Something Has to Give (6 page)

Yeah, she hated him
all right. She was really starting to hate this corner, too.

December 23
rd
…

That night it snowed, so not only did they spend their Mexican sleep-off arguing over who got what share of mattress-space and the lone pillow,
but the war was extended to include the blankets. Initially, Quint won the mattress and pillow, but lost the blankets, which left him with a section of thin sheet and a corner of covering to squeeze himself under. By morning, however, he found himself swaddled in both blankets and a softly-snoring Elsie, who wasn’t just cuddled up next to his side now, but who had in her slumbering bid for warmth, sprawled damn near on top of him.

Oh, the agony. His cock was
like stone. It would have been standing straight up against his belly if only her hot, sweet ass weren’t lying directly on top of it. His belly was a furnace, so hard and tight, as tight as his balls, with the seat of her panty-clad sex branding his groin with the fires of her teasing proximity. Her t-shirt had ridden up, leaving her bare stomach to burn against his. Her breasts were still covered—his hands ached to change that—and her hair was a curly brown fan spreading out across his shoulder and down his bicep. Her small hand was on his other arm. Now and then he could feel the minute twitches of her fingers as she slept, and oh, God, the urge to wrap his arms around her was impossible to deny.

Even knowing he shouldn’t,
Quint couldn’t stop himself. His hands moved of their own accord, folding in around her, filling themselves with the soft curves of her luscious backside. He squeezed, the pressure of his fingers easing only when she drew a sleepy breath and stirred, stretching, the tangle of her legs, shifting around his. The hot little core of her humped up a little before re-centering itself firmly against his cock. Oh, God…was he completely out of his shorts? He was, wasn’t he? He could feel the friction of her cotton panties abrading his throbbing flesh.

His fingers
squeezed her bottom again, kneading, seeking the elastic edges around her legs and moving in underneath to fill his palms with the swells of each bottom cheek.

Elsie made a soft moaning sound in her sleep, and that sound stabbed into him as lustfully as any full-throated ‘fuck-me’ purr. He wanted her under him. Now. He wanted her mouth under his. He wanted to drink those moans straight from her lips.

His fingers, unbidden, moved down over the curve of her ass only to discover the most exquisite moisture. Elsie was wet. She was wet for him, and wiggling again, her hands moving up to grip at his arms. He couldn’t help touching her, stroking her, saturating his fingers as they glided up and down and in and out of her. His cock throbbed from the agony of neglect. Her hot little bottom began to move again, responding instinctively even in sleep to his touch. She moaned, and then again, because now he’d found it, the secretive nub that was the key to a woman’s pleasure, growing under the slippery, circling caress of his longest finger. Around and around and around, her hips began to grind in sleepy response. She was waking, but he didn’t care. She was all he could feel, in his arms and full up against his body. She was all he could smell—her hair, her skin, the hot, wet musk of female arousal on every heated breath he drew. And the slickness of her, smearing up and down his shaft as she ground upon his fingers. Her sleepy head lifted. Her drowsy eyes lifted to stare uncomprehendingly at his chest, at his arms and then up at his face, meeting his eyes at last. And he couldn’t stop himself then, either. All it took was one startled blink—that flash of a moment when sleep retreated far enough to let recognition of what was happening take over—and there, right there in the brown abyss of her beautiful eyes, that shadow of temptation blossomed into full-blown feminine need.

Her mouth opened, and his complete undoing came with the shivery gasp that spill
ed out of her on waves of full-body delight. It was a spark, the tiny beginning of a sleepy orgasm that awakened all the right nerves in them both.

She was still looking boldly back into his eyes when he rolled them both—her onto her arching back and him now full on top of her. He had to get his hands out of her panties to do it. Need cut him, like fine razors scraping at his restraint
. He held his weight off her on shaky arms, but his hips refused to obey all his attempts to rise or still. His cock demanded movement. He was grinding against her now, feeling nothing but the inferno of her sex and the absolute saturation of her desire, slicking his length on the moisture spreading across the insides of both her thighs, taunting him with what he wanted most right then.

“Spread your legs,” he said hoarsely. “That’s all you have to do. Spread your legs and let me in.”

And she almost did. He saw that too—the lust, the wanting that turned into hesitation before exploding into anger.

Elsie
slugged him. She had a hell of a right hook that knocked him back just far enough for her to scramble out of bed. She ran for the bathroom and he was still wallowing in the blankets, cradling his jaw when he heard the door down the hall slam shut. A slightly bigger son of a bitch would have taken advantage of this opportunity to seal her into the bathroom the way she had him, but Quint didn’t.

He was such an idiot. His body was throbbing and aching with such intensity that he couldn’t even think about handling the problem himself. God knows, Rosy Palm and her five sisters were always willing, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t Elsie with her intoxicating body and heat curling up around him.

God, he was such an idiot. All he wanted right now, was for Elsie to change her mind, to come back out of the bathroom, to come back to his bed. If she did that, he’d have opened his arms to her. He’d have made love to her.

What the hell was
wrong with him?

* * * * *

What was wrong with her? She could still feel him touching her, all of her. Her body felt more alive right now than it had in years. She tingled in some places, throbbed in others, and in others still, that sensation had morphed into something that was so base and raw that it wasn’t even throbbing anymore. It was need unlike anything she had ever known, and it was Quint Rydecker that she wanted.

Bent over the sink, Elsie stared at her reflection with both lust and horror.
Quint Rydecker? How was that even possible? The man was going to throw her out of her home—the home she had made! He had also molested her in her sleep! How could she want a man like that? But the proof was right there, in the thrust of her nipples against the soft pink cotton of the long t-shirt she had worn to bed and in the molten pulse moving between her legs and up deep, deep inside her.

