44. Pleased As Punch
FORTY-FOUR
Pleased As Punch
Lillian
“U p, baby,” Harry ordered.
I slid up, sucking the length of his cock as I did so, and swirling the head with my tongue before I let him go.
I was going to move over him. I knew his sounds. I knew I’d gotten him close. And getting him close got me close.
So it was time to take my favorite ride.
“Hold there,” Harry said.
This was new.
I stilled and looked up at him, lazed naked in all his glory against the pillows propped up on my headboard, his long legs cocked and wide open.
Then I looked down, because his arm moved, and I watched Harry wrap his hand around his pretty cock.
I was on my knees between his legs, but I still squirmed as I watched him begin to jack himself.
“Oh God, Harry,” I breathed, eyes glued to the action.
He slid down in the bed, and so I didn’t interrupt any of this goodness, I scuttled out of the way.
Then, his voice thick, he commanded, “Climb on.”
He didn’t mean his dick.
I might have broken a record crawling up the bed, turning and hitching a leg over his head.
I settled over his face, positioned to see his body.
Harry curved his other hand warmly on my thigh, pulled me down and immediately started eating me.
That was when I rode his face.
He did all the work, between his legs and mine.
There was a fabulous pause in the festivities when I watched him come and felt him do it as he groaned into my pussy.
And then both his hands came to my hips, and he pulsed me down as he ate me out until I climaxed magnificently on his face.
He lapped as I rocked against his tongue while I came down.
Then he pulled me off, set me in bed, kissed my shoulder, and rolled the other way to take his feet and hit the bathroom to clean up.
The dogs followed him.
I settled in by curling up until he got back.
God, that was hot .
I grinned to myself.
One thing I’d learned for certain, Harry did like control.
And I liked how Harry controlled things.
He was very imaginative.
Harry came back with the dogs bustling around him, and I uncurled so we could do what we always did post-nighttime sex.
Turn the lights off and snuggle in under the covers.
It was Sunday night.
Friday afternoon, Leland Dern had been arrested for criminal stalking and harassment. He was still in Fret County jail because our courts deferred bail hearings until weekdays.
With the gate open to Harry sharing more (though, not all) about his work (and I promised I’d never breathe a word to anyone), he’d begun to share more.
This being, Dern flatly refused further comment on the situation surrounding my parents’ murders, denied knowing all Karl Abernathy had gotten up to, and vehemently denied the criminal stalking charges and using his deputies to pursue that behavior.
So that was that.
For now.
He still had to answer for his current charges, and that had MP in an uproar, though, not a bad one. Most folks were in fits of glee to see Dern answering (again) for his shenanigans.
I was one of them.
Harry had elected not to tell Willie’s mom just how hot the water was that Willie was in. I’d heard nothing from him since the first call (then again, I’d blocked him, but in looking at my history, no blocked calls had come in either).
And everything else was in a holding pattern as they searched for Karl Abernathy.
They had an APB on him, but so far, no luck.
As for the rest of it, since Harry couldn’t be intimately involved in that case because of me, Harry took the weekend off.
We had Jawa witches in the yard, and they surrounded a cauldron that produced smoke from a smoke machine situated inside. The porch was strung with orange lights, the bats hung on the outer wall, with more hanging from the ceiling of the porch. And the porch steps were strewn with a variety of shapes, sizes and faces of white jack-o’-lanterns with orange interiors and lights on timers.
It kicked Halloween’s ass.
It was the best decorated house on the block.
So much so, that day, I noticed not only Ronetta, but my neighbors on my other side, Allen and Susan, had been to Kimmy’s, and they’d ramped up the Halloween goodness in their decorations.
I was sure this was Kimmy’s ploy, but you didn’t make a go of a holiday store in a town the size of Misted Pines without deploying some strategy to keep sales going, so more power to her.
We’d spent that day at Jenna and Trey’s, watching football and stuffing ourselves with chips and dips and other football fare.
We’d spent that evening like the one before. With dogs lazing around us (on floor and couch), Harry watching football with his feet on the ottoman and my head in his lap while I played a phone game.
It was chill.
It was fun.
