Hard Time (16 page)

“Even faster.”

He strummed my clit, setting my body humming.

“Eric.”

“I can smell you.”

I folded around him, pressing my face into the crook of his neck, gripping his hair.

“Next time,” he breathed. “Next time you come on my dick.”

As the orgasm began blooming, I imagined it. All that slick, hard heat hugged inside me. His own excitement, that cock gripped in a tight fist as he pulled out, lost himself all over my belly or breasts. Explicit, possessive things.

“Moan for me,” I whispered, teetering on the edge.

He did as I asked, his deep voice right behind my ear, his throat humming. His fingers circling, circling.

“Like you’re coming.”

He gasped for me, grunted deep in his chest. His hips flexed beneath my thighs, and when he spoke, I unraveled.

“Here I come,” he murmured, and I pictured just that. Just as he’d done, not five minutes earlier, and I felt it all. The snap of the tension, the free fall, the plunge. The surge and crest, surge and crest, until I went still, trembling against his chest, hips ground raw.

His fingers were gone, both palms whispering over my sweat-damp back as I caught my breath.

“Good,” he told me. “Good.”

I pulled back and let him see everything I felt, no matter how flushed and crazy and rabid looking it’d left me. He smoothed my hair away from my face, twisting it into a coil, letting it tumble loose.

“All right?” he asked, and the tenderness in his voice broke my heart, officially.

“So much better than all right.”

He smiled at that. “Me, too.”

My calf was threatening to cramp, so I shifted to sit beside him, arranging a pillow at my back. He took my hand, linking our fingers atop his thigh.

I sighed for the entire city to hear, dropping my head back against the wall.

“Well said.”

I turned to grin at him, giddy when he grinned back.

After a long, dozy silence, he urged me to lie down with him, curling his body around me from behind. All that possession I’d fantasized about just as I came, only so tender, this way.

He froze with a deep breath, then asked, “Can I stay the night?”

I blinked at the dancing shadows of my room, surprised. “Of course you can.”

He buried his face against my neck, body going utterly slack, and he growled, “Good.”

“I wouldn’t dare send you back out into the cold. Not after that.”

“Can I take you someplace for breakfast tomorrow morning?”

“Sure. Or I could make pancakes or something.”

He
hmmm
ed happily at that. “Homemade pancakes. Jesus, it’s been ages.”

“Then we could stay inside and drink too much coffee. And get to know each other, nice and lazy. Oh—unless you have to work.”

“Only if it snows again. And it’s not supposed to.”

“Oh good.”

He pulled away, sitting up a little so he could catch my eyes. “So you really do want to get to know me better.”

I nodded. “Sure I do.”

“Does that mean . . . I dunno. What does that mean? Are you over the things that freaked you out about me?”

“I’m getting there. I forgive you for not telling me about your release, when you knew. As for the assault . . . I don’t know how I feel about that. I don’t know that I’ll ever understand it. But I don’t think it scares me anymore.”

“That’s something.”

I frowned, lips pursed hard enough to tingle.

“What?”

I twisted around to face him. “If we were ever . . . You know. An item.” My face went warm. Funny how naming that possibility could feel so vulnerable, after everything else we’d bared to one another tonight. Did people even say that anymore? An
item?

“Yeah?” he prompted.

“If a man did to me what that guy did to your sister—”

Eric instantly looked horrified.

“Sorry. I don’t want to imagine it, either. But just
if . . .”

“Would I fuck him up?”

I dipped my chin in a nervous little nod.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah I would. If that ever happened and you weren’t even my woman, just my friend, or my ex? Yes. I’d do that.”

“What if I asked you not to? Could you promise me you wouldn’t?”

That one really, truly stymied him. His gaze dropped to my chin, brow creasing.

“Eric?”

He met my eyes. “I couldn’t promise that, no.”

A little something went dark inside me, even as something else sparked hot. This man would avenge me, to the death. A thought as fierce and reassuring as it was disturbing.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I know that’s what I’d do.”

“If we were together, your freedom would mean more to me than another man’s punishment.”

His expression matched my own feelings—stubborn confusion, frustration, and everything so much bulkier and tougher to process with the sex haze still making us stupid.

“What would you gain from assaulting him?” I asked.

“It’s not what I get, or what I need. When I did what I had to, for my sister . . . The kind of man who’d do that to a woman, no sentence can fix what’s fucked up inside him. He’d have to be an animal to do that. And an animal won’t understand regret the way the prison system thinks he should . . . But he’ll understand two pounds of metal in another man’s fist, hell-bent on beating the life out of him.”

I winced.

