Once Upon A Killing (A Gass County Novel Book 2) Read online

  Buzz. The vibration cut through the grogginess that clung to her mind. With one hand, she reached over the pile of pillows covering the bed and grabbed the phone, still giving off sound on the nightstand in the dark. She pushed a few strands of dark hair out of her face, squinted her eyes, and stared down at the screen in her hand.

  Wayne. FaceTime. Calling.

  Hell no! Her mind screamed and with two hands she clutched the phone tightly to her ample bosom. She ignored the continuous buzzing as long as she could, until the attempted call ended, and with only one eye, she peeked down carefully, as if he could see her, and noticed the call had stopped. Instead a text appeared, “Saw you tonight. Still up? Talk?”

  Why the hell would I want to talk to you, now? she thought, then at once cursed herself for sounding old. The ‘pencil’ girls were probably just getting started for the night, she on the other hand had just woken up in a puddle of drool.

  For a few seconds she debated if she should send him something back. She knew he’d done something to her heart, something that made it almost impossible for her to let him go, yet she wasn’t sure if it was a smart move to let him know that. Somewhere deep inside, she knew she was starting to fall, hard and flat faced for this guy, but since he hadn’t shown any sign of reciprocating those feelings, she wasn’t going to let him know. Yet. This had heartbreak written all over it, and she’d learned to stay away from that, before anything ever had a chance to start. And with this being with Wayne, it didn’t fit her plans the least. Better to be safe than sorry, as her mom always said. Although she wasn’t sure her mom had meant her love life.

  Buzz, the phone vibrated once more and, in her weary state of mind, made her drop the phone among the pile of pillows. In the dull light from the nightlight, her hand dove in to the softness covering the bed until it finally grabbed hold of something cold and pulled it back out and into her hand.

  Damn it, her mind panicked.

  “You look cute. In the drunken kind of messy hair – cute,” a dark chuckle spread from the phone into the quietness of the bedroom around her.

  “Fuck.”

  “You want to fuck?” His smile turned into an ever bigger chuckle as he leaned back against the pillows of what must have been his bed. Dark blue sheets, she noticed, just like his car.

  “You heard that?” she mumbled then fumbled around, pushing her hair back, then pulling up the duvet to cover her bosom with nipples that wanted to play their own game underneath the soft fabric of her tank top as soon as she’d seen him over the phone.

  “Yep, your voice is loud and clear. You practically let my neighbors on the other side of this wall know what you want to do tonight.” Apparently her haphazard choice of word made it impossible for him to wipe that smile off his face.

  “Sorry, never done this FaceTime before,” she mumbled once more, and ran another hand through her hair in the hope it would look as good as, or maybe even better than the ‘pencils’ had earlier.

  A silence spread between them, and Wayne’s wicked smile settled into a more serious look.

  “How are you doing?” he asked softly.

  “I’m doing fine. Just sleeping you know, because it’s after midnight. You?”

  “I got home a little while ago.”

  I bet you did, you man-whore, she screamed inside, but her mouth exhaled a deep sigh and she nodded in response.

  “I saw you drive by the pub earlier, in the truck.”

  “Yep, on my way home from work. Had a lot of orders to finish up for Sunday. Big brunch at the women’s club, and I got a big order of hundreds of cupcakes. Figured I stay and finish them.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Yeah, it’s going rather well.”

  They both paused again, looked down at their shirts where they picked imaginary strands of hair or dust on either side of the screen. She felt nothing but awkward.

  “You must have been busy this week too. Didn’t even know you were alive until tonight, when I happened to see you with the girls outside the pub. Not that I care, though. Just glad to know you’re okay.”

  The elephant in the room caught his attention and he righted himself on the pillows stacked behind his head and leaned back further into their softness until it felt just like she was lying right on top of him, looking down upon his face. His uncut hair fell back against the pillow, and the darkness of his unshaven face made his jaw appear stronger, and she knew she could stare at that face for a very, very long time.

