Slide Down on Me (9 page)

“It was. Those were his initials. When we all found out, we chipped in and gave Mr. Martin a big jar of M&M’s. He was confused and we just laughed. None of us were brave enough to tell him the truth.”

Bella grimaced. “Poor kid.”

“You get the old man his flowers?”

“I did. He even smiled when I gave them to him at no charge.” She still couldn’t get over the look on Mr. Martin’s face when she’d said she wanted to take care of the cost. It was those little things that might change some opinions of her and her name. She couldn’t buy their forgiveness, but she could make small gestures of kindness and friendship.

“No charge, huh? I bet he was bowled over.”

“Yeah. You could say that. Never did understand what his wife saw in him. He was always so grumpy.”

“We always suspected it was the fact he played the trumpet. Maybe he had good oral skills.”

Bella smacked Travis’ arm. “Ewww.” Travis grabbed her hand and sucked at her palm, tickling the center with his tongue until she moaned.

“See?” he said, his breath hot against her damp skin. “Never underestimate the power of strong lips.” He folded her hand in his. “So…have you been up to your old house?”

“N-no.” Bella struggled for a second with the subject change, but caught up quickly enough. “I mean, I drove by a few times when I first came back to town, but haven’t been back since. The bank owns it and there’s a For Sale sign out front. It’s painful to see it that way. My mother loved that house.”

“We always said y’all were the Ewings of Tennessee.”

Bella laughed and nodded in the darkness. She lay back on the blanket and stared up at the stars. “Yep. I remember hearing that phrase once or twice growing up and had to ask my parents what it meant.”

They’d fashioned the Drake family home after the Southfork ranch in Texas, made famous by the television show
Dallas
. There was a Civil War-era plantation house on the property too, but it couldn’t be seen from the road and that just wouldn’t do for Bella’s mother.

Travis lay back as well, his fingers still wrapped around hers. “I’m sorry about everything, Bells.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, but thank you. I think you’re the only one who feels that way. Miles isn’t as forgiving.”

“No. He’s just jealous.”

“Jealous? Why?”

“You wanted me and not him.”

“Well, yeah, there is that, but he’s a bit older than me and I bet he’s not near as sexy as you are naked.”

“I wouldn’t know. Don’t intend to find out either.”

She turned and looked at him. He was staring up at the star-studded sky. His profile was hard lines and angles. There wasn’t an ounce of flab or fat on him anywhere. He had a physically demanding job and occasionally helped his brother with their family contracting business. Travis had no need for a gym, and though the men she’d dated before had chiseled physiques, they’d come from air-conditioned rooms full of weight machines and membership cards.

She preferred the man next to her. His body, his mind, his dirty, hard sexual tastes. “But to be honest, I don’t think you’re all that sorry either,” she teased.

“Come again?”

Bella snickered and rolled to her side. She propped her head up with her free hand. “Is that an offer?”

He rolled to face her, mimicking her pose. She loved how comfortable they were being naked with each other. In her past, after sex, she was the one to cover up. She liked it rough-and-tumble, but there had always been a small bit of embarrassment that inevitably followed such a loss of control. There was none of that with Travis. She loved being naked with him, accessible to him, ready for him.

“Not an offer. A promise. But tell me what you meant about me not really being sorry.”

She was momentarily sidetracked by the way his nipple piercings winked in the moonlight. They teased her and she considered tabling the conversation until she had a chance to satisfy the urge to taste the metal against his skin again.

“Hey,” he said, snapping the fingers of his free hand in front of her face. “Eyes up to mine, please. You’re a nympho,” he chuckled. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

“No, but no one has ever been you before either.”

“Prolly a good thing.” He tweaked her nipple and she moaned, leaned into the touch. It was gone as soon as it had come. “Tell me.”

“If you were truly sorry, we wouldn’t be going at it like a couple of animals in mating season.” She found it refreshing, as well, that she could be honest with him about what she was thinking or feeling at any given moment. Something about their arrangement, about the no-strings agreement, about the mutual desire for each other freed her tongue from restraint. She wasn’t trying to impress Travis. She wouldn’t deny that she’d love to be in his bed every night and she could imagine wanting that for the foreseeable future, maybe longer, but that wasn’t what he’d offered.

