Sugar Daddy (30 page)

A ray of sun filtered into the room, striking the gold chain on his neck. My fingertip suspended above the small gold oval he always wore back-to-front. “It’s William?”

“His likeness, close to my heart.” He turned the pendant over, rubbing my soft pad over the miniature embossed portrait. “I’m sorry, Shay. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did. With you I find myself wanting, wanting things I haven’t needed in such a long time.”

I turned the chain around and around in my hands, feeling the warmth of the metal.

The warmth of the man.

I couldn’t raise my eyes above his mouth.

“I need you,” he said with those ruddy lips, his voice rough with the compelling desire to connect.

“They’ll hear us.”

“Don’t care.” He drew me under him, our hands working furiously with buttons and zippers, tearing panties and briefs out of the way.

His thigh ran across my damp sex, and my nails bit into his shoulders, his back, his ass, bringing him into me, binding Reardon with my flesh.

The sex was fast and hard, then slow and simple. Grateful.

Our bodies brooked no space. Our mouths colliding and kissing and mating, stitching the other back together.

He filled me, chanting, “Shay, Shay,” and I fell into him, flooded to the top of my heart.

Afterward, I asked very quietly, “Were you relieved I was infertile?”

“No, darlin’.” Grabbing a swath of blankets, he covered us.

“It’s not as easy as that, though, is it?”

“I can’t go through losing a child again.” He chucked my chin until I met his regretful expression. “But I’d give everything I have so you could be a mother. I’d give it all up.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?”
Even me.

Taking in his childhood room, I saw posters and the trophies and ticket stubs. A ton of old, dusty, junky youthful souvenirs. Things both his Will and my Delilah would never know. I folded my arms around his, over my belly.

I was ready to
Steel Magnolia
myself right back down those stairs, face his family, determined to have him. Sorting through the mound of clothes we’d ripped off one another, I pulled on my dress.

His eyes strayed to the top of my breasts and stayed there.

I hooked two fingers and pointed to my face. “Up here, baby.”

With a low laugh, he shook his head.

Once dressed, we linked hands, and I think we both felt stronger somehow. More so when he squeezed my hip tight during our walk down the stairs. “There is hope, too, with you.”

“I’m so sorry for ruining the party.” I apologized to Miss Charlotte, patting my wet eyes with one hand, her shoulder with the other.

Hard and fast, her bear hug trapped me. “You got nothin’ to apologize for, Shay.” Setting me aside, she transferred her attention to Reardon. “Fault was–”

“Ransome’s.” Reardon slammed his mouth shut right before he had the good grace to look shamefaced.

Charlotte dropped me like a dirty dishcloth and wheeled on him. “Boy, I oughta box your ears, then let your daddy take you out back to the whippin’ tree.” She stopped reading him the riot act and raised her hands to gently capture his crestfallen face. “When you love someone, you tell ’em the truth, Reardon.”

Rejoining the others, Charlotte sat down and smoothed the plastic tablecloth as if it was fine linen. She snapped her fingers, which commanded Norris to the makeshift bar and back again with a fresh toddy.

“And I…” I stepped back gratefully into the warm man behind me. I looked at each of them, tears splitting my vision. “I’m sorry about Will.”

Reardon was so close to me I heard his painful swallowing. At my hips, his hands clenched, then released and lowered to clasp mine tightly.

With watery eyes, Norrie looked over my shoulder at his eldest. “Damn if any mother or father should have to go through the death of their child. Not for nothin’, our Will was.” He gulped. “He sure was somethin’ else, our grandbaby.”

Ellegee’s powerful hands shot across the table, falling on top of Norrie’s and Charlotte’s. “That he was,
that he was.
”

Turning me around, Reardon swiped his thumbs across my cheeks, then skipped one over my lips before he asked, “Where’d Ransome go?”

“Cash took him down the banks a way.”

“How’s he doing?”

Jane spoke up, “The episode didn’t last long. Now he feels like a turd in a punch bowl.”

“He couldn’t help it.” Reardon frowned.

“Makes it even worse, don’t it?”

“We’ll go talk to him.”

As we walked down the rutted path, feisty fiddler crabs scuttled this way and that. The tang from the marsh was piquant and creek birds nattered away in the hollow of waves washing ashore until we came upon Ransome’s bass voice. “Sure is a looker.”

“Yep, pretty as a penny, that Shay.”

“You two good-for-nothings can stop talking about Shay right about now.”

The boys cracked up as we brushed aside the bulrushes, coming to a stop in front of them.

Peering at his brother, Ransome said, “And next time I have a lapse, I’d ’preciate it if you don’t go grannyin’ me up. Don’t need no blanket over my legs. Not dead yet.”

Everyone gulped.

Ransome let out, “Yeah. I’m sorry ’bout before, too. Man, I’m so fuckin’–shit, sorry Shay–FUBAR today.”

Sloping to the sand, Reardon teepeed his knees and pulled me between them. He reached over and clasped his brother’s shoulder.

“It wasn’t my intention to let slip,” Ransome finished. Pain twisted his face. “I was back with Will.”

Massaging the big shoulder he held, Reardon said, “I know.”

