Chapter 36 Stormy #4
The bar. The plan. Ron. The gun on the nightstand.
The hot pink shirt bunched up around my chest. All of it drops into a white silence and the only thing left is Tex's mouth, hot and wet and impossibly thorough, and the sound I make is not quiet.
It bounces off the new walls and the neon beer signs and fills the empty room with the evidence that I am alive and being loved.
He takes me deep because his mouth is proportional to the rest of him, which is to say it's big, and he uses every inch of it.
His tongue works the underside, pressing flat, dragging slow, and then swirling around the tip in a way that makes my hips jerk and my hand leave the bar and find his hair.
The thick, brown, slightly too long hair that falls across his forehead, and I grip it.
He groans around me and the vibration of that groan runs through my entire body like a bass note.
"Oh God—"
He pulls back to the tip. Sucks. Hard. My spine goes rigid and I'm gripping the hair of a man who is on his knees behind his father's bar doing things with his tongue that should be illegal in the state of Florida and probably are.
He finds a rhythm. Slow and deep, then shallow and fast, alternating, reading my body with the full attention of a man who has decided that this is the only thing that matters right now.
His hands move from my thighs to my ass, cupping, pulling me closer, and I rock into his mouth because he wants me to.
And I want to and wanting to is still the newest and most staggering part of all of this.
I want. Not I endure. Not I allow. I want.
I look down at him. His eyes are closed.
His lashes rest against his cheeks. His mouth is stretched around me and his hands are holding me.
His knees are on the floor of his bar and he looks like a man who is exactly where he wants to be.
Not taking. Giving. This is Tex giving me something pure that no one has ever given me—the experience of being desired by someone who is content to be on their knees.
The experience of power that isn't taken. Power that is offered.
"Tex—I'm close—I can't—"
He opens his eyes. And there it is. The thing that breaks me open every time—the look.
The soft, fierce, impossible look that says everything I desperately need to hear.
I love you and I want you and you are safe and you are mine and none of those things contradict each other.
He holds my eyes and he takes me deeper.
His hand grips my hip and pulls me forward and I'm hitting the back of his throat.
He doesn't gag, doesn't pull away, just swallows around me and hums. The vibration and the heat and the look in his eyes all collide at once.
I come apart in his mouth.
My hand is gripping his hair while my other hand white-knuckles the bar top.
My body curls forward over his head, folding, collapsing, and the sound I make is raw and wrecked and it fills the bar.
He takes it. All of it. His mouth works me through every pulse, every aftershock, his hands holding my hips steady because my legs have stopped working and the only thing keeping me upright is his grip.
He eases off slowly. A last soft kiss to the tip that makes me shudder. Then he sits back on his heels and looks up at me and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Now those sweatpants," he says, "are going to smell like sex and war paint and I think that's perfect for tonight."
I burst out laughing. I'm leaning against the bar with my sweatpants around my thighs and the hot pink shirt bunched under my arms. My legs are shaking and the man I love is on the floor smiling at me like he just won the lottery.
I laugh because what else is there to do?
What else is there to do when the world is terrifying and beautiful and you're standing in a bar being loved by someone who is impossible and enormous and all yours?
"Get up here," I say.
"I'm comfortable down here."
"I seriously doubt that. Get up, Tex."
He gets up. It takes a while because getting up is a production when you're his size and your knees have been on a hardwood floor. He groans and his knees pop and he steadies himself on the bar. I pull the sweatpants back up and straighten the shirt. Then I pull him down by his collar and kiss him.
"Your turn," I tell him.
"No baby. Not until tonight. After. When this is done and he's gone and it's just us." He kisses my forehead. "Right now, I need to go stand in a cold shower and think about income taxes so I can function like a human being for the next twelve hours."
"You're going to walk around all day—"
"Hard as a rock and thinking about you in those sweatpants? Yes. Yes, I am. It's not a new experience. I did it for an entire week when you first got here. I'm a professional at this point. I have a system. Cold water. Taxes or baseball statistics."
I shake my head, smooth down the sweatpants and adjust the shirt. Somewhere out there a monster is planning and in here, two people are choosing to be alive and ready for whatever comes.
"You look incredible," he says again, quieter this time. "Did I already tell you that?"
"I look like a flamingo."
"Kinda and I'm in love with a flamingo and God help the man from Alabama who tries to touch my flamingo."
"Come on," I say. "We've got a bar to set up."
"Yes, we do."
He follows me toward the kitchen. As I pass, he reads the back of the sweatpants out loud.
"Follow this ass to Big Tex's Roadhouse.
" He whistles low. "That is the finest advertising this bar has ever produced.
I'm serious. Over the years, I've spent thousands on marketing.
Thousands, Stormy. Radio ads. Flyers. A billboard on Route 98 that cost me four hundred dollars a month and featured a photo of me that Sheila said made me look like a hostage.
None of it has ever been as effective as you walking around in those sweatpants.
That's the whole marketing campaign. Stormy in sweatpants. Revenue doubles."
"I'm burning these tomorrow."
"I won't allow it."
We set up the bar, prep the grill, get ready for tonight. The sun moves across the sky. The bikers will be here soon. Denny and his crew. The regulars. The wall of leather and loyalty that Tex built with phone calls and trust.
And somewhere out there, Ron Jackson is making his decision.
I touch the knife in my pocket. I read the letters on my chest in the reflection of the bar mirror.
PROPERTY OF BIG TEX'S.
Come and get me, Ron.
I fucking dare you.