Devil You Know Page 27

  “What’s wrong?”

  I was so excited, I didn’t answer with words but grabbed his hand and pulled him from the room.

  We reached the spot and I immediately resumed my position of lying down on my stomach. I looked up at him, but he just stared down at me with that blank look of his.

  “I know you’re a badass, but no one will see. Get down here.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  I heard the growl, but he did it, mirroring my position. He didn’t ask again what I wanted because he saw it immediately.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  His voice sounded a bit gruff when he said, “Yeah.”

  “I would have very much liked to have known your sister.”

  His head turned and there was a look in his eyes that settled quite happily in my chest. “You were raking?”

  “Yes. It’s hard work.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “Maybe I should put on more hot chocolate while you rake.”

  Mischievousness moved over his features and then he moved so fast, grabbing me around the waist before he dropped me right into the middle of the pile of leaves I had yet to bag.

  “I can’t believe you ruined my pile,” I screeched.

  He grinned, the sight making my heart sing, and then he reached for the rake and said, “That’s a good look on you.”

  Later that night we were working. We’d spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the yard. We even took a break for hot chocolate and a slice of pie.

  Janice’s was busy and after a day of yard work, I was dragging.

  “Hey, darling.”

  Mic walked by with a rack of glasses. “Hi, Mic.”

  “Take a break. You haven’t stopped since you arrived. I’ll bring you a soda.”

  He was right. I hadn’t taken a break because the place was crazy tonight. I didn’t take a seat, feared I wouldn’t be able to get up again, but I did stand near the fill station. Mic brought me a soda then rested his elbows on the bar. “You liking Deadwood?”

  “Very much. Madge cornered me the other day and twisted my arm into participating in the reenactment.”

  “Have you ever done one?”

  “No.”

  “It’s fun, something you should do at least once.”

  “So you’re a veteran.”

  “I’ve done several and if you’re doing this one I might have to give Madge a call.”

  I was so excited at the idea of having someone I knew doing it with me that I reached for his arm in my excitement. “You totally should.”

  It felt like heat boring a hole in my back. I glanced over my shoulder to see Damian leaning up against the wall, but his attention was completely on me.

  Mic asked, “How long have you and…” He lifted his chin in the direction of Damian “…been married.”

  “Three years.” That was how many years we were married in the fake life I had made up that first day. It seemed smart to stick to that even though Damian was sure no one would care.

  “I wouldn’t have thought that long. The man hasn’t taken his eyes off you.”

  Damian hadn’t taken his eyes off me? I couldn’t keep my eyes off him so it seemed fair.

  “Still feels like we’re newlyweds.” I felt his comment needed a reply.

  The smile he flashed me was pure sex. “I believe that.”

  I felt Damian before I heard him. Turning in time to see the expression on his face. I was momentarily speechless because he wasn’t just pissed. He looked like he was going to kill someone. And since I knew from firsthand experience he was more than capable of killing someone with his bare hands, I put up my hand as he approached. He could have walked right through me to get to Mic, the target of his malice, but he stopped as soon as my palm hit his muscled chest. His eyes jerked to me.

  “Mic and I were just discussing how it still feels like we’re newlyweds. Isn’t that right, baby?”

  I would sell my soul to the man depicted on Damian’s back to know what he was thinking because the heat that fired in his eyes was arousing. The accompanying chills that moved through me became visible when my nipples went hard, and since I was wearing a tank, my arousal was very easy to see. Damian’s gaze dropped and my clit spasmed. Oh dear God, I was going to come from nothing more than a heated looked from the man.

  In the next second, he gestured to someone behind me. “Take this. She’s taking a break.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer as he grabbed my hand and pulled me right out the front door, around the side of the building to the alley in the back.

  “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t answer, well not with words. He pushed me up against the brick of the building; pressed into me, his hands coming to rest on the wall near my head. He looked at me with such hunger my knees went weak. For a good few minutes it was like he was debating about what he wanted to do.

  “Fuck it,” he said as he threaded the fingers of one of his hands through my hair to palm the back of my head. In the next breath, his mouth closed over mine. Not a kiss, a conquering. His tongue invaded, tasting me with a thoroughness that left me weak. His free hand moved up my body, under my shirt. When he palmed my breast and swiped his thumb over my nipple, a moan caught in the back of my throat. His knee moved between my legs, his lips pulling from mine only long enough to say, “Ride it.”

  And I did, I rubbed myself against him. My panties were drenched; his jeans were going to be drenched and still my hips rocked into his leg because it felt so freaking good. I was so turned on I came on a scream, one muffled by his tongue and lips. I reached for his zipper, dropping it and pulling him free. He moaned and buried his face in my hair as he moved his hips finding that rhythm. He tried to move away from me before he came and even then he was being a gentleman. I didn’t want him to pull away, I needed him closer so with uncharacteristic skill, I pulled my apron off, dropped to my knees on it and took him into my mouth. I couldn’t believe what I was doing, never in my wildest dreams would I think I’d be blowing a man in an alley, but it wasn’t just any man. His hands slammed against the brick wall a second before he came. He tasted so good, I swallowed and he moaned and then I was being hauled up against his body for his kiss, his tongue sweeping my mouth tasting himself and me.

