Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Dixon
Knocking softly on AJ’s front door, I held the bouquet I’d driven all the way to Jackson and back for in my shitty car, missing her the whole way and wishing she was with me.
When she opened it, I pushed the frilly bunch toward her and said, “I’m sorry.”
I felt pretty clever, giving flowers to a floral artist, and that was an apt title.
AJ was indeed an artist. And I would bet money she didn’t receive them often, which was why I had to go to Jackson.
I couldn’t very well show up at the local florist’s house with a cheap handful of half-dead carnations from the Stop and Go.
If I had, something told me she would’ve slammed the door in my face.
Old country music played in her house—Shania Twain, if I wasn’t wrong—and she’d tied her hair back with what looked like the torn sleeve of a T-shirt, like a headband.
The knees of her peach sweatpants were dirty, her tank top damp with sweat down the middle, and her feet bare.
Her porch light cast a warm glow over her face and created shadows everywhere else.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the flowers from my hand, the tissue paper wrapped around them crinkling quietly. “They’re gorgeous. Where’d you get them?”
“King’s Floral in Jackson. They said they knew you, and the woman behind the counter made this specially for you.”
“Was it Kim?” she asked, and a gust of wind flowed from behind her, whipping through her hair.
I shrugged. “Dunno, but she had hair dyed the color of a purple crayon.” Looking past her shoulder, I asked, “The window guys haven’t replaced your window yet?”
AJ smiled, and her hazel eyes warmed. “That’s Kim King. She’s a sweetheart. Come in.” She stepped back to allow me in, spun on her foot, and I followed her to the kitchen. “The contractor cancelled, said he’d be here first thing Monday mornin’.”
“You know Brand owns a construction company, right? I could ask him if he—”
“Thank you. I appreciate the offer. If they cancel again, I can ask Brand for a recommendation, but I’d prefer to take care of it on my own.
” She leaned against the kitchen counter, still facing away from me, and tapped her phone on the counter.
The music stopped, and she sighed. “I’m sorry.
I must look like hell. I’ve been cleanin’ for hours.
” Pulling a glass vase from a low cabinet, she went on.
“I clean when I’m upset or tryin’ to make heads or tails of things. ”
I sat at her kitchen island and set my phone and keys on top. “I upset you.”
It wasn’t a question. I knew it was the truth, and it had been eating at me for days.
“I’m sorry about that. I was unkind.”
“No, you weren’t unkind.” She filled the vase three-quarters with water from the tap. “It’s not just our conversation the other night botherin’ me, but what you said was true, and I’ve spent the last couple days thinkin’ about it.”
“AJ?”
She plopped the flowers into the water and fluffed them a bit, watching as they fell into place, pruning a few loose leaves with her fingers, and then she turned to face me. “What?”
“You’re doin’ it again.”
“I’m not,” she argued, showing the first hint of anger I’d seen in her since I’d come back to town.
I hated that I’d made her mad, but I liked that she was showing me how she really felt.
“I’m tellin’ you what’s been goin’ through my mind.
You were right about my father. So, I’ve put some thought to what it might take for me to get over his absence in my life and let the anger and disappointment and…
Ugh.” She sighed heavily, and her shoulders slumped forward.
“Goddammit, what you said made me realize how utterly abandoned I’ve felt my whole life. ”
“I didn’t mean to make you—”
“You didn’t make me feel anything, Dixon. You simply asked a question, but now that you have, it’s got me lookin’ at things from a new angle. I’ve had to admit to myself that I’ve made a lot of choices in my life based on that feeling of abandonment.
“But some good came from it, too,” she said, “because now I know that I don’t like feelin’ that way. I don’t want to feel like I’m not worth loving, and if forgiving my deadbeat dad will cure me of that awful ache in my heart, then I want to do that.”
Slowly, she crossed her kitchen, and when she stood in front of me, I angled my chair to face her head on.
“New rule,” she said as she climbed over me and straddled my lap, resting her arms over my shoulders.
“I won’t let you off the hook so easily when I think you’ve done somethin’ wrong, and you will try to accept that what I say is true, even if you don’t believe it.
And especially if it’s somethin’ positive about you. Deal?”
