Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  It did and I knew that when my brother shot Shaw a bright smile. “Yeah. Yeah. Sunday.” He moved toward Hix and me but did it still aimed toward Shaw and Wendy. “Have fun.”

  “Thanks, you too,” Shaw replied.

  “’Bye, Andy,” Wendy said.

  Hix’s arm around my shoulders tightened as he turned us while we called our goodbyes to his son and his girl, and Andy fell into step beside us as we walked toward his Bronco.

  There weren’t many people left hanging around after the game. We’d said goodbye to Lou and the girls before Shaw came out and Mamie had taken off with her mother, who made it clear she was taking pains to ignore the fact that Hix and I existed, and she did this by leaving and not hanging to tell her son his team might have lost, but he’d done a good job.

  That said, her parents both came right up to Hix, her dad shaking his hand and introducing himself and his wife to me in a surprisingly friendly way (though, I knew Hope’s mom, Marie, she was a client of Lou’s).

  Marie gave Hix a brief hug before she smiled hesitantly at me and they both took off after Hope. Hope’s brothers and their families didn’t do the same, though one of the brothers gave Hix a wave, and both wives did (one, Jessie, was my client and she hadn’t stopped being that even with all that was happening, the other one, Molly, was Lou’s client and she’d been in two Thursdays ago so clearly they also weren’t holding grudges, which was a relief).

  I found all of that interesting.

  I didn’t pay it much mind because I found it concerning that Mamie stuck by our sides until the very last minute, trudged to her mother only when called as they were leaving, and she did this like she was dead ballerina walking.

  Also concerning was the fact that Corinne popped by once during the game to give her father a pointedly dutiful hug and kiss, her greeting of me and meeting of Andy vast degrees warmer than the chill she gave her dad. I noticed she hung with friends most of the game, and left with them, but that didn’t mean she didn’t spend a whole quarter of the game sitting beside her mother and her family.

  The dis to Hix was not veiled just as Mamie’s dis to her mother wasn’t either.

  Yes, this was all concerning.

  But these were the only things that dimmed the brilliance of the night, having Andy with us, but mostly having Hix make a statement to the entire town that he was with me. When the opportunity was afforded him, he did it with his arm thrown around my shoulders, holding my hand, dipping down to touch his mouth to mine. And he did it in a way no one could be in any question, what with Andy and Mamie with us, Corinne dropping by, Lou and Maple sitting close, and in the end, Shaw, that we were to the point we weren’t together, we were together—merging families.

  And although I was concerned about both Mamie and Corinne, I loved all that so much that the dim of that barely shadowed the brilliance of the rest.

  Making things better, we were only T minus the trip to Sunnydown and back before I could connect with my man in the way I’d been wanting to connect with my man since the second he actually, officially became my man.

  When we hit the Bronco Hix opened my door for me, and I caught Andy’s big smile that he did as my brother climbed into the back seat.

  I settled in and was grabbing the seatbelt while Hix was closing the door, and that was when I caught the soft look on his face as he stared at my ass sitting in his passenger seat.

  And that was when I knew.

  Andy sitting in Hix’s Bronco.

  Me sitting there.

  Andy being invited to Junk Sunday.

  T minus less than an hour before I had Hixon Drake naked.

  Yes, that was when I knew.

  I knew this was it.

  Having this, building it, keeping it . . .

  I’d fight for it.

  Finally, I’d found something to fight for.

  Mom could pull her shit, and I’d battle her to the death.

  Hope could pull her shit, and I’d go head to head to keep hold on my man, his kids, the promise of the life he was offering.

  I’d take any lick they could offer, and if it meant having Hixon, I’d keep on ticking.

  Hixon had barely closed the door after he’d folded himself in the driver’s seat when Andy asked, “Are you comin’ with Ta-Ta to get me on Sunday?”

  Hix’s eyes slid to me, his mouth twitching, his hand turning the key in the ignition, as he replied, “Yeah, bud. You up for early? We do donuts in the morning.”