“I know you can’t stand to hear that,” he said, stroking my hair. “But I hid enough from you already. From now on I’m laying it all out, ugly as it is.”

“I appreciate that. I think. But my daddy’s a state trooper. And a good man. So I refuse to believe the system’s completely broken.”

He laughed softly. “Jesus Christ. A trooper? Well, I’m fucked. Never getting
that
blessing.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

He sighed. “I’m not going to lie to you, not about what I feel. And as far as I’m concerned, any man who does what that asshole did to a woman has that coming to him, from her husband or her brother or her father.”

Her father.
My father. Thank God I’d never had to find out whether that good, upstanding lawman was capable of Eric’s brand of justice.

“Let’s not talk about all that,” he said, tone softening. “Let’s keep talking about pancakes and shit.”

I nodded. It wasn’t as though these worries might ever materialize, down the road. And it wasn’t as though we even knew if there would be a him-and-me, down the road. The fact that he was holding me now, that our impossible affair had somehow tunneled out from under those ten-foot walls and become this—our two bodies warm and spent in my bed—wasn’t anything I ever could have predicted.

And I didn’t want to waste this miraculous present, worrying about a future that might never arrive.

I turned back over, enclosed in strong arms and male heat. Wrapped in a body that offered me everything a man could, be it pleasure or desire or the darkest depths of loyalty and honor. Wrapped in uncertainty and inevitability. Wrapped in everything good and bad, beautiful and ugly, black and white and gray. And green.

Everything that made a man worth loving.

Everything that made a woman run. Into his arms, or out of his reach.

“Hey.”

The world inside my eyelids was dark pink, and I peeked through those curtains to find the man from my fantasies sitting up beside me in bed. He was cross-legged, sheets and blankets pooled around his waist. And goodness, he looked nice there.

“Morning,” I mumbled, wary of my breath and not wanting to waft its offense at my bedmate.

“Morning yourself. I was going to shower, unless you need to get in there first.”

“Oh, let me brush my teeth. Two minutes.” Leaving the covers, I felt a weird mix of self-conscious and seductive as I skirted the bed, naked. The drapes were closed, but light still leaked in from their crack and from the hallway. I shot Eric a look over my shoulder, admonishing the way he watched me.

“Take your time,” he said, a smug half smile on his lips.

He was still sitting up when I returned from my freshen-up, and he watched as I pulled on panties, a bra, yoga pants, camisole. I stared right back as I slipped into a cardigan and flipped my hair from under the collar. I put my hands to my hips.

“Two can play that pervert game,” I told him, awaiting my free show.

He smiled at that and drew the covers aside. All the mischief left me then, just to see this beautiful man, naked in my room. Tall and strong and handsome and, for however long it was meant to last,
mine.

As he passed me, he let our arms touch, his hand catching mine, and he gently turned me around as he moved toward the door, our fingers finally slipping free. My attention caught on his back, on black ink.

“Wait, come back here.”

I made him sit at the edge of the bed and I went to the curtains, drawing the heavier ones back, the sheer layer underneath letting in the dawn light but preserving our privacy.

I knelt on the mattress behind him. “I’ve been wondering what your tattoos were . . .” The one between his shoulder blades was as big as both my palms, a pair of feathered wings flaring out behind some kind of crest, a ribbon woven through it all, with writing. It was more illumination than motorcycle gang, and I traced the Antiqua-style letters. “‘Thicker than water.’ That’s quite appropriate, for you.”

The design flexed with his shrug.

“Did you get this in prison, or before?”

“Before.”

“And what’s the other one?” I shuffled on my knees and turned his shoulder toward me. A staggered stack of words, a trickling river of script.
Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Blood ties and vengeance. Of course. “They’re very . . . you, I’ll give you that. And I’m selfishly glad neither of them is some other girl’s name.”

He shot a smile over his shoulder. “Jealous?”

“Maybe a little.” I traced the ribbon drawn across his back one more time. “They’re pretty. You picked a good artist.”

“I’d get rid of them if I could.”

My hand dropped. “Really? How come?”

“I got them when I was twenty, twenty-one.”

I wondered if perhaps his time served had contradicted these words, if perhaps blood hadn’t proven especially thick in his family, not thick enough to stand by a man through a five-year sentence . . . ? Maybe not. Who knew?

“They’re still nice,” I told him.

“Glad you think so . . . Just feels like they belong to a guy who doesn’t exist anymore. Some dumbshit kid who had no clue what those things meant.”

“Like a bad omen or something?”

He shrugged again, the muscles between his shoulders bunching. “Nah, nothing that superstitious. I just feel like, I’m never going back to being that kid, the one who thought that stuff—loyalty and blood and all that—was just some crap to get inked across his skin.”

