8. Reed
Reed
Reed
What the hell has this woman done to me?
I watch Abbie sleeping, her expression soft, her cheek snuggled into her pillow—and she’s lying on her belly about a foot away. She went to sleep in my arms but she’s not there now. Maybe she got too hot, maybe she rolled away for some other reason. But I can count on zero fingers the number of times I’ve waited for a woman to begin stirring so that I can pull her close again.
Pull her close for another round, sure. But we did that about an hour ago. I woke in the dark, found Abbie on her stomach, got up behind her and hauled her onto her knees. It’s usually my favorite position to fuck, not just for the depth but also the view—yet with Abbie, rutting wasn’t enough. I had to turn her around so I could watch her bliss out, so I could kiss her as I came.
Then I tucked her up against my chest and we fell asleep.
Now she’s slipped out of my hold again. The distance does twisty, messy things inside my chest that I know damn well isn’t really about the twelve-inch gap between us. It hasn’t been since the first time I held her.
Fuck, was that only yesterday? With me utterly furious when she started blaming the Knowles for ruining her Christmas, thinking that I hadn’t been wrong about the Walkers after all because she was just throwing shit at anyone that she could. Then a snowball smashed into my face, and I actually started listening to what she was screaming.
And then…and then…
I’ve been lucky these past days. No doubt of it. But if I have any luck left to spend throughout my lifetime, I will never again have to watch Abbie Walker’s heart and soul shatter like they did when she broke down over the thought of returning to the festering hellhole she calls a home.
I don’t think I’d survive seeing it again.
That was my first time holding her. I haven’t gotten enough of holding her since. I haven’t stopped reeling since, either. Not with the way she bounced back, even though I dealt her blow after blow. Not after I saw how vulnerable she was—but I saw her strength, too. How she’d persevered through everything that was thrown at her. Not unharmed. But persisting…and somehow doing it with good humor and cheer.
I can’t begin to describe how appealing that is to me. That resilience. How she makes me laugh without trying. How she lights up everything with just her eyes.
It’s adorable. And terrifying.
Yet, for me, admiring resilience like hers is nothing new. So she’s done something else to me. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something that makes me want to hold her…and keep on holding her. As if there’s a person within me who wasn’t there before. A Reed Knowles who’s a stranger, a man that Abbie somehow brought to life inside me.
And that…could be an idea for a book. Though I’d write a much darker version of what I suspect is happening here.
Which is also really fucking scary. Mostly because I have no idea what to do with this stranger growing within.
Except hold onto her as tight as I can.
About fifteen minutes later, Abbie sighs and turns her head against her pillow. Good enough. I snag her around the waist and drag her in close, face to face.
She smiles and snuggles in. “This is nice,” she says sleepily.
I drop a kiss to her forehead and breathe in the scent of her hair. “Yeah, it is.”
Abruptly she stiffens, her leg jerking. Goddamn cat. I just got her in my arms again.
“I’ll take care of him,” I tell her. “Stay where it’s warm. How much cat food?”
“One scoop. Oh, and check the water dish. Yesterday there was ice on top. Thank you.”
I do both, then rebuild the fire so the cabin can heat up a bit before we leave the bed. Sliding in next to her, I drag her close again—making sure I can see her face, brushing back the curls that escaped from her braids during our two rounds of fucking.
She catches my wrist as I draw my hand back. “Is that where I bit you?”
My scar. “You remember doing it?”
“I could hardly forget.”
“I have. Mostly. Do you remember what brought it on?”
“I do.” She chews on the bottom corner of her lip, her eyes searching my face. “You really want to hear?”
“Yeah,” I say, though the way she’s looking at me makes me wonder if I do.
She sighs reluctantly. “We had an appointment to see the funeral director—and we were supposed to bring anything we wanted to go into my dad’s coffin. I’d made a drawing of our family. And maybe it was just really bad luck that your mom’s funeral was ending as we were going in but?—”
“Oh fuck,” I say, because I do remember this. “They started shouting at each other.”
Solemnly she nods. “And while they were going at it, you snatched the drawing out of my hands, said it was a stupid picture and ugly as shit, then ripped it in half.”
