Page 8 of Small Town Beast 2: Saverin's Duet

“I would never change a thing about you,” he said. “I just need to get to the right place, and then…then it can be better for us. But not yet. Not right now.”

“Whatever,” she said bitterly.

They fell into an uneasy silence. He stroked her back, her rapunzel curls, the rest of what he wanted to say halting on histongue. Lorrie had nothing to lose by the truth; he could not say the same.

There’s no way to marry her and be King. You heard that cockroach Mulgrew. Plenty of those opinions around… they’ll never accept her, and you’ll go down like Roman.

Lorrie hugged him tighter. For all her words and fury, her heart was snared in the same fucking trap.

He had the insane notion to run off with her somewhere, right now, never to be heard from again.

“Just let me think on it. Give me time,” he said.

Instead of replying, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply. Her tongue slid inside his mouth. Surprised but satisfied, Absalom gripped her around the waist and slung her legs around him, thrusting his dick in the seam of her legs.Good, darlin’, let’s just get back to this.Lorrie panted and clenched him tight with her thighs, and he absorbed her kisses and returned them back to her, stroking her hips, her breasts, cupping her face to take more, more…

Suddenly she shoved him away and scrambled upright, an ugly thought striking her like a thunderbolt.

“What the hell, Lorraine?”

“Whydid you marry her?” She cried.

His jaw clenched and his hopes sank. Apparently a couple kisses weren’t enough to get them past it.No shit.

“Lorrie. It was a leap-the-book thing. Just politics. I never slept with her, and I’m getting that shit annulled as soon as I’m where I need to be. Which should be tomorrow. If you just had a little patience you’d see I’m telling you the truth.”

“You really expect me to believe that?” Lorrie wiped her mouth on her hand. “You’ve never slept with me all these years we’ve been together. You’re a man. You’ve got your needs. I’m not stupid.”

“My needs ain’t your concern. I would never play you like that, Lorrie, come on.”

“So on your wedding night y’all just played Spades and took a nap?” Lorrie asked sarcastically.

“The woman drank so much she was asleep by ten. And even if she had been awake and stark naked covered in baby oil, I wouldn’t have touched her with the end of a bus.”

Lorrie began rifling inside her burlap bag. He waited in patient confusion to see what the hell she was about to do…Pull out a gun and shoot him? He didn’t wait long. Lorrie removed a small red book from the jumbled depths of her bag, and it was none other than her personal King James Bible.

“Swear,” she said, thrusting it at his chest. “Swear you’re tellin’ the truth.”

Absalom put his right hand on the Good Book and looked into her hazelnut-chocolate eyes. “I told you no lies, Lorrie.”

His marriage had been a political agreement between two clans, one he’d been forced to make, but he had never bedded that milk-faced Snatch Hill girl they forced on him. It was their guns he wanted and the marriage was the price. Why? He had no notion; the Snatch Hills were a shady bunch who delighted in pointless cruelty as much as they loved weapons and fighting. Pondering the whys and wherefores of Snatch Hill logic would be like guessing why water was wet.

At any rate, Absalom planned to be rid of them at the soonest opportunity. And his wife would shed no tears; she hadn’t wanted the marriage any more than he had.

The sound of the Bible hitting the floor broke his musings. A horror-struck expression flashed in Lorrie’s eyes, which just as suddenly overflowed with sparkling tears.

“Lorrie, I ain’t lying– you don’t believe it?” he said, clasping her hands.

“It’s not that.”

“What, darlin’?”

“I kissed Mike,” she blurted.

A door slammed downstairs. Someone had turned the stereo down and another person was tuning a fiddle. There would soon be live music, and dancing.

“It was the day you got married. I was hurt. You hurt me,” Lorrie said.

Each pulse of blood in his veins came loud as a drumbeat. He stared at Lorrie, wondering if she had ever looked more beautiful. Women…They were all the same, weren’t they? Slithering into a man’s life, into his dreams, wrapping their velvet bodies around him so slowly, patiently, until they cut his fucking air off…Ah, Jesus…

---