“Thanks, Brak,” he told the man who still stood behind her and held her steady. “I’m good now.”
“No problem, man.” Brak stepped around to look at Shana who had walked into Chet’s arms. “Troy’s a good guy, just broken up from the war. He and I were in the same unit.”
“He was a great guy,” Chet declared. “He could be again if he’d learn to accept what he’s gotta do to outgun that head injury.”
“I hear you,” Brak agreed with a nod. “But he’s depressed about the death of one of our guys, friend of ours killed with the same IED that wounded him. Drinking doesn’t help the depression.”
“Right you are,” Chet said and stuck out his hand to Brak. “Thanks for helping.”
“You bet.” He smiled and turned away.
The band that had stopped in the midst of the fracas stirred to life again.
“Are you okay?” Chet pushed curls from her cheek as they stood at the bar and drank their beers.
“Fine.” Liar. Her heart pounded like a freight train.
“You sure?” Chet ran a hand over her cheek. “He manhandled you, insulted you.”
“He’s got a disability. I understand. It’s not like—” She looked away then up at Chet. “Not like he’s an alcoholic.”
“Maybe not yet. If he keeps on, he will be. He drinks to cope with his disability.”
“And his feelings of inferiority. All those men who served over there have such a tough time coming back home and re-entering society.”
“And head injuries are the craziest things to understand. Even those of us who have one don’t always know when we’re going to get a little nuts.”
“But you do,” she said with certainty and pride that Chet could talk about it so readily. “I’ve watched you. You try not to get angry.” The anger that I wrote about with such carelessness. “How did you learn that restraint?”
He made patterns on the bar with the condensation from his beer bottle. “Long process. Behavior mod. Going to doctors—shrinks, really—and learning what makes me craziest most often.”
“And what is that?”
“People who insult me. Makes me see red.”
She felt as if she’d driven a stake into her own heart. I insulted you. I hurt you.
“I had to learn to stay cool. Not let them get to me.”
“And one way is to stay away from alcohol?”
“Definitely. The docs say it changes the brain chemistry. I know they’re right. After three years dry, I can’t say as I miss the taste. And when I see someone like Troy, who might have a chance at a decent life if he gave it up, I am never sorry I won’t take up the habit.”
The fiddler began and pretty soon the strains of a line dance filled the hall.
“Come on, darlin’. Don’t look sad. We’re here to have a good time and meet the ones who are going to buy tickets by the truckloads.”
He grinned so broadly, she had to smile back even if her heart was broken for what she’d done to him. She had accused him of behavior caused by the head injuries. Of course, she hadn’t known that. But she still owed him for her mistake.
“Let’s dance.” He held her close a minute. “Then I want to take you home with me and make love to you until the sun comes up.”
Surprised at herself, she laughed her way through the line dance with him then waltzed around the sawdust-covered floors to a few standard favorites. Chet, whom she expected might not be comfortable on the floor, was graceful and commanding. “I’ve never known a man who can dance so well.”
“You can thank my momma,” he told her as he led her into a turn. “And you?”
“My uncle.” She grinned. “He said it is the mark of a Texas lady or a Texas gentleman that they dance well. And you, my dear, are the most charming gentleman.” She leaned close so that he could hear her as they turned again. “In my bed, out of it, anywhere, Chet.”
His green eyes darkened to a wicked hue. “Compliment me all the time, and we won’t be winning friends and influencing people too long here,” he said, paraphrasing what she’d told him earlier.
“But I—” Love you. She froze with the realization. I can’t say that to you ever. Not unless I have the courage to tell you everything.
And if I don’t, I’ll lose you.
Hating herself, she deliberately squinted past the dance floor lights toward the tables. “Who else do we need to shake hands with?”
He named three people. “One owns a big ranch, the other the oil drilling company and the third one is the head of the county chamber of commerce.”
“Hurry, let’s say hello now.”
“You’re in an awful rush, darlin’.”
“I know.” I have to have more of you, all of you I can take. I have to give you as much as I possibly can because I can admit to myself now, I want you forever. I just don’t have the courage to make that happen.
* * * * *
Her haste unnerved him. She could tell as he kept glancing at her on their way home. His questions died down when she just shook her head, unable to answer any of them. If she spoke, she’d cry. Or worse, she feared she’d howl. So she just looked out her window and said nothing.
When he pulled into his driveway, she shoved open her door before he could come around to open it for her. She tugged him along the path and he came, but with apprehension in his every step.
After he put the key in the lock and pushed open the door, she charged through and pulled him after her. Running her hands up through his satin hair, she reached up and kissed him with all the desperate ardor of a woman about to lose her man.
“Baby, what are you doing?”
Tears leaked out of her eyes as she swirled away from him, toward the bedroom.
She kicked off her boots, tore at the buttons on her shirt and her jeans, dropping them, leaving them where they lay. She was naked when he appeared in the doorway. He lifted his chin, motioning her toward the bed, knowing by now, she guessed, that words weren’t going to work with her. She stepped backward, her calves hitting the mattress and allowing her to sink slowly down and push herself across its length.