Shame fills my chest like a ball of hot lead. “I did?”
“You did.” Her hand comes up to cup my cheek. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.” No fucking wonder she doesn’t want me to look at her painting. “I’m so damn sorry.”
“You don’t have to be. You were a kid. I was a kid. It doesn’t matter.”
Her memory of me doing that horrible shit to her is still so clear, it’s hard to believe it doesn’t really matter to her. Especially since what I said was echoed later by her own family.
Just as my memory of the incident was reinforced by my father. “I mostly only remember what my dad told me happened. I’m not surprised he didn’t mention that I was a nasty little bastard and had my own cruel part in it.”
She nods, and her hand slips down to curl gently at the side of my neck. “Did he ever let you be? Ever let you not be angry, and just quietly grieve?”
“No. And since you’re asking, I guess your mom didn’t let you, either?”
“She told us, flat-out told us, that our dad was dead and it was the Knowles’s fault. Did your dad say something similar?”
“Every goddamn day.”
“That’s why I truly mean that it doesn’t matter. Because we were kids.” Her thumb traces the line of my jaw, rasping over my morning stubble, and it takes everything in me not to bury my face in her hand and kiss her palm. “I’m pretty sure my mom knew what she was doing, arriving earlier than our appointment, then waiting where your dad would see her. I’m not sure either of us can be blamed for following where our parents were leading us or for believing what they told us. So neither one of us is at fault, not really. Not for what you said. Not for me biting you.” Her lips quirk and her eyes crinkle. “Of course, if either of us did the same now…I’m not sure we’d have an excuse.”
If she’s trying to lighten the load that we’re carrying, then I’ll help her. “There’s a bite mark on my shoulder that says you haven’t changed too much. Though you didn’t draw blood, at least.”
She grins up at me. “I came like some kind of wild animal. I’m surprised your dick wasn’t crushed.”
“If you hadn’t made my dick so damn hard, it probably would’ve been.” Not that I’m complaining. And I’m looking forward to it again, that tight fluttering squeeze down the full length of my cock.
I’m stiffening now just thinking of it.
Her head tilts. “If you don’t mind saying…why are you not with your dad? Because it is Christmas. Is it just that he’s an asshole?”
That deflates my burgeoning erection. “Partially. I don’t talk to him much. We haven’t done Christmas together for years. Nothing beyond a text, sometimes not even that. I do see him now and again. We know enough of the same people that we cross paths. But I’ve just got nothing to say to him.”
She gives me a knowing look. “Does he have anything to say to you?”
“Heh. Nothing worth hearing. He boasts about what he buys—his toys, he always calls them—and his big plans and his money. It’s always a whole lot of posturing, even when it’s just him and me. His own son. He doesn’t need to prove anything to me but it’s always the same shit. And we’re just completely fucking different. No common interests, nothing worth sharing with him. And he’s so goddamn loud. Always talking over everyone. Railroading over anyone else’s opinions.”
“Ah,” she says softly.
“What?”
“That’s why you said I was silenced. I didn’t know how to put it, the way I felt with Lauryn. But you did. Because being silenced isn’t unfamiliar to you.”
I shake my head—not in denial, but in surprise that she’d made the connection so quickly. It took me twenty-one years and about a hundred and fifty thousand words before I understood what he does. “It’s not the same—it’s not negativity—but I sure as hell wasn’t allowed to have an opinion that didn’t match his. So I learned to keep my mouth shut. But that was normal, growing up. Or I thought it was. ‘A good son respects his father’s authority.’ I can’t tell you how many times I heard that.”
Her eyes narrow. “A good son respect his father’s authority or respects his father?”
“Pretty sure he thought they were the same thing.”
“But you don’t,” she says.
“I’d say a good father is one that his son can respect.”
She smiles as if she likes that answer. “Did the respect ever go both ways?”
“Seemed like it did following the shouting match I told you about. As if he recognized me as my own man after.”
“‘Seemed?’”
This woman never misses a thing. “We’d cross paths, he’d slap my back and ask if I was doing all right, ask if I was getting enough pussy, and remind me that I should come to him if I needed any help with my business. That’s his version of respect.”
Her nose wrinkles. “How fun.”
