetti.

  I pulled her over me, then rolled us until she was beneath me. My heart was thundering, my cock was throbbing, and my girl was grinning. “What’s so funny, princess?”

  She kissed my mouth and let her lips slide across to whisper in my ear, “It’s a story for later.” My cock sprang free when she reached between us and shoved my shorts to my knees. I took it from there until they landed on the floor. When she reached for it, I grabbed for her hands. “Not just yet, princess. Although I’m wild about this lace you’re wearing, you have far too many clothes on.” I reached behind her back and freed her breasts, then slid the fabric up the length of her arms until they were raised overhead. I loosely draped the material around her wrists. “Keep these right here like a good girl. Don’t move them.” When I met her gaze, her eyes had gone from melted chocolate to pure obsidian.

  Her hips pulsed and rocked into me as if searching for relief. I buried my lips between her breasts and nibbled my way lower. And then lower. Until I passed the elastic waist of her panties. I peeled them down her legs, and then regrouped to nip at the pale flesh that led to her inner thigh.

  She lifted onto her elbows, a playful tilt to her lips. “You’re teasing again, Deke.” My dick throbbed against my belly. It wanted to know when the action was starting, too. “Not promising anything I don’t plan to deliver, princess.” I grasped the flesh behind her knees and tugged. “Pull these up for me, babe. That’s a girl.” Dixie drew her knees up, exposed my target.

  Her scent reached me first. The smell of passion. Of promise. I swiped my flattened tongue against her swollen bud and she rocked into my face. It felt like the goddamn future.

  I licked and sucked her tender flesh as she keened and panted and bucked her pleasure. When her legs stiffened and quivered, I clasped her shins and pressed her knees to her chest. She screamed my name and rode out her climax with my face buried in her pulsing core.

  Her entire body collapsed and I scrambled up her figure to loosen her wrists and draw her in my arms. My pulsing erection slid through her wet heat on the way up, and now I was the one being teased.

  The lavender curtains fluttered in the breeze from the fan, and foil condom wrappers crinkled beneath my foot. I reached for the closest one and regarded the wrapper curiously. “Ribbed for her pleasure.” I peered closer at the variety scattered around us. “Holy shit, Dixie! It’s a motherlode.” Flavored, vibrating, you name it, it was represented. Enough protection for an entire senior prom. I’d just rocked her world for the first time today, but she may have overestimated my staying power. Some of my blood was heading north to heat my face. “Dixie, you didn’t bring all these for me, did you? Because I’d hate to disappoint you.”

  Her eyes danced; she teased me with a peck at the corner of my mouth. “After your performance so far, I can’t imagine you ever disappointing me. But I may not have been as surprised as I let on when you found Cooter’s Viagra.”

  The relief was immediate; my blood surged back to my pecker. “Let me guess. You found his stash of rubbers in his nightstand?” Seemed like a fine time to rip one of those suckers open. I sheathed myself and lined up with her center.

  For the second t
ime this afternoon, her cheeks tinged pink. From that little taste of heaven as my erection nudged her core? I pulsed against her again and she gasped. “Not in the nightstand. A box. In the closet.” Her words came in gasps now. I covered her lips with mine and cut them off altogether. She rocked her hips against mine as I thrust into her in a steady rhythm.

  She grabbed a handful of my hair and the thrill of it shot straight to my balls. “Dildos and handcuffs too.” Dildos? She wanted dildos? My slow, easy tempo picked up until I was rocketing into her and the headboard was banging against the wall. “Jesus, Deke, that feels so good. Don’t stop.”

  Don’t stop? I couldn’t fucking stop if Cooter rose from the dead and stood in the doorway waving his shotgun. Her arms reached around me and her hands grabbed the straining flesh of my ass. My lips found hers and landed only briefly before they swept across her cheek and landed in the curve of her neck. I buried my face there while I pumped into her uncontrollably. The heat of her surrounded me. Her moans goaded me. Her inner walls pulsed around my stiff shaft and oh, thank fucking God, she was close.

