Home at Last [Davis Hollow, Davis Ranch 1] (Siren Publishing Allure) Page 13

  Oh, well. So much for privacy. CJ waved his thanks and entered the diner.

  Vanessa turned as the bell rang and a blast of cold air flowed into the diner.

  “Dang, ain’t you a tall, fine piece of man,” she said. She blushed a little. Vanessa didn’t bite her tongue, but it seemed she had spoken before she thought. “Sit anywhere. What can I do for you, sir?” she flipped a one-page menu, sliding it across the counter.

  CJ glanced at Iona before turning backed to Vanessa. “Well, Vanessa,” he said, reading her name from her nametag, “my belly is bouncing off my backbone. What do you suggest?” He smiled broadly at the bleached blonde, standing stunned by his bright smile in unusual silence. She collected herself quickly and returned the grin.

  “I have a fresh pork roast I’ve been simmering all night. The Deatre brothers just brought it to me from a very nice sow. Anyway, I got that with some late greens out of my garden, homemade biscuits, and mashed potatoes that are like nothing you ever had. Mister…?” Vanessa held her hand out over the small counter.

  “I’m CJ Davis.” He smiled.

  “Why I’m a Davis, too. I hope we’re not related, ’cause I might burn in Hell over the thoughts I’m having.” Vanessa blushed and offered CJ her hand.

  “I’m an Oklahoma Davis, so you can have those thoughts without fear of your soul. Plus, I’m no relation to the munchkin in the corner. I’ll have the roast and the biggest strawberry milkshake you have. We’ll talk dessert if I have any room. I’ll be over there with Lil Bit.”

  CJ hooked the toe of his boot under the chair opposite Iona and sat down.

  “Hey, CJ, what brings you here?” Iona knew her voice sounded breathless. All the air had been sucked out of the room when he walked in. Her heart beat faster and her pussy started to gush as soon as he drove up.

  “Oh, I often find myself in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. Cyn called me and told me where you were today so I came to see if you wanted to see a movie with me tonight. Clint said that we never dated, so I thought I’d get into the jet, fly to West Virginia, and take you out to dinner and a movie. Courting, I think it’s called.”

  “You two know each other well?” Vanessa asked as she set a thick and creamy shake in front of CJ.

  “I work for him as a consultant,” Iona said. She pushed her shake around in the puddle of water that collected under the glass. Vanessa quickly pulled a napkin from the dispenser on the table and placed the glass on it.

  “You were taught better than that, Iona. You’re not from around here, are you Mr. Davis?”

  “No, ma’m, I’m born, bred, and housed in Oklahoma. Lil Bit is my go-to guy on wind energy.”

  “Now, I did not know that. Jeff been saying she does something on the Internet up there on that mountain of hers but she only just started coming to town the last few months ago. She’s been living up there by herself for years. Since her people died. Donald Ray Todd been saying for a while that she does that Internet porn stuff, but who would she do it with? ’Sides, you can’t take nothing that man say as truth no how. Miz Davis wouldn’t allow nothing bad to happen to William’s daughter. William and I went to high school together and he was just about the most nicest guy you could know. Him being colored and all wasn’t a problem. He was smart as a whip. His little wife was just the nicest woman. She taught at the elementary school till—” Vanessa paused for breath and looked at Iona’s tight face. “Here I am running my mouth. Let me go get your food.”

  Vanessa paused on her way to the kitchen to start the juke box. It started in the middle of Patsy Cline singing about how “crazy” she was.

  “That was more information than you’ve told me about yourself or your family in almost three years.” CJ sipped his milkshake. “That’s really good.”

  “She grows her own strawberries and puts them up for the year. She also makes her own ice cream from fresh milk from local cows,” Iona said.

  “I wish I could take this home with me. Manny would love it. She says hi, by the way.”

  “We e-mail.”

  “Didn’t know that. Keeping tabs on me?” he said.

  Iona smiled around her straw, breaking the smile as the postmistress and the men from the barber shop came into the small diner. They didn’t pretend not to be doing anything but staring at CJ, who tipped his hat at each one of them. The barber shop guys sat at a table behind Iona while the postmistress sat at the table to their left.