  “Heck yeah!” Andy cried.

  I felt my lips curl up as I looked out the windshield, the ignition caught and Hix slid her in reverse, thinking, yes.

  Oh yes.

  I’d finally found it.

  Something worth fighting for.

  And if I had to, I was going to fight for it.

  Because I was falling in love with complicated.

  Hix’s head dropped so he could bury his face in my neck and I felt his heavy breathing against my skin just as I felt the weight and warmth of his body pressed to mine, his cock buried deep, fingers of one of my hands in his hair, the fingers of the other one laced in his, my legs curled around the backs of his thighs.

  He’d just come.

  He’d taken me there a few minutes before.

  It had been like the first time. Fast and desperate, then slow and gentle and sweet. Kissing, nuzzling, touching, tasting, gliding, connecting like we had all the time in the world.

  And like we’d have just that.

  For the rest of our lives.

  Hix’s breath started to come easy and his mouth started to work my skin where he murmured, “You good?”

  I’d never been better.

  “Yes.”

  “Your nose?”

  “It’s fine, baby.”

  He lifted his face out of my neck and looked into my eyes before he touched his mouth to mine, to the tip of my nose, and then he slid his hand from where he had it curled around the back of my neck down to where his thumb came out and he stroked the side of my breast.

  “Good night?” he whispered.

  Yes, it had been good.

  More than good.

  I slid my hand from his hair to his cheek and whispered back, “No, Hixon, it was great.”

  His blue eyes registered that, openly gave me just how much it meant to him, before he dropped his head and kissed me, deep and wet and beautiful. All through it his fingers threaded through mine, as they’d been since the moment he’d slid inside me, squeezed.

  He ended the kiss, his eyes roamed my face then he raised them to look over my head before he looked again at me.

  “We neglected your headboard.”

  I grinned at him. “It’s not going anywhere.”

  His return grin gave me a shiver when he replied, “Nope.”

  His face disappeared into my neck again where he slid his lips up from the junction of my shoulder to my ear, sliding his cock out as he did, and he said, “Sucks, but I gotta get back to the apartment early tomorrow, sweetheart.” He again lifted his head and looked at me. “Shaw and I have packed approximately three boxes in the last week. We don’t have a lot but I gotta get him outta bed and we gotta get some more shit boxed up. We have the unit until the end of the month but the sooner I can close the door on that place forever, the happier I’ll be.”

  This made me frown, because in the last week when he wasn’t working or with his kids, he’d been with me and it hadn’t occurred to me once to go to him and help him get ready to move.

  “I’m sorry, Hix, I didn’t think. We should have been packing last night, not making out on my couch.”

  At that, he didn’t grin but smiled huge like I was hilarious.

  “Babe, if you think I mind rollin’ out of your bed at oh dark thirty to start a day of packing boxes and lugging crap because I made the decision to make out with you on your couch and not pack boxes last night, you’d be wrong.”

  I smiled back. “I see.”

  “And tomorrow’s gonna
suck because moving sucks, but after tomorrow I’m gonna have my kids in a good place that’s two blocks from you and that is not gonna suck.”

  I kept smiling. “I hear that.”

  He was still smiling too. “So what I’m sayin’ is, I gotta deal with this condom and then we gotta settle in because I need some shuteye, seein’ as I’m not twenty-three anymore and I can’t go all night with a woman and roll outta bed and spend all day doin’ somethin’ physical without it kicking my ass.”

  I was enjoying gliding my free hand along the skin of his back, holding him anchored to me with my legs around his thighs and also still smiling when I asked, “When you were twenty-three, could you go all night with a woman?”

  He looked to the pillow over my head and muttered, “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this.”

  I wrapped my arm around him and gave him a squeeze with it as well as my legs as I teased, “I thought tops for a guy was three times in one night . . . maybe.”

  He looked down at me, brows raised. “You read that in some woman’s magazine?”

  I quit smiling and stared at him.

