Page 19 of At Last

She swallows hard a second time. “I’m going to kiss my man.” Then she presses into me, up on her tiptoes, because I’m so much taller. She tilts her head and covers her mouth over mine. Lips to lips. “You taste of tobacco and mint,” she says, still pressed against me.

A taste I give her more of when I take over the kiss, first throwing the butt on the ground so I can wrap my arms around her neck, then shove my tongue in her mouth. My fingers, I twine through the hair at her nape. And… fuck me, she moans. Right there in the parking lot of Ellis Auto & Towing. I slide my hand from around her neck down to her sumptuous, rounded ass and press our bodies flush, grinding my pelvis against hers. It’s torture, but I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.

“Ho-lyshit,” someone grumbles loudly. “I should’ve got there first.” Then I know it’s Sly who opened his yap, and laugh at my good fortune because yeah, he should’ve gone for it. He’d be dead because I would’ve gutted him. But at least he’d have died knowing how Doc smells up close and the taste of her lips. The feel of her body pressed in all the right places as she kisses with everything in her.

She moves back only slightly from me and turns her head. “Caitlin,” she calls out for no apparent reason.

“What?” He calls back.

“Caitlin. You guys can call me Caitlin. That’s my name.”

Right. Got it.

“Alright Doc,nowlet’s get you some coffee.” It’s selfish, but I want her all to myself. The brothers can get comfortable calling her Caitlin later.

“No good places in town,” she teases.

“Thought we were headed for Nashville?” I play along.

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” she says then presses another kiss against my mouth. “I could kiss you all day.” At first I think she’s being cute, but then, seeing the way she sucks in her bottom lip, biting down, I realize it was an accidental admission. One she really meant. Sly could’ve tried to get in there, but she’s mine all the way. Those words just proved it.

“Caitlin,” I growl. “Get in the truck.” Because goddamn I want to taste her again, but I want to do it in a way we won’t be interrupted by one of my brothers.

She hurries around the hood of my pickup to slide into the front seat, and automatically buckles herself in.

I move with my head held high, shoulders back, not on top of the world—Iownthe fucking world—and fold in behind the steering wheel, crank the engine, then back out of the parking spot.

After straightening out the frontend, I take her hand and move it to rest on my thigh, dangerously close to my dick. Part of me hopes she’ll take the initiative to move a little closer. Since she don’t, I press my hand over hers to keep it in place.

And we drive.

“You and Peaches eat barbeque?” I break the silence after a good twenty minutes of reliving that kiss and her sweet words over and over in my head. Feeling her hand in mine. The hum of the wheels rolling against the blacktop sound in the background.

Instead of giving me an answer, she stares out her window and mumbles, almost a whisper, so I can’t fully understand her words. Then it clicks as I listen to the last of her thoughts. “…I’m his girl. I’m Duke Ellis’s girl.”

I kind of snicker under my breath and give her hand another squeeze, not expecting that reaction. “Yeah, honey. You are.”

That’s when she turns her head to look my way and blinks her eyes twice, as if to clear her mind. Or maybe realizing I’m in the cab with her, or hell, that she spoke out loud. “I… um… don’t really know what that entails. Does this mean we’re exclusive? Or um, am I expected to give up other men but I’m supposed to look the other way when you’ve got a taste for one of the pieces?”

Fair enough question. Well, the first one, anyhow. I was married to Dawna for fucking years and never looked twice at a piece. Right up ’til the end. Even after she decided to stop the chemo that had made her so weak, it had been months since we’d been able to make love. Because with Dawna, it was always making love. She didn’t see the fun side of sex. The stress relief. The hot make up. She only wanted the intimacy. And because she was sick so much of our time together, I gave in and didn’t argue because I didn’t want to make her sicker.

That’s how I’m about to answer when she goes on. “Maybe we should work out the logistics of this relationship before we get too far in it.”

Doc ain’t sick, so I ain’t tiptoeing around her when I get pissed, and that last question of hers pissed me off. “I think you know the answer to that,” I tell her, thinking that’ll be the end of it. But no.

“Okay,” she says. “Logistics take two. Is this an exclusive thing between us or—” Doc cuts herself off to look out the window again, watching the mountains whip past us. Then she finishes in a jumble of words, “orareyoustillseeingotherwomen?”

“Come again?” I ask.

“You heard me.” She fixates her glare on a small, nondescript green bug holding on for dear life to her side mirror, so not to look at me, and adds, “Never mind.”

“No,” I answer.

“No?” She repeats my answer. “No to which?”

“No I’m not gonna answer ’til you look at me, and I can answer you properly.”

First she peeks over her shoulder to check on a sleeping Peaches. Must be afternoon naptime. After letting out a slow breath, Caitlin gets it all off her chest. “Are you going to keep—um—beingwith the pieces or hot mamas?”

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