Chapter 5
five
Billie
When Knox opens the front door of his house the following afternoon, I immediately wish I hadn’t brought the peach pie in my hands. He narrows his eyes at the baked offering I’m holding, like I’ve brought him a dead squirrel or something.
“The hell is that?”
“I baked you a pie,” I say, stating the obvious. “It’s a little crumbled on one side because it got bumped around on the back of my horse, but it’s still warm.”
A muscle slides up and down in his throat. “I don’t want a pie from you.”
“It’s peach,” I mutter, feeling stupid.
“And?”
My cheeks smart with embarrassed heat. What was I thinking baking this grumpy jerk my favorite peach pie recipe?
I don’t know, all right? But I’m pretty sure he saved my life yesterday and it felt like I needed to say thank you.
It’s not every day someone hides a body on a girl’s behalf.
Obviously, I’ve made an egregious error, though.
Now I’m humiliated and defensive. “Don’t eat it, then!
” I shout, dropping the pie onto the porch, just to the right of the door.
The crust ruptures down the center, pieces of my forked edges crumbling off onto the wooden floorboards. “Leave it for the birds.”
Knox stares down at the pie with a clenched jaw.
I stomp past his tensed body into the house. Watching him over my shoulder, I remove my hat and set it on the kitchen table. Next, I remove my boots—and he’s still standing in the open doorway looking down at the stupid pie.
What is he doing?
Finally, he curses and bends down to retrieve the pie, glaring at me as he carries it back into the house. “Are you happy?”
“No,” I fire back.
“I don’t like gifts.”
“Well, I don’t like your attitude!”
He slows to a stop in the kitchen, looking incredulous. “You don’t like my…”
“Att-i-tude,” I sound out. “The proper thing to do when someone brings you a pie is to say thank you and offer them a slice. Not make them feel like a gigantic dumbass.”
He processes that. “Are you hungry or something?”
“I wouldn’t eat a slice of that pie now if I was starving to death.”
“Stubborn.”
“You don’t know the half.”
Shaking his head at me, he puts the pie in the refrigerator—rather carefully, in fact. When he turns back around, he points at me. “Get in the bedroom and strip.”
I don’t move.
In fact, I stomp my foot, I’m so irritated.
Knox raises a single eyebrow.
I came here to do exactly what he told me. And the second your chores are done tomorrow, you better be on my doorstep ready to bite your lip and take cock. Now that my pie has been rejected in such an unnecessarily rude manner, however, I am physically incapable of following his order.
“Maybe I should come back tomorrow when I’ve had a chance to calm down. If you come near me right now, I’ll probably just bite you.”
He wasn’t expecting that. “This is all over a pie?”
“No, it’s the way you made me feel stupid over bringing the pie!”
“Who brings a pie to the man they’re fucking to pay off a debt?”
“I do!”
“Well don’t.”
“I’ll never give you another gift as long as I live.” I pick up one of my boots and hurl it at his head. He ducks just in time to avoid it, my boot smashing off the kitchen cabinet, instead. “I’m leaving.”
“The hell you are,” he growls. “Billie.”
I’m already hightailing it to the door. Barefoot.
No hat. Knowing my temper, I’m probably going to kick out the taillight of his truck on the way down the driveway, too.
I’ve only managed to get the front door open an inch when Knox’s hand appears over my shoulder, slamming it shut.
I’m spun around and shoved up against the door, his fingers jerking my chin up, that hard body crowding in on mine.
“You came to me to make this deal,” Knox grinds out. “We fuck. Your parents get to keep their ranch. There was no fine print about me being nice.”
“What’s wrong with being nice?”
A flicker of vulnerability moves across his features, gone as quickly as it appeared. “That’s when most people start taking advantage.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No shit,” he barks, hoarse. Closing his eyes. Inhaling. Exhaling. Trying to center himself? “It’s not about the pie. It’s about you trying to get under my fucking skin, girl.”
Indignation rocks me. “I’m not trying to do any such thing!”
“You’re doing it, regardless,” he rasps, his forehead falling to mine, rolling roughly side to side, while his fingers find the zipper of my jeans. “You can’t help it.”
I bat his hands away, fighting to get free of my imprisonment between his body and the door, but I’m trapped.
In more ways than one. I don’t have enough strength to struggle free…
and I don’t have enough strength to deny that with his mouth so close to mine, the taste of his minty breath on my tongue, I’m getting that melting sensation in my tummy.
Knox unfastens the button of my jeans and yanks the zipper down.
Oh, hell no.
I renew my struggle, ready to claw his eyeballs out.
Or…something. My sudden surge of energy must go somewhere.
I’m a shaken bottle of Coke ready to explode.
