Welcome to Sugartown (11 page)

“
So we’ll
tear one another apart and put each other back together, piece by
piece.” I slide my hand over her hips, down the damp fabric of her
dress. While my room may be warm already, it’s not so warm that she
won’t end up sick if she keeps this thing on. I ease up onto my
knees and pull her up so she’s doing the same. My hands snake
around her waist to the zip at the back of her dress. She looks at
me questioningly as I glide the zip down. “I thought you said I
needed to make you work for it?”

“
Darlin’
there’s a million other things I can do to your body without
shoving myself inside it.”

She’s covered
in chills as I pull the fabric over her head and I desperately want
to erase them with my tongue, but Ana’s shaking on the bed before
me and finally, I remember why I removed it in the first
place.

I ease off
the bed and open the cupboard, pulling out one of the hangers I
never use. I hang the dress in the window, where it’s in full
sunlight. I know I should probably close the curtains, but when I
turn and see her naked body spread before me, highlighted by the
sunlight spilling in through that window, I can’t bring myself to
do much of anything. I shed my jeans that have been so tight since
she stepped foot in this room last night and cover her body with my
own.

For a long
time we do nothing but maul each other with our mouths and roll
around on the bed, and then I slide my hands between us and make
her come in about two seconds flat, and yeah, I’m not gonna lie,
the fact that I can get her off so quickly makes my heart swell
with pride—shut the fuck up, it’s a guy thing.

My heart’s
not the only thing swelling, though, but for now I’m content to
leave it at that as I watch her bask with that freshly fucked glow,
because in all my life I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more
spectacular sight.

She cracks an
eyelid and whispers, “Stop staring at me, it’s weird.”

“
Eat me,” I
reply and scoop her up until she’s lying on top of me. She sits
herself up and I can’t resist trailing my hands over her gorgeous
tits. She wiggles a little, like she’s suddenly ticklish, and my
cock jumps around excitedly like it’s going to see some. Fuck. I
feel like I’ve been in a state of perm-a-wood ever since I met this
girl. She spears her bottom lip with her teeth and says, “Okay”
before trailing her mouth down my neck and chest. She hovers over
the tattoo on my left pec. Surprise twists her face as her eyes
zero in on the name written in cursive, hidden there amongst an
eerie moonlit cemetery. I tense.

Don’t ask me
about it
, I think.
Not now.

For a moment
I think she’s going to, and then she lowers her gaze and brings her
mouth to my stomach, licking and kissing and sucking all the way. I
breathe a sigh of relief.

When she
reaches my navel I grab her wrist, stopping her from going any
further, “Ana, you don’t have to do that.”

“
And if I
want to?”

Fuck
me
! Does she have any idea what that does
to a man? It looks like she might, because she smiles this sneaky
little smile and dips her head lower, taking me into her mouth. Her
hand follows her lips up the length of my cock and back down
again.

Oh
fuck.

I’ve never
had a problem staying the course, but holy mother of nun cunts, am
I about to lose my shit like twelve-year-old at his first glance of
pink bits in
Playboy
. I fist my hand in her hair, gently at first, and then
harder. The urge to push her head back and forth until I’m defiling
her beautiful mouth is so strong that I force my hand to go limp,
so I won’t hurt her.

I’ve played
this game too many times to count. The players are different, but
the rules never change. Until now. Until her. All the rules are
different now, and I’d do anything not to fuck it up. This is what
I think about as her delicate little mouth milks every last drop of
come from my cock. I just had the most incredible woman sucking me
off and she’s got me so fucking tied up in knots that I forgot to
enjoy the simplicity and base nature of it all. I missed the whole
God damn thing!

Ana smiles
coyly up at me, and then crawls up the bed and tucks herself in
under my arm. I automatically pull her closer and kiss the top of
her head. She lets out a contented sigh, and I feel her relax
further into me. We lie in the patch of sunlight streaming in
across the bed and she traces the tattoos on my arms and chest
until she falls asleep.

I’m too wired
to fall asleep. My brain is buzzing from the high and a million
thoughts swarm my head. Despite the morning’s workout, my body is
itching to move, to get up, to run. Instead, I hold Ana while she
naps. I stare at the ceiling and wonder what the hell I’ve done,
and what I’m going to do now. It doesn’t matter which way I look at
it: when it comes to Ana Belle, I’m completely fucking
screwed.

Chapter Nine

Ana

The minute I
set foot in the house Dad is on me. “Where the hell have you
been?”

“
Excuse
me?”

“
You up and
disappeared, without a word, Ana. Not to mention the fact that you
drove while drinking.”

“
Okay, first
of all, I wasn’t drunk. I’d stopped drinking at least two hours
before I drove anywhere, and I told Holly where I was
going—”

“
Holly is not
your father!” Dad booms.

“
Why are we
even having this conversation? I’m an adult, Dad. It’s time you
started treating me like one.”

“
You’re not
an adult, Ana. You might be nineteen, but that doesn’t mean you
know what’s best for you.”

“
Oh, and you
do? Okay, Dad, let’s talk about what’s best for me. Is it dating
one of your biker club friends and becoming an empty shell of a
woman waiting by the window for my husband to come home after he’s
finished screwing clubhouse whores, like the rest of the old
ladies? Is it staying in this shitty, fucked up town, marrying one
of the dickheads I went to school with and running the pie shop for
the rest of my life? Hey, you know what? Why not throw in raising
Sammy, too, since you and your whore of a wife seem too busy with
your bike club to take care of the kid she spat out of her gaping
vagina? Why not just throw the kid in and hammer that last nail in
my coffin?”

