The Substitute Wife Page 9

  He'd also grabbed a bottle of the same disreputable whiskey that had served them so well last night, and a surprise that consisted of something he had discovered under the counter when he'd been rummaging around for

  supplies. He'd found a big, party sized bag of what he knew was her favorite snack in all the world—Wise White Cheddar Popcorn.

  And he had to grin at her squeal of utter glee when she saw it and automatically lunged for it.

  But he held it away from her.

  "I thought we could bet with them, since we can't really do, you know, strip poker."

  "Okay," she warned, "but if I win, I'm not sharing, I'm eating."

  "I would expect nothing less from you," he responded gravely.

  "You've always been a cutthroat player."

  "Well, this is cheese popcorn. If it was Smarties or—" she gazed at him with her eyes scrunched up. "What's your favorite snack? I don't think Liz ever mentioned it to me, or if she did, I didn't listen." She didn't tell him that she'd always listened with rapt attention any time Liz had talked about him but had never asked follow up questions, really, wanting to glean as much about him as she could without appearing too eager to do so.

  He colored.

  And she sensed blood in the water.

  "What? Tell me!"

  He hesitated, feeling flattered by her sincere interest in something so truly mundane and stupid about him.

  Andi reached out and smacked his shoulder. "Tell me! It's only fair; you already know mine."

  "Well, all right, but you promise not to laugh at me?"

  Andi snorted loudly. "Hell, no, Roar. You know me better than that. If it's something funny, I'm going to go into hysterics, then I'm hold it over you for the rest of your life, like any good friend does!"

  He had to grin at just how blatantly unrepentant she was. It made him feel she might actually like him a bit, since that was definitely something like Liz would have said to him. Liz always took the mickey out of him, in the nicest way, but Andi had never really done that with him. He'd figured it wasn't really her sense of humor, but apparently he was wrong.

  "I like gummy bears."

  This big, muscular guy liked a kid's candy? She did laugh at him.

  "How old are you? Liz always said you were five—fifteen when you were hanging with your buddies, but never more than that. I didn't quite believe her until now!"

  Was he blushing? He hadn't blushed in years.

  Nah, he couldn't possibly be.

  "Do we have any, do you know? I could play with gummies and you could play with popcorn. That way when we won something, it would be something we wanted."

  His eyes narrowed as he answered, "I don't think so. Liz didn't let me eat them very often because of the sugar."

  Andi had to snort again at that.

  "What?" he asked, shuffling the well-worn deck of cards he'd brought with him, then making a bridge and repeating.

  She shrugged. "Nothing."

  "No. Tell me."

  Mr. No Nonsense was back, she could hear.

  Now it was her turn to blush. "I-I just think it's kind of funny. You guys had… that kind of relationship, where you spanked her and she was, you know, pretty submissive to you, and yet she said no gummy bears and you abided by it."

  "Yeah, I guess it was," he agreed.

  "I think it's very cute. Very endearing, how much you two loved each other and looked out for each other."

  He wasn't at all sure what to say to that, beyond an incredibly awkward, "Thank you." But he knew he wanted to divert her away from making him think about his wife. "I know what we could bet."

  She gave him a suspicious look that he hadn't earned and he tried to look affronted about. "What?"

  "Kisses."

  "Kisses?"

  "Yeah. The winner gets to kiss the loser anywhere he or she wants to."

  Andi pretended to think about that for a moment while avoiding his avid eyes. "That sounds interesting. And we can still bet using popcorn!"

  Rory chuckled. "Yes, we can!"

  The rounds went more quickly than they would have if there were more people, at least at first. But, since the only thing he gave either of them to drink was that awful rotgut, the drunker they got, the harder it was for them to concentrate on their cards. The winner was occasionally determined by default, which always seemed to skew towards him, somehow, since she

  was usually the one who was unable to make out what she should do.

  They had also quickly run out of the more neutral areas to kiss.

  Before long, when she was already losing very badly and quite plastered, he was asking her to kiss his nipples, then his lower belly, then the tops of his thighs…

  Before she became completely incapacitated, he put a halt to things. "I think that I am the overall winner here, clearly," he pronounced officiously, cupping her elbows and pulling her towards him so that she collapsed on top of him as he straightened himself out full length beneath her.

  "Dear God, you're so big. You go on forever! Look at where my food ends! It's in the middle of your shin, almost just below your knee, for crying out loud!"

  Rory dragged his fingertips through her loose hair. "Does that bother you, or do you like that?" he asked quietly, holding his breath for her answer, and knowing that the fact that she was tipsy was going to work in his favor.

  Liz always said that, if anyone wanted the truth out of Andi, all they had to do was to get her drunk and she became constitutionally incapable of lying—

  or keeping her mouth shut.

  He'd remembered that, and she had occasionally and unknowingly gotten Liz into big trouble because of it, telling him things that Liz knew better than to reveal.

  Biting her lip, she looked up at him. "I like it. I've never been with someone who is as big as you are, but it makes me feel… protected.