He came to her, fully dressed, hovered over her like a predator, his green eyes limpid but fierce with anxiety in the dim moonlight streaming through the windows.
She whimpered, arching up, her sensitive nipples brushing his starched shirt, her hands going around his waist. He caught one of her wrists then the other and forced them above her head, his gaze searching hers for clues to what was happening in her brain.
Whatever he thought he saw in her expression, he reached down to unbuckle his belt. Whipping it from its loops, he circled her wrists, then lifted her and shoved her up toward the head of the bed, wrapping the other end of the belt to the iron posts and yanking tight. His body went rigid, his eyes glazed.
Then he drew away.
Shocked that he would leave her, she groaned in objection, but her fears were for nothing. He lifted one of her feet, stroked it, sole to toes, massaged her ankle and kissed her arch. His mouth thrilled and tickled then spread kisses on her knee as his splayed hand slid up the inside of her thigh.
She bowed up, thinking she would come for him then and there, but he surprised her and seized her other foot. This one he nibbled, making her writhe and gasp as he nipped at each toe and her heel and scored her sole with his fingernails.
She bucked, craving his possession. He drifted away, and she cried out to watch him rummage in his closet. He came back with two more belts. He quickly wrapped one around one ankle and tied the other in the same way. He spread out her legs to secure her to the bottom posts. For each task, he seemed intent, his features harsh in the soft shadows. With a gentle tug, he ensured that she was bound well but not so tightly that she would be hurt.
He crawled over her again, supporting himself on his elbows, his mouth loving hers, then taking her lower lip in his teeth and biting her.
This play she loved, and with her eyes and pouting lips, she told him so.<
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He slid down and took an eternity while he gazed at her pussy. Finally he touched her tender flesh and she quivered. He fingered her so gently it seemed like the touch of a butterfly. Both hands to her inner thighs, he pushed her open wider. Her head thrashed. Her cunt creamed. She swallowed in electric excitement.
He stood while she undulated on the bed in sheer expectation and he stripped. When he was naked, she swooned with the beauty of his abs and the corded powerful arms that held her so well, so mightily, so often when they made love. She admired his lean hips, the way the muscles bulged and pulled at his taut stomach and pointed down to his dark thatch of hair and the long cock that stood proudly reaching for her.
He climbed over her, hunched, his shaft pointing down to her mouth, and slid a fingertip inside her lips. She knew what he wanted, though she’d never tongued him at this angle. She didn’t need experience, just him. And god knew, she’d give him whatever he desired.
She licked his length. He grunted, hands to his hips. She lifted her head and swirled her tongue on his tip, dewy with drops of cum, all for her. She sucked on him, over and over, as he gave her more and more. He held her chin as he dipped into her mouth and she swallowed as much of his length as she could. He groaned and pulled away.
He parted her swollen, tender labia, pinching her clit until she gasped. Then he spread himself out on the bed between her legs and began a thorough assault on her drenched, needy pussy. He kissed her, sucked her, fingered her and pushed her lips together so that he could titillate her sensitive little nub with his talented tongue and make her scream, “More!”
In two jerks, he had a condom open and on. The moment seemed like a year. He sank into her like a long, hard pillar of steel, gripped her hips in two hands and rode her like she’d seen him ride wild horses in the ring. Indomitable and ferocious. With bared teeth and mad devotion to conquering her body with every ounce of power in his own.
She came, gasping for air, grasping for memories to take with her. Her cunt pulsed with clenching ripples of completion that blazed across her consciousness.
He muttered something and drew out of her.
She screamed her objection.
But he loosened the belts at her feet and flipped her over, sending the last air from her lungs in the impact. Her wrists twisted in the belt that tied her to the post. He swirled his hands over her buttocks, and she prayed she knew what he would do next.
Have me there. Finally.
But he kissed her on one cheek and the other. Caressed the fullness of her ass and curled one arm around her hips to lift her up and back to him. He sent his cock deep inside her pussy this way, and in the bliss, she cooed utter nonsense.
He was gone before he gave her any time to build another orgasm.
Instead, he hauled her hips up into the air, and she trembled, expecting his caress. He spread her cheeks and massaged her asshole. She heard him reach for the gel he kept by the bed for their forays into anal sex play, and she wiggled her ass higher for him to get on with loving her, for god sakes!
The cool lubricant he spread over her little hole and inside had her sighing with his ministrations. He inserted a thumb, as he’d often done before. And a long finger, as he’d done also. But when he withdrew this time, she heard him putting the succulent lube on his cock. She arched.
Oh hurry, darling, please.
She felt the blunt tip of his rod at her opening, and she caught her breath. But he was a lover who was kind and generous, slow and careful, as he pushed one small iota at a time into her virgin channel and sank ever so much deeper with each moment. He drove her to a mute O of delight. Her fingernails digging up the sheets, she took the fullness of his shaft into her and held on as he took his time to let her feel his might.
The pain was pleasure, and the joy more ecstatic than ever before, as he plunged with deliberate care in and out of her. She’d whimper, and he’d pause. She’d groan and he would plunge. The ecstasy was an eternity and the climax all too brief.