  “That won’t happen again. I’m sorry.” I thought he was pulling away again so I prepared to argue the point. Then he added, “Blowing me in a fucking alley.”

  Oh. My behavior had shocked even me, but honestly it turned me on too. “Out of character, absolutely, but really awesome.”

  “It was a hell of a lot better than awesome.” He kissed me again, longer and sweeter, before he said, “We better get back inside before we’re missed.”

  I glanced down. “You might want to take care of that.” Or else I’d be tempted to give him awesome again.

  I tried running it off, tried working my body until it was too tired and sore to feel anything. But just the memory of the alley, her lips around my cock, turned me rock hard. I ran twice as long the following morning hoping to ease the ache, but it didn’t help. Thirteen years of wanting, when the lid came off that sexual geyser it was going to level cities. We weren’t at a place where we could spend weeks or months in bed riding that wave, and I knew it would take weeks or months to sate us.

  She was in the kitchen when I returned, sitting at the table as she had a habit of doing. She was looking over some tourist book. Fucking hell, don’t tell me she wanted to play tourist. I was battling blue balls and she wanted to buy souvenirs and t-shirts.

  “I’m visiting the gold mine today.”

  “What time?”

  “There’s a tour starting at one.”

  “I need a shower.”

  Her expressions were so transparent, every thought in her head showed on her face and right now I knew she was thinking about me in the shower, more specifically us in the shower and since that was where my head was at too, I walked away
. Closing the bedroom door I walked right to the shower, stripping on my way. How the hell I managed to walk with the hard on I sported was a mystery. Stepping under the spray, I pressed a hand to the wall, lowered my head, closed my eyes, as my other hand moved up the length of my cock, fisting the shaft as Thea took over my thoughts—her tits, her ass, her hair, her laugh, her smile. I was yanking so hard the fucking thing should have ripped right off. And even after I came I still wasn’t satisfied. We were going to need to bake a fuck load of cookies.

  “We can pan for gold? Oh, I so want to do that. Do you want to do that?”

  She asked but she wasn’t really asking. She was doing it with or without me. I wouldn’t allow her to go alone, so I was doing it whether I liked the idea or not.

  “This is going to be so much fun.”

  I seriously did not understand how this woman was like a sister to Anton. Two more opposite people never existed. As we waited in line it was like she was at a starting line, her body primed and ready to go as soon as the gun sounded. She reminded me so much of Amelia—a way of looking at the world. Not innocently, neither of them had been sheltered, but like they could take the hits and keep coming back for more. Optimistic. Amelia had been too fucking young. She should have had a full, happy life before dying of old age in her bed at ninety. Instead, fucking cancer took her too damn young. My father had turned out to be no better a parent than my mother and just as shitty a human as her too. He had had a mistress for years while he was living with my mom, had even gotten his mistress pregnant only a year or so after he had gotten my mom pregnant with me. There was no way she knew that because she would have gone homicidal. The man had a short attention span with not only the women in his life, but also the offspring he brought into the world. Amelia hadn’t known him any better than I had, but for a little while we had had each other. Watching her take her last breath, helpless to ease her pain…I would rather walk into a firefight unarmed than go through that again. And Janice. I’d set the ball in motion. Her world was about to collapse. She shouldn’t have become greedy. She had a good thing going, but she pushed too far. It was time to push back.

  “It is a real gold mine. Imagine the stories it could tell.” Thea looked around all wide-eyed. I saw a rock depleted of whatever value it had and left as a reminder of the greed of people and their thirst to own more, to have more. And she thought of the lives of those who had mined it. I had no doubt she romanticized it too and not the grueling, early death, sweaty shit job it was.

  Her voice turned a bit dreamy as her fingers ran along the walls. “I think I would have liked living back then. There were problems then too, but the simplicity of it. You worked and you loved. I would have liked that.”

  And it was because of the ease that I could imagine her with me in Amelia’s cottage that I ignored her. That pissed her off. And I was clearly a masochist because I enjoyed getting a rise out of her, watching that fire spark in her eyes. She leaned in and whispered in my ear, “I know what you’re doing, but there aren’t enough cookies in the world to erase that moment in the alley. And it will happen again because you are just as addicted to me as I am to you. But I can wait because I know you’re worth it.”

  An elderly couple was in front of us; she left me to walk with them, which was a good thing because we almost had our own reenactment of that alley scene right there in the gold mine. One thing was for sure. When this was all over I wasn’t letting her out of my bed for a fucking year.

