Chapter 14 #3
She pats my hand so tenderly that the backs of my eyes burn with a sudden onslaught of tears. I don’t let them surface, and instead, I pat her hand back. “You’re trying your best, Daddy.”
Quinn takes an aggressive bite of pot roast.
Sadie takes a few bites of her food, quiet as she eats. I follow her lead and start eating too, suppressing a groan when I taste the savory flavor combination flooding my tongue.
After a few minutes where I’m convinced I ruined my daughter, she finally breaks the quiet. “So Miss Quinn is marrying you like… playin’ house?”
I nod. “Just like playin’ house. Only… we gotta keep it a secret for a few months.”
“What happens after a few months?”
It’s a good question, and one I thought I was prepared for. “I’ll win the rodeo and with Miss Quinn by my side, I’ll prove to Grandpa and Grandma that I’m stable. They’ll be happy and drop the suit.” I fucking hope.
Sadie shakes her head. “Not that. Miss Quinn,” she says, looking directly at Quinn who is midway through a huge bite, potatoes in her cheek like a hamster. I nudge a glass of water her way and she sips slowly. “What happens to you and Miss Quinn?”
“We’ll be friends,” Quinn answers, “just like we are now. I’ll move back to California, but I’ll send you guys post cards and gifts, and I’ll even come visit,” she says, glancing at me then adding, “if I can. Maybe.”
Sadie’s face is a sickening mix of dejected and sad, but she manages the tiniest of smiles, completely meant to appease us.
“I’ll be real sad when you go,” she says to Quinn, who is fully crying now, tears streaking her face completely unacknowledged.
She reaches for Sadie, and they weave their fingers together over the tablecloth.
“I’ll be sad to leave you, too, Sadie Ruth.
But we can have something beautiful together while I’m here. ”
Sadie nods, and then the three of us eat in silence, but for the scrape of a fork on the plate or the occasional audible swallow. When we’re all done, Sadie asks Quinn to take her upstairs, to help her try on the dress and get bathed, and to read her a story.
Quinn agrees, and I clean up the kitchen alone. Neither one of them comes back downstairs and near Sadie’s bedtime, I bite the bullet and head up.
Nudging into Sadie’s room, I find her asleep, with Quinn sitting on the edge of the bed, her head in her hands.
“Psst,” I hiss, and when her head snaps up to meet my eyes, there’s a plummet of something weighty, from my chest to my stomach, seeing tears in her eyes.
I waste no time going to her, and extending my hand, palm up.
“C’mon,” I say quietly, and am pleased when she nods, slipping her hand against mine, curling her fingers into my palm like she trusts me.
I twist the lamp near Sadie’s bed, leaving her with just the glow of her horseshoe night-light on the wall.
Slowly, I guide Quinn to my room, because it’s far from Sadie’s and affords us the privacy we need. To talk.
I close the door with my boot and rake my hand through my hair, flicking on the light. Quinn’s hand comes to her eyes, adjusting to the sudden brightness, and I guide her to my bed, where we both take a seat on the edge.
We’re still holding hands.
“She’ll be okay, Quinn. One day, when she’s old enough to wrap her mind around everything that happened, she’ll understand.”
She shakes her head, blonde hair tangled around her face from the tears. “She’ll hate me.”
“No,” I refuse, “she won’t. She’ll get it.
It may take time, but she’ll get it. I’ll make sure she knows you’re the good guy in this equation.
” I squeeze our joined hands, and drag them to my thigh, pressing my other hand on top consolingly.
“You’re helping me keep my daughter, Quinn.
Without you, without this bit of discomfort, I’d lose her. ”
Her green eyes twinkle beneath the incandescent light, but another tear slips past her full lashes, and I can’t help but lift my hand and wipe it away. She sniffles. “I wouldn’t go back to him,” she says, keeping her voice low. “I mean, I won’t.”
I shake my head. “What?”
She sniffles again. “You said when I’m done making this film, I’ll go back to the city, and I’ll go back to Melvin.” Another tear slips through her lashes, carving a trail down her pale cheek. “I’d never go back to him.”
The back of my neck suddenly burns, and that heat surges through my limbs, making my toes curl into my boots. “Okay,” I reply. My voice is thick and rough when I ask, “Why do you want me to know that?”
She shakes her head but doesn’t say anything for a minute, until— “Kiss me.”
Immediately, I shake my head, knowing damn good and well that getting involved with my soon-to-be wife is an awful idea. Terrible. “Quinn, we shouldn’t.”
She frees her hand but controls mine, raising it up and placing it along her cheek, adjusting my thumb to cradle her jaw. “I said kiss me, Landry Vaughn.”
My eyes drop to her lips, full and pink, looking glossy and soft as ever. My hand is so large against her face, I start to wonder if I’d break her in half if we pursued this thing blooming between us.
“Practice kiss for tomorrow, c’mon,” she urges, and with that one tiny bit of logic thrown in—of course we gotta test-drive the kiss for the ceremony—my lips are on hers, our mouths open, tongues colliding.
My hands are suddenly possessive, one still on her jaw, the other on her hip, dragging her into my lap with ease.
She whines as she positions herself over me, our kiss growing frantic and sloppy.
Our teeth clash, her lips are on the side of my face, my throat, my jaw, and then my mouth again as she grinds against me, my cock thick and hard, assaulting the inside of my fly, seeking relief.
“Landry,” she breathes, grinding her hot little center against my crotch as her hands tantalize me, moving down my chest, along my neck and through my hair. The friction is intense, and the sporadic nature of it all is intense, too.
I pull back, stealing my lips away from the sweetest, sexiest mouth I’ve ever tasted, because I have so much at stake with her, I can’t fuck it up.