That man had spanked her
—not once, twice!—and she still wanted him. What was wrong with her? Even just that word—spanked—made the amalgam of warring sensations inside her thump all the harder, moving across the clenching surface of her bottom and down the backs of both legs. It flowed like a caressing hand back up the inner slope of her thighs until it could center itself between them, stroking and pulsing in molten waves until all she wanted was to feel thrusting there. Deep thrusting. Hard thrusting.

Quint thrusting.

She was depraved. There was just no other word for it. She was absolutely depraved.

She bent all the way over, pressing her forehead against the bathroom counter and one hand against her sex, willing the
needy sensation to stop. While in the very back of her mind, some traitorous thought whispered, ‘Open the door. Maybe Quint will see me bent over like this and spank me again.’

Inexcusably
depraved.

She ought to be spanked just for thinking thoughts like that, for feeling feelings like this. The hand between her legs squeezed, then stroked, just once, the sort of thing girls weren’t supposed to do. The sort of thing they
should
be spanked for. She spread her legs a little further apart, lifting up on her toes to make her bottom a high, round, available target.

From the hall outside, she heard footsteps approaching. They paused right outside the bathroom door
and, self-consciously, she put her bottom down. Quint knocked—no, not Quint. Quint was too intimate. Quint meant they were friends or at least on an approaching friendship-type basis, which they weren’t. Far from it. He was Rydecker to her. Nothing more, and they were definitely not friends.

“What?” she said bitterly, or tried to. Her voice was shaking. It came out sounding watery, as if she were on the verge of tears and she wasn’t. She felt the first
disloyal tickle spill over her lashes and she viciously scrubbed it from her cheek. Tears were a measure of frailty and she wasn’t weak, couldn’t afford to be weak, would never be weak again.

“Are you okay?”
Rydecker softly asked from the other side of the door.

Raising her head, Elsie stared at her reflection in the mirror of the medicine cabinet.
All she could feel was the pulse of lust licking between her legs; and all she could see, were echoes of the same, haunting the deep brown of her eyes. She caught her breath before she started crying again. “There’s another bathroom in this house somewhere. Find it.”

She wasn’t weak.

She wasn’t depraved.

And she was not about to let him take this house from her. Not him. Not anyone.

Not ever.

* * * * *

It must have been twenty minutes before Elsie came out of the bathroom. Not that he was counting.

Quint got up from the table where he’d been telling himself for the last twenty minutes that he wasn’t upset and he wasn’t fidgeting. He went into the kitchen and hesitated over the coffee pot until he heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

“Do you want some coffee?” he asked as she stalked into the kitchen behind him.

“Get bent.
” She fetched her milking bucket and promptly swept back out again, heading for the front porch.

He almost felt better. That was the kind o
f reply and kick in the butt he needed to start seeing her as neither a victim to his runaway passions nor as a potential lover nor even as a woman, but as the harpy invader who’d taken over his house.

He made coffee—not for two, just enough for him to have three or four bracing cups—and went to enjoy the first one at the kitchen table. He got to enjoy
every one to the cacophony of a herd of goats bleating on his front porch. That was new. He also got to enjoy it to the sound of a rooster strangling out an endless chorus of crows somewhere out behind the house. That was new as well. He wasn’t particularly happy about either. Fortunately, none would be staying. Just as soon as he was done with his coffee, he was going to take a trip into town to the county courthouse where he was going to file that paperwork and start Elsie’s eviction process. He couldn’t wait.

The front door bumped shut and then she came stomping through the kitchen.

“Don’t touch my stuff,” she said testily, putting the now full milk bucket on the counter by the sink.

“I’m not. I’m touching my stuff.” Deliberately, childishly even, he poked the bucket. “Want some coffee?”

“Get bent.” She stalked back out of the kitchen again, slamming out of the back door now. Quint poured himself another cup of coffee. Peering into the bucket, he eyed the goat milk before opening the fridge door. He found the little container with remnants of more of that cream cheese she’d given him along with the jam and toast she’d slid under the bathroom door. He wasn’t sure about goat’s milk, but that cream cheese had been pretty good. Even mad as hell while he’d been eating it, it had tasted pretty good.

Opening the container, he sniffed the contents
. He dipped his finger in before sampling a taste, then found some bread, made toast and enjoyed it smothered in cream cheese, and washed it all down with the last of his coffee. He was on his last few bites when Elsie returned, this time with a bucket half full of eggs.

“I’m heading into town,” he said. “Want me to pick you up anything
while I get your eviction notice started?

“Go to hell.” She began washing the eggs at the sink.

Two get bents and one go to hell. What a beautiful way to start the day.

Fetching his keys and wallet, he whistled as he headed out the front door for his truck.
He never made it off the porch. It was snowing again. Not just a little this time, but big, heavy flakes that were not melting when they touched the ground. Damn. It was looking like the beginnings of the winter’s first blizzard.

He wa
sn’t going anywhere today.

Quint
stood for a long time, staring out into the swirling whiteness, trying to figure out whether he was more upset that he wouldn’t be able to get the eviction process started just yet or relieved.

* * * * *

The minute Quint left the house, Elsie stopped what she was doing. She put the clean eggs down in the bottom of the sink and bent all the way over, resting her forehead on her folded arms. How could she possibly fix any of this and still keep the house? She could leave—she might just have to—but, no! Where would she go? What would she do? Find another abandoned place and pray no one came home a year or so down the road to rip that out from under her too? She couldn’t keep doing this. She just couldn’t. And the worst part was she had no one but herself to blame for any of this. She’d known right from the start that this could end badly, but she’d let herself believe no one would ever object to her living here. That no one would ever come back. That she would be left in peace to eke out her quiet living until the day she died and there would be no consequences. She’d wanted to believe that. She had wanted that so much.