The Hookup by Kristen Ashley
I unlocked my arms from around his head and put them to his shoulders.
“Let me go.”
“Izzy,” he whispered against my neck.
I turned my head to the side, away from him, not able to deal with this, not even able to be in my own skin.
It was dirty. Wrong. Revolting.
“That wasn’t right.”
“Baby—”
“Let me go.”
His lips found my ear. “Spätzchen, you need to listen to me.”
“That wasn’t right. You’re not mine. You’re hers.”
His body grew solid all around me. “What?”
“You ran after her.”
“I ran after my dog.”
I blinked at the dirt-floored corridor between the stalls.
He touched his lips to my earlobe and then kept them there, saying gently, “I knew you’d think that but I couldn’t correct you when you wouldn’t answer the fucking phone.”
Slowly, I turned my head his way, and slowly he lifted his to look into my eyes.
“You . . . ran after . . . your dog?”
“Ranger’s home,” he stated.
I blinked up at him.
He gently slid me off his cock and I took the hint, unhooking my legs from his hips. He set me to my feet but held me close, still pinned to the wall until he knew I was steady on them.
He moved away only enough to hitch up his jeans and then he bent and grabbed my panties.
I automatically lifted a hand to take them but he didn’t offer them to me.
He shoved them in his jeans pocket.
My lips parted.
He bent back and grabbed my pajama bottoms. He shook them to get the dirt off, his brows drew together as he gave them a look, then he handed them to me.
Brushing Johnny repeatedly because he stayed in my space, I put them on.
I was tying the drawstring when he said, “Trash.”
It was a statement that formed a question.
“Tack room.”
That was my answer.
He took my hand and shifted us to the tack room, opening the door. He walked with his jeans undone, dragging me with him.
He then treated me to the intimacy of him disposing of a spent condom in my trash.
There was something about this, something huge, something powerful. A shift in our relationship where the veil was pulled down and it was no longer about guarding important secrets until you knew they were safe to share or just getting to know each other a little better.
It was about fitting into each other’s lives.
He righted his jeans and belt then looked into the room.
“Jesus,” he murmured.
I looked into the room.
The tack was mounted on two opposite walls in a fashion that wasn’t only organized and orderly, but attractive. The narrow floor space between had a clean, oval, braided rug on it. In the two back corners, at angles to each other, were two armchairs. A faded chintz one I got in a yard sale for two dollars. And a fabulous, mahogany leather club chair I bought at an estate auction for twenty-five. The light fixture was tin, antique, beat up and fabulous and cost me a buck fifty at an antique store, and a margarita night plus my guacamole for a girlfriend who was an electrician to rewire it.
On the back wall there were four precisely placed pictures, two on either side of a big window, and I’d paid a small fortune to have each one of them professionally framed in the exact same frame.
All of them with huge mats surrounding cheap, drugstore produced snapshot pictures of the day Mom took Addie and me to a state park and we rode horses on a trail. One picture of Mom and Addie. One of Mom and me. And two of all three of us together, standing in front of a horse, smiling, goofing and looking happy.
“Trust you to have a tack room that’s nicer than most folks’ living room,” Johnny muttered.
I looked from the room to him.
“Johnny.”
He looked to me, said firmly, “Right,” then grabbed my hand and dragged me to the leather club chair.
He sat in it.
Then he sat me in it, that being me in his lap.
“Caught up with her and my dog,” he began without preamble.
I sat in his lap, and unsure I wanted to, unsure of anything, I listened.
“Since I wanted my dog back, told her we needed to find a private place to talk. She wanted the mill. I agreed to the mill because that way I could just let Ranger in his new home when we were done and I didn’t want to drag shit out by discussing where we were going to discuss shit. She followed me there in her car. I called you on the way there.” His expression turned annoyed. “You didn’t answer.”
“Um . . .” I muttered.
“Needless to say, when I got there and told her I wanted my dog back, this did not go over well. I’d told her we weren’t going back, what’s done is done, but apparently that didn’t get through. Me saying I wanted her to return Ranger made it get through. She was upset and I couldn’t just tell her to get gone but leave my dog. I did find times to call and text you during her being upset. But again, you didn’t answer.”
“Uh . . .” I mumbled.
“Things degenerated, because she couldn’t miss me trying to call and text you so she wanted to know about you, and since I wasn’t giving her a shot, she jumped to conclusions about Brooks bein’ our kid. Assuring her that didn’t happen but not assuring her that you and I weren’t what she assumed we were didn’t go over very well either. When it came out that it had only been a few weeks and she’d actually called right after we met each other, things degenerated further with a lot of her asking what ifs about if she’d just called a couple of days earlier. And again, it didn’t go over very well when I said what if was moot since I found someone, the connection we have runs deep, we’re both intent on exploring it and I was all in for that happening.”
I stared at him, no longer feeling unsure about listening.
I was listening hard to every word he said.
He kept saying them.