  Although, you know, I know that that's not your obligation—"

  "Stop. Of course it's not an obligation. My father, who you know is a big guy himself, taught me that my size was a weapon that I use to either honor or defile how I was made. I know Liz found some of my philosophies woefully outdated, but he always encouraged me to be protective of those who weren't as able to defend themselves as I am—which is most women and a surprising amount of men. I hope you didn't mind that I was sometimes a little high handed with you when she was around—"

  "I didn't, really."

  "Good, because I have a feeling that that's only going to get more so for you."

  He tipped her chin to him and claimed her lips with such gentleness as to bring tears to her eyes.

  "There's one more place I want you to kiss me, you know," he

  whispered.

  Andi needed no further encouragement. She began to bestow kisses liberally along his tanned, hair roughened skin, silently admiring the muscular bulges beneath it as she did so. Following his length downward, she angled herself between those thick thighs.

  "I wish I had a beard to rasp against your inner thighs the way you did yours to me," she threatened.

  That got her an actual giggle. The only person she'd ever known who could get him to do that was Liz. "I think I'm very, very happy that you don't have a beard, considering men have never been my thing."

  Andi tsked. "You know what I mean."

  "Stop abrading your delicate skin with my beard?"

  "Exactly."

  "Not likely," he answered back amiably.

  She chose that exact moment to purse her lips over him and take all of him at once, which was no easy feat. He was quite long and thick, but she was determined, and didn't stop until her nose was buried in his lower tummy, working her tongue down the length of him the entire time as a low, animalistic groan escaped his lips.

  "Son of a—"

  There was no hope for it. He reached down and drove his fingers into her hair, close to her scalp, using his hold to control her, or he was going to be done in an embarrassingly short amount of time.

  She wh
impered and struggled, trying to free herself, but he would not relent.

  "This is to be done by you, but in my time, little girl."

  She had never felt as submissive as she did as he guided her through something she thought she already knew how to do. Granted, she hadn't done it in a while, and had never done it for him.

  He insisted that she take her time and held himself back as much as he could to enjoy what she was doing for him. Playing with her hair and using it as a rein, he thrust himself gently into her mouth at first, then kept her still and used her more overtly, pumping himself into and out of those luscious wet lips of hers until he thought he'd drive himself crazy with it.

  And then he'd start it over again, until finally, he said, "Why don't you make me cum, Andi?"

  And he lay back, his hands by his sides, and let her do with him as she

  pleased.

  She teased him by suckling gently at his balls and flicking her tongue just behind them before working her mouth up and down his cock. She used her hand as an extension of the warm wetness of her lips, twisting, flicking, and sucking as hard as she could until she could feel his muscles gathering beneath her.

  "I'm going to cum. Damn, I'm going to—"

  He splashed against the back of her throat and she eagerly lapped up every bit of it, swallowing it down and continuing to stroke him until he collapsed beneath her, his big body shuddering and shaking in a way she took as the ultimate compliment.

  "God damn, woman," he panted. "I'm about dead."

  "Have the good manners not to die on me until you get me back home, please," she teased, lying on her back, her hand on his still heaving chest.

  "I—" Nothing more would come out. Nada. There wasn't a coherent thought in his head for quite a few minutes, and he couldn't tell her just how wonderful that was for him. She drove his demons away, even if for a short amount of time, she gave him more than just release, she gave him relief.

  The night was uneventful—full of amazing sex, laughter, bad food, bad liquor and the casual, sensual exploration of each other's bodies. They fell asleep very, very drunk, very sated, and very tired, intimately wound up in each other, his hand cupping her breast, hers tucked into his hair.

  So when Cury and the rescue crew busted the door open on them, it took him a second longer than it should have before he hauled himself up and out of bed, to the accompanying hoots and hollers of all the men who trooped in, at least until he slung a blanket around him, anyway.

  "It must be cold in here!" he heard Parker exclaim, which made everyone laugh.

  But it was Cury who did most of the talking. "You okay? I tried to call you and I texted you. We found your truck. It's all dug out and so are you. Power's still out, but you can get home now as it's on in town. We found a minivan and pulled it back onto your road. Isn't that—"

  "That's enough speculation," Rory cut him off, but they all knew to whom that van belonged. It was one of the downsides to living in a small town. Everyone knew what everyone else drove. He did his best to herd all

  the guys out the door as quickly as possible before anyone said or did anything any more untoward than they already had. Luckily, Andi was still under the pile of blankets on the bed, but he knew she had to be mortified at their unexpected discovery by men who were—like all men—known gossips, and who no doubt knew exactly who he'd been in bed with and would only be too eager to impart that information to their significant others—or anyone else who would be interested, or even just willing, to hear about it.

  Of course, Cury couldn't resist yelling, just as Rory closed the door and stepped out into the path they'd shoveled, "Hi, Miss Andi," which made Rory want to punch his best friend's teeth down his throat, which he narrowly managed to keep himself from doing.

  "We brought you a tank of propane and a heater, just in case." Cury motioned to where they were by the door and he nodded.

  "Thank you guys for all of your hard work," he said through gritted teeth as they began to trudge back down the steps they'd just shoveled off.

  "We—I—appreciate it."