And that explosion is channeled into an angry kiss when he stamps his mouth down over mine.
Taking a long hard draw of my lips, before forcing them wide for his tongue.
His texture. The flood of his hunger…he feeds it into my mouth with longing strokes.
Winding our tongues while his fingers shove down the front of my panties, taking tight hold of my sex.
My moan breaks the kiss.
Oh, my word.
To have this man’s much older hand gripping me there and kneading…
It should feel wrong.
I’m a sacrifice. Do sacrifices enjoy themselves? Should I like how he slides his middle fingers along the closed seam of my flesh with such ownership? Such familiarity?
Aren’t I supposed to be mad at him? When did I stop?
“You’re thinking too hard, little girl,” he whispers, taking my mouth in a rough, thorough kiss that is sure to leave my lips swollen.
“I’m a mean son of a bitch. I know it.” He parts my flesh with a deep rub, his fingers encountering that wetness I’ve been fretting about, a tingle spreading in my stomach, then lower, lower, and I see flashes of light on the backs of my eyelids.
“But mean or not, don’t I pet you nice?”
Air leaves my mouth in a burst. “Is…is it…”
He mashes his mouth against mine, not kissing me, just…reveling. “What?”
“Is it supposed to be s-so wet?”
A harsh sound leaves him. “Yes. For me.”
“For you,” I repeat, trembling, because oh goodness, he’s teasing his spot now that feels extra incredible. Teasing and playing with it, causing something unknown to pinwheel sharply, beautifully below my navel.
“Yeah. For me. So I can do this.” I am not expecting his middle finger to slide inside me. But that’s what it does. The whole blunt digit fills me between the legs and I gasp, his mouth swallowing the sound. Roughly.
There’s a wet squish sound in the room and I realize it’s me.
His fingers drawing in and out of my channel, seemingly getting deeper with every push, his mouth growing hungrier on mine.
Or is it mine growing hungrier on his? What is happening to my body?
The longer he presses that long finger in and out of me, the hotter I flame.
The more pliant my body becomes between his and the door, my mouth opening shamelessly wide for his tongue, mewls sounding in my throat.
“Look at me when I put this second finger in,” he says, his tone raw.
I struggle to focus on anything but the drugging power of his kiss and that continual fullness inside of me, the way he grinds the heel of his hand on my mound in just the right spot, a spot that must correspond to a live wire inside of me, because it’s snapping and sparking and…preparing to blow?
“Look at you…?” I hiccup, repeating the directive. Lifting my chin to do what I’m told, finding dark green eyes glittering down at me. Lust. “O-okay. Okay. Okay.”
I cry out when he twists in a second finger and something gives way inside of me.
He moans against my forehead and grinds that duo of digits deep. Deep. Deep.
Lifting me onto my toes.
“Put that virginity in Daddy’s hands, little girl. I’ll keep it safe.”
And there’s too much pleasure to be pain.
The pleasure is a torrent.
His hard mouth plasters to mine once more and guides me through it, making love to me with his fingers while a storm seems to rain down inside of me, soaking his hand in waves, tiny undiscovered muscles pulling tight like bow strings and releasing tension in a rush that blinds me.
It’s enormous. The feeling is enormous. It saws me in half.
My knees give out.
Knox catches me in his arms, sandwiching me between his embrace and the door.
My heart and pulse seem to race in different patterns for several minutes, my breath releasing in shallow pants against his chest. Knox is breathing hard, too, and I can feel the turgid length of him against my belly, but he makes no move to bring me to the bedroom, like he originally demanded.
Truthfully, I’d let him at this point. All of that embarrassment and irritation have left me, along with about a thousand brain cells.
When I’m able to stand on my own, Knox leaves me leaning against the door, collects my boots and hat, bringing them to me. I watch through a haze as he slips my boots back onto my feet. Stands up and perches my hat on my head, a noticeable lump lodged in his throat, just beneath his chin.
“Come back tomorrow,” he says gruffly, taking one last sweeping glance of my body with lustful eyes. “I might try and be less of a prick, if you’re lucky.”
His invitation to leave catches me off guard.
Leave…now?
After that?
But I guess I have no choice, because what am I going to do? Beg him to let me stay?
“Fine,” I whisper, opening the door and slipping out, wondering how I can go from feeling so wildly fulfilled to having a five-inch diameter hole in my chest.
That hole seals right up when I spy Knox through the front window of the house.
He’s standing in front of the refrigerator. Staring.
After a few seconds, he takes a fork out of the drawer adjacent to the fridge, opens the door and takes a forkful of pie, bringing it to his mouth.
Chewing hesitantly, then faster.
I ride back down the mountain, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.