Текст книги "Shaken, Not Stirred"

Автор книги: Sawyer Bennett

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“Okay… I’m ready,” Casey announces as she turns toward me and holds her arms out to the side for inspection.

My eyes slide over her… over golden skin that I’ve pretty much licked every square inch of. Looking back up to her, I give her a smirk. “I guess you pass muster.”

“Pass muster?” she asks dramatically with narrowed eyes. “This is the hottest thing you’ll see on the beach today. I think I more than pass muster.”

I grin licentiously at her, grab her by the waist, and pull her in for a kiss. After I rob the breath from her lungs with said kiss, I smile and rub my nose against hers. “You are the hottest, sexiest thing ever. You more than pass muster. You outshine the sun.”

“God… your dirty talk is good, but your sweet talk is even better,” Casey mutters as she shimmies past me and out the door of her bedroom.

I watch that fine ass as it sways out the door for just a moment before I follow her.

It’s a massive production to get set up on the beach but by nine AM, we are in business complete with foldout lounge chairs, a cooler with ice and water for Casey and Coke for Zoey and me, towels, and the ever-needed sunscreen. I suggested getting one of those large umbrellas you stick in the sand, but Casey actually sneered at me.

“Shade is for wusses.”

I threw up my hands in quick defeat and said, “Sorry, Miss Beach Goddess. Didn’t know there were rules.”

She just smirked at me, and then put on a production by slathering the front of her body with sunscreen. It took some concentrated effort on my part not to get turned on by that, but I managed and mainly because of my daughter being there. It’s amazing how free I am with Casey when it’s just me and her… having no boundaries when it comes to expressing our mutual desire for each other. With Zoey here, it’s a bit different. I have to check myself so I don’t say something completely dirty to Casey or I don’t get a full-blown hard-on when she does something as simple as putting on sunscreen.

Casey and I get settled in beach chairs next to each other while Zoey heads down to the water’s edge. She starts walking south, stopping every once in a while to pick up shells.

“I have off tomorrow and I’d like to take Zoey up to Corolla to see the wild horses,” Casey says as she tilts her face up to the sun.

“Am I invited?” I ask playfully as I tilt my face up too, closing my eyes against the glare.

“Sure,” she says impishly. “Why not?”

“Gee thanks,” I mutter, slightly put out.

“It’s just… I know how much Zoey loves horses, so I thought that would be something cool I could do for her.”

“I love horses too, Goldie,” I point out.

The creaking of Casey’s chair has me opening my eyes and swiveling my head to look at her. She’s turned over onto her side, one hand propping up her head and the other arm resting gracefully along the length of her ribs and hip. This position really catches my attention because her breasts squeeze together and… eyes back up to her face before I get a woody.

“So what was it like working on a ranch?” she asks curiously, her one hand now fiddling with the bow tie of her bikini bottoms at her hip. I swallow hard and make my eyes slide back to focus on her face, which… fuck… that’s so beautiful, that alone would give me a hard-on.

So I decide to concentrate on the conversation. “It’s hard work… up at dawn, usually done about the time the sun goes down. It’s physically grueling, especially during the calving and branding seasons. And sometimes boring… many days are spent on horseback just riding the perimeter of the property, checking the fence line, and protecting the cattle from wolves and coyotes by our presence out there.”

“Do you love horses or your motorcycle more?” she asks, her blue eyes looking lighter in the overhead sun.

“Hmmmm…” I pause to think because that’s a damn good question. Something I’ve never considered before, and while I don’t miss working the ranch, I do miss riding every day. “I’d have to say horses. I’ve been riding them since I was practically a baby. The motorcycle thing has only happened in the last several years.”

“Alyssa has a horse that she keeps over at The Haven now,” Casey says. She had told me about The Haven, which was Alyssa and Brody’s no-kill animal shelter they ran together. “She said I could bring Zoey over there to do some riding if I wanted.”

“She would love that,” I tell her, completely warmed over her thoughtfulness to give something to Zoey that she loves so much.

“You could ride too if you wanted,” Casey adds on. “I think you’d look really hot on a horse.”

“Hotter than on a motorcycle?” I ask, turning her original comparative question back on her somewhat.

“No way,” Casey says firmly. “The hottest is you lying on my bed naked, on your stomach and sleeping. The way your arms curl around the pillow make your biceps bunch, and I get to see all of your beautiful tattoos. And your ass… damn, boy… it is the hottest, sweetest ass I’ve ever seen. Or licked for that matter.”