  Then I asked, this time seriously, “When you were twenty-three, could you go all night with a woman?”

  “Greta—” he started hesitantly.

  “No, really, I wanna know,” I told him.

  “I didn’t have half a dozen people showin’ at my house tomorrow at eight with only three boxes for them to move, I could go all night tonight.”

  I felt my eyes get wide right before they narrowed.

  He was full of it.

  “That’s impossible,” I declared.

  He grinned. “And that sounded like a challenge.”

  “No, Hix, it’s physically impossible.”

  He dipped his grinning face close. “No, baby. See, the key is, to go all night, I gotta make it so you got your mind on other things so the last thing on your mind is counting how many times anything happens for me.”

  My body experienced another shiver as I whispered, “Oh.”

  “Though I didn’t know that when I was twenty-three, so to answer your question, yes. That three times is bullshit. But since then I learned how to play it so I can have all the fun doin’ a lot of the work but not all of the work, if you catch my meaning.”

  I was still whispering when I replied, “I totally catch your meaning.”

  He touched the tip of his nose to mine before he continued, “You want me to have a go at doin’ all the work, I’m up for that challenge too.” He pulled half an inch away. “Just not the night before I gotta wedge that couch out the door of my apartment without sending it flying over the side of my stairs.”

  “I wondered how you got it in there,” I shared.

  “Brute force and a promise to God I wouldn’t say ‘fuck’ for at least a week.”

  I started shaking under his big body with my laughter. “Did you keep your promise?”

  “Barely.”

  I lifted up, brushed my lips against his and dropped back. “Go, darlin’, so you can come back and we can get some sleep.”

  “All right, baby,” he murmured, returned my lip brush then rolled off.

  I turned out one of the lights on the nightstand before he came back and Hix turned off the other one before he slid back in beside me and curled me into him.

  Once there, I curled in deeper.

  “Hix,” I called into the dark.

  “Yeah?”

  “I love it that you made a son who would ask my brother to go with him and his date to eat pizza.”

  His arm around me pulled me even closer and I felt him do a slight curl before his lips touched the top of my head.

  He settled back in before he murmured, “I do too.”

  I turned my head, rubbing the point of my chin into his chest before I put my lips to it and whispered, “And I love it when you hold my hand when you’re moving inside me.”

  His hand slid up my back, over my shoulder, so he could use the backs of his knuckles to stroke my cheek. “I’m glad, Greta, ’cause I love doin’ that too.”

  I tilted my head back, rested my chin on his chest and looked at his shadowed face. “And I love it that your self-imposed, unnecessary ban on sex due to my broken nose, a ban you also imposed on me, is finally over.”

  “Greta?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re cute, you’re funny and you’re sweet, but you need to shut your mouth and go to sleep.”

  Since he sounded like he was smiling when he said that, I grinned through the dark, turned my head and rested my cheek to his chest.

  He kept stroking my face for a while before he moved his hand to curl it around my waist and hold me tucked to his side.

  I loved other things about that night, about Hix, about his kids.

  But I’d tell them to him later.

  Right then, naked with my man naked at my side, I fell asleep.

  I was on my hands and knees, naked, scurrying to the side of the bed in order to get in a better position to attack with the intent to win because this had gone on way longer than I expected and something had to give, when Hix’s fingers locked around my ankle.

  He pulled it, which meant he pulled my knee out from under me. The other knee went as his hand left my ankle, both went to my hips, and he whipped me on my belly perpendicular on the bed, him between my spread legs.

  He then yanked up my hips, putting me back on my knees.

  And at this maneuver (not the first time it happened that session, but much stronger than all the others), the walls of my pussy convulsed.

  I flipped my hair around so I could look over shoulder at him and they convulsed again when I saw the dark, hungry expression on his face as he stared down at my ass.

  Right.

  Naked bed wrestling with Hix was over.

  It was time to get down to business.

  “Fuck me,” I whispered and his eyes sliced to mine. “Fuck me, Hix. Hurry.”