  The talk was the usual hunting, fishing, and lying. Vanessa brought CJ his meal and he fell on it as if he’d been telling the truth about his hunger. Iona simply sat and watched him, knowing now that she was real moon-June-spoon in love with him but had no idea how he felt beyond being a guy and enjoying sex with a different kind of woman. She sat silently while CJ sopped up the gravy with his biscuit. Vanessa, obviously watching closely, took his plate and smiled broadly at him

  “You ready for dessert, Cowboy?” Vanessa smiled, showing all her store-bought teeth.

  “Yes, ma’m. Why don’t you bring me what you think is best. And for Lil Bit, bring her another shake and two spoons for the dessert,” CJ called after Vanessa as she hurried off to the back.

  “It’ll be a peach cobbler a la mode. Hers is good. Not as good as Cyn’s or mine, but it’s all right,” Iona said. She tried to keep her voice low.

  “Cynthia does make a good cobbler, though her blackberry is better’n her peach. Cain’t say I’ve evrra tasted yours, tho’,” Mr. Perry, the barber, said. His comment brought about an argument about who had the best cobbler in the county that lasted until Vanessa came back with the peach cobbler, vanilla ice cream, and two spoons. “Cyn’s is better than mine but she don’t sell hers, now do she?” That brought a general agreement and more people either drank their coffee or coke, ordering up a slice of cake or cobbler as they did.

  After they’d totally demolished the cobbler, CJ sat back, watching Iona from under the brim of his hat. She squirmed a little. “Can we leave now? I think the town has enough to talk about for the rest of the winter,” she said.

  “Oh, probably. But you have to come with me to Charleston. I’ve a room at the hotel there. It’s really nice, looks right out onto the mountain. They really are blue,” CJ said.

  “Miss Vanessa, that was one of the best meals I’ve had in a while. Let’s talk about you catering a party for me over the holidays. New Year’s clear for you? Here’s my card. I’ll have my housekeeper call you as it gets closer. It was a pleasure.” CJ stood at the cash register, slipped Vanessa a fifty, and hustled Iona out the door and into his rental before she had time to bundle up against the cold.

  The drive to Charleston was uneventful and quick, forty-five minutes down the Turnpike. They entered the room, started stripping as they stumbled to the bed. She kissed him all over his body, paying close attention to his nipples, and after a slow, wet trail down his chest, swallowed his already hardening dick. Her mind exploded in the remembered taste of him, salty, sweet PayDay. She nipped the skin along his pelvic bone and inhaled him to the back of her throat. His gasp and tightening of his cupped ass cheeks told her that he had missed her, too.

  The head of his dick, slick with her spit, lay on her lips, allowing her to slowly slurp on the tip, looking up, up to his eyes. His hands were burrowed into her hair, clutching her scalp and using his fingers to massage her head. He didn’t push her further but she slowly slipped more and more of his hard dick into her mouth keeping eye contact, enjoying his head drop as he sighed deeply.

  “I missed you so much, Lil Bit. I fucking missed you.” With that he pulled her off his dick, even though they both groaned in incompleteness, and kissed her in a wet, warm, openmouthed exchange of breath. She clung to him. His pants were tangled around his ankles, held there by his boots. She was fully clothed and grinding on his chest. He palmed her ass as she squirmed out of her coat, sweater, long johns, T-shirt, and bra. She dragged her naked, swollen nipples against the springy hair on his chest, smashing thei
r turgid peaks together. As she slowly slid from his waist to his cock, she left a wet trail marking him with her scent.

  CJ flipped her onto her back on the edge of the bed and shucked off her shoes, socks, long johns, and jeans. She had a tantalizing strip of hair pointing to her clit and he followed it down, dipping his fingers into her wet, weeping folds, using it to paint a trail from her core to her clit, allowing him smooth access to rub and pinch the awakened throbbing nub, already swollen and pulsating.

  He toed off his boots and almost fell as he duck-walked out of his jeans. “Cynthia tells me you’ve been to the doctor in Richmond and got an IUD.”

  Iona groaned. “Damn, do I have privacy?”