I groan and lean my head back against the chair, closing my eyes and wishing I could close my ears. “I need you to stop talking now, Casey. You’re getting a little too good at dirty talk.”

She chuckles, and I can hear the creaking of her chair as she rolls over onto her back.

Chapter 19

Casey

Tenn on a motorcycle? Very hot.

Tenn on a horse? No words in the English language can describe.

I took Alyssa up on her offer to let Tenn and Zoey ride her horse, Sasquatch. He’s an Appaloosa gelding that she rescued a few months ago. After she rehabbed him, she’d grown way too attached and decided to keep him. This necessitated her hiring Gabby to expand the current barn outward to add another stall.

Not knowing much about horses, I kept my distance as Alyssa and Zoey got him saddled. He seems to be a relatively calm horse, but his size intimidates me a bit. Not Zoey, though. She hopped right up and took off after Alyssa pointed her to a riding trail she and Brody had cleared out last year.

While we waited for her, Alyssa put Tenn and me to work helping to bathe some of the dogs. This is, of course, one of my favorite things to do when I volunteer at The Haven. It’s the perfect thing to do on a hot summer day too, and it doesn’t hurt to have a gorgeous man by your side doing it.

We got a grand total of five of the dogs done when Zoey came trotting back up to the back of the kennel, easily swinging her tiny frame off the big horse.

And looking like he’d just won the lottery, Tenn’s eyes shined with excitement as he took the reins and hauled himself up in the saddle. One would think a tall man wearing faded jeans, a Harley t-shirt, and black biker boots would look odd in the saddle, but my damn mouth watered as I looked up at him. He had pulled a beaten-up University of Wyoming ball cap out of his back pocket—courtesy of his brother, Woolf, who he had told me graduated there—stuck it on his head, and cantered off.

It was only when the dog that I was bathing decided to shake the wet soap off, spraying me in the face, did I turn my gaze from Tenn as he rode away on the horse.

“You really like my dad, huh?” Zoey asked as she squatted down beside me at the large, metal tub.

“Yeah,” I say with another glance at his retreating form in the distance. “I really kind of do.”

“He says you have commitment issues but he’s working on fixing that,” Zoey says innocently, now sticking her hands into the soapy water to help scrub down the Springer Spaniel who looks at us with morose eyes.

Shaking my head with a smile on my lips, I can only let Zoey’s words roll over me. Over the last week she’s been here, I’ve learned that fourteen-year-old girls don’t have much of a filter over their mouths. Zoey, in particular, says whatever is on her mind, never with any ill will or malice, but with a brutal honesty. It’s why I give her a pass, because true enough… I do have commitment issues.

“What do you think of my dad moving here?” she asks, and when I cut my eyes to her, I see a little bit of overprotectiveness in her gaze.

And damn… that’s sweet. She’s checking me out on behalf of her dad.

Taking the spaniel by the collar, I help urge him to hop out of the tub so I can rinse him down. He’s only too happy to comply as this dog clearly doesn’t like “bath time”.

“You want my honest thoughts?”

“No sense in lying,” she says with a grin. “I can smell a liar a mile away.”

Laughing, I tell her, “Here… come hold his collar as he’s likely to jet away when I turn the water on.”

When Zoey has the pup in her control, I grab the hose and start running the stream over his back, using my hands to push out the soap as I go along.

“So… your dad is pretty amazing,” I tell her candidly. “He’s made me look at things a bit differently.”

“He’s good at that,” Zoey says with a nod.

“Yeah, well, I can be pretty pigheaded about certain things, so he’s like really good at it,” I say with a chuckle. Continuing to rinse the dog, who intermittently tries to shake out the water of his coat, I tell her, “Without telling you the details, some guy messed up my head a long time ago. Hurt me pretty bad and then I sort of used that as an excuse to close myself off from relationships.”

“Because you didn’t want to get hurt again?”

“Exactly. I was protecting myself,” I confirm as I step away from the dog and turn the water off. He gives a vigorous shake, spraying Zoey down nicely.

She just laughs and turns her face away until he’s done, then looks back over him at me. “Good thing my dad came along and set you straight.”

“I’m sort of a work in progress,” I tell her truthfully. “Still scared but because your dad is so amazing, I’m really trying to push past that.”

She considers that for a moment and then with a voice that borders on almost pleading, she says, “Please don’t hurt him. I think you have the ability to do that.”

Ouch. That hurt.