  The man was impossible. If I didn’t think I’d break every bone in my foot, I would kick him in the shins or maybe the nuts, but I suspected they were just as hard as the rest of him. He was more determined than ever to keep me at arm’s-length, and considering our moment in the alley, I understood. Distracted wasn’t strong enough of a word. I even agreed with what he was doing, but it didn’t mean I had to like it.

  He was running more, and I got a sick sense of satisfaction that his body wanted me to the point that he was trying to physically exhaust himself.

  Madge had called and asked me to visit. She wanted to discuss the reenactment. Damian had dropped me off, but Madge was having a hankering for soup and since she was right down the street from the Tavern, I offered to pick her up some. I was on my way back to her house when a motorcycle pulled up alongside me. Razor.

  “Hey, babe.”

  I was a little cool in my reply remembering what Damian had told me about him and his sexual appetites. “Razor.”

  “Want a ride, babe?”

  “No thank you.”

  His face split into a smile.

  Maybe I was getting rusty but I didn’t get the rapist vibe from him. I wasn’t willing to put that theory to the test though. “Madge is waiting for me.”

  We were now in front of Madge’s house. He looked up at Madge before lifting a hand in greeting. What surprised me was she not only returned it, she called, “Join us, dear.”

  “You don’t have to ask me twice.”

  Razor touched my arm as we ascended the steps up to Madge’s porch. It was odd, a gentlemanly act like that from a man like him. Maybe I misunderstood what Damian had meant about Razor because he really didn’t seem the type to hurt women.

  “Razor, dear, you know where the cookies are. Could you please bring them out and put the kettle on for tea. Oh and take the soup from Thea.”

  “Sure thing, ma’am.”

  He didn’t fit with Madge’s floral décor in his faded jeans and leather jacket, the long hair and massive frame.

  “He’s a good boy.”

  “He is?”

  She looked at me funny. “Of course. You can see it in his eyes.”

  Not according to Damian.

  “Thanks for the soup.”

  “My pleasure. You wanted to talk about the reenactment.”

  “Yes. I need your measurements for the costume.”

  “Do you make the costumes every year?”

  “I do. As one of the founding families of this town, I like to be involved.”

  “You had family who lived here back in the day.”

  “I did.”

  “I’d love to hear about it.”

  Razor returned, the cookie jar in one hand, a half eaten cookie in the other. He sat on the steps, leaning back against the railing and bending one leg. He looked to be settling in for a while. He looked at me and winked. I thought he was charming in a roughneck kind of way, which didn’t jive with what I knew about him from Damian.

  Madge put her knitting down and started to rock. “It’s probably best to start when the town was founded.”

  And I understood why Razor had settled in because for the next two hours Madge told us everything there was to know about the town and it had been a wonderful way to pass the afternoon.

  “You keep missing your mark. You need to walk from the saloon and end here.” Dinky, owner of the saloon in town and director of the reenactment, said as he once again indicated the road where the x was located.

  Reenactments were much harder than I had thought, particularly since the people I was doing this one with became thespians as soon as the figurative costumes went on.

  “Sorry.”

  “Let’s try this again.”

  I waited for my cue and hit my mark. I got a thumbs up and then he was off directing someone else.

  Maureen walked over dressed as a gunfighter. “How did you get that role and I have to be some damsel?”

  “Years of participating.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing. Why would a woman in full formal attire be standing in the middle of the street during a gunfight?”

  “Drama. How are you enjoying Deadwood?”

  “I like it very much. It’s a great town and after talking with Madge, I know it’s also a town rich with history.”

  “That it is.”

  “How’s the nursery?”

  “We’re slowing down, people are preparing for winter, but I do sell trees and poinsettias so we’l
l be gearing up again after Thanksgiving.”

  “I’m sorry again that I accepted and then backed out.”

  “I really didn’t have much for you to do with the season coming to an end, but anything is better than being Charlie.”

  She wasn’t wrong about that.

  “Thea, I need you to swoon,” Dinky said as he came hurrying over to me. “Your hand to your forehead and then crumble, but daintily.”

  “I don’t want to swoon. Give me a gun. I’ll hide it in my garter. No one will be expecting that.”

  “You’re the damsel.”

  “I want to be a gunfighter.”

  “Your job is to faint.”

  “Then shoot me. We could get one of those prop bags. A hit to the stomach and I can die slowly while the fighting is going on around me.”

  Dinky lowered his clipboard. “You’re a bit bloodthirsty.”

  “I just want a role I can really sink my teeth into.”

  “And when you’ve got a few reenactments under your belt, we’ll discuss that. For this one, you’ll elegantly faint.”

  The urge to kick the ground in frustration almost had me doing so, but when I got my cue, I fainted demurely.

  I had just gotten back on my feet when Maureen muttered, “Brace yourself.” Before I could ask her meaning, Janice appeared in my face.

  “Where’s your husband?”

  Like I’d tell her anything about Damian.