Walk (Gentry Boys) (15 page)

If he’d made even one move in my direction I would have rushed to him but he wouldn’t budge.  He kept his arms at his sides, his expression hard as marble, and I knew we were at an impasse.  Whatever words I uttered would just bounce right off him.  There was only one thing I could do. 

He watched me in silence as I my fingers opened soft fabric, one button at a time.  I went slowly, partly because I was trembling, and partly because I wasn’t sure what he would do about it. 

Stone didn’t do anything.  He just watched. 

I pushed the flannel from my shoulders to show him there was nothing else underneath, only me.  Then I untied the drawstring on my pants and let them fall to the floor.

This time, when I crept toward him, he did not back away.  I felt the shudder roll through his body as I ran my fingers over his hard belly. 

“Use me,” I whispered, daring to brush my tongue across his skin.  “Like you said you wanted to.  I want that too.” 

I had to stretch on tiptoe to reach his neck, my bare nipples grazing his muscled chest. He threw his head back with a sharp gasp as I left a trail of kisses across his collarbone.  But still he didn’t touch me, not even when I tried to take his hand and link our fingers together. I slid down to my knees and wrapped my arms around his waist.  I could feel the distinctive bulge in his jeans, just begging for release. 

Dizzy from wanting him, I rested my cheek there, feeling the swollen muscle flex. 

“Stone?  Are you going to make me beg for it?”

He let out a groan and grabbed a fistful of my hair, pulling me to my feet. 

“No,” he growled and his mouth crashed down over mine. 

The kiss was sweet and demanding all at once.  While our tongues danced with one another I was trying to get to his pants.  I’d just forced his zipper down when he suddenly grabbed my wrists and ended the kiss.  One look at his face told me the floodgates had been opened and this time nothing would shut them. All our polite, restrained friendship had been discarded.  The man looking down at me needed something a hell of a lot more basic and I planned to give it to him. 

He kept my wrists locked together easily.  I squirmed, wanting to touch him.  He wouldn’t let me, not yet. 

“This will be my way,” he warned with a tight smile, “or I really will make you fucking beg.”  

Then I was in his arms so quickly I didn’t even know what happened.  He carried me to my bedroom and set me down atop the bed where I’d been napping my heartbreak away only hours earlier.  No lights were on but the gray light of a stormy day filtered through the blinds, giving everything a dreamy quality. 

Stone was looking my naked body up and down with no shame.  “Damn, you’re perfect,” he muttered and then dropped his pants. 

“I have, uh, condoms…” I started to say but then I forgot how to talk when he loomed over me, spreading my thighs with his strong hands.   

“We don’t need those yet,” he insisted. His fingers explored higher, stroking and entering until I was half out of my mind. 

I couldn’t think.  I could hardly do anything besides roll around and moan.  “We don’t need them?” 

“No, not yet,” he whispered.  As his blue eyes traveled all over my body I’d never felt so vulnerable and so sexy at the same time.  “I want you to come for me, honey.  I want to see it.  When you’ve gotten your fill I’ll do what I need to do to get inside of you and once I’m in there all bets are off.  It’ll be rough and it’ll be so fucking good.” 

He kissed my belly and licked his way higher.  I could feel the enormity of his arousal pressing against my thigh and I arched toward it but Stone had already made it clear he was calling the shots for now.  He sucked on my left breast and then my right, teasing each nipple with his teeth in a way that almost ended me right there.  I pressed his head closer, wanting more. 

Given how hard he was, how long it had been, this restraint must have been torture for him but still he held himself back. He ran a hand between my breasts and down my belly, ending between my legs.

“Shit,” I gasped, not sure how long I was going to be able to take this.   

“You’re the one who told me to use you, Evie.  That’s an offer I can’t refuse.”   

“Yes,” I gasped, writhing around. 

Condoms, what are condoms?
 

Fuck if I cared. 

