19. Hannah
19
HANNAH
I t would be a shame to let such a beautiful hard-on go to waste.
The morning sun peeked through the cheap hotel curtains that didn’t quite stretch across the full window. I had awoken first to find that I had kicked off the blanket in favor of wrapping my limbs around Zack’s warm body and using it for my personal space heater. Zack wasn’t up yet, but his dick certainly was.
His beautiful, beautiful dick.
The jury was still out on whether it was magic, but as far as his tongue was concerned, I had my answer.
My god, the things that man had done to me with his tongue.
I shivered, remembering, and my stomach turned warm and melty. Before Zack, I had never gotten off with anything but my own fingers or a toy, and even then a man had never been in the same room with me.
But he had done it…with his tongue, of all things. I hadn’t thought that was possible. Oral had always been a thing for me. I enjoyed the feel of it, but not the pressure. All that attention focused solely on my pussy with the expectation of a reward that I wanted to provide but couldn’t quite seem to manage.
And wow, did men ever take that personally.
Like I was ungrateful .
So, I had been a little nervous when Zack settled between my thighs like he intended to be there for awhile. But he didn’t seem at all concerned about how long it would take, or if I’d even get there at all. Like he was perfectly content to spend hours kissing me there and talking his Zack nonsense. It hadn’t felt like pressure. Only pleasure.
Cute aggression. For my pussy . What on earth .
I shook my head, smiling, and then continued to peruse Zack’s naked body in a way that would have been rude if he’d been awake—although I doubted very much that he would have minded. If there was one thing Zack Hale was not , it was shy about nudity, particularly his own. I loved that about him. It wasn’t even a sexual thing for him. He was simply comfortable in his own skin.
Of course, his body was magnificent, scars and all, so that probably helped. My eyes lingered over the angry, fresh scar that swooped under his rib, the one from his spleen removal. That had altered the course of his life, something he still seemed to be struggling to come to grips with. I had noticed his aversion to unhealthy foods and tried to accommodate that as much as I could on this road trip, but with limited fast-food options, it wasn’t easy.
But that seemed to be his personal hangup, although a common one among people who were recently spleen-less. From everything I’d read on the internet—I’d done an extensive search after he’d first told me at the rodeo—living without a spleen didn’t mean the end of everything. It was a good idea to avoid dangerous activities like bronc riding, but it didn’t have to change every factor of your life.
I made a mental note to talk to Chloe later to see if there were any mental health resources that could help him—without betraying his confidence, of course.
That could wait until we got back to Aspen Springs. Right now, I had a very beautiful, very hard dick to take care of.
I mean, my god, it was just so lovely . Thick and long, with a fat, dark pink head. I wanted to lick that vein pulsing along the underside of his length. So I did. I crouched between his legs and licked his lovely, lovely dick root to crown. I liked that so much that I did it again.
He whimpered, stirring, one hand going to my head as he murmured something unintelligible. It occurred to me that this could go badly. He might say another woman’s name. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a couple dozen to choose from. He might?—
“Hannah, baby. What are you doing?” his sleep-rough voice cut through my doubts.
“I think it’s pretty obvious what I’m doing.” A bead of pre-cum formed at the tip and I lapped it up.
Zack groaned. “God, your mouth feels so good. Do we have time?”
“We have time.” This wasn’t going to take long. Not to brag, but blowjobs happened to be a particular skill of mine. It turned out that being really good with my mouth was great for distracting men from the real issue. They were so busy with their own orgasms that they forgot all about mine.
But that’s not what I was doing now. And it wasn’t payment for last night, either. I just liked him, a lot. I wanted to make Zack feel good. Really, really good.
I slipped my lips over the silky-smooth crown of his cock and flicked my tongue over the frenulum. God, he was thick. I took the first pass slowly, enjoying every ridge and vein of cock, making it only halfway before I had to pause. I slid up again, dragging my tongue along the underside of his cock as I went, making him groan.
“Fuck, duchess, you’re so pretty with my cock in your mouth,” he muttered. He propped his arms behind his head to better enjoy the view.
With my eyes locked on his, I sucked gently on his crown. His hips bucked, pushing his dick deeper into my mouth. I took him in, and this time I got further down his shaft before he hit the back of my throat and I gagged like an amateur. But he liked that, too, and moaned in response.
My hand made up the difference I couldn’t stuff into my mouth, and I set a steady rhythm that made his dick thicken even more.
“Yes, Hannah, just like that, oh, fuck—” he hissed between his teeth. “I’m gonna come, don’t?—”
He tried to push me off, but I ignored his warning and kept going. With a shout he thrust up and shot hot bursts of cum into my mouth. I swallowed every last drop then slowly slid him from my mouth and dropped a kiss on his crown.
I followed that with a kiss on his cheek. “Get dressed, Zack. We have a horse to save.”
True to his word, Zack took the first shift driving—over my protests—but I didn’t use the time to sleep. Even when I was tired, I didn’t like wasting a long drive on sleeping. I loved road trips because it gave me a glimpse, however brief, of a place I would never truly visit.
“You’re not sleeping,” Zack accused.
“I’m fine. I slept really well last night.”
His chin dipped to consider me, and then he pulled his gaze back to the road. “Did you?” He sounded smug.
I supposed that was fair. I had slept like the dead for a solid six hours, thanks to his magic tongue. I still didn’t entirely understand it. I had given myself plenty of orgasms over the years. Not a single one of them had been like that . So…intense. It made me wonder if I was actually gaslighting myself. It was like someone spending their whole life living in Alaska, believing they knew what heat felt like, then suddenly moving to Arizona in the middle of summer.
