I lifted the ear buds, shoving one in his ear.
“Jussy.”
“Shh,” I whispered.
I put the other one in his ear, cued up my music, found what I needed and looked to him.
“Listen,” I said, looking again at my phone, making sure the volume was right (because I could blast my music).
When it was all good, I played him “Chain Link.”
Deke slid his hand up my back to curl it around the base of my neck while his other arm curved closer around my hip, his focus blurred and he listened to me singing in his ears.
I watched his face then I watched my phone and focused on breathing as the dot slid along the line.
When it was over, I hit pause and looked to him, lifting my hands to pop out the ear buds.
And when I did, he said quietly, “Heard that before, baby. Pretty song. You got a way.”
“You were standing by a chain link fence wearing worn jeans and a white tee the first time I saw you in a biker bar in Wyoming.”
The hand at my neck and the arm around me caused pain as both tightened with all the considerable strength Deke possessed.
I didn’t share he was hurting me.
I stared in hazel eyes burning into mine and I whispered, “Told you, baby. Sitting there in that bar before you brought me a Jack and Coke, I was writing lyrics.”
Suddenly we were up, me in Deke’s arms, and I dropped my phone so I could hold on to him as he stalked down the narrow hall, doing it sideways to accommodate us both.
When we got to his bed, he swung me out so he was standing at the foot but I was on my knees on the bed in front of him.
“Get naked,” he growled.
I stared for just a beat into the heat of his eyes before I hurried to do what I was told.
Deke didn’t take that beat. At the end of that beat, his arms slammed into the ceiling of his trailer as he yanked off his freaking…white tee.
I started trembling.
Both of us naked, Deke hooked me at the waist, yanking me up so I slammed into his body and he was kissing me before he bent us over the bed, climbing in, taking me with him.
I went down and Deke came down on top of me.
I thought it’d go fast, be frenzied, rough, hard, deep, intense, amazing.
It was frenzied. Rough. Hard. Deep. Intense. Amazing.
But it was that as we took our time.
I got to drag my tongue tight against both his nipples (and more). I got his cock in my mouth. I tasted his neck. The skin around his navel. Grazed the insides of his elbows with my teeth. Touched my tongue to the lobes of his ears. Pulled each of his balls deep into my mouth.
Deke took in just as much as me.
We didn’t give and take. We gave while taking. We took while giving.
And we were so into it…
No it wasn’t that.
There couldn’t be anything between us when Deke finally slid inside me, his cock unsheathed.
I held him close, I held him with everything I had, including holding his eyes as he moved over me, moved inside me, became a part of me.
The orgasm wasn’t hard and soul-shattering, tearing through me.
It came slow, it lasted long, and through it, clutching him tight to me, it knitted Deke into every fiber of me.
Deke ended his with his neck bent, his temple pressed to the side of my head, his labored breaths sounding sweet against my ear.
“Wish like fuck, Jussy, I didn’t stand you up.”
I closed my eyes and kept him held tight.
He wanted that time back.
God.
God.
He wanted to know years ago I was a bear in the morning.
I’d wanted that too.
But now…
Now I was just fucking happy that there was a now.
“I wish like fuck, Deke, that I could erase the life that covered you and your mom with shit and you two had more than your fair share of happy, us visiting her at her cottage on a lake,” I whispered back.
I opened my eyes when he lifted his head and looked down at me.
But I wasn’t done.
“Though, that said, I’d do it so you’d still end up a travelin’ man, because what can I say?” I gave him a slight shrug and a big smile. “I’m a gypsy.”
I felt the beauty of his sharp bark of laughter all through me right before he took my mouth in a rough, hard, deep, intense, amazing kiss.
He ended it and kissed the mark that was still on my shoulder, except fading, and I wished he’d bite me again, had even thought about getting a tattoo of his teeth marks so I could have that memory of our first time, that mark that was Deke’s with me always.
He slid out, rolled off and rolled me into him.
I rested my cheek on his chest, drawing mindless patterns through the hair there, staring at a wall filled with Deke’s history.
“I wanna be a part of your trailer,” I blurted.
“Say again?”
I lifted up, resting my forearm on his chest and looking in his eyes.
“The wallpaper history of Deke Hightower on the walls. I want to be a part of it.”
His face got soft and his hand did what it did a lot. It trailed up my spine, and along its path, he tangled it in my hair.
This time he used that hair to pull my face closer to his.
“So I take it that’s official you wanna see about lookin’ into a future with me.”
“Yep,” I replied immediately.
“Fuck,” he whispered, his gaze falling to my mouth. “No bullshit. Out there. Open. My Jussy.” He looked again into my eyes. “Made for me.”
I felt more tears sting my nose and combatted them by slapping his chest so hard, the sound cracked across the room and the surprise of it made him grunt and his body jerk.
I ignored that and ordered, “You have to stop saying shit like that because every time you do it makes me want to cry and now I’m thirty-four, I am worldly, worldly-wise and a little world-weary and as such, I’m not a crier. Except,” I hastened to add, “when the man I like…a lot,” I stressed, “tells me he and his mom were homeless. Then I’m allowed to cry.”