“Easy to shrug off, at least. Though I bet if I ever openly disagreed with him, I’d get the ‘good son’ speech again. It wasn’t until the thing with your mom’s house that I realized I actively disliked him. And that I couldn’t respect him.”
She comes up on her elbow, eyes wide. “Really?”
“It was his gloating.” How do I begin to explain this? “After she died, his rage against your family was always on my mother’s behalf. Because of the lawsuits and the way your mom trashed her name every time she could. I can’t say I felt much different. Even after accepting that what my mom did was unethical, it was still real fucking hard to see her name ground into the dirt. So I always respected my father for how fiercely he protected her good name. She’d cheated on him, yet he still protected her. I admired him for that loyalty, that dedication.”
“I understand that,” she says softly. “She was still his wife and he was defending her. The same way my mother defended my father. They each just…ignored the shitty cheating parts and clung to what was good.”
“Yeah, well—it took me a while to realize that it was never about defending her. The lawsuits were over with, your mom is easy to block on social media?—”
“What? Why? No! Oh god.” Her eyes close and her face glows pink. “Did she leave reviews on your business page?”
“Yeah.” And her blush is damn cute. “Or she’d reply to people posting on my pages and tell them not to trust the results of my inspections, because I could be bribed.”
Her face goes a brighter red. And though it’s adorable, the depth of her embarrassment is also painful to see.
“It’s all right,” I assure her. “It was irritating now and then—I’m pretty sure that shit I said to Harris was shortly after I had to delete another of those comments—but it’s nothing at this point. I’m done with all the Hatfield and McCoy shit. I wasn’t lying when I said that I didn’t think of the Walkers much at all anymore.”
“For a long time, I didn’t think of the Knowles much, either. Aside from when Harris mentioned you, but that was just—” She shrugs, as if to show how nothing it was. “Until they moved in and my mom told me…well, all the shit she told me. Then I despised you again.”
Because she’s spent the last eighteen months dealing with the fallout. “I won’t pretend I didn’t get some satisfaction out of seeing Angela Walker come to him for help, not after all the shit she said and did over the years—or that I didn’t feel there was some poetic justice in her not having the cash to pay off the county because she’d spent it on all those lawsuits. But his gloating left a real bad taste in my mouth. Partially because gloating when you’ve so clearly won is just shitty behavior?—”
“This, coming from a man who shouted ‘fuck yes’ when I finally laughed.”
I grin, because I’m still feeling good about that. “Spontaneous celebrations are exempt.”
“If you say so.” But she looks as if she’s close to laughing again. “I interrupted you. Go on. You were saying his gloating was shitty.”
“That was part of it. The rest was because he always went on about defending my mother. Protecting her name. But while he was gloating, every fucking word out of his mouth was about destroying everything your father once owned, everything he’d cared about. That’s what was getting him off. I realized then, there was no loyalty to my mother. For twenty years, he hated your father, but it wasn’t because your dad stole my mom from him. It wasn’t because your dad ruined his marriage or his happiness or broke his heart. Your dad stole his pride, and my father couldn’t fucking deal with that.”
“Oh,” she says softly. “You think he felt emasculated when she ran off with my dad?”
“Yeah. So when that man’s wife came asking him for help, he razed everything that man ever had to the ground and finally proved he had the bigger dick. And as unbearable as he was to be around before, he was worse after. Then he married Karilee.”
That detour catches her off-guard. She stares at me for a long second before venturing, “Are you…upset that he replaced your mother?”
“Not at all. Like I said, we aren’t around each other much—even during the holidays. But he remarried this year and I felt…obligated.” There’s no other way to put it. “He’s got a lodge not far from here. They wanted to make a Christmas get-together a new family tradition, so they invited me and Karilee’s parents—and her brothers and sister. All teenagers and absolute shits.”
“Her siblings are teenagers?” She looks at me in horror. “Is Karilee that young, too?”
“She can legally drink, but yeah. He needed his ego stroked, I guess.”
“Pretty sure she’s not just stroking his ego.” She studies me. “I understand the obligation to go, though. Did you fight with him and that’s why you left?”
I wish. “Karilee tried to join me in the shower.”