  CJ laughed. “No, Lil Bit, you don’t where your family is concerned. I’ve got a little piece of paper in my pocket that shows you that I’m clean as of yesterday afternoon. Hold still while I fill you up.” He finished with a groan that matched hers as he slammed all eight inches into her. They lay panting. Iona’s inner muscles massaged him, trying to milk him into coming and coating her deep, deep inside. Her hips twitched off the bed, begging silently for a hard stroke of him to fulfill her needs. CJ lay still, brushing her hair out of her face and kissing her with a tenderness that had nothing to do with the hard, passionate sex that his dick promised.

  “Open your eyes, Iona. Look at me while I fuck you. Look at me while I make you come. Look at me while I make you mine. AGAIN. Watch me come.” He was moving in slow, increasingly hard thrusts. She whimpered at each stroke. It hurt. It filled her. It felt good. It felt like it was too much. It felt like it wasn’t enough. She begged, incoherent whimpers for more and more and right now.

  “No, you don’t get what you want anymore. You made me wait too long.” He bit her neck, sucking deeply before moving down to nibble on her nipples one at a time. His cock widened her pussy. Moist wet sounds punctuated each thrust. “You made me crazy waiting for you to decide you were coming back to me. But no, Miss Iona Davis is too goddamn stubborn to want this.”

  “This” was accompanied by a deep thrust that hit her cervix, punched into her G-spot, and sawed over her clit, making her come off the bed. He had his hand under her arms to grip her shoulders and pull her into each thrust. She couldn’t move, only lay and allow him to take her, hard.

  “If I have to, I’ll come back every fucking week and fuck you just like this, like you belong to me, like you can’t come until I tell you to, like you need this as much as I do. Fuck you!” CJ’s face twisted into a grimace as he came hard. Iona held on to his waist and came along with him. A red haze blinded her to any other sights as she screamed her release and clutched him to her chest. They kissed in passion hard and wet and mean then collapsed back onto the sweat-damp bed.

  They lay connected, breathing hard and fast until the sweat cooled on their bodies. She kissed him tenderly, rolled over and began to quietly cry into the bedspread.

  CJ padded his way to the bathroom to clean up and returned with a warm wash cloth to gently, delicately clean Iona. He tossed the rag onto a night table, drew back the covers, and brought her into his arms. Kissing the top of his head, he lay with her draped over his chest, allowing the tears to run down his neck. They both went to sleep.

  Chapter Sixteen:

  Just Like It is In Heaven

  Two days later at 5:00 a.m., Iona was showered and on the porch with a cup of chocolate. She liked it now, watching the fog settle down from the mountains as the sun lightened up the sky. The cold lingered close to the ground but it promised to be a rare day in the mountains in winter, bright and sunny. She pulled her sweatshirt over her hands to grip a large cup, giving her the warmth she needed. Wool socks reached her knees and she had her legs curled up and pushed under the shirt. It was one of her father’s old shirts that always made her feel as if he were still there and hugging her. Now it was threadbare and didn’t hold the cold out, but it comforted her.

  This was home. This was a touch of her old life. This was the same house her father had built for his young wife. This was the only house she had lived in all her adult life. She couldn’t leave it to scratch an itch that would probably lead to nothing. Sipping chocolate and watching the fog settle into her valley. The house sat on about six acres of mountain and a valley where nothing grew, but God, it was beautiful.

  A shiver made her clutch the cup tighter. Six acres of land, eleven geese, two dogs, and a goat she hadn’t seen in months. That was the life she was looking at. She wished she could drink early in the morning, but she hadn’t brought the tequila she’d grown so fond of, so she fumbled around for her pipe. “This is what life will be from now on. I’ll become Miss Havisham, lamenting what might have been. Maybe in twenty or thirty years I’ll find a young girl to send to school and do the things I was too chickenshit to do.” She puffed herself through two bowls before the sun was fully up. “This is how addictions start, not with a bang but a whimper.” Pleasantly giddy and feeling no pain, she wasn’t even surprised when CJ pulled up in a Mercedes.

  “Early, ain’t it, Lil Bit?” CJ said. He looked at her pipe which, because of good manners, she offered to him.

