Page 68 of The Perils of Paulie
From: Tessa
Max and I are staying here. Good luck with race. We’re hoping you win. Don’t eat or drink around anyone but Dixon!
I texted back a long message full of thanks, regrets that they were leaving the race, and hopes that Melody would recover quickly now that her stomach was empty. Then, after a moment’s thought, I sent another message.
July 31
To: Roger
If you still deny the Esses are trying to wipe out the competition after they quite clearly poisoned Melody, you’re delusional.
He didn’t reply. Telling, that. I think... oh hell. Dixon’s awake. More later.
AUGUST 1
11:53 p.m.
Petropavlovsk
I had to stop writing yesterday morning because Dixon woke up with me texting Tessa and Roger, and then... Well, let me tell it properly.
“What are you doing?” Dixon said when I’d just completed my text to Roger. He rolled over with a yawn and delightfully tousled hair.
“I just told Roger he was delusional. Oooh, sexy stubble is sexy.” I gave a little wiggle and stroked a finger down his bristly cheek.
“Is there a reason you said that, or was it just a morning impulse?” he asked, looking sleepy and handsome and so sexy I wanted to bite him.
So I did.
“And now you’re eating my arm?” he commented when I started nibbling on his shoulder and moved over to his neck. “Either you’re starving or you woke up in an extremely good mood.”
I slid my hand down his belly to where his penis was standing at attention, waiting patiently for me to turn my attention to it. “I think we both did.”
“Any morning where I wake up with your delicious legs twined about mine is going to be a good one,” he murmured, his voice still rough with sleep.
It was a roughness that made me shiver with anticipation, and as I pushed him onto his back I remembered something we’d said when we’d tumbled into bed the night before. “We didn’t have a wedding night, Dixon. Do you think a wedding morning will suffice?”
His hands slid around my hips to my butt, his mouth doing amazing things to a breast. “I think that would work quite nicely.”
“I swear,” I said, swinging my leg over his body to straddle him and arching my back so he could have full access to everything he wanted to touch. “I swear you make little fires start up in my girl parts. Tiny little fires. Itsy-bitsy ones that combine to make everything down there burn.”
He paused in the act of tormenting a breast, looking up at me with a cocked eyebrow. “That sounds... uncomfortable.”
“What does?” I asked, busy with a mental image of me riding Dixon like a bucking bronco.
“Burning genitals. You don’t think... This is awkward,and I hope you forgive me for asking, but you don’t think you have... you know... something down there to cause the burning?”
I stopped imagining me riding him while slapping a cowboy hat on his flanks and whooping with joy, and looked down at him. He looked concerned. “Did you just ask me if I have an STD?”
“Well...” Embarrassment crawled over his face. “You said you were burning in your female bits, and—”
“I said you make me feel like I have little fires in there, not that I have a burning crotch!” I said, pinching his nipples. “Sheesh, Dixon!”
“I apologize,” he said quickly. “I just wanted to make sure that if you were having a burning sensation in those spots, you received medical treatment—”
“I do not,” I said loudly, breathing heavily through my nose, “have anything in my crotch but a desire for your crotch to come visiting, although I have to admit that at this moment my crotch is having second thoughts.”
He pulled me up so that his penis slid along my sensitive, STD-free parts. “What can I do to make your crotch forgive me?”
