His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee) Read online

  I nod, too mute with lust to care what I’m agreeing to.

  “Good,” he says, like I’ve passed the “sign your name” part of the test with flying colors. “And since you know this pussy is mine, I don’t have to tell you

  I’m the only one who gets to touch it while I’m on the road, right? Not anyone else. Not even you get to touch my pussy while I’m on the road, unless you have my permission. We clear on that, Purple?”

  No, we aren’t clear on that. I’ve been single too long, and he’s basically asking me to give up masturbation. Until I see him again. Whenever that is. I rally, shaking my head. “Not yours,” I mumble.

  “If you’re good and you follow the rules, I might let you touch my pussy while I’m talking to you on the phone,” he says. His voice is full of dark promise.

  I shake my head. Resisting. Trying to hold on to one shred of dignity. “Not yours.”

  And suddenly it’s no longer fun and games.

  “Do not fuck with me, Purple,” he says, driving himself into me. “I will lose my mind if I find out you’ve been with someone else while I’m on the road, so you need to tell me what I want to hear, now. ”

  I clamp my lips, refusing to answer. Afraid of him. Even more afraid of myself. It’s becoming a familiar feeling.

  My mutinous silence seems to enrage him. He yanks himself out of me and the next thing I feel is his chest blanketing my back. His body so heavy, I have no choice but to sphinx down to my elbows.

  But even that helpless physical submission isn’t enough for him. He yanks on my arms, forcing them out straight in front of me, as one large hand manacles around my bound wrists.

  “You think this is funny?” he asks me, his voice little more than a sneer. “You think I won’t zip up my pants and leave you here? Call Ginny, tell her to come untie you in a few hours? Is that what it’s going to take to make you learn your lesson about fucking with me?”

  The prospect of him leaving me tied naked to the bed scares the shit out of me. And of course, in this messed up dynamic we’ve got going, that only makes my pussy quiver more. I can feel it clenching in and out in a thirsty search for Colin’s cock, which is pressed against my backside.

  I have never wanted to give in to something the way I want to give in to this. But the one part of me that isn’t completely gone with lust has a question. One I have to ask. “How about you?”

  “What?”

  I turn my head toward the sound of his voice, even though he’s made it impossible for me to look at him over my shoulder.

  “What about you? If you’re out on the road, I don’t want you getting with anybody else either. Or touching yourself.” I lick my dry lips. “Not unless I’m on the other side of the phone.”

  Silence. And I see his other hand fisting around his dick, which he pushes back into to me.

  “You’re an idiot,” he says quietly.

  Now it’s my turn to still, the three words bringing back memories of the first time we met. The first time we fought.

  “You’re an idiot if you think I’d want to do this with any woman but you,” he finishes. His strokes become faster, meaner, even as his words become nicer. “But if you need me to say the words, here they go: I’m not paying any other girl any attention while I’m out on the road, Purple. And you’re going to pay for that, because I’m going to call you every day, make you play out all the fucked up fantasies I’ve been carrying around in my head since the night we met.”

  His words makes me feel strangely at peace, despite the ominous threat lurking in them.

  “Your pussy,” I happily concede. “Nobody touches it but you. Not even me. Nobody…”

  I have to stop then, because the orgasm hits me hard, ripping through my belly with such electric urgency, my heart stops beating and my brain goes offline for a few moments.

  Colin’s thrusts become faster above me. Desperate and urgent like he’s barely holding on.

  “Fuck yes, Purple. Damn you come good on this dick, girl.”

  His dirty assessment of my current situation sends a fresh climax shuddering through me. I cry out, my teeth grinding against the onslaught of intense pleasure. And just when I think I’ve got it under control, Colin swells and explodes inside of me with a jagged shout.

  Cue the third climax, and I just can’t… The entire side of my face hits the mattress as I collapse onto the bed. My butt is the only thing in the air now, and that’s because I’m still fully impaled on Colin’s dick. If not for that, I know I’d be little more than a quivering puddle of flesh on the bed. Every single ounce of fight has gone out of me. I’m no longer capable of speaking anything but Colin’s name in wonder, over and over again. My body is no longer capable of doing anything but shuddering with pleasure. Everything inside of me has given out. Given up. A word floats into the puddle of my mind like a steel boat with a foghorn. Piercing and undeniable.

  Submitted.

  I’ve submitted to him. This is what it must feel like to completely give yourself to someone the way Colin’s been demanding I give myself to him all weekend.

  The realization is too much. This situation is too much. Colin is too much. Hot tears blur my vision, but I don’t even have enough strength of will leftover to wipe them away.

  Then comes Colin’s voice, like a lighthouse in the fog. He pulls out of me, and the coldness of his disengagement is soon replaced by the warmth of his arms. “C’mere, Purple…”

  He tips my chin up. Presses his entire face into mine. Forehead, noses. I can even feel his eyelashes against my closed lids as he breathes his next words into my mouth like a CPR kiss. “I know it’s intense. I know it’s scary. I’m fucking scared myself. But it’s okay.”

  I believe him. Colin is probably the only person on Earth I could believe about anything right now. Especially this.