  Cury, who had hung back a bit from the others, was just about to mouth off with another off color remark, but one look at Rory's face and he decided he'd rather live than get in another shot that the big man obviously wasn't in any mood to find funny.

  He only turned when they were gone after making sure he heard the big trucks slowly making their way back down the mountain. Collecting the gas and the heater, he went back into the cabin, to find just what he thought he would. Andi was scampering around as best she could, trying to hop on one foot and keep the blanket around her from slipping as she shrugged into her clothes.

  It was all set up for him, all he had to do was turn the tank and the heater on, so he did so first thing, noting once he'd done that that she hadn't gotten far, for which he was very grateful, because he hated to see this time with her come to an end. So he unilaterally decided that it didn't need to, just yet anyway. After actually locking the cabin door behind him—something he'd never felt the need to do in all the time he'd been coming up there—

  against something like being interrupted happening again, he began to stalk towards her determinedly.

  Before he'd gotten very far, he ordered calmly, firmly, "Sit."

  She ignored him, knowing that she did so at her own peril, but unable to just do nothing after the real world had so rudely burst in on their little

  idyll.

  "Andi, stop." He got less of a reaction to that than he had to his first command, and that tightened his lips into a grim line.

  When he reached her, she was still fussing and futzing, trying to find her clothes and pull them on hurriedly. She'd barely able to get her bra and shirt on before he was on her, sinking to his knees in front of her and taking her jeans out of hands that were shaking for what he knew was an entirely different reason other than the cold.

  He could see the tears tracking down her cheeks, and his heart squeezed painfully in his chest. Rory stood, leaning down to take the hem of his shirt in his fingers and pull it up and off her with great ease, considering how big it was on her, and then he reached around her to unsnap her bra.

  "What are you doing? We can go home—"

  "No, we can't. You can't," he said resolutely.

  "Why not?" she sobbed, beginning to come apart at the seams.

  "Because I'm nowhere near through with you yet, young lady."

  When she thought he was going to pull her into his arms, she found herself bent over the edge of the bed, instead, held in place by a huge paw on her back.

  "No, Rory, you don't have to do this—"

  "Yes, I do," he said, reaching into her backpack to retrieve the hairbrush he'd seen living there. He'd wondered at the time if it would come in handy with her. He shouldn't have had any doubts that it would. Without preamble, without the slightest hesitation, he began to rain heavy, thudding swats down onto that beautiful bottom of hers, making her cry out pitifully from the first to the very last, hard, unforgiving smack as he marched it up one cheek and down the other, then down the backs of those pretty thighs of hers, too, making her dance to the painful tune he called.

  She was apt to overbalance, though, so he stayed on her bad side, supporting her to keep her in place, but it didn't make him go any easier on her in the least.

  "I told you to sit. You ignored me. I told you to stop. You ignored me a second time. You should be very happy that the belt isn't biting into you right now instead of just a hairbrush, Andi. In case you haven't guessed it, that's unacceptable behavior."

  Just a hairbrush? Was there really such a thing in this capacity, she wondered.

  He accepted her anguished cries as his due, steeling his heart in a way that had become unfamiliar to him, as he decorated every inch of her flesh with the brush until it was a scorching, red hot mess.

  Then he tucked the unexpectedly handy implement back where it belonged and pulled her up into his arms. He lifted her clean off the fl
oor so that she didn't have to worry about putting any weight on her ankle, and held her there against him, pressing his forehead to hers and kissing away her tears.

  Seconds later, he turned and fell with the two of them onto the bed, taking the weight of it entirely on himself and barely noticing it, reaching to lever her over his rampant cock. "Damn, woman, I can't seem to get enough of you," he groaned as he thrust himself into her.

  And she was as warm and wet and welcoming as he'd hoped she'd be, even after, or more likely because of the severity of her punishment.

  Rory looped his fingers around her wrists and used that hold to pull her over, forcing her to impale herself even further on him and to arch her back, also, because his arms were so much longer than her own, rendering her a helpless victim to his repeat invasion of her. He angled himself so that he hit just the right spots, judging by her continuous, tremulous cries.

  When she was very close and very malleable, he released her hands, moving one of his to the small of her back to force her to maintain that vulnerable arch as the fingers of his other hand other sought the source of her pleasure. She'd have no choice but to give herself to him, to surrender herself to him totally, to give him the ultimate control over her and allow him to fling her into the sun, which he did with the same mindless, primitive abandon with which he faced it himself.

  Long moments later, she said what he didn't want to be thinking, breaking the delicate spell that had surrounded them.

  "I guess we should be going home."

  Chapter IX

  He'd bundled her up to within an inch of her life, dosed her with ibuprofen, brought everything down to her car for her, then came back to carry her down as he'd carried her up not long ago. After making her promise to see her doctor about her foot—although he told her that he didn't think she'd done anything serious to it and she probably didn't need to go to the ER

  if she didn't want to, he gave her a long, lingering kiss. Then he followed her down the mountain, wishing there was some way that they could have been in the same car. Although that didn't make sense, he couldn't stop himself from worrying for every second that they were on his winding, narrow lane that her big bulky van was going to go over the side.