“How did you sleep?” I asked, because I knew rest didn’t come easily for him.
“No worse than usual.”
I decided not to take that personally. Instead, I took it as a challenge. Everyone should get to experience the deep, restful sleep that came from a fully satisfied body and, by god, I was going to make that happen for him, one way or another.
He turned on the radio and spun the dial until he found something that wasn’t static. A country station, of course. That was about all there was out here. Country, classic rock, and conservative talk shows.
That same song we had already heard a million times yesterday came on again. I hummed along and watched rural Montana go by out the window. White-peaked mountains hugged the distant horizon. Mostly it was just wide-open fields with the occasional cow, but every now and then we would drive through a cluster of small houses, some in various stages of dilapidation and some as pretty as a postcard.
Regardless, I had questions. I always had questions.
“Where do you think they work?” I pondered out loud.
“Who? The people who live here?” Zack peered out my window, then out his. He shrugged. “The ranches, mostly. Gas stations, hospitals, schools. There’s probably a dollar store around here somewhere, too. And we’re close to a few different national forests and parks that might employ a lot of them.”
“A national park. That might be a fun place to work.”
“Sure,” Zack agreed. “Except for all the people.”
I looked at him in surprise. “But you like people.”
“I like entertaining them. Cleaning up after them? Not so much.”
I laughed. I had done my fair share of cleaning up after people in the library. It wasn’t always a great experience.
We passed a woman sweeping her front porch like she was teaching it a lesson. “She has oatmeal every day for breakfast,” I said. It was a compliment. “Also, her husband is a jerk.” That was self-explanatory.
Zack snorted. “Maybe he ate the last of the oatmeal yesterday and forgot to put it on the grocery list.”
I shook my head. “No. Margaret would never live so close to the edge like that. She’s got a full month’s worth of oatmeal in the pantry. I bet he forgot their anniversary.”
“Oh, her name is Margaret, is it?” Zack kept his eyes on the road, but I could see the smile lines crinkle. “All right, then. But Jimmy didn’t forget their anniversary. He used her favorite spatula to unclog the toilet, and now she can’t look at it the same way anymore.”
“No!” I squealed, laughing. “Why would he do that?”
“He swears it’s clean now,” Zack said, completely straight faced. “But she says it’s tainted. And it still smells like shit.”
“Ew! No!” I covered my mouth with my hands, still laughing so hard my eyes stung.
“It’s her special spatula, the one she uses to mix up the batter for cakes and waffles.”
“ Zack ,” I wheezed.
We were long past Margaret and Jimmy’s house now, but eventually we passed another row of houses, and we made up stories for them, too. I had always been like this—or, at least, I had been like this ever since I’d left the compound and realized that people led all sorts of lives that I had never considered. I wasn’t all that interested in the big adventures or the shattering catastrophes; it was the mundane parts that fascinated me the most because that’s what life was, really. Ordinary moments strung together like pearls on a string, and it was only looking back, after time had polished them up a bit, that you could see how richly they gleamed.
It was funny, having an ordinary moment of my own, imagining the ordinary moments of people I would never see or probably even think of again.
But with Zack it felt extraordinary.
As planned, we arrived at the horse processing center before Reliable Trucking. That was the last thing that went right.
“What do you mean, he’s not for sale?” Zack demanded.
Mr. Biller, the manager of the operation, didn’t look like he cared for Zack’s tone. “Exactly what I said. None of these horses are for sale. They’ve all been bought and paid for, every last one of them. The horses will be branded for slaughter, and once they get through processing, they’ll be taken to the border station and into Canada.”
Zack’s eyes narrowed. “Well, that’s too damn bad, because?—”
“Thank you for your time, sir. Zack, let’s go.” I grabbed his arm, prepared to use force if necessary to get him out of there. I knew a losing argument when I saw one. We needed a new plan, and that would be hard to pull of if Zack was sitting in a jail cell for assault.
Fortunately, he didn’t fight me. He stormed behind me, looking mad enough to set the building on fire.
“This mother fucker,” he muttered. “I’m going to call the slaughter company in Alberta. Tell them I’ll pay double what he’s worth on the food market.”
“All right.” I turned in a circle, taking in our surroundings, as Zack stepped away to make the call.
There were probably close to a thousand horses here. They were in much worse shape than the horses we had seen at the auction yesterday. Thin, with a listless look to them. There were no stables, stalls, or lean-tos. Just metal pens and haybales stacked all around. Not a whole lot of people, either. The horses were left to themselves. Anyone could walk right up and pet one.
Or take one.
“Fuck!” Zack slapped his phone on his thigh. “No one is answering.”
A truck pulled up with more horses. I lifted my hand to my forehead to shield my eyes from the sharp sunlight and squinted at the emblem on the driver’s door. It wasn’t Reliable Trucking.
Zack went back to trying to call the slaughter company. I kept watching. A plant employee meandered over to help unload the horses. The back of the truck was lined up with what looked like an old shipping container, which opened up into the horse pen. The horses ran out of the truck, through the shipping container, and into the pen. The employee threw in some hay and disappeared.
Interesting.
“Zack,” I said.
“They’re still not picking up. What the fuck? Who is in charge of this shit show?” Zack ranted. His shoulders slumped as his anger faded to hopelessness. “I really thought we would win. I thought we would save him.”
“We haven’t lost yet. I have an idea.” I tapped my chin. “WWEPD?”
“WWEPD?” Zack repeated. “What does that mean?”
A smile spread across my face.
“WWEPD. What would Essie Price do?”