  “You did real good,” he tells me. “Better than I ever could have expected.” Suddenly he’s flooding me with a string of compliments. How much he likes my voice. How soft my body is. How he’s been dreaming about this for years—literally dreaming about it.

  “And you’re beautiful,” he tells me. “Do you have any idea how fucking beautiful you are? So fucking pretty, I’m supposed to be one of the best writers in country music and I can’t come up with anything better than that. Lookin’ at you fries my brain the hell out, Purple.”

  I believe him. For once I’m not thinking about the scar or the trouble spots on my body that keep me from doing things like wearing a bikini out in public.

  Colin makes me feel beautiful. Clean and glowing with promise.

  It’s the sex. I dimly recall something I read once about sex literally messing with your brain chemistry like a drug. This sex, I realize somewhere in the back of my mind, is definitely a drug, one that renders me incapable of telling what’s bullshit and what’s not.

  “Colin, I…” All the things I want to say traffic jam in my head, and I clamp my mouth, afraid of what I might say. Once again afraid of myself when it comes to him.

  Colin covers us up. “It’s all right. You don’t have to say anything. I tell you what. I’m going to put a lid on Mr. Jekyll until tomorrow. We’ll wake up. Do things sweet. Have a little breakfast. Talk to each other like human beings. Then fuck like animals one more time, and then we’ll both get on the road. Sound like a plan?”

  I am so curious about the prospect of doing things “sweet” with Colin. What does that even look like?

  But I’m tired. More tired than I’ve ever been after sex, and sleep is dragging my eyelids back down.

  “Okay,” I say. Agreeing to his plan, simple as that.

  Because despite all the complicated shit that’s gone down over the course of the weekend, and all the complicated shit still lurking in the hidden corners of our relationship, at this moment, Colin’s plan does feel like a logical choice. Sleep. Be sweet. Eat. Rough sex. Leave.

  What could be more simple than that?

  23

  I wake up to the
sound of a phone ringing.

  “Not mine,” I think as my eyes flutter open. I’d used Colin’s charger the day before to recharge my phone and text Bernice that I was fine, but my ringtone is the opening bars to “Nine to Five.” It must be Colin’s.

  Colin, who’s all snuggled up behind me, both his arms around my body with one arm around my waist and the other cupping my large breast.

  “I think that’s your phone,” I mumble.

  “Ignore it.” The hand cupping my breast starts kneading, as if to punctuate his argument.

  I arch back into him, happy to take this particular command. By the time the phone stops ringing, both of my nipples are standing on end.

  “I thought I wore you out last night, but look how hot my pussy is,” he says, low and dirty in my ear.

  He takes his fingers out of my core and pushes them into my mouth, giving me a sample of my own essence. He’s right. There’s plenty of me to taste on his fingers. And I groan around his fingers, feeling like the nastiest girl on earth.

  “Do you know how bad I want to hold you down right now?” he growls in my ear. “Make you put me in your pretty mouth and suck while I toy with these fine breasts of yours. Get you so hot you give me everything else. Your breasts. Your body. Your mind. Everything.”

  His words send sharp pulses of lust through my core, and I squirm in his arms at the image of sucking him off while he plays with my now very swollen breasts.

  “But I promised we’d do this sweet, so…”

  It almost feels like a let down when he quietly pushes in from behind and starts stroking into me with slow, gentle care.

  But only for a little bit. Then it becomes something else. Flames chewing through kindle slowly until the fire bursts into a fiery blast that needs putting out.

  His strokes become faster and true to his word, he doesn’t make me beg or submit, just drapes an arm over my hip and starts circling my clit.

  Pleasure bubbles through me, filling me up until I come with a long, keening moan.

  “Oh, God, Colin,” I say. “Please come, too.”

  To my surprise, he does exactly as I say. Before I’m even done coming down from my climax, I feel him release into me from the back with a grunt of satisfaction.

  “Good morning,” he says, turning me over to face him afterwards.

  I just stare at him, my eyes soft and surprised.

  “What?” he asks. “You didn’t think I could get off without the rough stuff?”

  “No,” I admit, still too stunned to consider a more tactful answer.

  “I’m a little fucked in the head,” he says with a half-grin. “But I’m not a complete monster. I like when you fight me, but I like this just fine, too.”

  He tilts his head to look down at me. “When are you going to get that you just turn me on, Purple?”

  The question is a soft accusation that somehow makes me feel like I really am an idiot for not considering one of the biggest country singers in the world might see something more in me than a shockingly eager willingness to play along with his rough sex fantasies.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “For what?”

  “For this weekend. For helping me out with my songs. For… everything. I’ve never… um… experienced anything like this.”

  Something unreadable passes over his face, and he opens his mouth to answer just as the phone starts ringing again.

  Colin curses.

  “Ginny and you are the only ones who have this number, and Ginny would never call twice unless it was important. Hold on…”

  I watch him get out of bed, naked, and take the phone out of the back pocket of his discarded jeans.

  “Hey, Ginny. I hope this is important,” he says instead of a proper hello.

  Then a frown comes over his face.

  “Yeah, I did buy a pink razor and some ladies clothes the other day. Yeah, wine, too. Why?”