He withdrew, pulled off the condom, rolled her over and, in a few strokes, freed her arms. Limp with exertion, she reveled in his embrace, his kisses to her eyes and her lips, his caresses of her nipples and her hips.
She drifted to sleep like that. Boneless with exhaustion, she awoke once to burrow into him more, remembering his mastery of her and letting herself go back to sleep, aware in the back of her mind that something was dreadfully wrong. But when she woke again, she knew instantly what fear stalked her.
She loved this man. Now, because of how she had so recklessly printed things about him that were false and had nothing to do with the head injury that caused his outbursts, he could never love her. She had to accept that as cruel fact.
She’d done this to herself. Carelessly, willfully, thinking that in the rightness of her youth, what she’d seen of him that day in the ring, what she’d read about him being hot-headed, bore repeating. She had been wrong. On all counts.
Except for one.
She needed to get her job done for him and build him up so that no one—no one as foolish as she had been—could ever hurt him again.
Chapter Five
The next morning, she awoke to hear him making breakfast in the kitchen. The lure of coffee and his huevos rancheros were usually enough to draw her out like a magnet, but this morning, she escaped to the shower. When she did go out, she had her hair up, wet in a ponytail, and her clothes on from last night. She was determined to be casual, normal and their usual bantering selves. But one look at Chet and she knew today that wasn’t going to work.
He put a mug of coffee in front of her then plunked the jug of milk down too.
Her eggs came next, warm and fragrant with onions and peppers, but served by a man who was stiff, silent and cold.
What was wrong? She knew him well enough by now to guess. He wanted an explanation about her behavior last night. Okay, she could do that.
“Chet, I want to explain about last night.”
He loomed over her. Breathing heavily, he waited.
She looked up.
His jaw was set, his gaze weary and sad. “Go ahead.”
He wasn’t going to make this easy.
“I just got upset by Troy and his problems.” Which was true.
“I could see that.”
“You see, I know a lot about alcoholism.”
Chet scowled. “How’s that?”
“My father drank himself to death.” She stared at her hands. “I grew up seeing him drunk and demanding and silly. He was a good man, funny and kind, but he also wanted to be a bigger star on the circuit than he ever was. And liquor helped him get over the fact he wasn’t going to be anything but mediocre. You know why. You’ve worked the circuit. Bull riding eats up your youth and your energy and your time. My mother, meanwhile, was lonely. With him gone so often, so long, she would beg him to quit, come home. And one day, he did. He’d gotten hurt, broken his leg. He was home, and of course, there was no money coming in. My mother went to work. But he hated her doing it. She’d come home, and they’d argue. That’s when he began to drink during the day. When I came home from school, he’d already be drunk. And by the time my mother got home, he was very drunk. They’d argue. And one day, he hit her. And kept on doing it every time they disagreed. They could get very ugly with each other.” She couldn’t bear to tell him the worst parts. The way her father would change in an instant from hurt to irate to brutal. How her mother got worn down by the insults and intimidated by the beatings. “Then one day, my mother decided things had to change.”
Chet pulled out a chair and sat down. He covered her hand with his warm one. “What happened?”
“She asked him to leave. He was furious, tore the house apart, smashing furniture and china. She called the police and they arrested him. Three days later he got out of jail and left us. But she didn’t tell him the whole reason why she asked him to leave.”
Chet frowned.
“She had found out from her doctor that she
had breast cancer. Very advanced and inoperable, you see. She just couldn’t cope with my dad’s problems and her own illness. So she asked him to leave, and when he did, it killed them both.”
“That’s why you were brought up by your aunt and uncle,” he concluded then raised her hand to his lips. “Honey, I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. I do. I just don’t like to be around people who can’t control their tempers. It makes me nervous. Anxious.” I can’t think straight. Or breathe.
“I get it. God knows, Troy is just not reliable.”
“I know. That’s what I want to say to you. I know. I shouldn’t freak out when I see someone who has problems with alcohol and anger.” She removed her hand from his grasp. “You see, that’s where I’m so much younger than you.” She smiled sadly at him. “Ten years can be a big rift.” Among other things.
He stood and pulled her up into his arms. “I’m willing to wait around and watch while you grow older, honey.”
“Jeez.” She gave a laugh. “I’ll never catch up to you.”
“You think I’m an old man, huh?”
“No.” She threw her arms around his broad shoulders. “I think you’re a wonderful man.”
His expression turned to stone, and he jerked her against him, raising her jaw so that she had to look him in the eye. She could see that her words had been too banal and not what he’d needed at all.
“I’m your man, baby. Last night,” he voiced dropped an octave, “I made you my woman. Completely.”
She stared up at him. Knowing he wanted her to affirm that she was his. His and no other’s. But she couldn’t now, could she? Because if she did, she’d put herself in deeper with him. She’d have to come clean about what she’d done. He’d hate her and she would have to leave. She’d never thought of herself as a coward. But she was the worst kind. The sort who knew what she had to do and failed at every turn.
She kissed his luscious lips, pushed away and ignored the way he blinked at her.
She sat down, ate her eggs and drank her coffee, then helped him wash dishes.
Do Him Right Page 7