Unfinished Hero 04 Deacon (9 page)

She shook her head again. “We came with them.
I was gonna walk Peyton up to the road then call a taxi.”

“Where are you staying?’

“Vista Real Condos, by the slopes.”

I nodded that I knew it, straightened, and
turned to Priest. “I’m taking the girls home.”

Priest glowered at me but jerked up his chin.
“You deal with them, I’ll deal with this,” he stated.

I didn’t know what “this” was or how he
intended to deal with it and I didn’t care.

I only cared about one thing.

So I walked across the cabin and got close to
him.

“I want this place cleaned up and I want
their asses out of here, Priest. Spic and freaking span and them
gone
,” I hissed.

“It’ll be done,” he replied tersely.

I looked into his eyes, nodded, and
turned.

“I’m gonna get my car. You rouse Peyton.
Yeah?” I said to the girl.

She was pushing herself to her feet and
wiping her face but she still managed to say, “Yeah.”

I moved to the door, stopped in it, and
forced my eyes to the boy standing there.

“One day,” I said, my voice soft, my tone
ugly. “You’re gonna have baby girls. One day, you’re gonna have
daughters you’ll love more than anything in the world. And then
there’ll come the day, the weeks, the months, the fucking
years
,” I leaned in to him, my voice degenerating, “you’ll
lie awake, remembering this night. Remembering what you did to that
girl. Scared out of your damned mind that some fucking asshole is
doing that to one of your girls. Knowing it could happen because
you know, being that kind of asshole, there are tons of assholes
out there just like you.”

His face paled and his throat convulsed.

“I pray to God what you did tonight never
happens to the babies you’re gonna make,” I stated quietly. “But
I’m fucking thrilled you’ll live in terror of it.”

On that, I stomped out to get my SUV.

* * * * *

By the time I got Annabelle (who told me her
name in my Rover) and Peyton to Vista Real, got their behinds into
their condo (also with no parents, what were these people
thinking?) and dealt with Peyton puking for an hour—after which I
delivered my lecture to them while Peyton lay sniveling on the
couch, curled up against Annabelle, who was cradling and rocking
her—and made my way home, it was well past four in the morning.

I drove directly to cabin six.

There was no Navigator. The other SUV was
gone too.

It was dark, as were all the cabins,
including eleven, where Priest’s Suburban was parked outside.

Apparently, Priest had done his duty and then
bedded down for some shuteye.

I found this upsetting. I knew it, I felt it,
but I didn’t let that feeling take hold.

It was Priest and I had to accept that.

I had no other choice.

Still, I got out of my Rover, walked up to
the cabin, and used my master key to open the door.

I flipped the light switch and saw it was
clean as a pin. The smell lingered in the air, which meant I’d
probably have to shampoo the rugs and air the place out but there
was nothing to indicate it had been trashed three hours before,
outside the cigarette burns in the coffee table. I even walked
through the bedrooms and bathroom and found they’d cleared out. Not
a pair of undies to say those loser kids had ever been in
residence.

Feeling slightly better about this
(
slightly
), I grabbed my bat and flashlight that Priest had
left sitting on the couch for me, left, locked up, and drove my
Rover home.

I walked in carrying my flashlight and bat,
dumping both on the seat of the handsome, carved, antique hall tree
that was one of the few things that the ex-owners left that I
intended to keep.

I left the light glowing in the foyer but
headed straight to the dark kitchen.

I did this because that was where the bourbon
was.

I made it to the cabinet where I kept my
booze and was reaching to it when the voice sounded behind me.

“Why don’t you have a man?”

I jumped, whirled, and stared at the hulking
shadow sitting at my kitchen table (my table, not the ex-owners,
theirs was gone—it was gently used, oak, sloped arrowback chairs,
one thick, sturdy, carved, gorgeous leg holding up the table—I’d
found it on
Craig’s List,
local, and a screaming deal).

I stared at Priest, finding it hard to speak
because my breathing had turned heavy.

“Why don’t you have a man?” he repeated.