Stone was intense as he ran his hands all over me.  I loved watching his face as his eyes roamed over my body.  I’d always thought of myself as flawed, with breasts that were a little too small and hips that were a little too square.  But the way Stone was looking at me with so much hunger, so much furious lust, made me feel more desirable than I ever had. 

His hands were stroking inside my thighs and then higher, easing me open and teasing with his thumbs.  I bent to his touch, wanting it all to be deeper, harder, shattering. 

“Tell me,” I panted. 

He pushed one finger inside, barely.  “Tell you what, baby?”

“Talk to me like you were before.” 

He let out a low chuckle as his fingers pressed and circled.  “So it’s like that, huh?  This good girl likes dirty talk.” 

“Please.  Yes.” 

I hadn’t realized I did until Stone Gentry had coarsely said he wanted to fuck me so bad he didn’t care about anything else. 

His voice was husky, his fingers insistent as somewhere deep inside of me the tide rose higher and higher. 

“That night we danced in the dark I wanted to push that stupid dress up, wrestle you to your back in the wet grass and fuck you backwards and forwards until daylight.” 

I was getting close.  It was so hard to talk. 

“And I would have…let you.”

“You would have let me fuck you, Evie.” 

“Yes.”

“A total fucking stranger.” 

“Yes!”

“And you would have loved it.”

“I would have.  Oh my god.  Stone.  Oh shit, that feels so good!” 

Usually I stifled the noise when I was in the throes of ecstasy but this time I couldn’t help it.  Plus I could tell how much Stone liked it.  He liked hearing me moan his name as I thrashed around. 

Stone didn’t let up on what he was doing until I relaxed my muscles and exhaled one final soft sigh.  As I was still coming down from the high of that climax I realized he already had a condom out. 

“Let me,” I begged, reaching for him. 

Before I slid the condom over that rigid, sizeable shaft I stroked him, enjoying his hard gasp as my fingers tightened.  It had been so long for him, so long since he’d physically connected with someone.  I wanted this to be incredible, to make up for everything he’d been missing. 

Once the condom was in place I bent my knees and spread wide to wrap all the way around him and bring him closer.  He slid his hands underneath my hips, lifting me to the angle he wanted.  Our eyes locked for one powerful heartbeat and then he was inside of me. 

Stone kept his promise.  It wasn’t sweet and tender.  It was a frenzied celebration of freedom and sex and youth and pure unfiltered lust.  It was what he needed.  It was what we both wanted.  As he roared my name, trembling in the spell of a powerful orgasm, I felt the tide return for me and I came along with him. 

We didn’t speak afterwards, not for a long time.  We held one another and we kissed and then when he was ready - which never took very long – we ravished each other again.  And again. 

The rain fell and the wind blew throughout the afternoon.  Stone, who claimed to have a newly discovered talent for cooking, whipped up a couple of omelets in the kitchen.  We ate them together, wrapped in my quilt, and drank directly from a bottle of red wine that had been languishing on my counter for a year, awaiting a special occasion. 

When we finished, we returned to bed. 

“So this is a first,” I said sleepily as Stone’s fingers traced a pattern on my sweaty back while the meager gray light of the day dwindled to darkness. 

“Which part?” he asked, pinching my flesh playfully.  “From behind or the sixty nine?” 

I swatted him.  Then I propped myself up on one elbow.  “That’s not what I meant.”

His grin was full of mischief.  “We can get more exotic if you’re up to it.  I just didn’t want to scare the hell out of you on day one.” 

“Animal.”  I kissed him to shut off his sex banter.  Then I propped my chin on his chest.  “I was talking about a different kind of first.  As in, it sure as hell seems like you have your first girlfriend.”

He stared at me for so long I started wondering if I’d jumped the gun.  I felt my face growing hot and cursed the way my skin always reddened at the slightest hint of anxiety.  Then Stone broke into a slow smile and gently ran his fingers through my long hair. 

