Page 60 of Small Town Beast 2: Saverin's Duet

He regretted nothing. He must honor his promise to her and keep everything else running— the family, the Harvest. That would be tough— maybe even dangerous, since the same prejudice that had poisoned Roman’s rule hadn’t gone anywhere. It would be a slow process getting Lorrie to be accepted. And maybe they would never accept her. But so be it. In twenty-four hours he’d nearly lost her twice. Life was just too short to live it by other people’s narrow expectations. Love was priceless. He’d rather have Lorrie and be nothing, than have the whole mountain and let her go.

“You happy?” he asked her, kissing down her neck.

“Like a cat in cream,” she smiled. “It’s perfect, Abi. It’s so pretty in every way. Is it really a diamond?”

“I was told they got science involved to make it, but yes. Chemically, physically, metaphysically…” He hoped Lorrie didn’t care, although it supposedly cheapened the “value” of the stone. Lorrie was a vegetarian and was always showing him depressing YouTube videos on children in mines andcows in machines. It seemed like something she would want— something harmlessly made, but just as beautiful as the real thing.

Her eyes lit up and he relaxed. “It’s perfect,” she murmured.

He watched in amusement as she twisted her hand this way and that way, hypnotized by the twinkling lights in the stone.

“Tomorrow night let’s get dinner to celebrate. That place you like,” he said, with no idea how he was going to make that happen, what with all the things he needed to do up on Roman’s hill. But Lorrie’s happiness brought him such pleasure he would have moved mountains.

“Fancy,” Lorrie teased. “You really want to spoil me like that?”

Money was no longer going to be a concern for Absalom, but he only said, “I was gonna take you there anyway for your birthday. We’ll just go twice. Or go to that place where they sell the wine…You remember Francine talking about that?”

“Don’t even talk to me about Francine right now.”

He grinned. “Come here.”

“Mmmm…Abi, shouldn’t you be getting back?” Lorrie whispered, though she wrapped her arms around his neck.

Yes.

“I’ve only been gone an hour.”

“Two,” Lorrie corrected.

Reckless already. But I can’t stop…

“We can be up there in five minutes.”

“Ten.”

Both laughing, he slanted her down into the couch, allowing the world to fall away between kisses, until it was just the two of them and the tension of their long-suppressed lust snapped like the string of a fiddle.

Lorrie’s hands spanned Abi’s broad chest, tunneling under his T-shirt to stroke his muscles. His tongue swept her mouthagain and he laid her out on the couch, kissing down her stomach.

“I love you,” she said.

“Aw, Lorrie…”

He bra came off with a snap, and her breasts spilled out over her chest. Absalom ducked his head and put one in his mouth, laving it thoroughly, and then the other, suckling them up to the hard tips he loved the most. She held him there, letting him suck and pull to his heart’s desire. The ring glittered on Lorrie’s finger, a diamond in a field of his wheat-colored hair. She smelled like flowers and baked pastry. He was going to marry her. They had nearly died. Hiram. The Snatch Hills. Lorrie moaning underneath him. A million wild thoughts raged in Absalom’s mind, none as important as the urging of his body to take things farther with Lorraine than they ever had before.

How far?

Not far,he lied to himself.We can wait for the Reverend, wait for the church…

His hand fumbled with the button on her daisy dukes, which he slipped as easily as he’d untacked her bra. But after a couple failed attempts to get the zipper down, he dove back in between her breasts again with coarse hunger, encouraged by her bucking and riding in his lap.Don’t get her naked. Then you won’t be able to stop.

Her rust-colored nipples thrust out indecently to meet him. She was half-naked and he hadn’t removed a stitch. Typical of their hookups, except he’d never let it get much farther than this. Sucking on her titties, rubbing her pussy over her clothes…Nothing more.

His hand fluttered back to the zipper a couple more times, but again and again he returned to her breasts, but no longer did it satisfy him. In fact, it hadn’t for a while. So soft…damn these fucking whorish shorts to blazes. Why wouldn’t the damnedthings come off? The resistance he met from her steep curves as he tried jerking the material down and down only turned him on. His cock rocked up hard as a hammer. He gripped himself and pictured fucking her from the back as her tremendous ass bounced up and down on it. A groan slipped out of his mouth.

“Does it hurt?” Lorrie asked.

“What?”

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