“I—”

I heard his chair scrape across the wood
floor and my body shot straight as he stood, his shadowed presence
a menace, even across the room.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in
my entire fuckin’ life,” he stated, his voice hushed but pulsing in
a way that scared the heck out of me.

But it was his words that made me stop
breathing.

“How is it that a woman that looks like you
does not have a fuckin’ man?” he asked.

“John—” I forced out.

“That is not my name,” he clipped, his sudden
fury blanketing the room. “You know that’s not my name,
Cassidy.”

“Okay, Priest—” I tried again.

He leaned toward me threateningly.

“That’s not my fuckin’ name either and you
know that too,” he bit out. “You know, woman. You fuckin’
know
. So why the fuck do you rent a cabin to me?”

I didn’t reply because there was no answer to
that. We both knew it. We both knew I had no business renting him a
cabin.

We both knew it.

“Every time I show, I pray to God there’ll be
another truck outside your house, a man in your bed. Every time I
show, nothin’. You’re alone. No fuckin’ clue why. You the way you
are. Goofy. Sweet. Hard-workin’. Happy to sit outside on a porch
and sit quiet, doin’ nothin’ but bein’ and listenin’ to a river
rush by. The way you look. No man?” I saw him shake his head in
disbelief. “It makes no fuckin’ sense. Then you rent a cabin to me
knowin’ you should show me the road and that makes even less
sense.”

“You need somewhere to stay and I need the
money,” I chanced pointing out.

“You
needed
the money, Cassidy,” he
retorted swiftly. “That was your excuse in the beginning. You don’t
need it anymore so we both know that’s bullshit.”

I lifted my hands, half-confused,
half-pleading. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I wanna know why you have no man,” he
returned immediately. “And since you don’t have a man, why you
don’t have a dog. And a fuckin’ Taser. And a goddamned can of
pepper spray.”

“I—”

“You walk up to a situation like that with a
Maglite and a baseball bat?” he asked, throwing a long arm wide,
indicating the cabins in an angry way that made me step back and
hit counter. “You rent to a guy like me and walk into a situation
like that, you’re fuckin’
whacked
.”

“They were just kids. I knew that.”

“They were drunk, high, well-built high
school boys with a hankerin’ for pussy and no fuckin’ scruples at
all about how they got it.”

I sucked my lips between my teeth because he
was right.

“You got a pussy, Cassidy?” he asked
derisively.

I didn’t give him the answer to that question
because he knew the answer.

Since he knew it, he kept at me

“Your beauty, five foot fuckin’ five, a slip
of a woman with tits and ass, don’t matter you’re older than them,
they’re in the mood, they’ll take that beauty, woman. Take it. Use
it. Fuckin’
destroy it
.”

“I—”

“You need a goddamned man,” he spat.

I decided at that juncture not to speak,
mostly because he wasn’t letting me say anything, partly because he
was scaring the crap out of me, and lastly because no one could
rant forever. He’d eventually burn it out and take off.

He always took off.

He came.

He left.

And we never changed.

But that thought gave me a new fear, a fear
bigger than any I’d had in my life.

That fear being whoever he was, whatever he
did, what happened that night made it clear in a way he could no
longer ignore that I meant something to him, and him being with me,
even if he was never really
with me
, brought me danger.

So he’d never come again.

The danger he might bring did not scare
me.

The idea of losing him, though…

I had no idea why, but that
petrified
me.

My body strung tight when his voice sounded
again, this time so guttural, it was tortured.

“Why don’t you have a fuckin’ man?”

His obvious pain slicing through me, my lips
moved, and when they did, they did it to whisper, “Honey.”

And then he wasn’t across the room.

He was right there, his arms locked around
me, one hand in my hair tugging back and not gently, his mouth
crashing down on mine.

I didn’t hesitate even a second.

I opened my lips.

He thrust his tongue inside on a feral growl
that shot right through me, straight through, down deep, detonating
between my legs.

And I was up, plastered to him but moving
swiftly.