“No!” Abbie jackknifes up to sitting, jaw dropped open. “Your new stepmother!? Tell me you’re joking.”
“Not a bit. She came prancing in, bare ass naked, and slid open the shower door.”
“What did you do?” She covers her mouth with her steepled hands, her eyes alight. “I’m sorry but this is the most amazingly horrible thing I’ve ever heard! It’s like a soap opera! What did you do?”
“Grabbed a towel and got the fuck out of there.”
“Did she say anything when she opened the shower?”
“‘Oops!’ But like this.” I thrust out my chest and flutter my eyelashes. “‘Oops!’”
Abbie doubles over, clutching helplessly at my shoulder as she laughs. “I-I’m s-sorry,” she manages after a minute, wiping her eyes. “It m-must have been tra-traumati-traumatizing.”
“No, I was just pissed. I packed up my shit, texted Harris and told my dad’s housekeeper I was taking his snowmobile—because even with 4-wheel drive, I didn’t trust my truck to get through the snow at that point. Didn’t say a damn word to anyone else. I just left.”
“Your dad’s snowmobile?” she echoes delightedly. “Did you wreck one of his toys?”
“I did. I’m not a bit sorry, either.” For a whole lot of reasons, but—“Mostly because coming here might be the best thing that ever happened to me.”
For the barest second, her eyes widen and she sucks in a breath. Then she laughs. “Not if I have herpes! It won’t be the best thing then.”
It was too much of a confession. And it came too fast. Because I’m getting to know Abbie Walker. I’m beginning to understand how some of her jokes are a deflection. Not all of them. Not even most of them. But when she doesn’t know what to think or how to feel.
And although I don’t fully understand what’s going on inside me—who this stranger is living in me now—I have no intention of hiding how much I like her. She’s been too fucking unappreciated by the people closest to her. So I’m not going to deal her measly little portions of praise. She’s going to know how amazing I think she is. And maybe there will come a day when her instinct isn’t to defend herself, and she can accept such a confession for what it is.
Or whatever it turns out to be.
Until then, I’ve got plenty of ways to appreciate Abbie Walker. “You’re worth the risk,” I tell her, then capture her lips. She gasps into my mouth before melting against me, her arms wreathing my neck. I take advantage of that boneless acquiescence to maneuver her onto the center of the bed, where I stretch out alongside her for a leisurely kiss and not-so-leisurely roaming of my hand.
Her tits are magnificent, her nipples a pretty pink when they’re soft and a darker rose after they’ve been pinched and teased. Her navel’s a sweet little outie, and a single spot next to her ribs is ticklish enough that the brush of my fingers makes her squirm and laugh into our kiss. Her auburn bush is neatly trimmed into a landing strip—though I wonder if it was before yesterday. She might keep it tidy for herself, but I also might not be the only one who shaved. I’ll need to do it again soon. I ought to do it now. Her chin is already reddened from my stubble. My razor twice a day, from now on.
That sounds like a good schedule for eating her pussy, too.
She’s about ready for my mouth. My fingers slip down between her clenched thighs, where her pussy’s already dripping. She moans a broken stutter into our kiss when I begin playing with her clit, circling and teasing, my fingertips so wet they might as well be a tongue.
“Your choice, Abbie girl,” I tell her, my voice roughened by hunger. “You want my mouth kissing you up here or down there? I’ll make you come either way.”
Her face screws into a grimace, as if I’ve asked her to make the most difficult decision of her life. She’s locked in that monumental internal struggle for ten endless seconds before she finally bursts out with, “Down!” Though once decided, she fully commits, shoving at my shoulders, helping me on my way.
I’m grinning so hard while holding in a laugh that at first I can’t do anything except rub my face against her cunt, coating my lips and chin with her wetness and her scent. One look up the length of her torso makes my hunger come roaring back again. Because she’s watching me with heavy-lidded eyes, half-propped against the pillow with one arm cocked behind her head. Her hair’s a messy tumble over her shoulders, the tips teasing her nipples. She’s got her teeth pinching her bottom lip, making that upper lip—already swollen from my kisses—look so pouty that I feel a desperate need to make her come so that I can go back up and kiss it again.
