Page 16 of Scotch: Unraveled

“Okay… you did nothing wrong. He pulled you over for no reason. I didn’t want you losing custody of the girls because I’m guessing he saw your vest through the window.”

“First, it’s a cut,” I correct her. An old lady needs to know these things. “Second, Rodrick has it out for the Lords. He’s been harassing the brothers for a while. Don’t know his game yet, but I trust that motherfucker about as far as I can throw him. Still, this is a sparsely populated county and he can get away with shite that would be harder to get away with in the bigger ones with more people.”

“But how can that be? I mean, I know I said he saw your vest through the window, even I had a hard time convincing myself of that. It was just the only thing I could logically come up with.”

“He saw me with ya. Today… at the daycare. When ya asked what I was looking at, it was him. He was watching us. I didn’t wanna scare ya so I blew it off. Now, I still don’t wanna scare ya but ya need to know. And I told ya, it’s a cut not a bloody vest. That’s important.”

“Cut,whatever.” She swats my words away and the motion dislodges my hand from her stomach. “There are more important things going on right now.” And I can’t help think there’s double meaning in that as she glances down quickly and her cheeks pink. Christ, she wants my hand back. I want my hand back. Before she can pretend she doesn’t want it, I drop my hand back in its rightful place and press slightly to make my point.

“Right, lass—” I’m about to lay down the law, tell her how it is now and how it’s going to be for us from this point on, when she licks her bottom lip. It glistens in the low light and I’m not a strong enough man to resist those plump lips when they’re wet. Never have been. Whether she forgot or subconsciously did that shite on purpose, I bend in to take her lips hard, tugging that bottom wet one into my mouth. She opens hers wider to gasp, which I capture while forcing my tongue inside her mouth to taste her.

Eight years since I’ve tasted this woman. And even only having just woken up, morning breath on the menu, she’s Frankie. My Frankie. She tastes exactly as I remember and even better at the same time. I taste hints of age and wisdom. Of life experiences. Want. Need. Hesitance. It’s all there as I continue to press harder against her.

She moves one hand to the back of my neck to grip my hair at the nape and pull me down as she lies back on the pillow. When she moans it’s soft and elongated and the sound moves through me to stop at my cock, a cock that wants this woman again as much as the rest of me.

Her back arches, tilting those beautiful breasts my way, her hard nipples protruding through the T-shirt, my T-shirt, that she’s wearing. It’s been too long since I’ve been laid. Even though it hasn’t actually been that long, it wasn’t with Frankie, and I can’t resist her, moving my body over hers to situate between her thighs. I suck one pert nipple in my mouth through the thin shirt and grind my hardened length against her panties.

Oh, fuck. Frankie. She widens her legs to accommodate me better and arches her back to a point I think it has to be almost painful. I take her other nipple in my mouth, continuing to rub the first until I can’t take it anymore and move my hand down her satiny skin to dip below the elastic of her panties. Her moan as I split her lips would’ve had me coming in my boxers if I’d still been sixteen. As a reward, I glide my finger through the wetness and press down when I’ve found her clit.

I swear her eyes roll back in this sort of euphoric reverie as she silently writhes beneath me, and I move my thumb to replace my finger on that magic little fun button in order to dip my two fingers inside her, the way she always used to like. Apparently, that’s one move too many. When her eyes pop open and she pushes me off her, I know I’m screwed in ways I don’t want to be.

I’m so fucking hard with Frankie so fucking wet. The memory of her moans still echoes in my ears. Her hot, heaving breaths tell me she wants this just as much as I do.

“What’s the matter?” I ask, my voice low and raspy. I swallow hard because I fucking want to touch her again like I don’t remember even wanting to touch her the first time we were together. Because this time I know—I know—how good it can be, how incendiary we were together and with age and experience on our sides the potential we have’ll be off the fucking charts. The memories of this woman, the woman of my dreams, shuffle like a playlist through my head as I stare into her gorgeous eyes, guiding me to an edge I desperately want to leap over.