“It would have ended there and I would have come to you, except folks talk, and they were talking, so by the time Margot and Dave got to the festival, what happened on that picnic blanket with the three of us was running rampant. Margot got in a snit, Shandra isn’t Dave’s favorite person either, so they decided to load back up in their car, show at the mill and give Shandra a few pieces of their minds.”
“Oh boy,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Margot laid into her and the result was mincemeat. She ground her to a pulp. I’d tried to be as cool with her as I could, but in that situation there is no way she’d think I was being cool. So Shandra had already taken a few lickings from me, and with Margot wading in she became a mess.”
“Yikes,” I murmured, beginning to feel sorry for Shandra.
I hoped Margot never was moved to make mincemeat of me because I figured she had a talent with that.
“Yeah,” he again agreed. “But Margot wasn’t done, because she jumped to conclusions about the fact Shandra and me were at the mill and she had a few things to say to me too. About Shandra and about you. Shandra hearing from Margot the depths of the wreckage of me she left behind meant she got it in her head that she might be the only one to salvage them, and even shredded she gave that a go. Me and Margo disabusing her of this considering you’d entered the picture and did it with staying power was insult to injury. She lost it, took off, and I spent the rest of the afternoon and most the night looking for her to make sure in her state she didn’t wrap herself around a tree while alternately trying to get you on the phone. I found her late, got her back to her folks safely, left her there and decided to sort you out this morning. You being you led us to straightening shit out the way we straightened it out, which, spätzchen, I’m not complaining since what we did against that wall was hot as fuck. And here we are.”
There we were.
That seemed very definite coming from Johnny, and all h
But even if I was right where I was, I didn’t know where we were.
“Where are we?” I asked.
His brows shot together and again they turned from manly and attractive to downright sinister.
Then he looked around my tack room, to me, both his arms curled around me and did it tight so he could give me a firm shake, and he asked, “Where the fuck do you think we are?”
I didn’t know.
That was why I asked.
But I made a guess.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” I told him carefully.
“Do what?” he asked angrily.
“Come after her. I don’t want to be—”
“Don’t fuckin’ say it,” he growled.
I closed my mouth.
“She was three years ago, Eliza. I loved her. That fact doesn’t change. I loved her and she wrecked me when she left because that was how much I loved her. I’m not going to apologize for that or deny it or walk on eggshells with you about it while we figure out what we got and why it’s so fuckin’ good and so fuckin’ intense and so fuckin’ everything.”
I blinked at him again.
He thought we were . . .
Everything?
He carried on speaking.
“I’d think you’d want that. I’d think you’d wanna know the man in your life could feel that deep for the woman he decided to spend the rest of his life with. But with her, that didn’t happen. She left. I wasn’t Sleeping Beauty, unconscious and unmoving, waiting for her to return. Life happens and it happened. I met you. She’s a memory that’s bittersweet and now back in my sphere, and unfortunately since you’ve taken firm residence in my sphere, yours. But the fact remains, she’s a memory.”
“She’s beautiful,” I told him something he was sure to know.
“So?” he asked.
“I . . . well, she dresses like you. You guys . . . you two . . .” I swallowed and finished, “Fit.”
“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “Her rocker-cowgirl gig is hot. Always was. But I’m not fucking her. I’m fucking a girl who wears a dress that reminds me how much I like her tits with that neckline, baby, which isn’t hot. It’s smokin’. A dress that has fuckin’ birds on it and still, it’s so sexy I took one look at it and wanted the skirt around your waist, or better yet, the whole dress lying on the floor by a bed, my bed, your bed, I don’t care. But just saying, this isn’t the way it’s gonna be where I gotta reassure you that I’m with you because I wanna be with you and I’m not with her because of history. I’m not with her because I wanna be with you.”
I withdrew without physically withdrawing, and I knew by the irritable look Johnny gave me (or the more irritable look) he felt it.
Still, I couldn’t help it.
“So you wanna fuck me,” I said, and I couldn’t keep the injury out of my tone.
“Well, yeah,” he bit out. “You’re the best lay, bar none, Iz, I’ve ever had. No one even comes close. You’re not on a higher level. You’re reinventing the highest level.”
Well that was a kind of compliment.
“I also want more of your guac,” he decreed. “And I wake up every day now at fuckin’ five in the morning because I can’t keep sleeping knowing you’re out here,” he threw out an arm to indicate the stables, “taking care of these horses all by yourself. I go to bed at night, every night, Eliza, jacking my junk thinking of you and wondering if you’re touching yourself thinking of me. Except that night after The Star. I didn’t sleep that first wink, not able to get it out of my head you’re alone out here and some fuckwit is messing with you. I cannot tell you how relieved I was to hear your sister was with you. For you, because I know you love her, and because you’re not alone out here with no one to look after you.”
I sat still on his lap in his arms staring at him and forgetting how to breathe.
Johnny didn’t forget.
He took a breath and kept at me.