Even the cleaning and laundry I did on Saturday was both, because Harry helped. He swung a mean vacuum, and he was really good at folding clothes (specifically T-shirts—so good, I redid my entire T-shirt drawer in the way Harry folded).
Oh, and we popped by his place so he could pack more stuff to bring over, which meant his dad was smiling ear to ear our entire hour-long visit. I thought this was sweet, but I didn’t get it or Harry telling him, “I don’t want to hear it.”
I didn’t ask.
I expected dads and sons had secrets, and if he wanted to share his, he would.
I needed to hit some shops to find a cozy-country-cottage-chic dresser for him, but I’d find time to do that during the week.
For now, it was all good.
I knew it wouldn’t last. Mondays were Mondays for everybody, and Harry’s was probably destined to be less fun than most people experienced.
But he’d had a great weekend. The edginess had leaked out, he was relaxed, quick to smile, same for laughter.
So I felt like I’d done the best work I could to help him face the next day.
“Sleepy?” he asked after he’d collected me under the covers in the dark room.
“Mm,” I hummed in affirmative. “You?”
“Yeah, sweetheart.”
I cuddled closer, mumbling, “Trust you to make sex hot by taking care of yourself, and me, with no penetration the day after I got back on the pill.”
And yeah, we also swung by the pharmacy so I could take care of that, and Harry could ditch the condoms.
His chuckle was soft. “There was penetration this morning.”
“Mm,” I hummed again.
“And last night. Twice.”
“Oh right,” I muttered like I forgot (which I did not ).
“I could delete what we just did from our catalogue.”
I pulled my head back. “Don’t you dare.”
The chuckle from him wasn’t soft as he cupped the back of my head and tucked my face in his throat.
“Okay, baby,” he murmured, humor still in his tone.
I so freaking loved that .
I closed my eyes and gave him a squeeze. “Goodnight, Harry.”
He returned the squeeze. “’Night, Lill.”
One of the dogs sighed.
And I fell asleep.
“Lilly.”
I blinked.
It was dark.
I felt my hair tucked behind my ear, then a finger slid down my jaw.
“Lillian.”
I opened my eyes.
I did not see what I expected to see.
Harry waking me for some midnight hanky-panky.
He was standing beside the bed, and the room was in shadow, but from what I could see, it seemed like he was fully clothed.
I got up on a forearm. “What’s happening?”
“Callout, Lill,” Harry told me. “I’ve got to go. Be back as soon as I can.”
Callout?
My groggy mind wasn’t computing.
It finally hit me, my man was the sheriff, and that wasn’t a nine to five, Monday through Friday job.
“Okay, honey,” I mumbled, then offered, “Do you want me to get up and make you a quick coffee?”
“Got one already in a travel mug. Just go back to sleep.”
I settled in to do as told.
He bent over me and kissed my temple.
“Is this dangerous?” I whispered.
“The threat is subdued,” he whispered back. “Just routine.”
I wasn’t all fired up about the threat is subdued part, so I focused on the last part.
“Okay, Harry, be safe.”
“Will do.”
Another kiss on my temple, and he was gone.
I didn’t know what routine meant, and I’d be finding that out as soon as Harry got home.
What I knew was, I woke up without Harry. I fed the dogs. I made some coffee. I took a shower.
And I was sitting at the kitchen table at a quarter to eight, when we were usually in line at Aromacobana.
This was when I heard the garage door go up.
The dogs got excited.
I got excited.
And we weren’t disappointed.
Harry, in faded jeans, boots, a walnut-colored sweater, over it, a shit-hot forest-green jacket with a yellow-stitched badge at the left breast and yellow shields on the arms just under his shoulders, his lustrous dark-brown hair windswept, walked in the side door.
“Hey,” I called.
“Hey, Lill,” he replied, bending to give his pups some love.
Totally liked Lill better than Lilly.
“That took a while,” I observed. “You want me to make you some breakfast?”
He went right to the coffee machine and put in a pod. “I’ve got to chat with you, shower and get to the station. Polly can run to the bakery and get a donut for me.”
