With Extreme Pleasure (17 page)

C
ady hadn’t been to her grandmother’s farm in years. As kids, she and Kevin had come here with their parents for summer vacation. They’d traipsed through the nearby woods after Redcoats. They’d prayed their tiny fishing hooks would hold should they snag any of the human bones rotting at the bottom of their grandmother’s five-acre lake.

They’d romped through the pastures where cows plopped patties the size of baseball diamonds. They’d ripped the skin off their knees, shins, and elbows climbing trees. That had all stopped, of course, when they’d become teenagers with concerts, friends, and parties calling their names.

Cady had been eighteen when Josephine Kowalski had died, two summers after her last vacation here. Thinking back now, she regretted not choosing family over material things, but hindsight was always twenty-twenty, and even more acute when looking back with matured eyes.

Though the house was empty and the property unused save for that one time each year, a caretaker checked in regularly, keeping the yard mowed, clearing away storm debris of downed limbs, repairing broken windows, deterring vandalism by local kids with nothing better to do.

Squatting to lift the heavy iron flower pot that sat beneath the front window looking out over the porch, Cady slid her hand along the damp and dirty board, searching for the key. She gave it to King when she found it, and eased the pot back into place.

He hadn’t left her side since they’d parked. It was cute, really, his attentiveness, his protectiveness, but there was nothing out here she needed protection from. No footprints but their own marred the dirt on the porch or the front steps, and there were no recent tire tracks on the road leading in.

More than likely they’d been seen driving onto the property, and the caretaker would be over before Cady had time to find sheets and make the bed. Or beds, if King decided he really did need a good night’s sleep since he and she both were going on two days now without one.

The door squeaked on its hinges as he forced it open, the noise and the stickiness two more of her memories, as were the family pictures on the fireplace mantel and the rack of hunting rifles hanging above. The smells, on the other hand, weren’t quite the same.

She was used to food being cooked at all hours, from bacon and maple syrup to toasted cheese sandwiches to fried chicken to her grandmother’s never-ending supply of cookies—chocolate chip, peanut butter, frosted sugar, and oatmeal raisin.

Her stomach growled, and King looked back. “Don’t even say it. We ate two hours ago. You cannot be hungry.”

“Wanna bet?” she said, and pushed past him. She tossed her backpack to the sofa and headed for the kitchen.

The refrigerator, of course, was empty, and would stay that way until they got the power turned on and cooled it down. They needed the electricity, too, to get the well pumping water to the house, to cook, heat water, even to see after dark. There had always been oil lamps around, but she had no clue where they were now.

She pulled open the curtains over the window and peered out. The shed that served as a garage sat directly behind the house. When she felt King at her shoulder, she pointed it out. “You can pull the truck in there if you want to keep it out of the elements.”

“The way things have been going, I won’t have it long enough for the elements to do any damage.”

Still facing the window, she smiled to herself. “Well, if you want to keep it out of sight, then. I don’t know if that matters or not. If we were followed, it’s too late. But if we weren’t…”

She let the sentence trail, thinking King would pick it up and offer some reassurance. He went in another direction instead. “I know you said this place is stocked, but we need food that doesn’t come out of a can.”

She wondered if he wanted to forget about McKie and Tuzzi and Malling for now, or if he just preferred not to borrow trouble or speculate on who might or might not have been trailing after them—not hard to understand since she was worn out from doing too much of both.

And though he hadn’t yet looked in the pantry, he had no trouble making a shopping list. “Eggs, milk, bacon. Steaks, potatoes, sour cream, cheese.”

She liked that they were on the same food wavelength. “The last part of that sounds like someone else is hungry, even though he just got through eating, too.”

“You’re right about two hours being nothing,” he leaned close to her ear and admitted, trapping her between his arms, his hands braced on the lip of the sink. “I could eat a horse and a cow.”

This time she turned, looked up at him, and shared her laughter. “Let’s check the breaker box and see about getting the electricity going. I’d like a hot bath later if I can get one. The water heater’s ancient, and will have to be drained before doing its thing.”

