Tex sits on the stool next to mine, facing the room, both of us looking at the space we've built.
"I'm going to make some calls," he says. "Denny first. Then a few others. I want the word out by tonight. And Stormy?"
"Yeah?"
"If he steps foot in this bar again, he's in your house. You hear me? Not mine. Not Sheila's. Yours. This is the place you chose when you stopped running. This is the place whereyou learned to smile and where you kissed me. When he walks through that front door, he is standing in Stormy's house. And Stormy doesn't run. Not anymore."
My throat tightens and my eyes burn. I don't trust my voice so I nod.
He puts his arm around my shoulders and I lean into him. Somewhere on a highway heading north, a man in a truck is planning his return.
Let him come.
I'll be ready for him this time.
Chapter 34: Tex
I wake up to Stormy's mouth on my stomach.
His mouth is marking a path just below the navel, where the trail of hair gets thicker and the skin is soft and the nerve endings apparently have a direct line to every part of my brain that isn't ready to be awake yet.
His lips are warm. His hand is flat on my hip, pressing lightly, holding me in place, and his mouth is moving south with the slow patience of a man who has a plan and is in no hurry to explain it.
I was dreaming about pancakes. I don't know why that's the detail my brain offers up first. I was dreaming and now I'm not. The transition between those two states is the best transition I've ever experienced in my life.
"Stormy." I'm barely thirty percent functional. "What are you—"
"Shh."
"It's—" I crane my neck to look at the clock on the nightstand. The numbers swim. "Six fifteen in the—"
"Shh… be quiet."
His mouth moves lower. His fingers hook into the waistband of my boxers and he pulls them down with a confidence that I haven't seen from him before. Stormy has always been careful in bed. Every touch has been a question he's asking with his hands. Is this okay? Can I do this?
This morning the questions are gone. This morning he's not asking.
He's deciding.
He pulls the boxers past my hips and down my legs. I kick them off because I'm a helpful participant and alsobecause the blood that was in my brain thirty seconds ago has relocated to a dick and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
His hand wraps around me and the sound I make is not dignified. It's not the sound a big, strong man should make. It's closer to the sound a man makes when he's been woken up by the man he loves doing extraordinary things.
"Jesus, Stormy."
He answers with his mouth. His lips close around me and the world reduces itself to a single point of contact. Hot. Wet. His tongue moving with a slow, curling pressure that tells me he's been thinking about this.
He's mastering the blowjob.
My hand finds his hair. The blond strands between my fingers, soft, and I don't push, I don't guide. I just rest my hand there because I need to touch him and his hair is the closest part of him I can reach.
He takes me deeper. His hand works the base where his mouth can't reach. And there's a lot his mouth can't reach, which is a fact I'm aware of and mildly self-conscious about, and which Stormy is currently treating as a challenge rather than an obstacle.
He pulls back. Runs his tongue along the underside from base to tip, slow, a long wet stripe that makes my spine arch off the mattress. Then he takes me in again, deeper this time, and I feel the back of his throat and his swallow around me. My hand tightens in his hair because my body has stopped accepting commands from my brain.
"Stormy, I'm going to—if you keep—"
He keeps going and his hand tightens. His other hand finds my thigh and grips hard. I look down at him. This beautiful, fierce man with storm-colored eyes and scars I'vememorized with my fingertips. He looks up at me through his lashes and his eyes are steady and present. He's here. Every movement is his.