“One thing has nothing to do with the other,” he continued softly, timidly, as though he didn’t believe his own words. She called him on it.

“One thing has everything to do with the other, Travis.”

Her recent dealings with life, the way the rug had been pulled out from under her, meant she was no longer sheltered by money or name. She and Travis were on a level playing field. She no longer had a free or easy ride. And if she were honest with herself, she was coming to like it that way. Working for a living, a hot man in her life, even for a few days, gave her a newfound confidence in putting one foot in front of the other. She wasn’t going to tiptoe with him or anyone else, including herself.

“Shit, Bells.” He moved lightning-quick. She was on her back and he was straddling her in the span of time it took to inhale the air between them. “What do you want me to say?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Fine. Yes, one thing has everything to do with the other. Your current situation in life, how you’ve been knocked down several rungs and in debt to me, made it easier to approach you, easier to get what I’ve wanted since the first time I saw your wet body through a bathing suit on this very lake. It was a black one-piece, you remember? Your nipples pointed just enough to make every guy within viewing distance hard as a fucking tree trunk. It hugged your ass when you climbed up to the floating dock out there in the middle of the water, and if you laid down just right, we could all see the wet fabric pulled tight between your legs.”

“Oh God,” she groaned, aroused and humiliated by her younger self as seen through Travis’ eyes.

“You were beautiful, so sexy with your curves when every other girl was stick-thin. But you were untouchable, especially for someone like me. I was covered in dirt and grease and your mama wouldn’t have let me within a mile of you. So yeah, your circumstances make getting near you much easier.”

His words, while harsh and honest, fueled her need. He was using her, and in some ways she was using him too, and she couldn’t find it in herself to be upset or play the offended lady. They were both getting something they’d wanted for years. Each other.

She pulled her knees up and spread her legs as best she could with him straddling them. It was his turn to be surprised and his gaze widened, but only for a second. He took the move for what it was—an invitation.

He slid back, lifted her legs with his arms under her knees, and shifted until he pushed inside her. She arched and in one smooth motion, he had her heels on his shoulders. It changed the downward angle of his cock and lifted her ass slightly. She was open, vulnerable, and she wouldn’t want to be any other way. Not with him.

“It’s taking advantage, my bedding you, but I had to, Bells. You’ve teased my dick, my imagination since we were teens.”

“And the reality?”

Travis stopped and stared down. “Fuckin’. Hot.” He leaned forward and the move forced her knees in toward her chest. She felt the stretch all the way through the backs of her thighs. It also forced him deeper. “I’ve had you in ways I’d only dreamed about and not even in all the ways I want.”

Her brain latched on to that last little nugget of information and filed it away for later. At the present, though… “Tell me more.”

“Insatiable girl,” he said.

Her stomach flipped at the affectionate tone of his voice and then flopped over again at the words that followed and the hard, plowing motion of his hips. He drove into her, pulled out, over and over, punctuating his thoughts with sexual exclamation points.

“I want you under me, over me. I want to be behind the counter in the flower shop with my mouth pressed against your pussy. I want to bring you to the garage and put you on your knees with my dick in your mouth. I’m pretty sure I can work like that. More?” he asked as he lowered her legs and wrapped them around his back.

She wiggled and readjusted herself beneath him, and he touched his chest to hers, his lips to her ear. He never stopped moving inside her. “Spank you with a thick rubber belt from a car, leaving grease tracks on your pretty bottom. Finger you in broad daylight out on the floating dock for everyone to see. Fill you with everything I can find to fit in your sweet cunt that shouldn’t be there. Tempt you, tease you, suck you, spread you. I want you tied wide open and offered up to me as if you’re the exact treat I’ve been craving. I want to slide on you, up in you, pull you down on me, make sure you remember these moments every time any man thinks to fuck you.”

Bella shuddered on his cock, her orgasm so hard and acute, tears leaked from her eyes. She grunted with animalistic need and Travis obliged. He plowed into her with long, punishing strokes. No man had ever said those kinds of things to her. No man had ever made her come with just his cock inside her. No man had ever made her feel so wanted, desired, so carnal.