“I think I understand.”

“They’re not bad, I guess. They just belong to someone else now.”

I studied his skin, a trace of that golden tan lingering even as the New Year approached. I pressed my winter-pale hand to his back. “What’s your lineage, anyway?”

“Bunch of stuff. Mostly French Canadian and German on my dad’s side, and my mom’s half Puerto Rican, half Irish.”

“That’s quite a mix.” Complex, just like him.

“Bit of everything . . . Ignorant as they might be otherwise, I’ll give my family that much—they’re color-blind.”

I wished I could say the same of mine. My parents would
never
say anything intolerant aloud, and they were both way more evolved than the generation who’d raised them . . . But old biases persisted.

As Eric stood, I let my fingertips trail down his spine, then watched his ass as he strode to the door. I flopped back across the rumpled covers, and listened as the water came on.

There’s a felon in my shower.
There’d been a felon in my bed. In my
body
. But it was so easy to forget how we’d met, taking it minute by minute. And thank goodness. If this was going to be something, I needed to focus on the future—not the place we’d met or the mistakes he’d made to get there.

He doesn’t see it as a mistake, though.

I got up and headed for the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. If I’d welcomed him into my bed, I had to have gotten at least halfway past the cavernous divide between Eric’s actions and our two disparate lenses for viewing them. I had to be, or else whatever this was didn’t stand a chance. And it deserved a chance. Eric deserved a chance.

It was as I clicked the basket into place and hit the On switch that I found a way around the problem. A philosophy to trump his righteousness and my misgiving.

If he hadn’t done that, I’d never have met him.

I wouldn’t have gotten my sexuality back for who knew how long. Wouldn’t have felt alive as I did now. Wouldn’t have felt all those wonderful things with him, last night in bed.

Maybe I didn’t approve of what he’d done . . . but I’d be a liar to deny that I was grateful for it, in my own selfish way.

I pulled out pancake ingredients, pleased to find I had everything. I heard the bathroom door open, heard Eric’s footsteps creaking through my bedroom. He appeared shortly in the kitchen threshold, dressed in yesterday’s clothes.

“Have a seat,” I said, waving to my little table by the window. “How do you take your coffee?”

“Cream and sugar, if you have it.”

I made him a cup, hoping it was a million times better than prison coffee. I wanted to spoil him today, in every way possible.

He sat just as he had back in Cousins during Book Discussion, legs spread wide and lazy, and it felt like August all over again. My heart soared as he took a sip and shut his eyes, pure rapture in his smile.

“Strong enough?”

“I haven’t had coffee this good in forever.”

“When’s the last time you had pancakes?”

“When I got out.”

My shoulders slumped. “Oh, darn. I was hoping I’d be your first time for everything.”

“Sorry, my mom and sister beat you to it.”

I found a whisk and beat the batter in a plastic bowl. “Did they meet you, the morning you were released?”

He nodded. “They brought my truck, with some furniture to fill out the apartment I’d gotten hooked up with. A bunch of old clothes, not that they fit anymore—I was still a wiry kid when I went in. We went to IHOP.”

“What’d you order?”

“Sausage. Two sides of sausage.” He smiled at the thought. “The meat in prison is disgusting.”

“I’ll bet. What else?”

“Pancakes, eggs, butter on everything. But the coffee wasn’t half as good as this,” he said, raising his cup. “Or maybe everything just tastes extra good this morning.”

“And why might that be?” I asked coyly.

He smirked, eyes narrowing, and patted his thigh. “C’mere.”

I set the bowl aside and dusted my hands on a dishrag. I sat on his leg, feet between his spread ones. Warm palms ran boldly down my waist, over my hips.

“Thanks for last night,” he said quietly.

“Thank
you
for last night.”

“There’s no way I can tell you how much that . . . how important that was, to me.” He looped his arms around my middle and rested his chin on my shoulder.

I felt vulnerable in the nicest way, naked and protected at once. “I’m so . . . I’m so grateful, I guess, that you waited for me. Or flattered. Or something. That whatever you feel for me, it was strong enough to be worth waiting for.”

“You know how I feel about you. I told you last night, at the bar.”

I’m in love with you.
I’d barely let myself absorb his words, but I’d felt the truth of them, spoken between our bodies. I wasn’t ready to say them back. I didn’t yet know if they accurately named what I felt for him. But I could bask in having been told them, at least.

He spoke, breath warming me through my sweater. “You will let me see you again, right?”

I stroked his hair. “Yes, of course I will.”