So I hook her legs over my shoulders and dive in, adoring her taste, adoring every sound she makes, adoring the way she loses herself as she gets closer and closer. I’m forced to hold her down when her wild gyrations reach their peak—and when she comes, shaking and crying my name, there’s nothing in this world more delicious than the pulse of her cunt on my tongue.
Her hands are covering her face when I head back up, as if she needs another second to recover. I kiss her nipple, which is about as pouty and as rosy as her lip. When she finally peeks at me, I tell her, “Your thighs are the best Christmas gift I’ve ever opened.”
She laughs, and when I get to her mouth she’s still smiling. “Since I’m the one who came, isn’t it my gift?”
“Making you come all over my tongue is my gift to myself.” Just as this kiss is. Her mouth softens under mine, and I take a long slow taste. But I should have known better than to let my guard down.
Abbie reaches down and strokes her soft hands the length of my aching cock. “So making you come all over my tongue will be my gift to myself.”
“No.” My voice sounds hoarse, but only because I’m locked in a battle against the need to fuck myself into her grip like a mindless brute. But I don’t fight anything else, rolling onto my back to let her do as she likes to me. “This’ll be my present, too.”
“So greedy,” she says, kissing her way down my chest. “You get all the presents?”
“Yeah. Because I’m bigger than you.”
She presses her face into my abdomen and laughs. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, my brain is short-circuiting.”
“What could possibly be distracting you?” she asks, then licks the underside of my shaft from balls to tip. “Are you thinking of how this monster felt when you shoved it inside me?”
I was only thinking of her tongue and how I’m not going to last even two minutes—but now I’m thinking of being inside her, too. So I’ll probably last only one minute.
“But there will be no getting into me yet.” She gives the head an open-mouthed suckling kiss, coaxing a drop of pre-cum from the slit with her tongue, just about killing me. “We’ve already used two condoms and we’re only at the beginning of the first day.”
“I can’t count to two right now, Abbie girl,” I groan. “Unless you count my two balls that will explode before you begin sucking, the way you’re teasing me.”
“I’m just pointing out that it’ll be easier to ration if we use our mouths and hands more often.”
“Is that what’s happening? Rationing?”
Abbie’s answer is to ruthlessly use both her mouth and her hands for a glorious five minutes, then swallow every drop when I come. I’m near delirious as I reach for her—but she’s already on her way back up, snuggling in against my side, letting me hold her tight.
I wasn’t fully joking when I’d said both were my presents. But I hadn’t realized how true it was. Every second with Abbie seems like a gift. Every touch. Every word.
That’s never happened before. I’ve dated but have never been in a relationship that went beyond casual. I’ve sure as hell never before wanted to spend time with someone like I want to with Abbie.
The same is even true of my friends. I enjoy spending time with them—Harris, a few others—but I never feel like I’m missing out on anything when they’re not around. I get along by myself too well, and it’s always a bit of a relief after being out with them when I’m on my own again.
Yet I feel like I might miss out when I’m not with Abbie. Her every word. Her every expression. I want to hear and see them all. And I might wonder what the hell she has done to me, but I’m beginning to suspect that the real question is?—
What the hell am I going to do when she’s done with me?
Because Abbie might be done the second this vacation is over. She joked about remaining enemies because she can’t so easily discard so much baggage, but it’s no joke that she’s got twenty years of shit to work through, plus all that she recently discovered about her mom lying to her. And being isolated here with me will be a lot different than being with me back in the city, where her mom and sister will rip her to shreds simply for associating with me, let alone allowing me to stick my cock inside her. So when Abbie leaves here, it’ll be a hell of a lot easier for her to just tell me we’re done—tell me that I’m nothing more than a holiday fling—than deal with the very real shit that will inevitably come from our being friends. Or more than friends.
And I wouldn’t blame her. Hell, I don’t want her to bear the shit that would come her way. Not after everything she’s already had to take.
And yet…I’m not giving this up. Not giving her up. Even if I don’t know yet what it is that’s making me hold onto her so tight. I’ll do anything necessary so that she won’t end this. So that being done with me will be harder than bearing whatever comes next.
I just wish I had a single clue about how to make her desperate to hold onto me, too.