34. Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Four

O ne thing kept Isa from racing to Junior's house (Sol's threat be damned), and it was the unexpected visitor who had arrived at Dogwood Hotel with a wrapped gift in tow. Mr. Ricci gave Isa and her guest leave to use his office for their visit so long as the door remained cracked.

"You're telling me," Isa said slowly from Mr. Ricci's plush leather desk chair, "that you fell in love with your wife during our time apart?"

"Quite like a fairy tale, isn't it?" David Corner quipped around one of Mr. Ricci's fine cigars.

"The one where the maliferous witch is sent to a faraway land so the prince and princess can live happily ever after?" Isa could almost laugh if she wasn't so torn up by the circumstances of her own love life.

David, whose world was finally set to rights, did laugh. "Just so. I imagine I needed some time apart from you to see what had been in front of me all along."

Isa's brows rose. "Spoken like a true philosopher."

"I've become wise in your weeks away. Also, Father refuses to retire and begs for your return." He blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling, smiling benevolently.

"Give him my apologies, but I am not returning to Austin." She dropped her head against the chair's backrest and looked out the bay window. The street teemed with people busily living as they did daily. How did they do it? How did they exist in the same place, day after day, and not want to flee?

"Something is wrong," David said from his seat across the enormous desk. "I've never once seen you melancholy. Perhaps it's good that I showed up when I did."

A small huff of mirthless laughter escaped Isa's pinched nostrils. "I am not melancholy. Just—not in control."

"Oh?" David leaned forward, his boyishly handsome face wreathed with intrigue. "What's out of your control? I've never seen you with a feather out of place, not even when you were soaked with beer and stumbling out of the gaming hall."

Isa never lied to David. In fact, the more shocked he was, the more it amused her. But, curiously, she was not in the mood for sharing. "I'm telling you nothing while you're as euphorically happy as you are. Misery loves company, or haven't you heard?"

"Ah. You must be having trouble with a man. Mr. Suffix, I presume?"

Her eyes narrowed on him. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I know what unrequited love looks like, Dora, and I'd say you have quite the case of it. As the only man you've ever loved is your childhood sweetheart, I'd wager from your brooding that he does not share these affections."

"You'd bet wrong," said a deep, menacing voice from the doorway.

Isa and David jumped from their seats in unison. David's cigar fell to the hardwood and rolled several feet away. The door opened wider, and the owner of the deep voice stepped through and crushed the burning ember with his boot heel. Isa's heart did somersaults in her ribcage, an anatomical impossibility, yet there it was, twisting and flipping like a banked fish.

"Junior," she croaked, panicking. For him to come here, now, while she was entertaining another man…

"I'm in love with my wife," David blurted, his hands up as though at gunpoint. "I arrived with a Christmas gift for Dora, but it's from my wife, I swear to you."

Junior, dressed in a dark-blue shirt, faded jeans, and no bandana, ignored the other man. His indigo eyes were on Isa and Isa alone. No kerchief hid his scar from view, and no hat covered his wavy golden hair. Thanks to a fresh shave, dimples and a cleft chin were visible. His footsteps were slow and measured as he passed David and rounded the desk.

"Isadora Williams, I love you. I'll always love you, no matter how many men pant after you."

"Well." David cleared his throat but quietened when Isa shot him a nasty look.

As if he and Isa were the only two people in the room, Junior continued, "You told me once that if you were to ever marry, it would be to a man who was more in love with you than you were with him. Well, here I am. I want to fight with you for the rest of my life. I want you to make lists of all the places we'll go and all the things we'll see because I'll be right there beside you until we've been everywhere. Until the only thing left to see is the wrinkles poppin' up on our faces."

Something hard was choking her. A ray of sun must be blinding her. She couldn't speak and could hardly see. Even drawing breath was difficult.

Junior wiped a callused thumb beneath her eye and gently lifted her bloodless hands to his mouth. "I spoke to your pa, your ma, and even your brother. Sol would rather have horsewhipped me than listened. We both knew I wasn't worthy of you, but I'm a selfish bastard. It took a lot of convincing, but I got your family's blessing. All I need now is yours."

From the corner of her eye, she saw David smile and surreptitiously leave the room. Isa hardly noticed. "My blessing for what?" she asked, her lips trembling into their first smile since she'd left him in that barn.

"You gonna make me spell it out for you?"

"If you're going to propose, you may as well do it right," she said, sniffling.