Letting the hose drop to the concrete, I step over to Zoey and squat down so I’m eye level with her. “I promise you that I will never intentionally hurt him. And I also promise I will continue to work hard at moving past my insecurities. Your dad is extremely good at pushing me nicely but also giving me room to falter. That’s how people learn the best.”

“Good enough,” she says, and then with a completely unfiltered mouth adds on, “because it would be awesome if y’all got married.”

I shake my head at her as I stand up and give her an admonishing smile. “Your dad and I have known each other going on four weeks now. I don’t think marriage is something we should be talking about at this point in our relationship.”

“But he loves you,” Zoey says with innocent candor as she stands up, keeping her hand on the spaniel’s collar.

Her words… so simple, said with somewhat of a child’s view on the world, and yet they slam into me like a nuclear punch. My voice actually shakes when I ask her, “Why do you say that?”

She gives me a sly smile and leads the dog over to a hook on the wall that has a leash. Taking it, she snaps it to his collar. “He looks at you the way he looks at me. That’s how I know.”

An overload of emotion swarms through me, making my chest ache and feel warm at the same time. Only one man has ever said he loved me and that was a man who absolutely lied about it. Other men have come close, but I never let them get the words out of their mouths, the thought of hearing it almost sending me into a full-blown panic.

Which begs the question… does Tenn really love me and if so, how do I feel about it?

Little bursts of panic that recede just as quickly as they exploded, then a nice feeling of comfort settles over me. A secure feeling. Peace, maybe?

The thought of Tenn loving me is… actually okay, I think.

Now I just have to figure out what my feelings are for him, because as much as I’ve learned over the many years I’ve played at being a seductress, the one thing I know absolutely nothing about is what it really means to love a man.

“Are you sure you’re okay walking up there by yourself?” Tenn asks Zoey for the third time as he hands her over a twenty-dollar bill.

Typical Zoey, she shoots him the old teenage eye roll. “Yes, Dad. You can see the pier from here. It’s not like I’m traveling to Mozambique.”

I snicker and start walking up the stairs to my house. We just got back from The Haven, and I have to get ready for work. Zoey asked if she could go up to the pier because some of the friends she had made on the beach over the last week will be up there hanging out. Tenn is about ready to freak out about his daughter wandering off, and I think it’s adorable.

“When will you be back?” he asks.

“Few hours?” she asks back, to make sure that’s okay.

“Fine,” he grumbles, and she turns to start running back toward the public beach access. But he can’t help himself when he calls out to her, “You have your phone on you, right?”

She waves a dismissive hand over her head and doesn’t answer. He continues to watch her until she’s out of sight, and I feel compelled to walk back down the steps to him. Placing my hands on his shoulders, I lean forward and kiss the back of his neck. “Relax, Daddy. She’ll be fine.”

Tenn doesn’t answer me for a moment, continuing to look at the walkway over the dunes where she just disappeared. When he finally does turn to face me, his eyes are filled with white-hot lust, blazing so intensely that I actually jerk backward.

“Get upstairs and get naked now,” he growls at me, placing his hands on my hips and roughly turning me around. A small push on my lower back to start climbing and he says, “Really, really need to fuck you, Casey.”

Heat scorches me from the inside out and my belly flutters. It’s stupid to say it, but I argue, “I have to be at work soon. I can’t be late.”

“Fuck work,” he says, pushing me faster up the stairs, and when I reach the top, he simply spins me around, bends over, and throws me over his shoulder. “Give me the keys.”

I pass him my key chain and he deftly unlocks my door, pushing it open and leaving it that way as he makes his way through my house. The keys drop to the floor and then he’s in my bedroom, tossing me on the bed.

Tenn starts stripping quickly, eyes focused first on his boots, then on his belt. He glances over to me, sees me just leaning on my elbows while I watch him undress, and growls again. “Naked, Casey.”

Even as I reach to pull my shirt over my head, I grumble, “I’m going to be late for work.”

Tenn snorts as he whips his shirt over his head, the muscles in his stomach flexing with the action and giving me a peep at the washboard that apparently resides just under the skin. “I seriously doubt your brother will fire you.”

He takes his jeans off lightning fast, pushing his boxers right along with them, and then he’s gloriously naked at the foot of my bed, stroking a very magnificent and beautiful erection. I take a moment just to appreciate, and then I start shimmying out of my shorts and underwear. Tenn pounces about the time they get pushed to my knees, jerking them the rest of the way off me.

I start to undo my bra, but he mutters, “Leave it” and places a large hand on my chest to push me down. Roughly jerking my legs apart, he turns my insides to jelly when he levels me with a promising stare. “Going to eat you out… fucking devour you actually, then I’m going to fuck you hard.”