  “For visiting, yes, for getting my head right for the day, not so much. I’ve got a really, really asshole client that I have to keep happy. Sometimes I’m up at weird hours to make the impossible demands he places on me. I always have to come up with new stuff and save his gonads from some disaster of a deal. So”—here she grabbed his wrist to look at his watch—“6:34 a.m. isn’t too early. Besides I’m on London time.”

  After he declined, she took a big hit that made the top of her head sort of lift off. She tried to be cool, slowly putting the pipe down and carefully picking up her cup. Unfortunately, she missed the damn things three times. He politely held it for her to grab.

  “Trying to forget your sorrows, darlin’?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I am. What would you do in my position? Happily give up your life? Become the mistress of the gazillionaire for a while? Or would you drink an entire bottle of scotch and call it a day?” She curled further back into her chair.

  CJ continued up the steps, scooped her up on the way, then sat down in the swing. Iona did have the presence of mind to wiggle away from his lap, leaning against the arm of the swing but with her feet under his legs, widespread and pushing the swing lightly. It made her a little sick, but the heat from his body compensated for the queasy sensation. They sat for long minutes, Buster and Bunny going down the steps to run into the woods to do their business, the geese doing whatever it was that geese do. Neither broke the silence.

  “It’s a goddamn test to see who says something first. I’m not losing.”

  “You just did, Lil Bit.” CJ laughed. “It wasn’t a test. I just don’t know what to say to you. All I know is that I want you to be with me.”

  “What if we get tired of each other? What if one of us dies?” Iona voiced her secret worry for the first time to him and to herself.

  CJ stood straight and very, very tall on the porch, tipping his cowboy hat back, then all the way off as he walked into the house right to the kitchen. She glanced through the window to watch as he took the coffee and coffeemaker out of the cupboard. He made coffee, played with the dogs, leaned against the sink, and just stared at her.

  Iona wandered in to sit at the island, just looking. There he stood, blond, green eyed, and big. He had on jeans, cowboy boots, and a white chambray shirt. One hand held a cup of coffee. The other clutched the rim of the sink. They did not speak.

  “You’re driving me crazy,” he said.

  “I don’t mean to. Maybe it’s not what I think it is. I trust you more than I trust me. I’m really bad at people.” Iona bit her right thumbnail, worrying it until she had it in shreds on one side.

  He smiled sadly, took her thumb out her mouth, kissed her on the side of her mouth, and walked out her door. This time, even the dogs cried.

  * * * *

  The geese were in their winter pen when
Cyn pulled up early one wintery morning after Christmas. Iona heard her fussing at Bonnie on the porch. Buster met her at the door, waiting quietly for a pat and scratch.

  “Girl, go put something respectable on and pack some clothes. CJ’s cousin, Clint, is at Vanessa’s diner picking up some cobbler. Why he would want that gloppy stuff for a party I don’t know. I told him to wait while I get you to go back to Oklahoma,” Cyn said. She padded up the stairs and started throwing clothes out on the bed. “Is it cold in Oklahoma? Not as cold as here, but I’ll only put in one pair of long johns, but don’t wear this shit around CJ. Men don’t get it up when they have to cuddle up to a flapped thermal.”

  Iona stood in the doorway, listening to her sister but really not comprehending. As with most days now, she was slightly high, a two-toke buzz that allowed her to sleep, work, and function without either crying or drifting off into memories of being with CJ. She hadn’t been eating much so had dropped at least ten pounds that really showed in her face and hips. Hips that were covered in thick, oversized sweats that matched her shirt. More wool socks completed the outfit and were her standard uniform these days.

  “Go wash your hair, and shave. I’d put money that you’ve not shaved your pits, legs, or intimate places since the last time you were with CJ. I’ll finish packing for you. I don’t want you to talk or tell me anything. If I don’t get you out of this house and back to that big old cowboy you gonna go way, way back into the hole that you made for yourself after Dad, Mom, and Grandma died,” Cyn said. Iona saw a spark of tears in her eyes. “I’m not allowing you to long yourself to death. I’ve buried enough of my people to last a lifetime. I need all the little bit of my family that I have.”