by Mia Malone
“To sound ridiculous,” I heard myself admit.
“Babe.”
“I’m not like your other women,” I told him.
“Don’t have any other women.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Actually, no. I don’t.”
I stared at him, and he wasn’t teasing anymore. He was watching me calmly, and my stupid mouth told him what I meant with no preamble.
“I haven’t had sex in a long time.”
There. I’d blurted it out, so I closed my eyes and waited for him to leave.
“In a long time?”
“A very long time,” I clarified.
“Okay. I know you haven’t gotten any since you came to Wilhelmine, Lee. How long before that?”
“I’m not telling,” I said.
“Weeks?”
I didn’t answer.
“Months?”
I still didn’t answer.
“Jesus,” he said, put a hand on my cheek and pressed gently until I opened my eyes. “Baby, how long have you gone without?”
“A year and a half,” I whispered.
His mouth fell open, and he looked angry suddenly, but it passed, and his eyes turned gentle again.
“No wonder you have toys.”
“I didn’t get them until after I left Bob,” I confessed.
Oh God, why had I told him that?
“You used only your fingers before that?” he murmured.
His voice was suddenly even lower and more gravelly than usual, and he pulled one of my hands out from under the covers.
“These?” he kept murmuring and raised it to his mouth. When he put my index and middle finger in his mouth and sucked gently, electricity went straight to between my legs, and I gasped. “Was it enough, Lee? Or do you want more?”
I couldn’t help myself. I whimpered.
He pulled the fingers out of his mouth to grin at me and put my hand back on the cover.
“The week is up on Sunday. Let’s talk about getting you some then.”
He moved away from the bed, and I stared at him. Sunday was two days away.
“Gibson,” I said, not sure exactly what I wanted him to do, but it did not involve leaving.
“Nurse your hangover, babe. Sleep for a while, go get breakfast at Jenny’s. Paddy and I need to deal with some shit today.”
“Gibson,” I repeated.
“Don’t worry about dinner, I’ll get us something on my way home.”
“Okay,” I said but he was halfway out the door by then, and I lay in silence, listening to his footsteps and the whistle for Boo.
Then his car drove off, and I sank back into my pillows. I’d been moving toward an orgasm just from him sucking my fingers. And on Sunday we’d talk about… getting me some.
I was in way over my head with this man.
***
Gibson
He stopped the car outside Paddy’s office, leaned forward and put his forehead on the steering wheel, breathing deeply and trying to calm down. The urge to hunt down Lee’s fucking ex-husband and shove his nuts far enough up his ass he could taste them made him grip the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. What in the hell had the man been thinking, letting his wife satisfy herself with her own goddamned fingers for over a year? He should have -
What the hell was he thinking himself? If the assclown had done what he was supposed to have done with his wife and not some other woman, then Lee would still have been the unhappy Charlene in the suburbs. Now she was in Wilhelmine, in his home.
Two more days. He could do two more days, and if Lee had some fucking idiot idea that she’d not sleep with him, then he’d… He pressed his lips together and focused on breathing. He’d figure something out.
“You okay, bud?”
The knock on the window jolted him out of his thoughts, and he turned to find Paddy staring at him with a look on his face that was a mix of anger and concern. He wondered if the concerned part would ever go away. So, he’d had himself a fucking breakdown. He was good again. A lot of people snapped, and he hadn’t killed anyone, had he? Not even himself.
“Yeah,” he said as he opened the door and stepped out. “Lot on my mind, that’s all.”
“How the hell does Jenny know the size of your dick?” Paddy asked sourly.
“What?”
“Tell me you haven’t done her.”
“Man, calm down. No, I haven’t done her, you know that. I have no fucking clue what she knows about my dick but the hens of this town peck absolutely everything to pieces so my guess? Someone told her.”
Paddy took a step back and nodded.
“It’s not that big,” he muttered.
“Bigger than yours,” Gibson retorted, although he hadn’t actually seen his friend without clothes in years, and had only vague memories of the dimensions, so it was more a taunt than anything else.
“Huh,” Paddy grunted.
“Hey, sorry I’m late” Mac called out as he jogged over, narrowing his eyes when he saw their faces. “What are you talking about?”
“The size of my dick,” Gib muttered.
“It’s not that big,” Mac snorted.
“Bigger than yours,” Gibson repeated, again guessing.
They entered the reception area of the construction company Paddy had taken over from his father when he died of a heart attack. Paddy had been twenty-six and had worked around the clock for the next ten years just to keep it going and then the next twenty to make it grow. Gibson looked around the fancy offices and wondered if it had been worth it. Padraig Callaghan had never married, not even when one of his girlfriends had become pregnant, and he was living on his own since his daughter moved out.
“Hey,” Joke said as he joined them.
“It’s bigger than yours too,” Gibson muttered, ignored Joke’s surprise, and nodded at Edna, the receptionist. “Hey, Eddie.”
“Hey, Gibson. How’s Lee?”
“Hung over.”
“Well good for her,” Edna quipped. “Tell her we’d love it if you joined us one of the nights next week. Billy said he might turn on the smoker. Get us some ribs.”