His brows drew together as he met her gaze. “Roughing it doesn’t bother you? You don’t miss having a bodega on every corner and three meals delivered a day?”

She blew him a raspberry. “You’re obviously thinking about another stowaway. I’ve never had three meals delivered a day. And this sort of roughing it is a whole lot better than what I’ve been doing, having nothing of my own but a bedroom.”

She turned around again and looked out the window. “Here when I look over my shoulder, I can see for miles. I have acres of land and trees and ponds surrounding me, not to mention the lake. And best of all, I can breathe.”

“You’d probably like Le Hasard. Different climate. Different geography. Definitely different trees. Cypress. Spanish moss. Magnolia. And being in the Mississippi River Delta, most of our ponds are swamps.”

“Le Hasard?”

“My place in Vermilion Parish.”

“Oh, right. Louisiana.”

She wasn’t sure why he was telling her this. Did he want her to see his home? Did
he
want to see his home? Was homesickness causing him to regret being here?

After all, he was doing a favor for a stranger—a dangerous favor at that, and look at what it had cost him. In exchange for what? He wasn’t getting anything out of it—except for the sex.

She would never believe the sex was keeping him here. Kingdom Trahan would have no trouble getting sex in any of the fifty states. As much as she would’ve enjoyed the ego stroke, his sticking with her in Pennsylvania or New Jersey or New York was not about her body.

“King?”

“Cady?”

“Why are you here?”

“Because every man’s life could use a little adventure.”

She swung her elbow backward, connected with his gut, got a lot of satisfaction out of his, “Oomph.” “I want a real answer. You could’ve told me to bugger off in the parking lot after the explosion. Or at the hospital when you realized you were collateral damage in Tuzzi’s hunt for me.”

“What’s a Hummer or two between friends?”

She elbowed him again.

“Hey. I need those ribs.”

“And I need an answer.” She did not enjoy feeling as if she’d been thrust into the role of damsel in distress, tied to the tracks by some dastardly villain, and had to be saved by a knight on a white horse or a lawman with a badge.

She was used to saving herself. Yeah, she hadn’t done the best job in the world, but relying on someone else hadn’t worked out for her at all. Better her half-assed self-reliance than being dropped on her head by others. “Please?”

King moved his hands from the sink and wrapped them around her midsection, pulling her back into his body. He tucked her head against his neck, rubbed his chin at her temple. She listened to the scratch of his whiskers against her hair stiff with product.

“I want to be here. Isn’t that enough?”

It should be, but she needed more because this was no cake walk for him either. “No. You have to have a reason.”

“You mean
you
have to have a reason.”

“Semantics. Whatever.” She closed her eyes, enjoyed his strength. It was so damn easy, so damn tempting to let her own seep away. “I’m not your responsibility, King. I stowed away with you, yes, but all you had to do was drop me at the bus station like I asked. You didn’t have to come this far, or go through so much. You didn’t have to do anything. I have to know why you have.”

“Why?” he asked, after a moment’s hesitation that was pregnant with emotion. “Are you thinking you’re going to repay me? That I want you to repay me?”

“I can never repay you,” she said, shaking her head. “You’ve done so much.”

“You must have me confused with some other Good Samaritan, chère. I gave you a ride. That’s all.”

Why could he not answer this one simple question? “That’s not all, and you know it. For one thing, you stuck around. If not for me, you would be home by now instead of playing farm boy.”

“I happen to like playing farm boy. And I happen to like playing it with you. Yeah, I thought early on about dumping you at the bus station, or buying you a one-way ticket to Anchorage to get you out of my hair. And if all this shit had gone down a year ago, I’d’ve done just that.

“But I’m not the same man now I was then. I’d like to think I’m a better man, but maybe I’m just old. So if you need me to sum all that up, well, I’m here because you’re here, and because not being here isn’t an option. And then there’s the fact that my dick hasn’t been this happy in years.”