I saw forgiveness shining in her eyes. When I walked in tonight, I wasn’t sure I’d find it. Apologizing for something I’d recently said or done was a new thing for me, but living one more minute with AJ pissed at me was unacceptable. And it hurt.
“Deal?” she said again.
“Deal.” I smirked. “You’re a little feisty when you’re mad.”
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
“You gonna show me more, little dragon?” Running my hands up her ribcage, I molded them over her breasts and then pushed her tank beneath them. They popped free because she hadn’t worn a bra while she cleaned, and my dick jumped to attention under my jeans.
“Dixon, I’m a dirty, sweaty Dumpster fire. I’m covered in grime and multi-purpose cleaner.”
Looking up at her, I asked, “Did you douse your tits with bleach?”
She swatted the back of my head and laughed. “No!”
“Good, then I want ’em in my mouth.” I proved it when I leaned forward and wrapped my lips around one.
AJ groaned and arched in my arms, but I held her up, and her hair brushed over my forearms behind her. She slid a hand up and pulled off her headband, then let it fall to the floor.
“Why do we always end up like this? With me straddlin’ you?”
Tightening my hands around her hips, I squeezed, feeling like I could eat her alive.
It was the reason we’d argued the other night, but something about the way she always forgave me for things I didn’t deserve to be forgiven for—the way she believed in me—settled something inside me. I felt whole in a way I never thought I’d experience.
“You want me some other way?”
“Yes,” she said. “I want you to stop bein’ so careful with me. I won’t break. I want you to show me how you really feel, and I want you to know that I’m okay with it.”
She climbed down, pulled off her tank, and held out her hand. I whipped my T-shirt over my head, tossed it, and accepted that hand, letting her drag me through her living room. Before she could lead me to her bed, I stopped her behind the couch, and she turned slowly.
I didn’t speak, but I bent her forward over the back of the couch. She let her arms fall limp but then gripped the cushions hard when I shoved my hand inside her sweats. I worked it beneath her thin panties, cupped her pussy, and she moaned loudly.
She pressed her ass back against my erection, and I began to pump and rub my hips lazily, working myself up into a frenzy with the friction from my jeans.
I hardened like bone just watching her become pliant for me like she was. She wanted to be fucked. She wanted to know the storm inside me, and I wanted to show it to her. I wanted her to feel it.
Pulling away, I gripped the top of her sweats and underwear in both hands and shoved them down her legs. She worked them off with her feet as I spread her thighs and trailed my fingers slowly toward her pussy. I dragged them between her lips, her breath sped, and she tried to fuck my hand.
“Hold on, baby girl,” I breathed, listening to the shake in my voice and letting myself give into the want I felt for her, the wild, ragged need she’d awoken in me.
Unzipping my jeans, I remembered my wallet in my back pocket and grappled for it as they fell down my thighs.
As soon as my cock was unbound, it sought her body like she was the only light in the dark.
I let it slip between her ass cheeks so she could feel me pulse and jerk as I ripped open a condom packet.
Without Shania’s dulcet tones filling the silence, the sound cracked through AJ’s living room loud as thunder.
She moaned again and clenched her cheeks.
They squeezed the life out of my dick, and pre-come seeped out and coated her soft skin.
I’d never seen anyone sexier than AJ, bent over and ready to take me, and seeing my cum marring the perfect, rounded globes of her ass made saliva pool in my mouth, but it also urged me to get the damn condom on.
When it was in place, I whispered, “Spread for me.”
Wordlessly, she opened her legs wider. I swooped my hips back, letting my cock drag over her ass, and I slipped inside her pussy, her wet, sweaty body easing the glide.
“Yes.” She begged, “More.”
She moaned and began to move and suck me in, but I thrust my cock as far inside her as I could.
Her ass slapped against my stomach, her feet lifted off the ground, and I held her where I wanted her with one hand on her back and the other pressed between her and the couch so I could rub her clit and make her wild while I fucked her.
She wanted hard, and that was what she got. I entered her over and over again relentlessly. Wrapping my hands around her full hips, every thrust was euphoric, and I had to fight hard against the urge to come.
I let it all go: the constant awareness of my family’s disappointment in the back of my mind.