  His mouth twisted a little, and his eyes seemed to wander every square inch of his walls, until they came back to face her on the screen in his hand.

  “I like you too much that I’m afraid I’ll screw things up if I get any closer,” he said low. “You’re reeling me in like a magnet and I don’t know how to be in a relationship. Never had one, wasn’t ever planning on having one either.” His fingers rubbed the lines on his forehead. “I’m afraid I’ll be like the old saying, ‘you can’t teach an old dogs new tricks,’ and that I might be too old to have that chance. That’s why I’m staying closer to what I know - being with random women, never to see them again. Never to get attached.”

  His honesty took her by surprise, and for a while she had no answer. Instead she followed his act, leaned back against the pile of pillows bunkered by the top of the bed, and set the phone securely on her belly which was covered in the duvet and looked back at him on the screen. A small smile suddenly tickled the side of her cheek.

  “What is it?” his voice mumbled on the screen and she peeked down to see him rolled over on his side, his five-o-clock shadow, or more like a six-o-clock beard, pushed down into his pillow, looking back at her.

  “I didn’t expect you to say that. That was sweet. Honest.”

  “I figured at the age of thirty-six I should probably try to stick to truths more than not. What the hell do I have to lose? You haven’t really shown much interest in me either, so I figured I’ll shoot and see where the bullet lands. If it goes to shit, I end it here and move on with my life.” His eyes wandered the walls of his bedroom once more as the sentence died off.

  “Why would you think I’m not interested in you?” she asked. “I think I kissed you first that day in the bakery, I’ve let you grab my behind and caressed my thigh in various situations, and I agreed to come with you to New York. How could those things possibly show that I’m not interested?”

  “Maybe it’s a guy thing but… we’ve never slept with each other.”

  She sighed deeply and ran a hand through her hair again, as if grabbing her thoughts by the roots.

  “Since you have been very clear with me the entire time that you’re not interested in a relationship I made up my mind not to be another notch on your bedpost. I’m not a weekend type of friend, or a friend with benefits. I’ve been married, as you know, and I want to be in a relationship similar to that again sometime. Have I been honest enough with you?” her voice softly caressing the words.

  His eyes held at the screen and as he kept the phone a little closer to his face it felt like she was laying right there next to him among those blue sheets. “Is it too late to try?” he asked suddenly.

  “Try for what?”

  “For me to be with you. Only you.”

  “Um… I’m not sure, Wayne.”

  Suddenly he sat up, the phone fumbled and the picture went erratic. “I’m coming over,” he grunted, and she watched him in the somewhat blurry video pulling on pants and shoes, grabbing a jacket from a top a chair and walking down what seemed to be a hallway on his end.

  “What? Now? No, no I’m sleeping. It’s in the middle of the night!” She panicked and realized she hadn’t shaved her legs for a period of days, sported a face containing puffy eyes from crying herself to sleep, hadn’t lost the ten pounds she wanted to over night, and was in her most unflattering outfit for an after midnight date with a hot specimen, such as Wayne. Or really with anyone.

  “Already heading out the door. See you in a few.” FaceT
ime Ended, the screen bleeped and she stared into its darkness.

  “Oh crap.”

  Chapter Nine

  The last ten minutes since he’d dropped his call and showed her he was leaving his place in a rush must have been the quickest ten minutes on record. She hadn’t succeeded in almost anything she had wished, because her legs were still uncomfortably abrasive, her face bared nothing but the truth of the night, but at least her body was clad in a black satin nightgown. Better than Pooh Bear jammies, she figured. Anything was, really.

  The door bell rang the second the silky satin touched her mid-thigh and clung to her curvy body like a second skin.

  “Hi, can I come in?”

  “You drove all the way over here and it’s after one in the morning, so yeah, please come on inside,” her mocking didn’t go unnoticed, and as his boots brought him inside her entryway a crooked smile created a line on the side his cheek that she suddenly urged to run her tongue along. Her tongue tickled by the growth of hair that had appeared since she last saw him, and she liked it. A lot.