“She’ll call you. Thursday might work,” Gibson said, and walked into Paddy’s office.
His friends were staring at him as they sat down on the leather couches and chairs.
“What?”
“You’re invited to Eddie’s?” Paddy asked. “For Billy’s ribs?”
“Apparently,” Gibson said and pulled out his phone when it beeped to indicate he had a text message.
“The devil will make dinner for us. Pick it up at six?”
Lee.
“Devil?” he replied with a grin.
“Did you know Jenny doesn’t do hangovers?”
“Yup.”
“I’m never drinking tequila again.”
“Babe.”
Silence.
“Sorry I brought up the size of your cock last night. See, I could at least type it.”
She’d added a smiley to the last one. Cute.
“Gibson?”
He raised a finger to indicate he needed a second and used it to let Lee know he’d pick their dinner up.
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
“Texting?” Gib asked, wondering why Mac had to ask that when he held his fucking phone right in front of him.
And why the hell did he sound so weird?
“Or sexting?” Paddy asked with a grin.
Well, hell.
“You said we’d have a meeting,” he reminded Paddy.
“We are having a meeting, as soon as you’ve finished organizing dinner plans which include ribs which I at the ripe age of fifty-five yet have to earn the honor of tasting. And sexting Lee.”
“Sorry. I’m done. What did you want to meet about?” Gibson said, hoping they’d act as the grown-ups they were supposed to be, wh
ich meant not ribbing him more about Lee.
“Yeah, Pad, let’s get to the meeting part, but Gib…” Mac trailed off until their eyes met. “If this is going where I think it’s going then I’m over the fucking moon for you. Don’t fuck it up, buddy. Hold on to it while you can.”
“Mac,” Gibson murmured.
“Day isn’t here, but he’d say the same thing.”
There was a flash of something in Mac’s eyes which he hadn’t seen in a very long time. Christ, he thought. They’d all thought Mac was okay. He worked and laughed and partied with the rest of them, and the flash of pain had been brief, but he’d recognized it for what it was. And he hadn’t seen it in Mac’s eyes for more than ten years. Not since they buried Corinne.
“Mac,” he said again with a sigh, not sure what to say and feeling like an idiot for grinning over a stupid text from Lee.
“Don’t,” Mac warned, reading his face accurately. “Didn’t say it to make you feel like shit over sexting with your lady instead of paying attention to your brothers.”
Right, Gibson thought. Mac didn’t want to share, and that was his choice to make.
“We weren’t sexting,” Gibson protested. “Dinner plans.”
“You’re telling me there were no words describing any kind of genitals?” Mac said, and the usual calm humor was back in his eyes.
“No -” Gibson started but remembered what Lee had texted him.
Fuck it but she was cute, he thought. She’d been so embarrassed that morning, but she’d texted the word cock to him after all, which meant she’d been thinking about it. He looked forward to making her say the word out loud. Hell, he wanted to hear her screaming it while he was buried deep inside her.
“Maybe one,” he said with a crooked grin.
“Aha!” Paddy said. “Which one?”
“What are you? Fifteen?” Gibson muttered.
“Just wondered what our sweet Lee would think about you talking dirty.”
“It wasn’t me -”
He cut himself off too late, and after a brief but stunned silence, the room erupted in loud cheers.
“Coffee?” Edna said from the door and since Gibson was grateful for the interruption he got up and took the tray from the older woman.
She winked at him, and he wondered how thin Paddy’s walls were.
Paddy grinned at him but started asking about his trip to Chicago, and they all focused when he shared that one of the men breaking into his home had indeed been found shot in the chest and floating in the Chicago River. He’d turned out to be a smalltime crook, known to the Chicago PD but no one had any insight as to why the man had been in Wilhelmine. They also had no suspects in his murder case.
When they had turned it around without finding anything more to investigate, they split up, Mac going to the station, and Joke to do something he described as a fucking administrative nightmare at Oak.
Gibson went with Paddy to take measurements on a home Callaghan construction was building where he would do the custom-built bookshelves and a few other bits and pieces. He’d told Lee he worked with Paddy, but in reality, he was only brought in when the customers wanted something unique. And when they could pay what he charged for his things. People who could afford to buy a place in the ski-resorts could apparently afford all kinds of extras, so he had enough work to keep him happy. He knew what getting too immersed in his job had cost him once, though, so he was conscious of how much work he took on. He wasn’t going down that fucking road again.
Two hours later, he straightened and groaned. He worked out daily, but during the trip to Chicago, he’d cut his routines short, and he was stiff. He’d seen Lee do yoga on his back deck in the mornings and wondered if he should join her but decided that doing yoga with a huge erection would mostly be embarrassing so he’d pass.
They were walking toward the car, arguing about whether to go to Jenny’s or one of the fast food places for an afternoon snack when there was a loud crash in the house behind them.
Paddy swore, and muttered, “Give me a sec. Just wanna check.”
Gibson spent the second which turned out to be fifteen minutes standing in the sun, thinking about Lee and feeling little ridiculous but wondering what she was doing right then.