“Quinn, Quinn, wait,” I hedge, but her little body keeps moving, hips rolling, thighs pinched hard around my waist. I bring my hand to her throat, and she sucks my thumb into her mouth, hooded green eyes falling on me as she moans once, and stills over me.
Her eyes roll shut and her chest hollows with a heavy sigh. “Oh god,” she breathes, grinding me once, twice, then a third time. “Oh my god,” she sighs, exhaling what seems to be all of her stress.
Holy fuck. I’m almost positive she just had an orgasm.
Her eyes snap open, and I wonder if she’ll be embarrassed or try to play it off like it didn’t happen. Instead, Quinn Farley throws me for another unexpected loop. “I have a demand. If I’m gonna break that little girl’s heart, and help you, I realize, I do have a demand after all.”
She stays in my lap and my cock leaks freely into my briefs, and if she makes any sudden movements, I’m liable to join her in her postcoital bliss. “I thought inside access, more footage of me and Sadie, shit like that, that’s what you said your demands were,” I remind her through a husky tone.
She shakes her head. “I’m marrying you and there is no way that I’m not gonna hate myself when I drive away from Sadie Ruth, so I’m upping the ante. I want more.”
I narrow my eyes and let my hands wander the narrow curves of her slender form, landing on her tiny hips. “What?”
“You.”
I laugh, because it’s funny, and you laugh when things are funny.
She stares down at me, and I’m starting to think she isn’t kidding.
“I want you, whenever I want you.”
I shake my head. “I don’t get it.”
She smirks. “God, and that only makes me want it that much more.”
“What?”
“I want you. Whenever I want you. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, if I want you, I get to have you. And I get you in whatever form I please.”
I scratch the back of my head, keeping her steady in my lap with just one hand on her hip. She’s half my size, I could probably toss her with one hand, too. “I don’t—”
She reaches between us and grabs my cock through my jeans, her eyes fluttering when she finds me thick and hard for her. “I want this whenever I want it, however I want it. That’s my demand. I get free use of you, Landry Vaughn, and in exchange, I’ll be your temporary wife.”
I still don’t know what to say, and she rolls her eyes in the absence of my words.
“Look, I just had the best orgasm ever and all I was doing was dry humping,” she says, laying it all out there, completely unembarrassed of it.
“If I have to do something that’s going to break my heart, I think it’s only fair I get the good dick while I’m here. ”
“Quinn.” I attempt to stand, but she presses one hand between my pecs and grips my cock with even more force.
“Landry.” She presses her mouth to mine in a soft, tender kiss, one that I wish lasted longer.
“You want me, I can feel it. And I want you, obviously. So let me have you. You can focus on the ranch, training, all that, and when the mood strikes me, I’ll use you.
And once it’s all said and done, I’ll leave a little less broken, and you’ll get laid on top of keeping your ranch and daughter. ”
I can’t believe I’m going to say this, because I know in my heart it’s an awful idea.
Sex ain’t meant to be casual, not in my eyes. I just said that much to Tate. But hell, she’s got me. Not just by the dick, but she’s got me because I need her. I need this marriage.
“You’ve got a deal.”
“So what do you gotta tell me? I know it’s not that you pitched my idea to Quinn and she said yes. I mean, hell, Landry, I’m not a genius but we are walkin’ up to the courthouse,” Tate says as we tread behind the women, indeed on our way to the courthouse.
I definitely called Tate in a panic last night after I agreed to a free use situation with Quinn.
I still can’t believe that Quinn Farley wants to use me for her sexual needs. Even this morning I had to pinch myself and burn myself in the shower to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.
“I couldn’t call you back last night because Lola wasn’t sleepin’ well. She’s cuttin’ a tooth and—” I cut Tate off, not because I don’t love his two-year-old daughter Lola, but because Quinn and I are signing on the dotted line in three minutes, and I don’t have time for it right now.
I grab his arm and yank him behind the mail truck in the parking lot. “No, listen, last night we were talking about how much this sucks for Sadie, and Quinn started getting emotional thinking about leaving her when the film’s all done.”
Tate shrugs. “Okay.”
I place my hand on his shoulder. “Listen, she said the only way this deal is going to work for her is if she gets something out of it, too.”
Tate rolls his neck. “You are really draggin’ this story out, ain’t ya?”
I shake my head. “She wants to… use me. Sexually. The entire time she’s here. That’s what her demand is.” I straighten, then smooth my tie, and his, since I messed it up when I grabbed him. “Free use, she says it’s called.”
Tate snorts. “Do you know you sound like our granddaddies right now?” He stands up taller and drops his voice to a low boom, which I guess is supposed to sound like me. “Free use, she says it’s called.” He socks me in the chest. “I know what free use is.”
Oh.
He tilts his head. “You didn’t?”
“I’ve been single for six years, asshole. Anyway,” I hedge, peering around the mail truck to see Love stopped, a hand on her hip, looking for us. I wave, and she motions us to keep coming, so we do, slowly. “I think it’s a bad idea, but I already agreed.”
“Oh, it’s an awful idea, but at least a fun one,” Tate says, and then we head inside the courthouse where my best friend and his wife stand witness to the ceremony.
Quinn in her pink cowboy boots and a little white sundress, wildflowers picked by Sadie between her hands, smiling up at me. We don’t say vows, but instead, let the judge declare us married after he rattles off some stuff and we sign some forms.
Sadie takes the flowers from Quinn, and in front of my daughter and the only family I can call family, I kiss Quinn Farley and make her my wife.
She rocks to her toes, pressing a kiss to my cheek, then one to my ear, before whispering, “Your room, tonight.”
It’s not a real marriage, and it’s going to end disastrously, no doubt.
But hell if I’m not excited.