“Miss that little man so much,” Ransome choked out. His eyes narrowed over the sun-shattered water. “Good to talk about him though. Remember the time we had him down here? Oooh boy! Leila was so pissed. Mud up to his armpits and him out oystering with us? Lookin’ for pearls, wasn’t he?” He passed his shirtsleeve across his eyes. “‘Pearls to make my mom a necklace for her birfday.’ What was it he gave her in the end?”

“A handful of magic rocks.” Reardon laughed.

“Bet she still has ’em.”

“She always did.”

“She weren’t so bad.”

“No, she wasn’t.” Reardon tucked a wayward strand behind my ear. “We weren’t ever right together though. Anyway, today you did what I was too–”

“Too pussy to do yourself.” Cash ended the solemn conversation with a tweak of his ’stache.

I smothered my laughter until Reardon jostled behind me.

Bundling me up when he stood, he asked his brother, “We good?”

“Solid.”

There was a round of fist bumps.

“Good, because I’m taking Shay home now.” He remembered his mama-bred manners to ask, “If that’s okay with you, darlin’.”

“Yours or mine?”

“Mine.” His look sent goose bumps prickling along my body.

Ransome and Cash didn’t even try to hide their shit-eating grins, so I joined right along with them.

Hands tucked under his head of close-cropped black hair, Ransome smirked at me. “I would stand to send you off, but…” He motioned to his legs without an ounce of self-pity. “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to give me your hand instead?”

I leaned over, displaying my hand. Faster than a water moccasin strike, he had me fully prone across his lap.

Giggling, I scrambled aside. “You’re one fresh son-of-a–”

“Now, now.” He leaned onto his elbows. “Don’t let Charley hear you cussin’.”

“Why, you don’t seem so hard up to me ’t all anymore, Ransome.”

“Sassy Miss Shay, you’d be amazed what I get away with.”

“Somehow I doubt it.”

Reardon escorted me away to mumbles of, “Did you just use the words hard and up with my brother?”

I punched his arm. “He was asking for it!”

“Little–”

“Shit,” I concluded.

“Yeah.” He hugged me into his side. “Yes, he is.”

The ride back to Mt. Pleasant was quiet.

Halfway home, I tried to not think about...everything. About Will, about Delilah. About how alike we were in our pain.

I blew out a breath. I really wanted a cigarette.

Glancing over, Reardon released my hand. “Go ahead.”

“Huh?”

“Have a smoke.”

“You sure?” I was already sifting through my bag when he hit the button to lower my window.

“Yeah, it’s a lot to take in.”

The intense
intensity
of it all ramped up the closer we got to The Tides. By the time we were outside his door, we were rubbed raw by emotions and desperate for a physical anchor.

Fumbling with the keys, Reardon swore under his breath and spun me in his arms. Possessively kissing me, he trailed a sizzling line to my breasts.

The key finally found the lock and he jerked the door open. Lifting me over the threshold, he slammed it shut, pinning me against it with his body.

I ripped at his shirt to pull it over his head.

Once freed, he carried me to the bedroom, the edge of desperation in his tone. “I want to take it slow, Shay, but I have to fuck you now.”

“Do it.” I tore off my clothes and his too. His hands all over me made my body scream for him.

On the bed, he hauled my knees to his hips, nipped the tips of my breasts. “Can’t be gentle.”

I stroked his face, cupped his jaw. “I want it, I want you.” I bucked under him. “I need you like this too. Right now.”

“Right now?” He rolled his length against me.

“Yes, yes!”

Delving into the slinky material of my panties, he yanked them off. I moaned at the hot onslaught of his fingers drilling into me.

“Like this? You want me, like this?” He punctuated with his first rigid plunge parting my engorged flesh.

“Uhhh, yes, goddamn it.”

He flexed his hips, grinding his pelvis to mine, hitting every single sweet spot I had. My heels dug into his ass, my fingers burrowed into his hair with each sure, long stroke.

There was a ringing in my ears, he was that good.

But then…

He stopped.

Why did he stop?

I wasn’t done!

I wanted my money back–
or wait
, it was his money–whatever. He couldn’t have come already, not with his stamina.

The ringing became more shrill.

“Your phone,” he rasped.

Ma Bell was a motherfucking cock-blocker.

Pulling out of me, stroking my wetness all over his deep red throbbing shaft, he urged, “I don’t care if it’s the damn Pope, turn...it...off.”

“Well, I’m not a Catholic so I don’t much care if it’s the Pope either.” Captivated by the sight of him working his cock, I lent a hand to the cause, massaging his velvety sac. “Still, it would be rude not to answer.”

His head fell back, and he groaned with our combined caresses.

“Besides.” I kneeled before him, tonguing his ripe, ready head. “I can multi-task.”

His head snapped up, eyes fiery as kerosene flames.

Hollowing my cheeks, I sucked his hot flesh into my mouth with an obscene slurp. Lapping his shaft until it stood shiny and pulsing, I looked at the cell he’d thrust in my hand.

“It’s my momma!”

“Turn it off.”

“You don’t understand, she won’t talk to The Machine.”

“The Machine?”

“Voicemail, answering machines, anything modern.”

“Shay.” He laid me back on the bed, spreading my legs. “Don’t answer.”