“Yeah,” he finally said. “I sure as hell do.” 

STONE

I had to be the luckiest son of a bitch ever to walk out of the Central State Penitentiary front gates.  That was the only explanation for how a guy with lint in his pockets, grief in his heart and a prison record on paper could catch the eye of a beautiful, classy woman like Evie Dupont. 

As I watched her sleep that first night we spent together I made her a silent promise that I would do anything to be the man she saw in me.  Then I curled up alongside her and slept better than I had in years. 

It was easy, falling right into a relationship.  I’d never known it could be so easy.  All it took was the right girl. 

Most nights we spent at Evie’s place since she didn’t have the inconvenience of a roommate.  When I worked an event I wouldn’t be finished until very late but she had given me a key and always sighed with happiness when I finally crawled into bed beside her. 

Evie was absolutely fucking incredible. I liked everything about her.  Her humor, her face, her body, the way she pressed her lips together when she was thinking about something.  How she’d reach for my hand at odd moments like she didn’t realize she was doing it.  The fact that she always had two dozen half read books lying around.  The way she’d quiver and whisper my name the moment she came and smile in her sleep when I touched her. Every hour I was away from her I couldn’t wait to be with her again.  She always ran straight into my arms without hesitation. If all of that meant we were falling hard then I sure didn’t ever want to hit the ground.

My cousins were thrilled by the fact that we were together.  Bash was amused. Evie’s friends were perplexed. I got to meet some of them when we met up for drinks to celebrate the birthday of an old college friend. 

Bash got dragged along as a reluctant wingman.  I’d forgotten that he’d hooked up with that neighbor who happened to be in Evie’s circle.  Her name was Darcy and she was a piece of work.  I had the feeling she and Evie were only friends out of habit.  She greeted Evie with a phony cheek kiss, looked right through Bash and only acknowledged me with a cool nod before retreating to a squad of some expensively dressed stick figures who sipped cocktails and hunted with hopeful eyes for something with deep pockets. 

“Table Tots,” Bash grumbled.  “What did I tell you?”

Evie wouldn’t let us be sidelined though.  She kept one arm around me and laughed at Bash’s bawdy jokes, even telling a few of her own.  Bash already liked Evie but by the end of the night he was looking at her like she was a goddess. 

“You’re one fortunate bastard,” he muttered to me at one point. 

I pulled my girl closer and grinned.  “I know.”  

Evie’s friend Kendra was the only one who seemed interested in talking to us.  Kendra was the epitome of elegant class.  She managed to be beautiful without flaunting it and she was kind without being condescending.  Since she was one of Evie’s favorite people in the world I was relieved to discover that she wasn’t a jerk.  Even when Bash was practically drooling all over her, she managed to politely discourage him without flinging insults. 

Bash took off pretty early, patting me on the back and saying he was going to go look for action in a place where it was less selective.

After we waved goodbye to Bash, Evie nuzzled my neck and reached up to kiss my cheek.  “Don’t be sad,” she said. 

“Not sad.”  I folded her into my arms, feeling the familiar stir of excitement that always came from having her close.  “I’ve got a lot to look forward to tonight.” 

She giggled.  “You’re confident.” 

“I’m fucking horny is what I am.” 

Evie tilted her head back to peer up at me.  “You keep looking around, looking for him.” 

“Just a habit.  I know he’s not here.” 

It had become a routine, to crane my neck around and search for Conway in crowds like this.  But I did know for a fact that he wasn’t here.  A few days after that unpleasant encounter at the seedy strip club, Deck had called to tell me that Conway had been arrested for drunk driving.  He was serving thirty days in County’s Tent City Jail and wouldn’t be out for another week.  I’d been counting down.

  Evie ran a soft hand across my cheek.  She knew my moods.  She knew Con was never very far from my thoughts.  She also knew I was waiting for something that still had to happen, one way or another.  Con and I had a lot more baggage to sort out and I wasn’t giving up. 