“God, that’s sexy,” I moan, spreading my legs further to him.

His eyes glitter at me and as he strokes a finger through my wet folds, he says, “This quiet lovemaking we’ve been doing has been supremely nice, Goldie, but I’ve been dying to hear you scream. Now that Zoey’s gone… well, I really am looking forward to making you scream.”

“And, I could just come from your words alone,” I say as a full-body shudder overtakes me.

Tenn levels me with a wicked grin and then dives down in between my legs. His long fingers spread me apart and his tongue works his magic, causing every muscle in my body to clench hard over the pleasure he gives me. He alternates spearing his tongue inside of me to fluttering the tip over that home-run spot, and when he adds two fingers that push deep inside of me, my hips fly off the bed as I start to come.

A long moan tears out of me and even while spasms are still playing havoc on my body, Tenn is flipping me over and pulling me up to my knees.

“Grab the headboard, Casey,” he grits out with urgency. “You’re going to need to brace yourself.”

And wow… just wow… the threatening promise in those words causes mini orgasms to fire up and slingshot up my spine. My hands go out and grab onto the edge of the wood and the minute I grip on tight, Tenn is thrusting hard into me from behind.

He lets out a groan of such deep satisfaction and fills me so completely, more spasms shoot up my back.

And then he does indeed proceed to fuck me hard. He pulls that long length out of me, almost to the tip… almost to the point of empty desolation within me, and then he’s ramming it back in so hard his balls slap against me.

Every time… he grunts, hisses, or moans from the friction he’s causing.

Every time he slams into me, more tingles race up and down my back and another orgasm builds.

Every time he fills me up, I feel my heart filling up as well.

Tenn leans forward over me, bringing one hand up to lay beside mine on the headboard. The other comes to the back of my head where he fists my hair and pulls on it, twisting my head to the side so he can close his mouth over mine. He kisses me deep, his thrusts going a bit slower as he takes the time to let our tongues mate. Then he pulls his mouth away, drops his hand from my hair to my shoulder, and then uses his leverage by holding onto the headboard to fuck me harder yet.

His thrusts now are hitting me so deep, the entire bed is rocking back and forth and we have to pull our hands back a bit so our fingers don’t get slammed in between the wood and the wall. Tenn merely uses that as an opportunity to lace his fingers with mine, and then push them against the front of the headboard for continued leverage.

“Tenn,” I whimper as he continues to heave inside my body.

“What is it, baby?” he gasps as he pumps in and out, over and over.

“Feels so good,” I tell him… my words coming out in choppy spurts because he simply steals my breath in all ways.

Tenn leans over me again, moving his hand from my shoulder to wrap his entire arm over my chest. His stomach presses into my spine, and I can feel his forehead drop to the back of my head. “I am never letting you go,” he says through clenched teeth. “And I don’t care if it scares the shit out of you. You’re going to have to deal with it.”

My heart squeezes hard.

Oh… Tenn… what are you doing to me?

“Want you to see everything you’ve been missing,” he says softly as he continues to tunnel in and out of me. “Want you to crave me the way I crave you.”

My eyes start misting with tears over the need in his voice. A ball of pleasurable tension contracts tight in my center as he continues to drive deep into me.

“You’re mine, Casey,” he says dangerously. “And nothing will stand in my way to keep you. Not even you.”

The confident and dominating way in which he’s claiming me finally causes all of my resistance to cave. My orgasm breaks free like a thunderclap at the same time I feel the walls around my heart start to crumble with the realization… a realization deep in the marrow of my bones, that Tenn would never abuse my heart.

I’d gladly give it to him and while he holds it within his big, powerful hands, I know he would only ever give it the most delicate of care.

I cry out from the force of my release as much as from the understanding that Tenn Jennings may just be my salvation. I cry his name out loud and with deep emotion, “Tenn!”

Tenn slams hard into me once more, his body freezing in that perfect moment, and he moans, “Fucking coming… coming deep inside you, baby.”

Shuddering, his breath gusts out over the back of my head. He releases my hand pinned against the headboard, wraps it over his other arm across my chest, and pulls us both upright to our knees while I can feel him pulsing wetly inside of me. He squeezes me hard… to the point of cutting off my breath, but I don’t care.

It feels too good to care.

As he grinds his pelvis against my ass, tiny tremors race through me, zinging all around and plucking at my nerves. My heart feels like it’s about to explode from my chest.

My. Heart. Actually. Feels.

It actually feels damn good.