My brows shot up at the donut mention, even if he couldn’t see them. He was pouring creamer in a mug he’d placed under the Nespresso spout.
He put the creamer back in the fridge before he came to me.
That was my first full look at his expression, and the first I realized he hadn’t given me his normal Harry greeting, which was kissing some part of my face (usually, he went for the lips).
He did that now, choosing my forehead.
Then he yanked a chair close and sat in it, our knees brushing.
Oh boy.
I didn’t take this as a good sign.
“I’m wondering if my guy told a fib with all that ‘routine’ business,” I remarked after he sat, and his searching eyes found mine.
“Caught,” he whispered.
Oh boy!
“I’m sorry, Lilly.” (Okay, maybe I did like Lilly better, even if he was using it while admitting a fib.) “I wanted you to sleep. I also wanted to know all that was going on before I told you.”
Great.
“So, what all was going on?” I prompted.
“Willie burned down the stables at my place last night.”
I jerked in my seat.
“ What? ” I shouted.
“Unfortunately, my dad caught him after he lit the match. More unfortunately, this for Willie, he tried to get away, Dad took out one of his tires with his shotgun, and Willie lost control of his car and hit a tree. Fortunately, he only has mild whiplash and a sprained wrist. But Dad was able to call 911 and get close to him. Not many people defy the orders of a man holding a shotgun whose barn is burning behind him, and you lit the fire. He didn’t try to make a break for it. The deputies showed. Arrested him. Took him to the hospital. Had him looked at. Then checked him out, and he’s in the cell next to Dern.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
“I called the FBI in Seattle. They’re on their way. They took off several hours ago, so they’ll be here soon. I gotta get to the station.”
“Willie burned down your stables,” I said wanly.
“Dad’s fine. Willie’s fine,” Harry assured. “The stables, though, are toast.”
“And your dad had to shoot my ex-husband.”
Yep.
Still talking dispassionately.
Harry grabbed both my hands. “He’s fine, Lillian. And he didn’t shoot Willie, just his tire.”
“Oh my God, what a moron,” I whispered, stunned, embarrassed and pissed, equal measures of all of those, but those measures were overflowing.
“This is the thing,” Harry said after shaking my hands. “He is a moron. He’s fucked right now. So fucked, he’s not going to be unfucked for a very long time. Dad is thrilled. Said it proved he was right to stay there when I fought him on it. He’s been crowing about that since I showed in the middle of the night.”
My lips parted in shock.
Harry kept speaking.
“And we were going to demolish those stables anyway. Now, the insurance can pay us to haul what remains away, and we’ll have extra to build what we wanted to put there. Although my premiums are probably going to go up after all this shit, we still made out good with that.”
I blinked.
“So, Willie kind of did us a favor,” he finished.
“He did you a favor,” I repeated after him.
“More than one. He showed his ass, now I’ve got it in a cell, and we don’t have to worry about his shit anymore.”
There was that.
The Nespresso was finishing its blurting, so Harry said, “I gotta get a move on. You okay to skip Aromacobana today?”
I nodded.
He grinned at me, and I saw it then.
Harry was right as rain and pleased as punch.
Seeing this, I started giggling.
Harry started laughing.
“I cannot wait to tell Ronnie about this,” I said, still laughing. “Can I tell her?”
“Crime will be on the official blotter. It won’t be a secret.”
“What a dope.” And I was still laughing.
Harry kept grinning at me then he came in for an actual kiss on the lips. It didn’t linger (regrettably) because he had stuff to do (understandably).
He pulled away, went to get his coffee and took it into the bathroom with him.
I grabbed my own coffee and took a sip.
Smokey showed and rested his jaw on my thigh.
I stroked his head and told him, “Daddy got a big win last night.”
Smokey’s mouth opened so he could pant, but it made him look like he was grinning.
“I know, it’s awesome,” I shared.
Smokey licked the inside of my forearm.
“Totally,” I agreed.
He kept me company while I drank coffee and only left me to follow Harry to the door after he came into the room ready to roll and gave me another kiss.
“See you later, sweetheart,” he said from the door.
“Later, honey,” I replied.
Harry left for work.
I got up and started my day.