  My heart thundered. My balls tightened and my brain cried No! Wait! as I reached between us to give her the push she needed to get over the edge. Her clit had to be tender, but I gave the slick surface a few slow circles with my thumb. “Come on, Dixie. Go get it, princess. I’ll catch you.” That was all it took. My girl bowed off the bed, my name on her lips, her hands full of my ass, and then I jerked myself into her two quick times and found my own release.

  I collapsed on top of her, then immediately raised myself to my forearms and skimmed my hair out of my face; droplets of sweat dripped down my temples. I dropped a kiss to her lips, to her cheek, to the corner of her eye. “Damn, we do that good, girl.”

  Her shoulders shook within my arms. “Baby, you okay? Did I hurt you?” Something about Dixie made me lose my head. Not only was she hot as fuck—I propped up on my elbow and peered into her face. “You’re laughing? Dixie, that was perfection. What the hell are you laughing at?”

  Then her hand was there to cover my cheek, to comfort me. “Not you, Deke.” She released me to wave her finger and point out the brightly colored packages adorning the bed and dissolved into giggles. “Flavored and vibrating? That sweet Elsie Hoffer; I’ll never be able to look her in the eye again.”

  I threw my arm over her and collapsed against her back in a fit of laughter. This girl. She could be stern and fierce, and frankly, scary, when she needed to make her point to clients, but did she realize she was also regaining a kernel of the girl she left behind when she ran away to the big city? The first to jump in, the first to laugh. And all while holding her heart in reserve.

  That reminder had my heart squeezing.

  Her ass bounced when I gave it a slap. “You still planning to pack up candy land, babe?” I threw my legs over the side of the bed and forced myself to move from the bed to dispose of the condom.

  It was pure torture watching her stretch, her eyes on me as I dressed. I pulled my shorts up and leaned over her. She rolled toward me when the mattress dipped and she giggled again. “Not gonna happen with you ogling me.” I held her hands down when she reached for me, and dropped a teasing kiss on the fullness of her bottom lip that would have to tide us both over. Then I forced myself out of the candy-colored room so Dixie could box up her childhood.

  The nasty pond out front was drying up nicely—which meant Blake had to forgo his mud wrestling adventure and therefore keep his girlfriend. I found a hand truck out in the shed and counted that my second win of the day. No matter there were only twenty-seven boxes so far, I’d be the one schlepping those suckers up and down the porch steps and around the house to the little tin building around back, one at a time. Rolling them three at a time, I spent the afternoon contemplating myself and Dixie, and whatever this relationship of ours was. I was a smart guy—technically a genius—and Dixie had given me no reason to suspect she’d consider staying. No, her life was on the west coast and she seemed eager to return. I knew that from the beginning. I kept that in mind along the way. But somewhere during the journey of the past couple of days, sneaking optimism had managed to weasel its way into my subconscious. Maybe something would change. Maybe she’d decide to stay. Maybe my wish of ten years ago would finally come true.

  Maybe she would actually live in the house I built for her.

  Maybe I was still a dork after all.

  A seedling of hope. All it needed was a food source and a dose of sunlight for it to flourish.

  If I was wise I’d yank it before it had time to take root.

  I rang the doorbell and waited on Beth’s front porch. Her boots trampled across her hardwood floor, then she opened the door wide and hid her uniform clad body behind the friendly red portal. “I’m so sorry to leave you standing out here! I meant to leave it unlocked but then my mama called and I . . . Cheese and rice, Dixie, what is all this stuff?” She gaped at the assortment of luggage I dragged up from my car before reaching for one of my rolling overnight bags and then a garment bag I had slung over my shoulder. I yanked my arm back and shoved one of Break an Egg’s logo bags into her hands instead.

  “I brought dinner. And this time, there had better be two cheeseburgers smothered with everything in those takeout containers or Ruby and I are having words. Deke and I have been packing up Cooter’s house all day. I’m sexed out, and I’m starving. I am in no mood for healthy food. I need red meat and I need it now.”