She would’ve elbowed him again, but she was crying now. She didn’t want him to know, and it was getting hard not to give in and sob, to sniff back her tears. And then she thought, to hell with it.

With her voice quavering, she asked, “Who do you get to write your speeches, because you’re definitely not paying him enough?”

“Hey, what’s with the disrespecting? That was one of my finer moments.”

“I loved your finer moment,” she said, turning in his arms and fighting her heart that was telling her she loved so much more. She clutched the front of his shirt in both hands. “I just feel like I have ruined your life.”

“Oh, Cady, chère. My life was ruined a long time before I met you,” he said, and she laughed. Then she cried. She couldn’t hold in the emotion a moment longer, and the dam broke to an exhausting flood.

He cupped the back of her head and kept her there in the circle of his arms, rocking her gently while she sobbed like a heartbroken baby. Her shoulders shook. Her throat swelled. Her lungs felt on the verge of collapse. She ached from head to toe, and she wanted to stop, but she couldn’t.

A groan rumbled through King’s chest. He bent and scooped her up as if she weighed as much as a pillow, and carried her through the house until he found a bed. The mattress was bare, but he laid her on top of it, then curled up behind her and held her while she cried.

“I’m sorry,” she finally got out, amazed she had the energy or the breath left for any words at all. “I’m just so tired. I’m so tired.”

“I know, chère. I know,” he told her, stroking her arm from shoulder to elbow until she fell asleep.

O
nce he was certain Cady wouldn’t miss him, King eased off the bed. He’d seen a linen closet in the hallway, and found pillows, sheets, blankets, and quilts stored there in protective plastic bags.

He chose a well worn and soft as cotton balls quilt, and tucked it around Cady as best he could without moving her. He then pulled the curtains closed, shut the bedroom door, and went in search of the breaker box.

His plan was to get as much done as he could while she slept, and for her to sleep as long as her mind and body would let her. She’d been going strong for two days, going up against shit that could easily wear good men to nubs, going like that battery bunny that never stopped.

If she didn’t stop, her body was going to slam her to the ground and keep her there until she ran out of breath to cry uncle. He wasn’t unsympathetic; he knew what it was like, needing to unwind and being unable, all efforts to force muscles to relax making them tighten further, the fight for sleep more often lost than won.

The fact that she hadn’t broken down already during the last two days was a surprise. The fact that she’d finally done so in a place she felt safe wasn’t. The fact that he’d spilled as much of his guts as he had did not make him happy. Nor did her insistence on knowing why he was here.

Her insistence put him in the position of having to dig for an answer, and he’d been avoiding anything that looked like work, telling himself he was sticking around because he had nothing better to do with his time. Telling himself, too, that what he’d felt when he thought of losing her was nothing but a heat of the moment response.

It wasn’t exactly a lie. At least the part about his time. He had no pressing engagements other than a date with his sunshine and crawfish. But the truth went a lot deeper, and he’d didn’t think Fitz had packed a big enough shovel in the back of his truck.

Besides, he mused, finding the breaker box at the back of the house and switching the electricity on, if he did go digging for more, he might not like what he found and take off. And his running away from what was feeling like more than sexual involvement wasn’t going to keep Cady safe.

Once the electricity was humming, and he’d checked the level of propane in the tank, he returned to the utility room and set about draining the water heater. Then he headed into the kitchen, lighting the oven’s pilot and turning on the fridge so it would cool before they loaded it down.

Depending on how long it took to get fresh water pumped from the well to the tank for heating, and how soon Cady wanted that bath, he might have to haul water to the tub from pots warmed up on the stove. He’d roughed it himself a lot of years. The thought wasn’t the least bit daunting.

What was daunting was the prospect of waiting for her to wake up so they could do something about shopping for food. He was damn near close to expiring. The protein in the bacon and the caffeine in the coffee was losing out to the overload of carbs in the syrup-drenched waffles he’d downed.