She pressed her body against me.  “Want to go home?” she murmured in a sexy voice.    

Instead of answering with words I slipped my arms around her waist and rolled my hips hard into hers.  She felt it.  She bit the corner of her lip and pushed back. 

I kissed her.  It wasn’t a casual kiss.  It was full of passion and promises.  All I wanted to do was take her to bed and make good on every one of those promises. 

“Let’s go.” 

Kendra left at the same time so we walked her to her car, which was parked one block away.  Before she ducked behind the wheel she looked over at me, whispered something in Evie’s ear and they hugged.  Kendra waved at us and pulled away.  When I asked Evie what her friend had said, she smiled and squeezed my arm. 

“Kendra said, ‘Don’t listen to the rest of them.  They don’t know what’s important.’  She likes you. Says you’re good people. Kendra has sharp instincts.” 

A couple of young polished guys in suits passed us by, obviously drunk, looking for their car.  One of them gave Evie the eye and leered like he was going to make a filthy suggestion.  I tensed and rested my hands possessively on Evie’s shoulders so he’d know that he ought to keep his mouth shut.  He saw me and paled slightly, dropping his head with a cough.  I just glared at his back until he was gone. 

We decided to stop at my place so I could grab a few things.  In the last few weeks I’d been spending so much time at Evie’s apartment that I really ought to start keeping more of my stuff there.

Bash wasn’t home yet.  I threw a change of clothes in a backpack while Evie wandered into my bedroom and spotted something on top of my dresser. 

“Look at you,” she said softly, staring down at the picture and sinking down on the bed.  “How old were you here?”

“Just turned eleven.”

“So Conway was ten here?”

“Yup.  Deck gave me that picture.  My mother had shipped a box of stuff to Con after she kicked him out and that was in there.  He left it behind when he moved out of Deck’s house.” 

I sat beside her and peered down at the photograph.  I remembered the day it was taken.  Our father had snapped the shot as we stood side by side on the banks of a small lake, fishing poles in the water, mile-wide grins on our faces because it had been a great day.  We had grumbled when our dad woke us up when the sky was still dark and told us we were driving up north to go fishing.  Once we were in the car though, a sense of adventure started to set in.  It was just the three of us boys, my mother having scoffed at the idea, refusing to come along.

Several years later, this was the picture that had sat beside Elijah’s bedside as he lay dying. 

Evie rested her head on my shoulder as I looked down at those goofy, grinning boys from so many years ago.  I thought about the man who’d proudly taken a picture of his sons. 

His sons. 

I had no idea how much Elijah had heard of the nasty gossip floating around.  Half of Emblem said there was no way in hell we were his kids.  Whatever the truth was, the man had loved us.  I knew that much. 

“Wish I knew what to say,” Evie whispered.  “I wish I could tell you everything will be okay with Con.” 

I set the picture carefully back on the dresser.  “You still planning on going to visit Macon next weekend?”

She shook her head, looking miserable.  “He never sees me.  I tried to talk my mom into flying down here to see if that would make a difference but when she said she just couldn’t bear it and started to cry I didn’t have the heart to push anymore.  She writes him letters.  I know that.  He never answers her either.”

I thought about saying some bullshit like, “One of these days he’ll come around,” but I couldn’t.  I didn’t have any right to tell her that when it might not be true. 

Evie was running her fingers up and down my thigh.  “Can we stay here tonight?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind hearing Bash making a racket with whatever company he drags home with him.” 

“I don’t mind.  But it means you’d have to drive me home real early so I can get to work on time.” 

“I can do that.” 

“You sure?”

“I would do anything for you, sweetheart.” 

Evie reached out and ran her finger along my jaw.  “Stone Gentry.  That’s what’s rare about you.  When you say something so poetic it’s actually true.” 

“Of course it’s true.”  I slid down to the floor on my knees. 

