Chapter 18 #2
“So?” He’s adorable when he’s so worked up.
“Come on.” I pat his thigh. “Don’t leave me hanging. You want to what?”
His eyes go all hot and hungry, and when he speaks, his voice is rough as gravel.
“I want to kiss you until you can’t remember your own name. I want to get my hands all over you and find out if you taste as good as I remember. I want to hear you make those sounds you made that first night, when you—”
“When I what?” I’m leaning in so hard that our faces are mere inches apart.
“When you came apart in my arms like you were made for it.”
Holy shit. Where has this Jack been hiding?
“Okay, then.” I’m so breathless now. “Good thing we’ve got a truck bed and some privacy.”
Something shifts in his expression. The careful control he wears like armor just cracks. Peels right off. And underneath he’s absolutely wrecked.
“You sure?” he asks.
Instead of answering, I grab his shirt and pull him to me.
This kiss is filthy from the start—all teeth and tongue and the taste of funnel cake and want. His hands fist my hair, angling my head where he wants it, and when I moan into his mouth, he makes a low, growling sound that goes straight through me.
“Finally,” he rasps, like he’s been holding himself back for weeks. “I’ve been thinking about this all goddamned day.”
His mouth moves to my jaw, my neck, biting down just enough to make me gasp. He’s all unleashed hunger now, the careful preacher mask completely gone. This Jack is a barbarian, a lumberjack beast who’s been hiding behind Sunday sermons.
“God, I love the sounds you make,” he growls against my throat. “You’re gonna make them all night long for me.”
When he captures my mouth again, it’s demanding, desperate. His hands roam everywhere—down my back, gripping my hips, pulling me flush against him until I can feel exactly how much he wants this.
“I’ve wanted to get my hands all over you since the moment I met you,” he says, voice rough as gravel. “Wanted to taste every inch of you. Wanted to find out if you sound as good as I remember when you come apart for me.”
I reward that awesome confession by trying to arch against him as best I can, but the stupid front seat’s cockblocking me.
“Truck bed,” I gasp when we finally come up for air. “Now.”
We fumble out of the cab like teenagers, all urgent hands and breathless laughter. Jack drops the tailgate and spreads out the blanket he keeps behind the seat—because of course he has a blanket, the Boy Scout—while I try not to combust from anticipation.
The night air is cool against my heated skin, but Jack is warm and solid when he pulls me against him. We’re surrounded by darkness and cricket songs, the kind of silence that makes you feel like the whole world has paused just for you.
“You have any idea what you do to me?” His beard scrapes deliciously against my skin.
I pull him closer. “Show me.”
I’m demanding, but he doesn’t seem to mind. His hands are everywhere—skimming up my sides, tangling in my hair, mapping the curve of my waist like he’s memorizing me. When he peels my shirt over my head, he doesn’t go slow or gentle.
Instead, he kisses me like he’s drowning and I’m air. His mouth moves over my collarbone, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses to my skin while his hands make short work of my bra clasp.
“You taste incredible,” he tells my shoulder, then bites down, making me arch against him.
I pull his head back up to mine, needing his mouth on mine again. This kiss is filthier than the others, full of promise and heat. When I nip at his bottom lip, he makes this low sound in the back of his throat that goes straight through me.
“Fuck, Jack—”
“Language,” he warns against my lips, but he’s grinning.
“If you want me to mind, make me,” I snark back.
The look he gives me is pure sin. “Challenge accepted.”
What follows is a master class in dirty talk delivered in that slow, honeyed drawl of his. Jack Carter, it turns out, has a mouth on him that could make a saint blush.
“I’ve been thinking about getting you naked in the back of this truck for days,” he says against my ear, his voice rough with want. “About laying you down just like this and tasting every inch of you until you’re begging me to stop.”
When I shiver and press closer, he continues, his hands roaming over my bare skin. “You have no idea what you do to me, walking around my house in those little shorts. I’ve wanted to bend you over my kitchen counter and show you exactly what happens when you tease me like that.”
“Jesus Christ, Jack—”
“I want to hear you say my name when I make you come.” His fingers move between my legs. “Want to feel you fall apart under my hands, then do it all over again with my mouth.”
His dirty promises keep coming in that slow Southern drawl, each more explicit than the last. He tells me how he’s imagined taking me against his bedroom wall, how he wants to watch my face when he fills me completely, how he plans to make me scream his name until the whole town knows who I belong to.
And when I give it right back to him—telling him what to do and how it feels, he just kisses me harder.
“Jesus, your mouth,” he breathes, hands stripping off my jeans. “You’ll be the death of me.”
“It’s the best way to go,” I say before he also strips me of the ability to form coherent sentences when his fingers find their mark.
He takes his time with me, calloused hands mapping every inch of skin like he’s trying to memorize me. But it’s his mouth that undoes me completely—pressing kisses to my wrists, the inside of my elbow, the hollow of my throat.