He’d unloaded the Hummer, looked through Fitz’s latest stock of supplies, and done all he could think of to get the house ready for their stay. It was either pop open a can of Vienna sausages or pry his way into one of Spam, or starve while he sat out her nap.

Since he’d never been one to sit for anything, he went exploring instead, starting in the garage shed combo that hunkered behind the house. On a hook in the utility room, he found the key to the padlock securing the building.

Inside the building, he found a riding lawn mower, a fully stocked peg board and workbench, and room to park the H3. He’d move the SUV in here after they made the trip to the small grocery store Cady had pointed out before they’d turned off the main road from Rosingsville.

And then he decided this would be a good place to hide the gun neither one of them were registered to own.

He’d tucked both his piece and Alice’s into the zip-away bottom of Cady’s backpack that first night they’d shared a room when he still had his original Hummer and all of his hair.

Considering she hauled that bag everywhere the way most women would a purse, he couldn’t imagine she hadn’t noticed the extra weight, but she hadn’t said a word or even hinted that she knew she was packing.

The backpack was on the front room’s worn floral couch where she’d left it. He retrieved both guns, put his with the rest of his things still stored in the back of the Hummer, and the other in a coffee can of ten penny nails he found on top of a shelf in the shed.

He was busy checking out the tools—some rusted all to hell, some legitimate antiques—hanging on the pegboard when Cady finished her two-hour nap and joined him, driving all thoughts of shopping for food from his mind.

He heard her coming, her steps on the gravel of the driveway, and then he caught her scent, a mix of something warm and earthy and something else that he could only say was Cady. It was a harsh jolt to realize that he was so familiar with her after knowing her for just a few days.

Harsh, because it meant she was going to stay with him for longer than was good for him, long after they’d finished this detour, after he’d told her good-bye, after they’d both ridden off into their own sunsets. Yeah. He didn’t like how much he was going to hate doing that.

For someone who hadn’t had much sleep, she shouldn’t look as good as she did. There was actually color in her face besides green, purple, and blue. And there was more. An expression of serenity, of being comfortable here. And just a hint of joy that she’d found him.

“Thank you for letting me sleep,” she said, her hands in her jeans pockets, a shoulder propped against the open door. Her bangs hung into her eyes, her hair flatter on one side than the other and pointing this way and that on top.

It was a pretentiously affected look that he knew people with no fashion sense paid good money for. On Cady, it was cute. Even when she looked like she’d just run a balloon all over her head, it was who she was. Just like everything about her—the jeans, the sneakers, the T-shirts with logos for bands he didn’t know existed.

Christ Almighty. He sounded like the fashion police.

“No problem,” he said, looking down at the awl he held because looking at her was going to be his downfall. She was soft and sexy and he wanted to climb inside her clothes, a tight fit he wasn’t sure she was ready for.

Rubbing at the back of his neck, he said, “If I hadn’t been afraid I’d wake you up with my snoring, I probably would’ve stayed and done the same.”

“You do not snore.”

“Hmm. Must be you then,” he told her, and she stepped inside the building and slapped him.

He caught her hand and laughed. “If this is how you treat all your men, no wonder you spend so much time looking over your shoulder.”

“All my men?” She jerked, her eyes flashing when he pulled her closer and held her there. “You think I put up with this abuse from anyone else?”

“See? I knew I was special.” And then he couldn’t help himself. He kissed her. He tugged her between his body and the workbench and kissed her.

He wasn’t gentle as he ground his mouth against hers. He knew he might be hurting her, but he couldn’t stop. His need was too great. His heart too hungry. His mind unable to wrap around conscious thought.

She parted her lips, and he accepted the invitation, pushing his tongue inside to find hers. They played there together, sliding, loving, a parry and thrust that had his sword rising, had him moving Cady’s hands to his fly.

She cupped him in her palm, pressed against him until he moaned into her mouth. Her hands were sweet, but not nearly enough. He moved his legs to straddle her thigh and ground his crotch against her, his hips bucking, his cock straining as it grew to mammoth size.

