One in Waiting (Reedsville Roosters Book 2), page 10
Ren wasn’t sure how to answer or even if he should answer. His body was quaking with spasms, his lungs still trying to draw in breath.
“Answer him, Mr. Ardent.” Emilie stopped flogging, but there were her fingers at his lips again.
He sucked them in greedily and nodded. “Yes. Yes.”
Leary thrust again, and again, grunting, then shouting he came, sending his hot load into Ren, and then bending over him to catch his breath.
Emilie tugged her fingers, and only then did Ren realize he’d bitten them, though probably not all that hard. He nudged up the blindfold. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
Her expression was coolly unaffected as she loosened the ties of the blindfold. “I knew the risks of doing it. It’s not something I’d punish you for. At least, not the first time.”
The first time.
Leary slipped out of him, and gave his ass a little smack before backing off the bed. “Stay there. I’ll be right back.”
As if Ren could go anywhere at the moment. He collapsed onto his belly, eyes closed, and took long breaths in through his mouth.
His eyes sprung back open at the drizzle of cold wetness on his back.
“Relax, Mr. Ardent. We’re all done. I’m just checking your skin. Should be fine, but I think the pinwheel may have nicked you here and here.” She pressed her palms against his back in the gentlest massage, backing off at the places where he cringed. Just tiny little pricks, really, like she’d said. Just surprised his nerves a little when she touched them. “You did very well,” she said.
“Why does it sound like that surprises you?”
“A lot of people ask for things they aren’t built to endure. They end up regretting the scenario. Feel guilty about doing it to themselves or angry at the person they allowed to do it. How are you feeling?”
He turned, rested his cheek atop his hands again and locked onto her gaze. “Feeling like Leary may be a little more traumatized than I am, to be honest.”
“What makes you think that?”
He shrugged. “He’s just so hesitant.”
“He’s trying. If you could have seen his face, you would know that. He wants to please you.”
Ren pulled his bottom lip between his teeth.
“You doubt that?”
“No. I mean. I guess not.”
He was stupid for expecting it of Leary. So fucking stupid. He was going to get tired of it and—
Emilie swiped her fingers across Ren’s brow, and over the eyelids he closed at her hand’s proximity. A gentle hypnotizing. Calming him like a baby.
“It’s okay to be confused,” she whispered as Leary’s heavy footsteps sounded across the room. She leaned in and said into his ear, “Now’s not a good time for thinking. Just relax and think about your body—about what you liked and what you want next time. Don’t mix emotion up with that. It doesn’t belong there right now. Do you understand?”
He didn’t. He didn’t understand anything at the moment, but he nodded anyway.
Leary returned with his pants zipped, obviously having cleaned himself up.
Emilie crawled to the edge of the bed and put her legs over it to stand. “Are you still a post-coital cuddler or has that changed?”
“Depends on the time of day.”
“This should be one of those times.”
“Okay.”
She padded away with a gray box, and both Ren and Leary watched her tuck it into the closet before returning to pick up her clothes. “Don’t feel like you need to hurry up and leave. Sleep here if you want. No one will disturb you.”
She was gone before they could make any response.
Leary looked down at him. “You wanna stay?”
Ren sure as shit didn’t want to move. Why’d she leave? She didn’t have to leave. He just nodded and closed his eyes. Moments later, Leary climbed onto the bed and pulled back the covers. “Come on inside.”
Ren did the necessary wriggling to get under the sheets, and Leary insinuated his warm, hot body against Ren’s backside. He bussed his lips across the side of his face and settled behind him, rubbing his arm in long motions. “I…didn’t know you liked that kind of thing.”
Ren let out a breath. “I don’t know what I like. I just like to feel. That feeling of being overwhelmed. I don’t know how to put it any clearer than that.”
“Plain ol’ sex isn’t enough?”
“Plain ol’ sex is okay sometimes. But sometimes I want something different.”
“Different.” He said the word as if he were trying it on for size. “You like Emilie? Was she kind to you? I only caught the tail end.”
“Mm-hmm. Didn’t know what I expected, but not that.”
“I didn’t know what to expect, either. That’s why I popped in.”
“I’m glad you popped in so you could see.”
“Yeah, now that I’ve seen, though, I don’t think I have the imagination for what you want. I’m in the dark on all that stuff. I don’t know what’s appropriate. I guess I’m learning right along with you.”
“You want to learn?”
“Yeah. I told you I’d try to give you what you needed. I love you. That hasn’t changed.”
“Good.” Ren swallowed and tried to push down all that nagging self-doubt. He knew Leary loved him, but that didn’t mean Leary wouldn’t leave him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The following morning, Leary woke to an empty bed and a too-bright room. He rolled over and squinted at the wind-up alarm clock. “Shit.” It was already past ten.
He got up, dressed, and poked his head into the bathroom in search of Ren, but he wasn’t there. Rubbing his eyes, he made his way through the house, stopping when he passed the doorway of what looked to be the office. Ceria sat at one side of the two pushed-together desks and was bent over her computer. She bobbed her head to some music only she could hear through the headphones she wore slightly askew of her ears.