“I fucking adore your freckles,” he growls and then loves on each one, his lips mapping constellations on my skin I didn’t know existed.
When he settles between my thighs, looking up at me with those dark eyes, I nearly come apart from the intensity of his gaze alone.
“Jack—” The rest of that sentence dies on my lips because he puts his mouth on me.
He’s thorough, deliberate, using his lips and tongue like he’s conducting a symphony and I’m his instrument. Every sound I make spurs him on, and when I tangle my fingers in his hair, pulling him closer, he groans against me.
“God, you taste even better than I remember.” The rough honesty in his voice makes me arch off the truck bed.
By the time he finally heads north to kiss my mouth, I need him now. I can taste myself on his lips.
“Look at me,” he demands as he deals with the condom. “I want to see you.”
When he moves inside me, it’s slow and deliberate, like he’s savoring every second.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” he says against my ear, his breath making me shiver. “About you. How you’d feel, how you’d sound…”
“How do I sound?” My voice comes out breathless and wrecked.
“Perfect.” His hips rock against mine, finding a rhythm that makes my toes curl. “Like you’re made for this. Made for me.”
Then he pauses, his hand stilling on my hip. “Are you okay? Your joints—is this position working for you? We can change—”
“Jack.” I grab his butt, urging him on. “I’m good. Really good. But thank you for asking.”
His control finally snaps, movements becoming urgent, desperate. But even then, he never stops watching me, never stops whispering sweet, filthy things that make me arch and gasp. Make me forget my own name.
When I come apart in his arms, it’s with his forehead pressed to mine, our breath mingling in the tiny bit of space between us. And when he comes a heartbeat later, calling my name like a prayer, something fundamental shifts between us.
Afterward, we lie tangled together under the stars, my head on his chest and his fingers trailing lazy patterns on my bare shoulder.
“So.” I still can’t breathe quite right. “That happened.”
His chest rumbles with quiet laughter. “Yeah. It did.”
“Any regrets, Preacher Man?”
He’s quiet long enough for me to start to worry. Then his arms tighten around me.
“Only that we waited this long.”
I lift my head to look at him. “Really?”
“Really.” He brushes a strand of hair away from my face. “You’re not just staying in my house, Dixie. You’re not just my guest. You’re…”
“What?”
“Mine,” he says simply. Like it’s that easy. That clear. “If you want to be.”
Something warm and terrifyingly wonderful blooms in my chest. Joke, I tell myself. Deflect and keep things light. Instead, I hear myself say:
“Yeah. I want to be.”
His smile is soft and devastating. “Good. Because I wasn’t planning on letting you go anyway.”
Jack
It’s been a great twenty-four hours. The best. Red-letter day all around. The drawbridge to Dixie’s castle is at least halfway down. She’s letting me in, and I appreciate the gift.
Except something she said yesterday keeps echoing in my head, and I’m thinking I need to do something about it. There’s an opportunity here for me to fix something for her.
“I recorded my first demo when I was nineteen. Sold my first guitar to do it. My granddad’s guitar. It was this beat-up old Gibson, missing a knob, duct tape holding the pickguard on. Had his name and mine carved on the back and it was the ugliest guitar ever—but it sounded like magic.
“It felt like trading in a part of myself.”
I get out of bed carefully. After we came back here last night, she got in my bed.
I haven’t been able to stop looking at her.
Asleep she looks more peaceful, like she’s happy.
I’m planning on keeping her that way for the rest of her life.
Premature? Not from where I’m standing. The morning light catches the auburn in her hair, and I brush a strand away from her face like the lovestruck fool I am.
In the kitchen, I make coffee and sit at the table she’s cluttered with half-written lyrics and an empty bag of peanut M&M’s. Huck snores on his rug while Georgia Peach lectures at a squirrel outside the window.
I can’t stop thinking about that guitar.
About nineteen-year-old Dixie, so sure that one clean demo could change everything, willing to sacrifice something precious for a shot at her dream.
It feels mean, God, that You didn’t let it work.
Not that she quit. Dixie is relentless that way. I love her refusal to quit.
I can’t give her the recording contract she’s dreamed of, but maybe I can find that guitar.
I open my laptop and type: Nashville pawn shops 2017.
Dozens of hits populate the screen. Hundreds. That’s okay. I’ll pick one and start there.
I grab a sticky note and jot down what I know: Old Gibson. Missing knob. Duct tape pickguard. “Dixie + Granddad” carved on back. Pawned 2017-ish.
It’s a long shot. The guitar may be gone, broken, trashed. But maybe—just maybe—it’s still out there, waiting.
I try the first phone number and wait through three rings.
“Bill’s Buy & Pawn, what’re you selling?”
“Not selling,” I say. “I’m trying to find something. It’s a long shot, but—”
I tell them the story. A girl with a dream and a guitar that was part of her before she ever stepped onstage. They can’t help, but they give me the name of another shop that sells vintage instruments.
I write it down and call the next name on my list.
And the next.