  One of his hands left my hip and dove between my legs, scoring a path of electricity from clit to nipples that made my hips jerk and would have made my mouth protest that was all he gave me, no matter how good it was, if he didn’t lean away and I didn’t hear the drawer of his nightstand opening.

  I ground into his hand and he fingered me as I watched him tear into the condom packet with his teeth.

  God.

  That was hot.

  “Baby, hurry,” I breathed, rocking against the magic of his fingers.

  His gaze came back to burn into mine as I felt him shift closer, his movements, the promise of what was about to come making the insides of my thighs quiver as I tried to brace.

  And then he was there. The tip of him at my opening.

  He removed his hand, both went to my hips, and I reared back as he thrust in.

  I tossed my head, feeling my hair drifting over sensitive skin, as I moaned low, “Yes.”

  He curled over me, mounting me, one hand cupping my breast, fingers pulling at my nipple, the other arm slashing across my upper chest, fingers curling around my shoulder, hauling me back into his drives.

  God, he was good at this.

  “Yes,” I whimpered it this time, moving with him, meeting his thrusts, the noises of our flesh slapping together sounding in the room mingled with his quiet grunts, my muffled mews.

  My whole body quaked when his teeth sunk into my shoulder blade and he growled, “Who won?”

  He wasn’t serious.

  “Just fuck me,” I begged.

  He pulled out so I only had the head.

  I twisted my neck to spear him with my gaze. “Don’t stop.”

  “Who won, Greta?”

  “Fuck me, Hix.”

  He tugged hard on my nipple, grinned a grin that should be illegal it was so damned sexy, and repeated, “Who won, gum drop?”

  I was going to kill him.

  After he finished fucking me, of course.

  “I want your cock back,” I demanded, and him being a man wh
o liked using his cock the way he’d been using it, I didn’t think I’d have to say it twice.

  “You’ll get it, you declare me bed wrestling champion of the millennium.”

  All right.

  Someone shoot me for waking Hixon Drake early on the Sunday morning after he’d moved into a new house and throwing down the gauntlet in a tease that I’d take him in the bed wrestling championship of the millennium, seeing as I thought I could take him considering he’d gotten up early the morning before, made love to me before he left at six thirty and then he’d been engaged in the strenuous activity of moving all day.

  I had some moves in my arsenal. They mostly involved my hands, fingers, lips, tongue and teeth, but not strength, though I could be fast and I’d only stood on my feet for hours then unpacked boxes the day before.

  I thought I was good to go.

  Problem was, Hix was all that plus strong, and clearly moving hadn’t taken anything out of him.

  Not a thing.

  But he’d just taken something out of me and I wanted it back.

  “You,” I bit out.

  “Me what?” he pushed, still grinning that fucking grin that just made me want him back inside even more.

  I tried to press back.

  He moved with me and thus withheld.

  “Hix!” I snapped.

  “Me what?” he pressed.

  I gave in. “You win.”

  “Which makes me what?”

  I glared at him.

  His fingers rolled my nipple.

  My eyes slid nearly closed as my legs trembled.

  “Which makes me what, baby?” he coaxed, gentle and sweet.

  The gentle and sweet did it for me.

  That and I wanted his cock and was in the mood to say just about anything to get it.

  I opened my eyes. “It makes you the bed wrestling champion of the millennium.”

  Slowly, making my eyes go hooded again, but I still caught his grin melting to something that was even hotter, he slid back in as he murmured, “That’s right, sweetheart, now take your fucking from the champ.”

  I felt his lips draw the curve of my shoulder blade and whispered, “Yes,” as I commenced taking my fucking from the champ.

  He kept me anchored with his arm across my chest but moved his hand from my breast to between my legs where he played with me as he fucked me. He did this unrelentingly, and amazingly, until I pressed my forehead into the mattress, reared back, my fingers fisted in his sheets. My cry was stifled when the force Hix was building between my legs exploded and tore through me, making me shudder uncontrollably under him.