The disappointment I had in myself, the anger, the sadness of a life abandoned, and the surprising joy I’d felt at finding it again.
But mostly, the fear that I’d fuck this all up.
All of it dissipated from the prison inside my head as I fucked AJ, but this time, I didn’t feel guilty about the pleasure.
This time, I let myself drown in it.
Sweat coated my skin. It dripped down my neck and chest while I worked her, and I was mesmerized by the sight of it glistening on her ass. Rubbing it into her skin with my thumbs, I gripped her hips harder, held on for dear life, and pounded inside her.
My balls slapped against her thighs, the wet heat of our bodies fused us together, and I watched our sweat catch and glisten in my pubic hair.
She slid her hand beneath her, reached between her thighs with greedy fingers, and let them slip around my balls. She cupped them in her hand and squeezed, and breath froze in my lungs.
“Avery Jane Harlow, stop that right now or I’m gonna c—”
She squeezed harder. Cum shot out of me and filled up the condom, and I shouted my release, almost falling on top of her when the sudden orgasm rushed through me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, panting and trying to catch my breath. I caressed her low back with relaxed hands, but then pulled out, holding the condom in place between the V of two fingers.
“Sorry? What for?” she asked, pushing with her hands on the couch and trying to touch her toes to the floor.
“You didn’t come.”
“No, but that was—”
“Fuck that,” I growled, and pulled her up by her shoulders and flipped her. “That ain’t who I am.”
She squeaked her surprise when I lifted her and set her bare ass on the back of the couch.
Her eyes, wide open and curious, held mine as I leaned in to steal a kiss, and I guided her back down and left her laid out over a throw pillow.
Her head hit the cushion again, but this time she watched as I hooked her legs over my shoulders and descended.
“Who’s that?” she asked, her voice all husk and heat.
“Someone who leaves his woman unsatisfied.”
“Ohh,” she moaned when I sucked her swollen sex, savoring her tangy sweetness in the back of my throat. I watched her eyes roll and her lids fall closed in ecstasy, and she slid her fingers into my hair, pressing her pink fingernails into my skull, moving me where she needed me most.
Sounds of slippery sex and sucking filled her living room as I slid three fingers inside her and curved them.
It was overwhelming, the way we fit together, the real, visceral connection. There was no high making me feel bolder than I really was or more effective than I surely had been. No, this was simpler. Better.
There was nothing shrouding or hiding AJ from me or me from her. The light on the ceiling fan above us shone down on us, and I saw every part of her.
But I wasn’t so overwhelmed that I couldn’t be in the moment with her.
For the first time in my life with a woman, I reveled in her, letting my eyes graze her soft stomach, her bouncing breasts and beautiful, perfectly round, darkened nipples.
Her thighs tightened around my head as I ate her out and took her essence inside my body, and I relished every fucking second of her stranglehold, like she was the high I’d been chasing most of my life.
Loving her was like church, no church I’d ever been to, but I wanted to pray to Avery Jane Harlowe’s altar for the rest of my damn life.
Her stomach tightened as she flexed her abdomen and tried to ride my face upside down.
The couch did all the work to hold her up, so I let my hand glide over her breast, and when I pinched her nipple tightly between my finger and thumb, she gasped.
She suffocated me as I went to town on her clit and pumped harder, my tongue fluttering madly.
Pausing to breathe, I begged, “I need you to come, AJ. I need it more than I need breath in my lungs.”
She moaned and opened her eyes.
“I need it, I need it, I need it.”
She watched me lean over her, my hair falling forward and feathering her thighs, and spit on her clit. I moved the pad of my thumb over it in unhurried, smooth circles, and I slowed my fingers inside her, but pressed harder.
I’d made a sloppy, wet mess of her pussy with my mouth. The sounds and the obscene sight of my fingers slipping and gliding in and out of her forced blood to pulse through my cock again, and thank fuck, because I had plans to make messes out of her all night long.
Looking up, I begged her one more time. “I fucking need you.”
She gasped, and her hazel eyes flashed a kaleidoscope of color before I descended again, attacking her pussy one more time with my tongue. I sucked her clit so hard that it rubbed the roof of my mouth, and she dug her heels into my back when she came, whispering my name to the night.