Prologue
Big Country sat in his Papa-Bear-sized chair, naked as the day he was born. Curling and uncurling his toes in the soft fibers of the flokati rug, he reached up and adjusted the half-smoked cigar dangling from his mouth. Closing his eyes, he widened his thighs and let his head fall back against the chair’s supple leather, simply wanting to relax, wanting to have an itty-bitty minuscule moment of peace in the comfort of his Tiburón beach house, but he couldn’t find it.
All week he’d been running around like Marvin-the-Merry-Fucking-Mover for Sabrina and Zeus, his Ford F350 clocking hundreds of miles as he hauled furniture and boxes from Zeus’s cabin and Sabrina’s apartment to the garage at the base of the mountain. The hours on the road weren’t the problem though; he loved driving almost as much as he loved fucking. No, something he couldn’t put a finger on was barring him from his unbothered nature, and not knowing what it was pushed him farther toward the edge.
Soon enough, ol’ son, you’ll figure it out soon enough, he promised himself. He had a great mind and great minds figured shit out.
The gagging sound from his crotch forced him to open his eyes and look down, pulling the cigar from his mouth.
“You all right down there, darlin’?” he asked the pretty little blonde with the baby-blue eyes. She looked up at him, her pink glossy lips stretched taut over his girth. He reached down and stroked her silky strands encouragingly.
Pretty girl tried to smile, then went back to work. Her ungraceful attempts at navigating the length and thickness of his glorious manhood had him rethinking his decision to bring home a regular kind of woman—and by regular, he meant one whose skills and motivations hadn’t been honed by the incentives of money and all it could provide.
Big Country flinched and grunted as a tooth caught on a ridge along his shaft.
“Shit, woman!”
“Sowwy,” she mumbled while having the ever-loving grace to look both embarrassed and tickled by his reaction.
He rolled his neck to relieve the mounting tension.
Taking a slow drag on the cigar, he tamped down on a surge of impatience and watched her bob up and down a few more seconds before he concluded that, for both their sakes, it was best to give her some guidance.
“Look here, sweetness, my motto is if you ain’t a pro, go slow. Learn your way around the big fella and maybe leave the deep-throating for another time.”
Of course, the possibility ofanothertime was a bald-faced lie. He wasn’t giving this novice another opportunity to abuse Big Bubba.
“This ain’t what you want, man; if you take her home you’re going to regret it.”
Lynx had warned him before they’d parted ways earlier tonight. Damned if his best friend didn’t have a touch of psychic in him. Leaving the lounge with…with…whatever her name washadn’t been his smartest decision. He should’ve headed back to Mama’s House with Lynx instead of believing an innocent face and sweet disposition would be a solution to this discontent he couldn’t identify.
In his haste to return to being the easygoing man he’d struggled to be, he’d made a fool’s mistake, broken his A-number one rule when he’d chosen to have a sexual encounter with a woman outside of the professional sexual services industry. Now he sat here, receiving the worst blow he had since he was a fourteen-year-old test dummy in Lucy Bell Lucree’s quest to land an older wealthier boy at their high school. He’d crushed on the then-sixteen-year-old since he was twelve and had no problem being her guinea pig, and as awkward as it had been in the beginning, he’d come each and every time. Now, with each passing moment, he accepted that his chances of finding pleasure and peace between this woman’s thighs were spiraling fromdamn unlikelytoa snowball’s chance in hell.
In an act of boldness, the woman on her knees tried to take him deeper and choked again. He clenched up, expecting more teeth, more pain, sighing in relief when neither came to pass. Hastily, he dislodged his dick from her mouth before she bit it clean off, and stood.
Lord, protect me from the unskilled, he thought, as a strange look settled over her face. He wondered if it was shame or sadness, but she bowed her head before he could be sure.
Well, this was a conundrum.
He scratched his left ass cheek, unaccustomed to anything other than shared orgasms during sex. Right then and there, he decided to sacrifice himself and give her a bit of pleasure. That was one rule he wouldn’t break tonight. He always made sure he gave his partners their release.
“Lay back on the rug and bend your knees for me, sweetness,” he instructed, grabbing the glass ashtray near the foot of the recliner and extinguishing his cigar. Placing the ashtray on the chair, he looked at…at…it started with a D but he still couldn’t remember her name.
He shrugged. Wasn’t like it mattered. He didn’t have any intention of seeing her again, and maybe that reflected in his gaze because she seemed hesitant to do as requested.
“If you ain’t the most beautiful sight a man could ever want to see, I don’t know what is.” He complimented her, knowing the quickest way through a woman’s defenses was through her vanity.
Predictably she eased back on the rug, propped herself up on her elbows, and looked at him with uncertain anticipation.
Stepping into the space between her slightly spread legs, he gloried in her sun-kissed skin, unmarred except for the scars on her left wrist and forearm. The scarring was old, an indication of a past suffering self-expressed on her body. Maybe it had been a grab at attention, or maybe it had been an indication of something worse.
Either way, he could appreciate anybody who’d stood toe to toe with their mortality and somehow made it out alive. Near death made you appreciate living; at least that’s what he’d felt when Mama and his grandparents had stepped in after his family had beaten the living shit out of him, trying to hasten his death before he was even old enough to know how to spell the word.
“Bend your knees for me, sweetness,” he said and kneeled, looking at the woman’s shaved pussy.Good Lord in Heaven, he thought as Bubba attempted to push toward the silky prize buried deep within her body.Sorry, old son, Big Country apologized. There was no way in hell he was going to add to the list of tonight’s mistakes.
Positioning his head between her thighs, he inhaled the natural musk still able to exist despite the floral scents she tried to smother it with. He looked up beyond her abdomen and breasts to her cornflower-blue eyes. “Anything I should be worrying about, darlin’?”
It was an unusual question to have to ask. The women he had sex with were tested at regular intervals by the physicians he paid to provide him with proof of their status. The woman shook her head, blushing so red her level of embarrassment was painful.Poor darlin’.