Then I was down, back to the kitchen table,
Priest (or whoever he was) bent over me, his tongue taking, his big
hands moving over me just like I knew they’d be.

Far from gentle.

Rough.

Greedy.

Demanding.

Amazing.

I was ready. His tongue in my mouth, his
scent in my nostrils, his big body bent over me, those hands on me,
I was ready.

And it had nothing to do with not having a
lover for months.

It had everything to do with the man who
called himself John Priest.

So I curled my fingers into his thermal and
pulled up.

He broke his mouth from mine instantly,
arching back. His hands going behind his neck, he tore it off and
tossed it aside. Then he moved his arms back around me but his
fingers yanked at my thermal. I instantly shot my arms in the air,
he ripped it off, and threw it away.

Within a breath, I felt my bra unclasped at
the back and his finger scratching between my breasts, jerking it
off, the straps scraping my arms that were forced in front of me to
accommodate its release.

Then he was bent over me and I was forced
back to the table, his mouth tracing a path from my neck down. It
latched on to my nipple and he drew it in, hard and sharp.

I cried out, my fingers diving into his
hair.

“Name,” I breathed.

He sucked harder.

I squirmed beneath him.

“Name!” I demanded.

He released my nipple and his mouth came to
mine.

“Deacon,” he rumbled against my lips.

“Deacon,” I whispered and then he was again
kissing me.

My fingers still in his hair, I held him to
me and kissed him back, giving him everything, taking all I could
get.

I felt his hands at my jeans and I knew what
that meant. I wanted what that meant. So my hands went there. Our
fingers colliding, I got the button, he tore down my zipper.

Suddenly, I lost his mouth but I didn’t mind
(much) because my jeans and panties were being dragged down my
legs. I felt them catch at my feet and gone was one boot and sock.
Then the other. Finally I was naked on the table, my legs spread
with big hands gripping tight at the sides of my knees, and he was
down.

As in
down
.

On his knees on the floor, his mouth between
my legs.

Feeding.

God.

Oh God.

Not feeding.

Feeding.

My back left the table. My legs spasming
against his grip, he tossed them over his shoulders, cupped my ass
in his hands, and pulled me deeper into his mouth.

I dug my heels in his back, my own back
arching higher, as a cry escaped my lips and my climax tore through
me, shredding me,
destroying me
.

The good way.

The way it was meant to be.

Before I was even close to coming down,
Deacon was over me. I felt the tip of his cock sliding through my
wet, he caught where he needed to be and thrust inside, filling
me.

“Baby,” I breathed, wrapping my arms tight
around him, lifting my knees high, pressing my thighs to his sides
as he drove into me.

“Fuck. Years,” he grunted against my neck,
powering deep.

Oh God.

God.

He’d waited, holding back, wanting, maybe
hoping.

Just like me.

“Years,” I whispered.

“Too long,” he growled.

“Way too long,” I agreed, gliding from the
down of my climax into the up of another one as I took his cock and
felt his teeth nip my earlobe.

“Beauty,” he ground out.

“You fit me. Perfect.”

“Tight. So wet.
Fuck
,” he groaned,
slamming inside me.

“It’s building again,” I told him, my voice
breathy and sharp, the pleasure amping.

“Ride it, Cassie.”

Cassie.

Oh man.

He was right.

This was right.

We
were right.

Beauty.

I held on tight and then tighter as I lifted
my head, shoved my face in his neck, and moaned my second orgasm
into his skin.

He bucked hard and fast between my legs, then
with a grunt that rolled into a very long groan, he joined me.

I held on coming down and then I held on
tighter listening to him do it.

But as I did, panic gripped me and I tried to
get a hold on it even as I fought back the desperation to take
everything in. Memorize it with a clarity that meant I’d never lose
the memories.

The feel of him inside me. Moving my hands to
take in the sleek skin over tight muscle on his back. Drawing him
in through my nostrils to memorize the scent of his hair tickling
my nose.

Knowing we’d finally changed.

Knowing this meant it was over.