“We can’t, Rory.”

“Oh, I think we can,” I tell her, forcing a chuckle.

“Ican’t. Not again.” She swallows hard. “Not ever again. You broke my heart. Crushed it. I don’t trust you.”

Tears roll over her cheeks and as much as I want to comfort her, I find myself pushing away instead.Ibrokeherheart? This woman fucking crushed my soul, yet here I am, trying for a second chance. How can she even utter those lies? For Christ’s sake, I asked her to move in with me. There wasn’t a woman before or since that I felt close enough to live with. I fucking couldn’t wait to get away from my own mother. But Frankie? She’d been my everything.

“Not exactly as I remember it, lass.”Shit.This morning started so sweet. I sit up to turn my back to her, my feet to the floor. My dick is so hard, it pains me pressing against my boxers. Elbows to knees, I press the palms of my hands to my eyes.

“Not how you remember it?” she asks, though it’s more of an accusation, and she tries to take steadying breaths. “I wanted you to come to Cold Springs with me. I had visions of a home and family,” she cries. “And all you wanted was a plaything. ‘Easy pussy.’ Weren’t those the words you used? We move in together and you could have pussy any time you wanted. And I could have your cock.”

Goddammit. I’d said that. Exactly that. But I’d not meant it the way she took it. The woman came from a fucked-up broken home. I’d come from an even more fucked-up home. She’d been scared to take the next step with me because of those demons haunting her. Frankie loved my cock. She’d used those exact words on too many occasions. ‘Rory, I love your cock.’ I heard that every time I moved inside her. She’d be lying if she said I didn’t love her pussy as I was inside her more than I wasn’t when we were alone together, back then. Making dinner, I’d bend her over the table to fuck her. Watching a movie, I’d split her legs and shove inside. Hell, I remember times when she’d only just step inside my apartment when I’d unzip her pants, spin her around, and take her against the closed door.

Frankie was made for me. Always ready to take me. As much sense as we made while fucking, we made equal sense when we weren’t fucking. Goddammit, this woman was my best friend. The good. The bad. Everything in between. If it happened, she was the first one I wanted to tell.

But the further she went in school the less she involved me in our life together. Making decisions instead of talking things out with me. We had a life in Lexington. By the time she’d ended us, she’d been finishing up her two years at Bluegrass Community College. We both had jobs. I’d felt like she was pulling away because we were getting too close, but I’d wanted everything with her. Fucking ready to put a ring on her finger. Then the next thing I knew, she was informing me she was attending Northern Kentucky in the fall. No discussion. No applying to universities closer to where we lived. She was going and I could come if I wanted. That was the moment I knew where I stood with her.

With all this mess running through my head, I guess I stay silent too long, feeling her weight leave the bed. “Francesca Cardone, sit your arse back down before I pull you over my lap and spank it good and hard for the nonsense ya pulled.”

All this time wasted—for what?

She gasps and says, “You don’t get to tell me what to do.” But she does it, sitting her arse back down.

“I was crazy about ya. Don’t pretend now that ya didn’t know, woman,” I grumble because I’m feeling ten kinds of stupid right now. Her response is to keep quiet. Good. Because I have things to say and she’s not leaving here until we’re on the same page again. “All that shite you thought could’ve easily been cleared up if you’d just have called me on it. Told me what ya were thinking.”

“You let me go,” she says. “I got into a good school to better my future—our future and you just let me go.”

“Woman, tell me ya didn’t say that. By not even mentioning ya’d applied to that fucking school, ya told me how ya thought of us. And not once did ya ask me to move. ‘I’m getting anapartment’, that’s what ya said. So, tell me how I was supposed to act any different?”

When she opens her mouth, I’m prepared for her to argue but she doesn’t. No, she begins to fucking giggle when I’m being fucking serious here. Giggle? What’s worse, I love the sound, miss the sound. “What’s funny?” I demand to know.

“I forgot how strong your accent becomes the more you get worked up.”

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