She bucked under him, arched. He lifted at the same moment and snagged a nipple between his teeth and tugged. Her fluttering didn’t stop, just flowed through her, kept the shock waves heightened each time he dragged against her walls.

“I love that I can make you lose control like that,” he rasped as he rose above her.

Seconds later he knelt over her throat and presented his cock to her mouth. She wanted him to come inside her just once. She wanted that feeling of him losing control while buried in her body.

“Take the ring between your teeth. Yes, baby, just like that. Now,” he said as he wrapped his hand around the shaft and began stroking, “tug on the ring. I know how much you… God, yeah. Tug harder.” He gulped breath. “Fuck, Bells.”

Cum hit her lips and teeth and she let go of the ring as he fed his cock into her mouth. She greedily took it, held it, sucked him down. He grabbed hold of her head and fucked her throat.

“Think that one…think that one might have killed me.” Travis crawled off her and lowered himself to the deck. She was wrapped in his arms and his heartbeat thundered in her ear. “Hottest fuckin’ piece of ass I’ve ever had,” he whispered into her hair.

“You’re not alone in that,” she whispered back before closing her eyes, sated for the moment.

Chapter Seven

Friday Afternoon

“You need anything else, Travis?”

Travis surveyed the small farm stand then glanced back to the grandmotherly figure behind the cash register. He didn’t patronize the place much, even though it was on the corner opposite his garage, but since the raspberry jam episode at Bella’s, he couldn’t seem to get his mind off wanting more. Maybe even a few different flavors. “Yeah.” He grabbed a bottle of locally harvested honey. “This too.”

Local wildflower honey on a local wild girl.

“Oh that’s a wonderful choice. You should try some drizzled over pepper-crusted goat cheese.”

Goat cheese? That didn’t sound appetizing at all. “Thanks, Mrs. Norman. I’ll have to remember that.” Not. He didn’t even know where to get goat cheese.

Travis was nearly to the edge of the property when he heard his name. He turned to find Mr. Norman headed his way.

“How’s my Jeep?” the older man asked, holding his hand out. Travis met it with his own and they shook. He’d known the Normans since he was a kid, grew up with their son. Travis’ family had bought all their vegetables from the Normans until Travis’ parents moved east into the mountains, after Travis and Miles took over the family businesses.

“I’ll have her finished by the end of the day. You should be able to come by in the morning. She’ll run like a dream.”

“I’ll do that. Wife wants to get on the road early Sunday morning.”

Travis nodded. “Where’s your first stop?”

“Graceland.”

“Not too far.”

“Nope.” Mr. Norman rocked back on his heels. “Wife’s never been there. Lived in Tennessee all her life and never been. Always liked Elvis though.”

“I’ve never been either. Heard it’s pretty touristy.”

“Yeah. Not looking forward to it myself. We’ll be headed South after. New Orleans, San Antonio.”

“That’ll be nice.” Hotter than fuck too, but Travis kept that to himself. “You headed out West?”

“All the way to the coast. That’s why I needed you to make sure the ol’ girl is in tiptop shape.”

“She will be, sir. I’m headed back to finish up right now.”

“Good, good. Haven’t seen you over here in a while.”

Travis held up the two items he’d bought. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I, uh, needed jam for sandwiches. Grew up on this raspberry jam.”

“Wife makes it.”

“The best I’ve ever had. My favorite.”

“Say, I saw Arabella’s car over at your garage.”

So there it was. A confrontation about Bella from someone other than Miles. Travis braced himself. Mr. Norman’s statement hadn’t held any hint of threat or warning, but Travis kept his guard up all the same. “Yeah,” he answered easily. “She’s had some transmission issues.”

“Nasty business,” Mr. Norman commented.

“It is, but hasn’t taken away from my work on yours,” Travis quickly reassured the man.

“Oh I’m not worried about that. You’re good at your job, Travis. Wife likes her, you know. Bella,” he added as though Travis needed clarification. “That mess her brother created was nasty business too.”

“Yes, sir.” Travis wasn’t sure what to make—or how to get out—of this conversation. He felt a little uncomfortable discussing her with people. He liked her. Was getting to know her, in and out of bed. She was kind and smart and those smiles that were all for him? Yeah, he could get used to those.