"Alright." Junior grinned, released one of her hands to pull something out of his pocket, and bent to one knee. "Izzy, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

He held between his fingers a delicately wrought gold ring set with a large, square-cut citrine, which glittered in the afternoon sun.

"I'd love to be your wife," she said through a haze of irritating tears, laughing when he whooped, stood, and swung her around.

Junior slid the ring on her finger with shaking hands. "I got it because the gemstone looks a lot like your eyes."

Isa kissed him.

JUNIOR RETURNED THE kiss enthusiastically, then immediately dragged her from the office. After checking the hall and down the stairs, he led Isa up into the attic. In broad daylight, they disrobed, neither caring a damn if they were caught; they were engaged now, weren't they?

"Remember the first time we did this?" he asked her between kisses. Her skin was incredibly soft against his.

"Hm, perhaps you should remind me," Isa murmured, nibbling his full lower lip.

Junior growled playfully, and she laughed when he picked her up as if she were light as feather down and threw her on the bed.

"Wait, I remember something!" Isa climbed to her knees and positioned herself at the edge of the bed where he stood. In this position, Junior's eyes snagged on the sensual crease between her hips and legs.

His smile wavered, and he licked his lips; Isa was kissing the warm, taut skin of his stomach. Instead of going lower, her moist pink lips rose and skated over his pectorals. The narrow gap in her white teeth flashed when she bit the fleshy muscle of his chest. It made him instinctively grip a handful of her thick hair in warning, but she only grinned. Then the little minx wrapped her lips around his nipple and drew on it.

"What are you doin'?" he asked, laughing.

"Seeing if this feels as good for you as it does for me," she said, kissing his hardened nipple.

He thought about it while he pulled the pins out of her hair, enjoying the way the heavy waves unraveled down her back to her waist. "It feels pretty good."

"When you do it to mine, I feel it all the way down here." Isa pulled his hand between her legs until he was cupping her.

Junior lost the ability to speak. His fingers parted her, spreading her damp heat to the part of her that drove her wild, but she wriggled free to kiss down his flexing stomach. Below her chin, his cock bobbed insistently. He could feel the cool air on its tip; it was already leaking. And when she palmed the heavy sac below, he grunted. Isa licked him from the bottom of his shaft to the slit of his crown. Unsteadily, his fingers pulled her hair back until it lay in a thick rope in his fist. Every time her eyes met his, he felt his control slipping a little more. Finally, finally , Isa's lips spread around the flushed crown of his cock, and his groan was pure gravel. She sucked him past the roof of her mouth to that soft place in the back of her throat. Without realizing he was doing so, he used the hair in his fist to guide her up and down. Every time he pulled her back, her cheeks hollowed, the suction increasing as though she were afraid to unlatch. Isa's breasts swayed below, heavy and full, and a remembered fantasy of those breasts resurfaced.

"Sit up," he growled, pulling her off him with a little pop . Isa's lips were red and swollen from abuse. "Push your bosom together."

"What?" She looked dazed.

"Like this." Junior stepped so close that his erection grazed her breastbone. He filled his hands with her bountiful breasts and pressed them together until they sandwiched his shaft.

"Oh." Isa watched the broad head of his sex disappear and reappear between her manufactured cleavage. Her cheeks flushed. "You, sir, have a dirty mind."

"I know," he groaned. "You make me that way."

It didn't take long of whispering filthy things to her, of her following the unlikeliest of orders, before he was close to his end. She had stuck her pink tongue out to lick him and had replaced his hands with her own when he gasped, "Izzy, open your mouth."

Abandoning her breasts, he slid back between her welcoming lips, noises grunting out of him that he could feel ashamed of later. The hot pull of her mouth was too good, and he exploded, completely forgetting to pull out. Besides a surprised noise, she didn't protest.

Junior weaved on his feet while she worked him, and with his thumbs, he stroked her silky brows, her flushed cheeks, her lips tight around him. Thighs shaking like jelly, he disengaged from her mouth; the top half of his cock was dark red. Isa had turned it into one big love bruise. Heart hammering, he crouched and kissed her forehead, her nose, her lips. When they opened, the expression in her eyes was one of adoration, obstructing any ready words. She'd never looked at him like that before.

If only she knew how much he loved her. Revered her.