She looked like an angel sitting on the edge of my bed, watching me with soft eyes as her hair fell loosely over her shoulders. 

I put one hand between her knees and eased them apart.  With the other hand I pushed gently on her chest until she got the message that I wanted her to lie back.  I unfastened her black skirt and slid it slowly down before tossing it aside.  I took a moment to admire the sight of Evie squirming around in her black lace thong before I got that barrier out of the way as well. 

“The door,” she gasped, getting up on her elbows. 

“Fuck the door.  No one’s home.” 

She started to sputter something else so I had no choice but to push my face between her legs and get to work.  She quieted down after that, lying back and moving her body to the rhythm.  It didn’t take long to get her to come.  I knew exactly how she worked by now and I liked proving it.   

She was still gasping from her climax and the door was still wide open when I climbed on top of her and slid inside.  Every time was as fucking sweet as the first. 

Afterwards, we showered together with a little bit of steamy recreation that ended with the curtain getting accidentally torn out of the wall.  My bed wasn’t king sized like Evie’s was but she was small and we fit together perfectly as she snuggled against me.  I slept much better with her beside me.  In the morning I woke early and drove her home like I’d promised. 

“Think of me today?” she asked sweetly after we kissed at her front door. 

“Think of you all day,” I promised.  Sometimes I couldn’t believe the syrupy, romantic words that tumbled out of my mouth in her presence but with her they were completely natural.  Evie Dupont had me in every way and I wanted her to know it. 

She gave me one final, passionate kiss and then reluctantly disappeared indoors to get ready for work.  I waited in my truck for a few minutes before driving away from her apartment.  There was a scattered tribe of well-dressed people hurrying to their cars so they could join rush hour traffic.  One of these days I hoped I’d be one of them.  I damn well didn’t intend to set up chairs and tables for other peoples’ parties for the rest of my life.  Evie had been trying to steer me toward school but I wasn’t sure that was the right direction at the moment. 

The library in Tempe opened early on weekdays and I often checked on the jobs board in there.  Nothing new was posted today but I hung out for a while and used the computer, searching online for ideas. 

After I ate breakfast out of the vending machine, I decided to drive up to the tattoo parlor owned by Cord and Deck, just to say hello.  The place was called Scratch and it was close to the university. I remembered Deck saying they’d expanded last year, doubling the size of the shop to encompass two storefronts.   When I was released they’d offered me a job there but I was determined not to let my cousins bend over backwards for me anymore. 

Cord’s truck was parked in the back lot and I hoped I wasn’t intruding in on his workday.  At the front desk a very blue-haired, very pregnant girl greeted me with an excited grin and clapped her hands together. 

“I know who you are!” she squealed.  “You’ve got that Gentry look.”  Then she laughed.  “I was wondering when you’d stop by, Stone. I’m Aspen. Cord’s in the office down the hall if you want to go on back.” 

Along the way I passed a small room where a middle aged bald man was sitting in a black reclining chair as a hulking brute with a flat top and army fatigues sat nearby, setting out tools.  

“Time to erase that bitch,” the bald man announced.  “Make her a fucking skull or something.”

“You got it,” the other man said.  He looked up at my shadow, eyed me briefly, and then returned to the task at hand. 

The next door I came to was closed but it had a gold colored plate that read ‘Office’ so I knocked. 

“Come in,” Cord said from the other side. 

He was sitting behind a large dark wooden desk, facing the only window in the room as he worked on the sketch pad in his hands.  He broke into a smile and dropped it on the desk immediately. 

“Stone,” he said, already standing and on his way over.  “Good to see you.  Kept hoping you’d stop by.” 

I shook his hand and took the chair he offered me while he returned to the other side of the desk.  The walls were covered with Cord’s artwork, none of it framed, just pieces of loosely torn off paper from various sources that had been thumbtacked to the walls.  It was an impressive display of talent and his surrealistic style reminded me a little of a book I’d read in the prison library about an artist named Salvador Dali.