He pulled at my collar, exposing my bare shoulder and kissing me there, then bade me to stand with a soft pat on my butt. I was cooking a man breakfast, obeying his orders to sit on his lap and getting patted on the butt. It would’ve been kind of ridiculous, if I weren’t so damn crazy about him.

“I wish I could afford to take you someplace nice,” he said as I went back to cooking.

I ran a melting pat of butter around the pan. “I don’t care. There’s not any nice places in Darren, anyway.”

“Someday, though. I’ll save up and take you somewhere good. For Valentine’s Day, maybe.”

I smiled at him, ladling batter into pools with a soft sizzle. “I like the places you took me last night. Without us even leaving my bed.”

His cheeks went ever so slightly pink, his grin bashful. “I liked those places, too.”

“Don’t you look shy?” I teased. “You, the man who tricked me into writing dirty letters for him in a room filled with convicts.”

He laughed. “I only tricked you that first time. You can’t act innocent about all the stuff that came after.”

“You still going to write me love letters, now that you’re out?”

He made a game face. “If you want me to.”

“You could email me over Christmas while I’m in South Carolina. Tell me everything I’m missing out on, being away.”

“I will.”

I grinned, turning the bubbling pancakes over. “What are you doing for Christmas, anyhow? Driving home to see your family? And where is home, again?”

“Kernsville.”

“Right.”

“It’s about twenty miles past that lake we parked by. But it depends on the weather. If it snows and there’s extra work I could pick up, I’ll stick around here. Holidays pay double. I don’t really want to head home, anyhow. My dad always seems to turn up, and I don’t really feel like dealing with him. Not yet, at least.”

“You haven’t said much about him.”

He shrugged. “He’s still married to my mom, but it doesn’t mean anything to either of them.”

“You said your sister takes after him. What word did you use? Wild?”

“Yeah. He’s always up to something. Always waiting for some check to show up, or some scheme to come through. He’s not the worst man in the world—never hit my mom or us kids, and he’s more of a dipshit than an actual leech. But he’s no sort of role model, either. He’s a loser, basically. Lazy. Ignorant.”

“Bummer.”

“He’s just how they make them, back home.”

“You’re not, though.”

“I used to think I wasn’t . . . but come on. I was incarcerated. Kind of wrecks any upstanding cred I’d built up, always staying employed and relatively sober.”

“What did you do, before Cousins?” I asked him. “For work?”

“Whatever I could get. Construction, demolition. Security. Drove a truck for a lumber company for a couple years. Whatever paid half-decent money and kept me outside some, and didn’t require a diploma.”

I handed him a plate with two pancakes, delivered the syrup bottle and butter dish, found us silverware. I put the third pancake on my own plate and sat down, our knees brushing under the small table.

“Made me nuts,” he went on, “the times when I couldn’t find work for a week or two, back home. I hated some of my jobs, but I never understood how anybody could stand it, just sitting around doing nothing.”

“Me, too.” I thought of Justin, twenty-eight now but probably still sixteen at heart, wasting entire weekends drinking and playing video games with his buddies. And how many hours had I sat there, spectating, bored half to death?

Eric said, “That had me more nervous than anything, about getting released—what the fuck I’d do if I didn’t have something lined up. If I’d get stuck back home, having to crash with my mom or sister. And how awful that’d feel. Like I’d forfeited all that time
and
wound up worse than where I’d left off. Or like everybody would look at me like I was going to turn into my dad—a waste of space.”

“Thank goodness for your work release supervisor, I guess.”

“No lie.” He sponged at his syrup with a forkful of pancake. “It’s been hard. For my family, after five years, my getting parole is like the finish line to them. The goal. For me it’s just the beginning.”

“And what are
your
goals?”

His eyes went to the window as he chewed, the morning light making them look like the syrup, sweet and maple brown.

“To work my ass off, to start. Get through the winter and see how this job goes, once I’m actually getting to do landscaping. Get good at it. Get
real
good at it, and I dunno. Just see where it takes me. Maybe I’ll see about getting some certification. Though I probably need my GED first, and I never managed to pass that while I was locked up. Not even close. I don’t think I ever even made it halfway through before the time was up.”

“They offer GED programs tailored to people with all sorts of special needs.”

He smiled, looking embarrassed. “Special needs? Christ.”

“You know what I mean. For dyslexic students and people with ADHD, and even for dysgraphia. I think you need proof from a doctor though, to qualify. But that’s not such a hurdle.”

“Nah, probably not. Not if I want better work certification. It costs a couple hundred bucks for a professional landscaping course and it’s probably all stuff I’ll learn on the job anyhow, but if it means I might make more money down the road . . . could be worth it.”