He knocked gently on the open door, more for her to see the movement than for her to hear it. He suspected she’d only hear a bang.
She pushed the headphones down and raised an eyebrow. “I got so busy I forgot you were here. Cook left some sausage biscuits in the kitchen. Help yourself. Everyone else has already eaten.”
“Any idea where Ren went?”
“I’m not precisely sure. He left with Emilie at around six-thirty. She needed to make a decision about the Camp Out horses before a meeting, and I think Ren wanted to see some of the herd. He’s probably riding along with one of the ranch hands.”
“He’s probably the only man I know who’d find some work to do during what could be technically considered a vacation.” Unpaid, but still…
“You make that sound like a bad thing.”
“It’s not. He’s hardworking. Wired that way, just like his granddaddy, I guess. I’m not surprised baseball is starting to bore him. All that standing around and waiting probably makes him antsy.”
“I imagine going from non-stop movement to a sport requiring a lot of downtime would be quite an adjustment.”
“Yeah. Did he leave the car?”
“Mm-hmm. I can give you some ideas where he might be, but you may be better off just calling him…if you even get a signal out here.”
He sighed. “On and off.” Ren could wait, though. Leary and Emilie needed to bury the hatchet. Now that tempers had cooled—both his and hers—they could probably have a conversation that didn’t go all sideways. Having Ren around as a buffer had helped, but now Leary needed some one-on-one time with her. He needed to see where her head was about Alison and see if she could facilitate their introduction. He was also damned curious about what she thought about Ren. He really shouldn’t have given a damn what she thought about his lover, but he couldn’t help that he did. He thought he’d done good, and he wanted her to think so, too. Perhaps there was a childish element of “Hey, look at the cool toy I have” about it, but oddly enough, he wanted to share that toy with her. He didn’t really understand the compulsion.
“I’d rather know where Emilie might be. Do you know?”
“This time of day she might be working with the horse trainer.” She snorted. “Or supervising him, rather. She doesn’t trust him yet.”
“How long has he been working for her?”
“A year.”
“Sounds like Emilie. Can you tell me how to get there?”
“I’ll draw you a little map.”
Armed with an ink pen drawing on a piece of scrap paper, Leary made his way to the horse training pen and spotted Emilie, with a bone-colored cowboy hat pulled low on her brow, leaning against the fence. Even from fifty feet away, his gaze immediately fell to the exquisite curves of her hips and ass. He’d never seen a woman wear a pair of jeans so well—certainly not a society lady.
He pulled the parking brake on the little disposable rental car, left the key in the ignition, joined her at the fence, and returned her nod with one of his own.
“The last time I saw Ren he was yelling at my ranch hands.” She laughed—a genuine laugh that deepened the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. He hadn’t seen her laugh like that since way before wrinkles were a threat to any of them.
“Why’s that funny?”
“Just because I think they’re a little scared of him. More scared of him than me, apparently, and he wasn’t wrong.”
“What was he right about?”
“We’re behind with haying. Haven’t even started the first cutting yet. Herd needs to be moved, too. They need more grass, and he says the cows don’t care that I’m short-staffed.”
“Knowing him, by the end of the day your ranch hands won’t remember who signs their paychecks.”
“That’s fine with me, as long as they’re doing the work they’re paid for.”
“He might do such a good job you’ll miss him when he’s gone.”
“If he does that great of a job, I won’t let him leave.”
Hmm. Seemed as good a place to transition as any. Leary draped his forearms over the gate slat and watched the trainer put a horse through its paces for a few minutes. Leary knew fuck-all about horses. Never even ridden one. By the time he’d formally hooked up with Ren, Ren’s grandfather had already sold his ranch.
He canted his head toward the trainer and met her pale gaze. “You think you could do a better job?”
“He’s been on horses since he could walk. I rode my first one at seventeen.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
She sighed and turned her attention back to the horsey spectacle. “I don’t know. I like to think I’m a little more empathetic, but he’s far more efficient than I am.”
“So you understand horses? You understand this ranching thing?”
“I’m pretty green, still, if that’s what you’re asking. I spent a lot of time outside in the sun after I had Alison. Helped with my depression. Couldn’t just sit around, though. I had to find things to do to stay busy. I was curious about how things worked, so I started asking questions. My foster parents kindly obliged me. I think they hoped I’d show some interest. Probably tickled them when a girl like me didn’t mind getting her hands dirty.”
“I guess they didn’t know you very well. I never knew you to be afraid of work, but I also never thought you’d be out in the dirt like this.”
“They got to know me well enough. After I came out of my haze, anyway.”
“How long was that?”
“Few months after delivery. Postpartum stuff didn’t help.”
“Did you get to see her?”
“When?”
“After the birth.”
“Oh.” She tucked an escaping swath of hair behind her ear. “Yes, I held her for about three hours and sobbed the entire time. I remember my mother sitting in that hospital room looking at me like she didn’t know what to do with me, and I don’t understand that now. I was still her baby. She should have known what to do. Even I would have known that one thing. It should have been instinctive.”