“I spent a lot of time the last two weeks bein’ pissed at Shandra, not because she took off on me but because she called and fucked things up before I could take you camping. And I spent a lot of time wondering if you got your peonies and tee and wondering if I should have done that at all or if it made things worse and needing to talk to you about it. So, to end, I spent a lot of time just thinking about you and yeah, some of it was thinking about what I wanted to do to you to make you come, but the rest of it wasn’t.”
“So, you like me,” I whispered breathily.
He scowled at me like he wanted to strangle me then his head dropped to the back of the chair and he stared at the ceiling.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I muttered.
His arms tightened around me so tight, they curled my thighs into my torso so I was a little ball of Izzy tucked tight against his chest as his head came back up and he clipped, “Yeah, I fuckin’ like you.”
“Okeydokey,” I mumbled.
“I know your sister is here but I wanna spend time with you today and then I want you comin’ back to the mill with me to spend the night.”
“She’s in a rough spot, Johnny, and she’s always had the mammoth share of taking care of Brooks.”
Something closed down in his face I didn’t quite understand but that wasn’t the reason I said my next.
I said my next because I wasn’t finished speaking.
“But she’ll get it. She tried to get me to talk to you so she’ll be, uh . . . glad things are where they, um . . . are. Though, I’ll need to be with her tomorrow. Every diaper change I do with Brooks, I swear, after I’m done she wants to kiss me.”
Whatever clouded his features cleared, he nestled me closer and he asked, “You got tomorrow off?”
I nodded.
“Your sister and Brooks can come over to the mill and I’ll grill for you.”
“That’d be sweet,” I said on a smile.
He looked to my smile then his eyes wandered down farther and his arms loosened.
“I . . . well, liked the tee, uh . . . obviously,” I shared. “And also the peonies,” I added.
His gaze came back to me.
“The bottoms?” he asked.
“Sorry?” I asked back.
“Whose are those?”
Uh-oh.
“Uh . . .”
He gave me another shake and said a warning, “Iz.”
“They’re not Kent’s,” I felt it safe to share.
“So whose are they?”
I could tell him I had a man’s pair of pajama bottoms because I found them comfy.
But that would be a lie.
“The guy before the guy before Kent.”
“Okay. Then you can wear ’em back to the house but after that, lose them, Izzy. And by that I mean I’d prefer you burn them but chucking them in the trash works.”
I stared at him again.
He took in my stare and stated, “Right, we’re doin’ this so no more fucking around. I’m that guy. I got a sense of the type of woman you are, it’d be hard not to. You made all this. You keep all this like it is. You dress like you dress. You got it together. You can take care of yourself and a lot more than that. You’re smart, sharp, successful and independent. I like all that or I wouldn’t be here. I’m still that guy and you gotta know that. And part of that guy is being a guy where his woman doesn’t wear another guy’s pajama bottoms, even if that guy is history. You want some, I’ll dig out some of my own, give them to you and have at it. But those are gone. Now, you got a problem with that?”
“Not really.”
He relaxed all around me, muttering, “Good.”
“Can I say something?” I asked.
“Can I ask why you’d ask if you could say something?” he asked back.
I felt my mouth quirk before I got serious.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all of that yesterday, honey. It sounded like a rough day and I feel bad that I made it
His face got soft and it also got closer to mine.
“It was messed up all around,” he stated. “Now it isn’t. Thanks for saying that, spätzchen, but it’s done and we’re moving on. You with me?”
I nodded then asked, “Are you going to give me back my panties?”
“Hell no,” he answered.
I felt my brows draw together. “Why?”
“Babe, do you have even a little clue how hot it is, you sitting in my lap after we fucked like we fucked and I know you’re not wearing panties because I got them in my pocket?”
I squirmed in his lap.
His face then got something else entirely when he growled, “Yeah.”
It took a second for us both to have our moment before his lips hitched and I should have prepared but I didn’t.
So when he said, “You thought I’d bagged on you and you went to sleep in my tee?”
My eyes narrowed on him.
That got me a white flash in his beard.
I tried to push off, mumbling, “I need to make breakfast and then muck stalls.”
His arms tightened again and he returned, “You can make breakfast, babe. For three. I’ll muck the stalls.”
I stopped pushing against him. “I can muck my own stalls, Johnny.”
“No doubt. Just that today your sister is here and so am I, so I’m gonna muck the stalls and you’re gonna spend time with your sister. Then you’re gonna feed me. After that, I’m gonna go home, shower and come back. We’ll spend the day together and after dinner, I’ll take you home with me so I can fuck you without you worried about anyone hearing and I’ll bring you back in the morning. I’ll go out and get shit to grill and you guys can meet me at the mill. We got a plan?”
I forgot my pique because I liked that plan so much I just smiled at him and agreed, “We have a plan.”
Johnny’s face changed back to what it had been before, my body responded to the change and then I was shoulders to the arm of the chair and he was making out with me.
When he lifted his head, he said, “Soon’s your sister leaves, date night and you wear that dress you wore to the festival because I didn’t get near enough of it, spätzchen.”
“’Kay,” I breathed.