He found the hem of her shirt and pulled the garment over her head, but lost patience with the hooks of her bra and tore them out of their moorings. Her laughter spilled into his mouth. “You owe me a bra, mister.”

“Fuck your bra. I’m about to owe myself a pair of boxers and jeans,” he said, too caught up in his ache to snag her when she ducked away. She didn’t go far.

For that he was grateful, because he was in no condition to chase her down. And when he realized what she was up to—unbuttoning, unzipping, pulling her pants to her knees, sliding her panties down to bunch on top of the denim, turning, bending over, bracing her hands on the lawn mower seat—he was afraid he was rooted to the spot for good.

All it took to set his feet in motion was Cady wiggling her ass. He made quick work of his belt and button fly, shucked his pants and boxers to the top of his boots. And then he spat into his hand, wet the head of his cock, and pushed inside of her all the way to his balls.

She groaned. He groaned. She cursed under her breath. He cursed out loud. And then he held her hips and began to move, thrusting, driving, pumping, in and out and in. Goddamn, but he liked to be in.

She was tight, so tight, like a fist, like his own skin, scraping him, sucking him, slicking him with her juices until he was dripping with her.

He reached around and found her clit, pressed against it the way she liked, rubbing, pinching, wishing his mouth was there so he could bite.

She shuddered, moaned, ground against his hand and his shaft. Then she shifted her weight on the mower seat so that she was leaning on one forearm, freeing up one of her hands to slip down and join his.

Her fingers were everywhere, playing with herself, with his shaft, with his balls, with the head of his cock when he withdrew to tease her, fucking through her folds and then into the cup she made of her hand.

He stayed there as long as he could stand it, pumping, clenching, closing his eyes and throwing back his head. Sweat beaded in the hollow of his throat and rolled down his chest. His thighs burned. His chest ached, and he pushed against the emotion building there, struggling to breathe as he moved his hands back to her hips.

Digging in and holding, he shoved his cock inside of her again. She gasped, and shoved back, meeting him stroke for stroke as things got wild, both of them giving and taking, hurting and easing, searching and coming apart.

His completion ripped through him like a knife to the gut. He jerked once, twice, unloading as Cady cried out and contracted, tightening around him like a cinch.

He held her while she shook, stayed with her until she calmed, waiting until he was empty to pull free, and then he slipped out and collapsed, draping himself over her and leaning against the lawn mower seat.

Cady finally pushed him away, mumbling something about her aching back. He wanted to laugh, but his lungs weren’t working, and so he reached out and spanked her. She yelped, jumped, turned around and glared.

He looked her up and down as he went about pulling up his boxers and jeans. “You know, chère. It’s hard to take that evil eye of yours seriously when your pants are bagging at your knees.”

“I didn’t ask you to take me seriously,” she said, rubbing her bare bottom. “Only to take me.”

“I’d say I did that.”

“Proud of yourself, are you?”

If she kept standing there like that, her lower half naked and not the least bit inhibited, he was going to be proud of himself all over her again. “If you’ve got it, no need to be shy, my grandmother would say.”

“Well, my grandmother would be rolling over in her grave if she knew someone, but me especially, was having sex in the shed.”

“You’ve never had sex in this shed?”

“I’ve never even spoken the word sex in this shed until now. And the only place on this farm that I’ve ever dropped my panties is behind the closed bathroom door.”

He wanted to see her naked outside. He wanted to fuck her naked outside. “So drop them the rest of the way.”

“What?”

“Take them off. Take everything off. Your shirt. Your pants.” He popped open the snaps of his shirt. “I’ll get a blanket. We’ll do it out in the open like animals.”

It took her a minute to respond, her gaze measuring his intent, her head cocked to the side as she studied him. The next thing he knew she was slipping her feet—sneakers and all—through the skinny legs of her jeans.

Balling up her clothes—her jeans, her panties, her torn bra and top—she took off running, calling over her shoulder, “I don’t think animals use blankets.”