  His dark leather jacket slid off his broad shoulders, and he hung it up on one of the coat hangers next to hers. “What happened over there?” His finger pointed across the hallway to the pile of rubble that had fallen out of her purse earlier when, in pure rage and jealousy, she had tossed it across the room.

  “Oh, nothing. I just had a… moment and tossed the bag. I guess most of what was inside fell out on the floor.” Her hand pulled a strand of hair behind hear ear before she locked both arms across her chest.

  “Okay,” he mumbled, and pushed his hands down deep into his jeans pockets. And oh my goodness those jeans fit him well, she noticed: just perfectly tight around his thighs, and framing his butt like a piece of expensive art when he walked by to pick up the purse from the floor. As he bent down, what looked like a well-worn AC/DC shirt crept up a hint to reveal some skin on his lower back, and out of the blue her fingers wanted to dance across the pale skin. Or her mouth, to taste what his body would feel like against her lips.

  His fingers adeptly cleaned up everything from lip gloss to tampons, then hung the purse on the hook next to their jackets, and pushed his hands into those pockets once more. A movement that made her eyes travel south as well, and set where she imagined the top of his finger tips would be. Where she wished her hands could set.

  “So, what made you come over here in the middle of the night?” she asked, staring down at the floor. “You could have waited until tomorrow, just a few more hours.”

  The floor boards gave a low creek as his boots moved across them, closing the distance between. Pockets that had just recently been filled with his hands gaped empty and those hands settled around her hips, causing her lungs to inhale a shallow breath steadying herself for all that he was: his masculine scent, tall posture, and unruly hair. The fact that he had driven the whole way over in the middle of the night to see her only added fuel to the fire burning within her.

  Avoiding an answer, he bent his head slowly and touched his lips to hers. The way his stubble scratched the delicate skin around her mouth further enlightened the blaze within. Suddenly she felt awake, fully alive, and she grabbed the back of his neck with both hands and forced his mouth deeper onto hers, feeding off of him, and pressed her body tightly into his until she felt him stumble over shoes scattered across the floor. His back slammed hard enough against the wall to make the frame holding a long lost canine companion come off its metal fastenings and fall with a crash to the floor.

  She could have climbed him like a tree. Her body certainly wanted to. The apex of her thighs found his muscular thigh underneath his pants and in rhythm with their tongues she grinded her pussy against the coarse fabric until the feeling of his jeans disintegrated and her wetness made his pants warm and smooth, similar to her wash cloth hanging on the side of the bathtub upstairs.

  Tonight Wayne’s rough fabric was a godsend, and with the pressure he was using, pushing back against her, only made everything feel so much better.

  “God, you’re amazing. And gorgeous,” he whispered, grabbing her butt and pushing her harder onto his thigh, making sure she knew he understood what made her feel so good.

  Her hand found its way from his neck down his chest to his zipper and with a steady hand she grabbed him, felt him, teased him through his jeans as a thank you for his compliments.

  His hands were not any slower, as they followed with the same interest. One unzipped his pants then placed her hand on his cock sticking out of his boxers, the other found its way inside her panties until two fingers slid through her wetness then disappeared deep inside her. She moaned into his mouth and pressed herself even harder onto his hand.

  There they were, pressed against the wall in the dimness of her hallway, way past midnight, with only the antique lamp standing on the entryway table, lighting up the corner of the room. The light shone on them in their corner of the world, Wayne’s pants pushed down mid-thigh, and Christine riding his fingers like they were the lightning rod she needed to survive. The elixir to life sat in his hand.

  “You’re so wonderfully wet. God,” his words mumbled between kisses. “But you should know,” he inhaled and broke them apart, “I’m about to come if we don’t stop this.”

  “Damn it.”

