Page 43 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight
“This is my hand.” Grady gestured with his chin as he said it. Cole was standing there, hands jammed in his pockets, head nodding before he looked down at his boots. “Cole.”
“Since when do you hire hands?” Charmaine let his arm go and went up the path. She shook Cole’s hand and introduced herself.
Grady got her suitcase, went up to the porch and said, “Since I don’t wanna be seedin’ in the rain.”
“Finally, he sees the light!” She grinned conspiratorially at Cole, and Grady watched him try to give a weak smile in return.
“Where’s Lady?”
Charmaine was looking around, her gaze drawn to the sound of the dogs behind the screen door, their nails tapping on the floorboards and the door as they tried to get out and say hello.
“Inside?” Charmaine was surprised. And rightfully so. Grady shrugged.
She went to greet them, and Grady tried to catch Cole’s eye, but he was mumbling about checking the horses. Then he looked stricken, as if he was thinking maybe he couldn’t do that now.
“Go on then, Chloe’s probably wonderin’ where you been for an hour,” Grady said.
Cole nodded and then took off.
“You let him ride Chloe?” Charmaine asked from behind him. “Is that safe?”
“Kid can handle it,” Grady replied as he ushered her inside.
Charmaine studied him for a moment, but then dropped her reply and went into the kitchen with the dogs, nattering about how she couldn’t believe they were inside, while Grady took her suitcase upstairs.
Dinner that night was awkward in a way Grady reckoned he’d never experienced in his life. It wasn’t like the time his mama found out his daddy had been cheating with the other Jacobs’ widow—the wife of the deceased older brother of the current Jacobs. No, that dinner had been charged with awkward animosity. Animosity for obvious reasons, awkward because his mama didn’t want Grady to know what he knew well enough from her shouting the night before. But this awkwardness was perhaps all in Grady’s head. He didn’t get it. Charmaine was his missus, and Cole was his hand, and they helped each other out on account of that just being what you did out here. So why did he feel so self-conscious? Cole wasn’t helping matters, barely speaking more than a syllable. Grady knew he wasn’t the world’s biggest talker, but he could get going if a subject interested him. And Charmaine was trying, asking him about the book she saw he had out, about riding Chloe.
And now, Grady knew Cole loved that damn horse, but you’d have thought Charmaine suggested taking her to the glue factory with the way Cole blanched when she asked.
“Do you want dessert?” Charmaine asked Cole and stood up.
Bless her good breeding, Grady thought. If the weird atmosphere was bothering her, you’d never know it.
“I’m good,” Cole said and stood. “Gonna turn in.”
And then he was gone. Charmaine stood with the plates in her hands, Grady still sitting, as they listened to him thundering up the stairs.
“Something’s off with that one,” Charmaine said as she turned to do the dishes.
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with him,” Grady said, and got out his cigarettes.
“I never said there was.” She turned back. “Since when are you smoking?”
“Since I felt like it.”
She rolled her eyes, came over to him and propped her hip against his chair. He ran his free hand around her waist, met her eyes and smoked.
“I can think of something better than dessert,” she said.
Grady hummed and crushed his cigarette. It’d been six months since he’d been up to the city to see her. And they were always great in bed together, even if every other aspect of their marriage had gone askew in a way they’d never outright acknowledged but was pretty damn obvious given that she lived in a townhouse in the city and he stayed out here.
As they climbed the stairs together, her ass swaying in front of him in those ridiculously tight pants—not right for farming at all—Grady had a fleeting thought that he wasn’t as excited as he normally was. He figured he’d been getting a hand on the regular, and so maybe he just wasn’t as desperate as usual.
Problem was, once they got to it, Grady couldn’t get hard. Charmaine was spread out beneath him, her hand working his shaft the way she knew he liked, and he was sporting a semi, but not rock hard. He could see her questioning look and didn’t want to answer it, so he went down on her. That usually turned him on like nothing else, and he dove in.
She was perfectly waxed and wet, and she spread her legs wide to let him in. He got to it, licking and teasing her clit, bringing in fingers. He felt like he was going through the motions. Charmaine rocked up into his face, letting out breathy moans and gasps. Grady thought about Cole in his room down the hall, and how there was no way he couldn’t hear it. As he sucked on Charmaine’s clit and drove his fingers in and out of her, he thought about Cole listening and wondered if it was getting him hard.
That thought had Grady’s dick stiffening up. Cole lying there, his cock rising up to slap on his belly. The way he’d bring his hand up to lick his palm and then grip himself so he could strokehimself off in time to what he could imagine Grady was doing in here.