“
You watch
your tone, missy,” he hisses.

“
No, Dad. You
watch yours,” I spit back.

“
Let’s get
one thing straight. While you live in this house, you live by my
rules. You come home at a decent hour, not 3 pm the next day,
wearing the same clothes you had on last night. That’s how shit
gets started in places like this, Ana. You want more of those
rumours floating around that you’re the town bike? You want me to
get hauled back to the station for punching out some other fucker
that’s been running his mouth?”

“
Are you done
insinuating that I’m some giant fucking whore?” I fold my arms over
my chest. “You wanna know where I was all night, Dad? At Elijah’s
motel room. And since you’re so damn concerned about it, my virtue
is still very much intact.”

His eyes go
saucer-wide, like he cannot believe I just said that. Come to think
of it,
I
can’t
believe I just said that. Call me crazy, but the fact that my dad
thought I was a slut, along with the rest of the town, broke my
heart into a million tiny pieces. As angry as I am with him, and as
grown-up as I claim to be, I’m still his little girl, and it cuts
to the bone to hear how low his opinion of me really is.

“
Yeah, Dad,
still a virgin. But thanks for your vote of confidence.” I throw my
keys on the table, grab a hair tie from the phone caddy on the
bench and yank my hair back into a messy bun. “Now, if you’ll
excuse me, I have to spend the next eight hours of my free time
making pies for this town that thinks so highly of me.”

Dad stands
there looking absolutely crushed. His mouth is working but no words
are coming out. Sticking it to him like that should have made me
feel better, but it doesn’t. It makes me feel just as ashamed as
when he’d insinuated I was a whore. That’s the thing about guilt;
it always leaves you feeling cheap.

“
Ana …” he
begins, but I wave him off and head for my room.

“
Forget it,
Dad. I have to get to work.” I close the door and allow myself a
minute or two for the tears pricking my eyes to fall.

I have maybe
twenty pies lining the countertops when I hear Elijah’s bike
pulling in around back. I smile to myself, thinking of the better
part of the day when my dad wasn’t accusing me of being a whore and
I was instead partaking in activities where I could perhaps still
be considered one. I marvel at how small I felt in his hands and at
how quickly he was able to blow my world apart for the third time
today when he pushed me up against the cool shower tile.

I’m still
smiling as I pour melted chocolate into the recipe base for the pie
that Elijah inspired, and I’m halfway to creating another recipe in
my head when I hear the front door bang back on its hinges and my
dad come tearing out of the house and across the gravel walkway
toward Elijah. “CADE!”

Oh
crap
! I throw the spatula down on the
bench and run for the door. My dad has Elijah by the collar of his
jacket, holding him up against the back of the shop and, despite
being younger, taller and musclier than Dad, Elijah’s hands are up
in surrender. “I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t pursue
her, I swear. It just happened.”

“
So you think
that makes it okay? Because she came to you? She’s nineteen, she
doesn’t know what the fuck she wants.”

“
Dad!” I snap
and the two of them glance at me. Dad backs off, but only enough so
that there’s maybe an inch or two more space between them, and he’s
no longer holding onto Elijah’s collar.

“
Bob, your
daughter’s old enough to know what she wants.” Elijah runs a hand
over the back of his neck and then looks at me a little sheepishly.
“For God’s sake look at her. Have you ever seen a more put together
nineteen-year-old? Look, you’re my boss. I respect you immensely. I
respect your family and your family’s reputation in this town, but
your daughter? There aren’t enough words to describe how much I
think of her.”

“
Oh, I know
exactly what you think of her. You and every other young prick in
this town—”

My father is
getting riled up again. His face is beet red and he practically has
steam pouring out his ears. I wedge myself between them and gently
push at his broad chest. “Dad, back off. What happens between
Elijah and I is none of your business.”

He puts his
hand over mine and looks down at me, “You’re my little girl;
everything you do is my business.”

I shake my
head and give him a sad smile. “No. It’s not. I can’t be a little
girl forever, Dad. I’m not a little girl. I haven’t been since Mum
died.”

“
Aww, hell,
kiddo.” Dad sniffs, and then, I guess to prove he’s not a complete
pansy—because the definition of a “sheila” in my father’s eyes is a
grown man who cries—he turns away from me and spits on the ground
before taking a step back towards the house.

I glance at
Elijah, making sure he’s not already planning to run for the hills.
He gives me an odd but warm smile, and then his eyes widen when he
sees my dad turn around again.

“
Hey, kiddo,
I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I didn’t mean it. I
don’t
mean
it.”

I smile,
because despite the fact that he can be a big and scary beast of a
man at times, underneath he’s like a puppy dog—albeit one with a
mean bite—but mostly, I smile because, in my entire nineteen years,
this is the first time I’ve ever heard my dad say sorry, to anyone.
“Don’t worry about it, Dad. I know you’re just trying to look out
for me.”

He nods like
he’s satisfied with that answer and then points a finger at Elijah.
“You remember what I said last night. You think on it long and hard
before you make any decisions that affect her or you’ll be seeing
the wrong end of a shotgun. You got it?”