  Beth’s jaw dropped. “Sexed out? I get to hear more about that, right? Because . . . you know, I haven’t seen a real penis in . . .” She proceeded to count on her fingers, then gave up and sighed. “I don’t have that many fingers.”

  With a laugh, I followed her across the threshold and dumped my belongings on the floor inside the door. “What about the night Jimmy Peters got drunk and flashed you and you had to haul him in and call his wife?” Beth cringed and shuddered all over.

  “That’s a penis I’m still trying to scrub from my brain. But if the sex with Deke was so good, why are you here instead of with him in his log mansion? I think he’d want to tie you up and keep you . . . um, tied up.” Her eyes fairly glowed at the idea of it.

  I moved to the kitchen counter, where she’d deposited the Styrofoam containers holding our dinners. My stomach growled. The aroma drifting from the closed boxes was smoky and flavorful, and seemed promising. Surely Ruby had a heart and hooked us up with real beef. I open the lids and . . . shit! But oh, my God! Thick slabs of meatloaf along with mounds of creamy mashed potatoes and pools of black eyed peas swimming with bacon. Practically drooling, I transferred our dinners to the round table in the middle of the room.

  “Huh-uh. Get out those fingers of yours and start counting again.” A quick hunt through drawers produced cutlery. “How much of this weekend have I spent with him so far, and how much have I spent with you? We’ve been trying to squeeze in one night together and something keeps coming up with your work.” Chair legs scraped the floor when I pulled one out to take a seat at the table. Beth reached into the fridge for a couple bottles of beer. Uncapped them and set one at my place. “Well, now you’re off until after I leave, and other than a few odds and ends I need to wrap up tomorrow, I say it’s time for shenanigans.”

  Beth lifted her bottle and clinked it against mine. “Let the shenanigans begin.”

  As if on cue, my phone went off—“The Bitch is Back”—and the evening was instantly tainted. Beth had instinctively stretched across the table to grab for it, then just as quickly batted it away. “Eek!” My phone came sliding back toward me. “It’s the viper!”

  I grabbed the offending device before it nose-dived off the table, and walked toward Beth’s garden door to her back deck to take the call. Olivia Westerbrooke would only be ignored for so long before she made her presence known. And Lord help us all should she choose to appear in person.

  I hardly had a chance to connect the call before Olivia was practically hyperventilating in my e
ar. I could imagine the scene clearly: she’d have her slim hand patting her perfectly styled bob—jet black with a remarkable silver streak—pacing the polished hardwood floor in her designer shirtwaist buttoned to the throat, wearing the requisite string of hand-knotted pearls and stylish pumps with three-inch heels. “Dixie, for God’s sake, I haven’t had an update from you in days! What kind of event are you tossing together for your daddy down there? You got a quality casket, didn’t you? And plenty of fresh flowers? None of those tacky fake things! Can you imagine? And please tell me you planned some sort of reception so the guests can pay their respects. My George has an image—”

  Apparently, my daddy did have an image other than the one I’d carried around in my memory, but it was the least of my concerns. If Olivia was so concerned about what actually happened at his funeral, or afterward, she could drag her bony ass down to Moreover, Tennessee and plan the damn event herself.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose beneath my sunglasses. I planned to give her the information she wanted as she was generously footing the bill for everything she demanded, but I also planned to spend tonight with Beth. If I gave Olivia too big a piece of my mind, that plan would be shot to hell, and I’d spend the evening on the phone defending every decision I’d made so far.

  “Olivia, it’s a mystery to me, but the man had friends in this town. He has a nice box to be buried in and a man of God to say a few words over his body. There’s even a nice celebration of life”—or death, but I wisely kept that thought to myself—“planned for afterward. If you’re concerned how your money’s being spent, you’re welcome to make the trip down here to join us. There’s still plenty of time.”

  The silence over the phone line had me holding my breath, and then Olivia sputtered, “Now, Dixie, I’m sure you’re doing a fine job. A fine job, indeed. You know I have every confidence in your abilities. After all, you’ve been running your business with all those celebrities in California for years. I’m sure you can handle one little funeral with no interference from me.”