“Stupid, fucking morons,” Paddy growled. “One of the supporting beams came loose, part of the roof caved in.”
“Yeah?”
Paddy’s crew were usually doing better work than that.
“New guy on the crew and the others didn’t check his work properly. Not on the crew anymore.”
“Harsh.”
“You and I were in that fucking room less than half hour ago, Gib. The prospect of having all that shit crashing down on my head does not make me happy.”
“They need help?”
“Nah,” Paddy said with a sigh. “Ben’s leading the work, and he was unhappier than me. Heard him tell the guys they weren’t leaving for the day until it was cleared up, and they were working unpaid overtime to catch up of they got behind schedule because of what happened.”
“Bet new guy left quickly.”
“Yup,” Paddy said and started the car.
Gibson grinned and thought about all the times through the years he’d sat with starry-eyed women who talked about how sweet Paddy was. How nice. Anyone who’d ever worked with Padraig Callaghan used slightly different words. Fair, honest, and straight-talking, for sure, but also tough, demanding and damned unpleasant when things went wrong. Gibson supposed Paddy wouldn’t have managed to build Callaghan construction up from a small-time shop to the biggest construction company in the area without the streak of ruthlessness he hid so successfully.
“I think this earned us a piece of pie at Jenny’s,” he said with a grin.
***
Charlene
When I heard Gibson’s truck drive up to the house, I looked at the long dinner table and cursed. Then I removed the candles and napkins and moved the plates to a corner so we wouldn’t face each other. Then I cursed again. The man had candles and napkins, and he’d have them because he wanted them to be used, wouldn’t he?
“Hey,” he said and put a couple of bags on the kitchen counter. “This smells good.”
“Yes,” I said and began to bring out food which indeed smelled just as fabulously as Jenny had promised it would taste.
“Feeling better?” he asked and put a hand on my cheek when I was about to pass him.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “Let me just get Boo some chow, then we’ll eat. I’m hungry.”
“You could have left him with me. I love dogs,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about getting one.”
“Someone to lick you all over?” Gibson asked with a wink.
“Yes,” I said and started bringing the food to the table to hide the blush I felt on my cheeks.
Damn, I thought. We’d been talking about pets for crying out loud. Why did everything that man said sound like a sexual invite?
Maybe because it so very often was one? Maybe because he was hot? Maybe because of the way the seam of my tight jeans scraped over my undies, making every move a prelude to orgasm?
“Tea?”
I yelped when Gibson appeared behind me, and he chuckled. He couldn’t know what I’d been thinking about, could he?
“Sure,” I said breezily, and then we ate.
During the meal, Gibson talked about the break-in, and I was surprised to hear that he and his friends were investigating it. I would have thought they’d leave it to the police.
“It’s what we do,” Gib said and leaned back.
“Do?” I asked.
He sighed and pulled his hands through his hair a couple of times, which messed it up in a way that made him look even more handsome. It had grown since I moved to Wilhelmine, and he needed a haircut. I hoped he wouldn’t get one.
“Lots of shit going on, Lee. Can’t have that in Wilhelmine, so we
’re making sure it isn’t.”
I jerked out of my admiration of his unruly hair and blinked.
“What does that mean?”
He took hold of my hand and raised it to give it a soft kiss.
“Mac’s wife died ten years ago, baby.”
“No,” I murmured.
I’d thought they were all single by choice, and Mac hadn’t seemed like… I wasn’t even sure what a widower was supposed to act like, but he’d appeared to be same happy-go-lucky kind of guy they all were.
“Drugs were pouring into the area. Drug cartels were making headway, and the motorcycle clubs were unhappy. Small time dealers got into the mix. Shit, anyone and everyone seemed to be heading this way, and Wilhelmine was right in the center of it. Mac wasn’t chief back then, but he fought them. God, we all did. I started going back on weekends to help out where I could. Had a rep already back then and used it. Joke got into fights in the bar. Day had his own issues and didn’t give a shit, so he was reckless as all hell and Paddy… He tried to hold us all together and run his company at the same time.”
I held on to his hand and tried to breathe slowly, hurting with him as he got lost in his memories.
“Mac did everything by the book. Crossing all t’s and dotting the i’s as fast as he could. Believing in the system and that we would beat it all back.” He turned to me, and I felt my eyes burn when I saw the look in his eyes. “Corinne got caught in crossfire on her way back from picking their boy up from a friend. They both died.”
“Oh, God. Gibson…”
“We all lost something that day, Lee.” He paused and continued quietly, “She was the first girl I kissed. Used to rib Mac about that all the fucking time. She was Jenny’s best friend. Hell, she was Jen’s only friend.” He paused again and raised our hands to his cheek. “And she was Paddy’s sister, baby.”
Tears pooled in my eyes, and I tried to stay calm but when our eyes met, I felt my lips wobble. It didn’t matter how hard I pressed them together, the tears spilled over anyway and ran silently down my cheeks.
“Lee,” he murmured.
“I’m so sorry,” I said and thought about all the time I’d said those words in the ER, holding someone’s hand after the doctors had delivered that godawful message no one wanted to hear.