  “I’m sorry,” his chuckle birthed goose bumps on her skin. “It’s a compliment, I assure you. You, brazen, pushing me against the wall, wanting me. Every man’s dream.“

  The moment his fingers left her she felt cold, empty even. Shuttering, attempting to pull her skimpy negligee further down her bare thighs, she stepped backwards slightly shameful. Pulling strands of hair back over her head, behind her ears, looking everywhere but at his obviously amused smile.

  “Thank you,” he mumbled happily and pulled his jeans up into decent order before running his large hand over the dark fabric on his thigh, still damp with her moisture. “You know,” he said softly caressing the dampness. “I wouldn’t mind walking around with this until these pants fall off by old age. It’s still warm, of you,” he mumbled and eyed his own hand moving up and down his thigh. “And I love it. It makes the skin underneath warm and tingly.” His eyes twinkled with naughtiness.

  “You want to come in, I mean farther than the entryway?” Interruption was the best distraction technique until she could get some control over her shameless thoughts of what to do with him next, and how she could get those fingers inside her once more.

  “After you, miss.” With his hand gesturing for a house tour she smoothed out the dark fabric clinging even tighter as her increased body heat made the gown feel more like a snake skin she desperately needed to shed. She knew he was watching her every move, walking tightly behind her. Close enough to feel the swift flow of his exhale on her upper back when she slowed down or stopped to show him different parts of her home. Everything from the open kitchen with its remodeled marble countertops and open floor plan, to the living room’s deep couch and large fireplace.

  From the far wall of the living room went an exceptionally steep, but wide, wooden stairway, up to the second story of the old house. There the soft coffee colored carpet had replaced the wooden floors from below, and led them both towards the master bedroom on the right and a smaller room to the left.

  “What’s in here?” His body motioned in the direction of the closed door before she could stop him. “Oh, this is beautiful,” he whispered. “I never would have guessed.”

  The smaller bedroom had for long been reserved as a temple of retreat when grief had knocked on the door and crashed into life as a dark hand, grabbing her by the throat in an attempt to suffocate her mind.

  “These are… these are very colorful. Cheerful.” His fingers grazed the top of each and every painting leaning in rows against the wall. She had stacked them, just to make room for more, but the frequency of her production had lessened as time passed.

  His fingers continued to graze each canvas dressed rectangle, moving them around, pick
ing them up, studying each as their own masterpiece.

  “There are so many,” he said. “Why don’t you hang them up? I’ll help you” His eyes went from painting to painting as someone in absolute elation finding a long lost treasure of Picassos or Monets.

  “I paint as therapy, and when my session is over, so is my time with my painting. Some are finished, some are not, but they’re all still here.” Her shoulders shrugged and again her arms crossed her chest, hugging herself, shutting everyone else out.

  “But these are – amazing doesn’t cover it. Remarkable. You,” he turned, holding a large square shaped painting of running, wild Mustangs in a large field of swaying yellow grass, “have an aptitude for capturing moments.”

  “Oh,” a slight embarrassment tickled her cheeks and made her hand touch the blank, ready-to-go, canvas standing in front of her. “I’m sure most people can create things, or paint. Maybe you enjoy that too?”

  “I merely want to paint you.” His lips played with amusement again, while he lowered the painting back onto the soft carpet, leaning it against the others.

  “Using this?” She held a thin paintbrush between her delicate fingertips, grazing the empty white canvas with the other.

  “No,” his voice a low purr.

  “Then what?”

  “Using this.” His eyes drilled straight into hers before he opened his lips and let the tip of his tongue flicker against his upper teeth.

  She gulped, and no matter how hard she tried, that mouth of his was reeling her in like a bee to honey. She couldn’t take her eyes away from it. His tongue had left the smallest of dew at the middle of his bottom lip, and she wondered what it would taste like landing on her tongue.

  Without noticing how it happened, her hair was suddenly tangled around his fingers, massaging her scalp. The moment she let her eyes fall shut, the warmth of his breath touched her skin, making delicious goose bumps break out across her body.