Gradually, he pushed her to her back and got to his knees on the rough attic floor. This was where he always wanted to be. On his knees before her. Pulling her smooth thighs over his shoulders, he buried his face between her legs. She was unbelievably soft, the petals of her sex practically melting beneath the flat of his tongue. With his two longest fingers, he tested her, felt the give of her narrow passage and the flutter of her muscles when he pushed them in deep. Her fingers delved into his hair, mussing it, and he lost track of time as he paid homage to her. The noises she made, the gasps—he would never forget them as long as he lived. When her fingers roughened in his hair, and he was in desperate need of air, he still didn't stop. If this was how he succumbed to his death, so be it.

From far away, Junior heard her sobbing, begging, pleading through a fierce orgasm. Her inner walls sucked his fingers in, and her thighs quivered around his ears. He resurfaced, pulling his wet face and fingers free, breathing hard. Wild for her.

Maintaining her ankles' position on his shoulders, he surged to his feet and guided himself to her slick, swollen entrance. Isa was unbelievably tight in this position with her endlessly long legs together and elevated, and they both gasped when he worked himself in and out of her. He was talking again, voicing how much he loved her, how beautiful she was. He couldn't stop and was too intoxicated to care.

When her noises reached boisterous pitches, he leaned over and covered her mouth hard with his hand, a movement that forced him deeper, to the very end of her. She screamed behind his hand, clenched hard around him, and he saw stars. Teeth gritted so he didn't shout, he yanked out of her and rode out a tremendous climax between her tightly clamped legs.

An eternity later, Junior remembered to release her mouth. Isa lay there, winded, her breasts heaving, her eyes closed. Gingerly, he pulled away from her closed legs and let the boneless limbs fall open. Splayed open in the sunlight, she was damned beautiful. He lovingly stroked and patted her damp, exposed sex, then soundly slapped the round cheek of her rear end. Something about the way her flesh jiggled following the friendly swat filled him with masculine appreciation.

One of Isa's eyes slit open. "How can you even stand?" Her voice was almost hoarse.

"I have no idea, darlin'." It was true. His legs were shaking. Weak. Junior felt he had run two miles and wanted to do nothing more than sleep. Instead, he walked to the washstand and wet a cloth.

After he had tidied them up, he pulled the quilt back and tucked them in. While she stroked his back between the sheets, he lifted his head and admired her. One of her breasts was exposed to the chilly attic air, its pink nipple puckered. Lovingly, he palmed it, warming it. Then he manipulated it this way and that, squeezing, squishing, and plucking.

"Ouch. Those are attached." She sounded half-asleep.

"Imagine if they weren't. I could put 'em in my saddlebags so I don't miss you when I'm away."

"You're vile." But a wicked grin spread across her cheeks.

Junior kissed her softly on the lips. Something beneath her pillow caught his eye, and he tugged it out. It was a black bandana. He suspected it was the one he had worn to the dance. Hiding a delighted smirk, Junior slid it back under her pillow.

"You know," he said after a beat. He had eschewed her breast to play with her hair, another choice diversion. "You're pretty good at…what you did earlier."

Isa's eyes blinked open. "Which part?"

He told her and felt his ears warm.

"Have you ever done it before?" He tried to sound as though it didn't matter.

"Fellatio?" she asked. "Yes."

Hot jealousy welled up in him. "That so?"

"Yes, but I'm not telling you with whom."

"I already know with whom ," he said dryly, wishing the lock of hair in his hand was David Corner's neck. "Christ, I didn't think I could hate that city boy more than I already do. I was wrong."

Isa didn't correct him, and he had a brief urge to stomp downstairs naked and challenge her "friend" to a showdown on Main Street. But her next words dampened the hot flare of violence. "Tell me about the first time you performed cunnilingus, since we're sharing."

Damn it . He knew asking her would end up piquing her own curiosity. And cunnilingus , what a mouthful of a word. "Alright, then." Junior cleared his throat. "I did it one time and one time only before you. She was a whore in Huntsville. I remember she—well, it was like I took a swig of our housemaid's cleaning solution. Vinegar and carbolic. I told myself I'd like it better the next time I tried it and not with a prostitute. The next time was a neighbor girl who got around. I went beneath her skirts and came right back out."

Isa was struggling to keep a straight face. "How unfortunate."

"Unfortunate for her. Judgin' from the noises you make, I reckon I'm pretty good at it."

"Cad." She grabbed one of her smaller pillows and smacked him with it.

They laughed and scuffled beneath the bedclothes before he popped his head out of the sheets like a straw-haired gopher. "I forgot to ask you something."

"What?" Isa was dreamily admiring the ring on her finger.

"Where are we traveling to first?"

The dreamy smile became incandescent.