  He listens and his frown becomes deeper the longer Ginny talks.

  “Hell…”

  He goes over to the closet and pulls down a plastic shopping bag.

  “Sorry,” he says, tossing the clothes over to me. “That’s all they had in the women’s section.”

  I open the bag and find a pair of mom jeans, a pink thong, and a pink t-shirt with the name of what I can only assume is the local high school’s football team written across it.

  Before I can answer, Colin’s back, talking with Ginny.

  “Yeah. Yeah, you better come and get her. How soon can you be here?” His mouth quirks up. “That soon… because you were already on your way when you called the first time.” He chuckles. “And that’s why I pay you the big bucks, Ginny. Yeah, I’ll make sure she’s ready. Honk when you’re outside.”

  But the amusement falls off his face as soon as he hangs up.

  “The owner of the local general store snapped a pic of me buying the razor and the ladies clothes yesterday. Sold it to a few online blogs. Story broke this morning. That means we maybe have an hour before the Nashville paparazzi shows up here and figures out where I’m staying. Get in the shower. Ginny’s going to be here in twenty to pick you up.”

  ACTUALLY GINNY GETS THERE in less than twenty. After taking a quick shower and getting dressed, I come out to the living room to find her with Colin, discussing next steps.

  “They’ve already got a few paps swarming around the general store,” Ginny is saying to Colin. “I think the best thing to do is for me to drive her car out of here, then by the time they figure out you’re staying out here, she’ll be gone and they’ll only have my car to trace if they take pictures. Luckily it’s private property all the way from the road. Might keep them out of the trees.”

  “Might,” Colin says, his voice terse.

  Ginny sees me. “You ready?” she asks, like a busy divorced mother waiting to make the trade off at the end of dad’s weekend.

  “Yeah, I think so,” I answer, since I didn’t come with much more than my purse. I notice Ginny’s already got my keys in her hand. Colin must have given them to her. “Where are we going?”

  “About twenty miles or so, to the a bus station in the next town over. Then I’ll double back for my car. But there might be paparazzi at the fence, so I’m going to need you to duck down in the back seat.”

  Colin picks up the afghan off the back of the couch. “Here, put this over her. That way there’s nothing to see.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t understand,” I say. “All of this, because Colin bought a few things at the local general store?”

  “All of this, because Colin’s deeply private about his personal life,” Ginny answers. “The Nashville paps haven’t been able to confirm he’s had so much as one date over the past fifteen years. Colin’s managed to control his story because of it, but that means the bottom feeders get all riled up if they even think there’s a chance they might break a story about who Colin’s dating.”

  “But—” I start to say. An urgent beeping sound cuts me off.

  More cursing from Colin as he picks up his phone again, and I see a picture of a couple of men with beer bellies at the access road’s perimeter. He must have a security camera in one of the trees, I realize, one that sends an alert to his phone if anything triggers it. Which means he must have known I was coming from the moment I turned onto the access road.

  “Shit, looks like they’re at the edge of the property,” he says.

  I think of Colin, coming to the door to greet me two days ago, and register that it was just a ruse. He’d been inside, lying in wait the whole time.

  But now he pushes the afghan at Ginny and says, “Get her out of here, and make sure nobody sees her.”

  24

  Make sure nobody sees her.

  Colin’s final words ring in my head as I’m driven down his access road, hunkered down in my own back seat. I know when we get to the gate because I can hear the sound of shouts, despite the windows being rolled up. Also, Ginny starts mumbling about bottom feeders h
aving nothing better to do.

  Someone thumps against the window.

  “You the girlfriend? You the girlfriend?” A muffled voice yells outside the car.

  “No, you idiot. I’m the lesbian assistant whose picture isn’t worth nil,” Ginny mumbles.

  The car slows as it turns onto the main road, but it never stops, and soon we’re back on paved road, driving at least fifty.

  But it’s not soon enough to keep the memories from crashing down…

  “MAMA, MAMA, NO! Please mama, don’t. Don’t!” I pull on my mother’s arm, trying to keep her from going up the walk to the Prescott’s Tudor mansion.

  But I’m still weak from blood loss. The only thing that’s letting me pull on my mother’s arm now is the need to keep her from shaming us like I can tell she’s fixing to do. But even with that extra strength, I can’t tug hard enough to keep her from moving forward.

  I can’t still her hand before she uses it to ring the doorbell, and then pound on the door itself while the bells are still chiming our arrival.

  “Mama, please don’t do this! Please,” I beg. “Let’s just go!”

  She glares at me, like I’m the one who’s had too much to drink before coming over here and not her.

  “Why you trying to protect him? This is all his fault. We don’t have insurance. We barely got a pot to piss in. Look at your face! Unh-uh, he needs to pay for this.”

  I don’t have to look at my face. I can feel the blood still seeping through the makeshift bandage I taped on myself.

  “Yes, Mama, look at my face. I need stitches.” I actually needed them twenty-four hours ago when this first happened, but my mother had spent that time drinking, leaving me to tend to my own wounds as she drank straight from the bottle, cursing our lot. Cursing her former boss, Beauregard Prescott, the man who had put us in this position. Until she’d grabbed her keys and told me to “come on.”