“What did she tell you?”
“She told me that I made a commitment and I needed to follow through with it. She said I needed to think about the life I had ahead of me, and how there was no place for a baby in it.”
Shit. He’d always hated that woman, and it wasn’t just because she’d slammed the door in his face one too many times when he’d called on Emilie. “I—my mother would have taken her.” Not him. Who knew where he would have been? Prison, if Mr. Beaudeliare had had his way, probably. “She wouldn’t have told anyone who Alison’s mother was. She wouldn’t have asked for anything.”
Emilie’s nod came slowly. “I knew that.”
He waited for the “but.”
“I suggested that. My parents said New Orleans was too small a place and eventually someone would put two and two together. My prospects would have been ruined even before I turned eighteen.”
“Your prospects? Is that what your parents said or what you thought? Because you were with me. At the time, you didn’t need any other prospects.”
“We were kids, Leary. Yeah, we clicked. We thought we were in love, but you can’t say marriage was on the horizon. I hadn’t even finished puberty and you were on your way out to college.”
He winced, but knew she was right. Love made at sixteen and eighteen years old wasn’t supposed to last forever. “I gotta say I’m angry at everything that happened, but it’s hard to say now who I’m angry at. I just know thinking about it makes me hurt.”
“I don’t know what I would have done differently. It’s easy to look back now and talk about should-haves and could-haves, but at sixteen, I trusted the people around me to help me make good decisions. I made some I’ll never stop regretting. I…I regret the way you were cut out of things and that you weren’t given a chance to be a father to Alison if you wanted to be. I’ll never regret not going back to New Orleans, though.”
“You really don’t go home?”
She gave her head a slow shake. “I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been there in fifteen years, and those were all quick trips. Funerals. Weddings. A baby shower once. The baby shower was the hardest, because I never got to have one, and I knew that woman was going to go home with a baby in her arms after delivery. I decided never to put myself through that again. Easier to just decline invitations.”
He recalled her not responding to several invitations his sister extended through Emilie’s stepmother. Now he knew why she hadn’t responded, and knowing made his heart hurt. “People ask about you, you know. Still ask me whenever they see me. They wonder what happened to you. Where you went to. I never know what to do except change the subject.”
She laid her head against the side of her arm and looked over at him. Her expression was soft. Almost neutral, but not quite. Inquisitive. He’d seen that same look long ago when they were kids and he realized she might actually tolerate him a little better than all the other jerks. “What are you going to tell them now when they ask?”
He chuckled and shrugged. “I dunno. I’ll probably still do the same old song and dance. I’ve gotten used to keeping folks out of my business, and I think I like it that way. Nobody really needs to know much about my personal life, except maybe my mother. Can’t really keep any secrets from her.”
“She knows you’re with Ren?”
“Yeah. Knows we both do hook-ups on the side, too. She doesn’t necessarily condone it, but she understands why we do it. The best she can, anyway. It’s hard explaining that sort of thing to someone who is so firmly hetero.”
“What about your father?”
“Painfully oblivious about everything as always. Mom stopped trying to convert him to Team Enlightenment ten years ago. He likes to stick his head in the sand and let the world go on around him.”
“What would he have done if your mother had taken Alison?”
He scoffed. “Probably do the same thing I do and sidestep questions about things he doesn’t want to talk about.”
Emilie looked into the pen again and watched the trainer work.
Leary did too, more because he didn’t know what to say than because he had any real interest in the work. She was standing still for once. Not hauling ass from one place to another, not purposefully avoiding him. Maybe she was in her element. Her little bubble. Maybe having a bubble was a good thing for a woman like her.
He picked up the end of her ponytail and gave it a little flick against her cheek. “You happy here, Emilie?”
“That’s out of the blue.”
“Nah. Just wondering if you’re really happy or if you’ve just resigned yourself. I’d like to think you were happy.”
“You care?”
“You think I shouldn’t?”
“I’d expect you wouldn’t, not after everything that happened.”
“I won’t lie. When I saw you back at The Beaudelaire, I hoped you were miserable. I hoped karma had caught up to you for what you’d done, but I couldn’t stay angry. You’re still the same girl you were, aren’t you?”
“For better or for worse.”
“I knew that girl wouldn’t gut me so bad on purpose. You were evil, but you were never cruel.”
She smiled again, and just like old times he pulled her instinctively to his side and tucked his chin on the top of her head.
He realized what he’d done when her body tensed, and he started to let go, but then she relaxed and molded against his side. She felt so good, and he always felt like he was the only man who made her feel safe enough to let down her guard—that’s how relieved her body seemed when they touched.
And that was a shame.
“You should know, Ren seems to be of the mistaken impression you’re going to leave him,” she said softly.
“I have no plans to. I’m happy with the way things are.”
“He thinks you’ll abandon him and try to make a family out of Alison and I.”
“Which isn’t possible.”
“Not impossible, just unlikely.”
“What do you mean?”
“Alison comes and goes as she pleases. I don’t discourage that, but I think by now she knows her visits make me anxious.”
