Beware Falling Ice Read online

  “Wait for me!” a kid yelled.

  “Connie!” Jill called out. “Be quiet! People are trying to sleep!”

  Andrew closed his eyes as he felt Rachel’s body go stiff across his lap.

  Dammit.

  “I cannot catch a fucking break this morning,” he muttered.

  She started to sit up, but he held her down. “Are you safewording, pet?”

  “No, Sir, but—”

  “Either safeword, or lay back down and get comfy.”

  He wasn’t sure which way this was going to go until she finally relaxed across his lap again. He reached between her legs, which parted for him, and slowly worked two fingers into her pussy.

  “Good girl,” he whispered.

  Her hips started rocking in time with his actions, until she was actively humping his hand.

  That’s when he pulled his fingers free and quickly gave her several really hard, fast swats, alternating between ass cheeks, before plunging his fingers into her pussy again.

  It had the desired effect. She was off-balance, couldn’t focus, and the last thing on her mind was any noises out in the hall.

  He repeated this cycle several times, until the last time when he fingered her, playing with her clit until she was moaning and grinding herself against his hand. With the hand in her hair, he pulled her up and then put her on her knees on the floor in front of him, his legs spread wide.

  She eagerly devoured his cock as he cradled her head in his hands and held her there.

  Finally.

  No quick-draw, no ball-taps, not even irritating hallway interruptions. Just a really great blowjob that soon had him moaning before he finally came, filling her mouth while holding her there and waiting on her to swallow.

  “Such a good girl,” he whispered, stroking her hair.

  She looked up at him, his limp cock still between her lips. He wanted to keep her like that forever, freeze this perfect moment, the trust and contentment on her face.

  He urged her back up and kissed her. “Go get the shower started, baby,” he softly said. “I’ll be right there. We need to get ready and get dressed. Then we need to get moving and find something to eat.”

  “It’ll only take about thirty minutes to drive down there.”

  “I know. But you can show me around town after breakfast. Unless you want to risk running into the cousins?”

  “Good point.” She headed for the bathroom.

  After finishing his coffee drink, he followed her.

  At least one thing had gone right this morning.

  So far.

  Although the day was still young.

  Chapter Twelve

  They took a shower together, with Rachel happy to engage in a little sexy shower play with Andrew in the process.

  Both of them survived the experience uninjured, much to their relief.

  When they crept down the stairwell to the first floor just before nine o’clock, they didn’t see any sign of the cousins. The overcast day felt damp and dreary and threatened rain. Andrew had brought his new hoodie with him, in addition to the two jackets. While he wore slacks and loafers this morning, he’d also brought jeans and sneakers to change into later, as had Rachel.

  She drove them to a restaurant far enough away from the hotel she suspected they wouldn’t run into any relations. As Andrew savored his coffee, he smiled at her over the top of the mug.

  “See? Morning salvaged.”

  “Sorry about earlier.”

  “Let’s try not to repeat that exact set of circumstances. Next time, I’ll make sure your ass is tied down tightly and immobilized.” But he smiled, telling her he wasn’t upset.

  Lynn’s going to laugh her ass off.

  Justin called her while they were eating.

  “You haven’t chickened out yet, have you?”

  “No, smartass. We’re at breakfast.”

  “With the cousins?”

  “Nope. We left the hotel undetected.” Under the table, Andrew’s foot found her leg. He started running the toe of his shoe up and down the back of her calf to distract her, as well as teasing the tip of his tongue along his lips, trying to crack her up.

  “That’s a miracle,” Justin said. “Aunt Karen told me that Jack’s brother’s there, and so are two of Jill’s sisters and their kids, Morland and his family, and a few others.”

  She closed her eyes and groaned, but Andrew must have sensed it wasn’t the good kind of groan. He reached across the table, tapped her on the arm, and silently mouthed, “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head at him. “Well, we’re just lucky, I guess. We’re using the excuse that we’re meeting up with friends of Andrew’s while we’re in town.”

  “Hopefully you’re safe, then. What time are you getting to George and Karen’s?”

  “As late as possible.”

  “I told them I’d be there about noon. Please?”

  She sighed. “Yeah, we’ll be there about noon.”

  “Okay…because there’s been a slight change in plans.”

  Something about his tone of voice grabbed her full attention. “What kind of change?”

  “Um, tomorrow there’s going to be a wake at their place.”

  “Please tell me Uncle George bit the dust?” She felt like a horrible person for saying that, but it just sort of popped out.

  “No. I don’t know all the details yet, but Aunt Karen called me a little while ago. Aunt Wyndie died in a car wreck last night.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But…she was like the only one of them halfway worth talking to.” Well, except for their Aunt Coral, whom they rarely saw anyway.

  Wyndie Gaele had been their mother’s oldest sibling, an unconventional woman who’d refused to get married despite having several live-in boyfriends over the years. As far as Rachel knew, their aunt didn’t have any children, and she would have been in her late sixties or thereabouts. She’d not had a lot of love for her younger brother, George, although she’d gotten along fine with Aunt Karen and their three sons, Michael, Morland, and Isaac.

  Wyndie had also been fiercely independent, a hunter and fisherman who homesteaded on her property and believed all the libtards would take her guns and shove her into a FEMA camp to die there, one day. And she’d been rumored to have a pretty good drinking habit.

  In other words, about the norm for that side of the family. Except she used to give Justin and Rachel really cool gifts when they were little.

  Like real archery sets, none of that Nerf garbage for her nieces and nephews.

  Her belief was that kids should learn personal responsibility at a young age, and if they accidentally killed each other, then they weren’t being careful enough.

  “I know, right?”

  Rachel wasn’t altogether sure that maybe she was still asleep and the events of that morning so far were a really weird dream. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know all the details. Something about she hit a deer.”

  Rachel knew it was too good to last, that their lucky streak of all of an hour vanished in a stiff South Dakota breeze. “You’re kidding me?”

  “No. Apparently, Morland was literally a couple of minutes behind her in his car when it happened.”

  Andrew intently stared at her, obviously trying to figure out what was wrong. She held up a finger to him to hold on as she kept speaking to Justin. “All those times Dad joked when we were kids that Bambi was going to get even with her one day.”

  “Apparently, he finally did.” She could tell Justin was only one snarky comment away from bursting into laughter.

  “Holy crap.”

  Did it make her a horrible person for imagining a suicidal deer dressed as a kamikaze pilot and holding a katana jumping into the middle of the road?

  Maybe.

  She still snickered.

  “Why isn’t he canceling the graduation party today?”

  “Because it’s Uncle George, that’s why. He said a
nyone who wasn’t here today should be able to get to his place by tomorrow for the wake. Anyone who has to go home tomorrow and can’t make it can remember her today at the wake-slash-graduation barbecue.”

  “Wait. We have to have two days of a wake on your graduation weekend?”

  “Yep.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I think we’ve hit a new low, even for this family.”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m sorry, kiddo.”

  “Yeah, well, it is what it is. Tom and Kerra have been laughing their asses off this morning over it. I know Dad would be nearly shitting himself laughing.”

  “Yeah, he would.” Despite needing the man’s help, Rachel’s father hadn’t hidden from his children his dislike of his brother-in-law, although he had gotten along with Wyndie okay, despite not agreeing with her on 99.9 percent of any given topics.

  By the time Rachel got off the phone with Justin, she wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t need to stop by a liquor store on the way to her uncle and aunt’s house to buy herself some of those small airplane-sized bottles to take to the cookout.

  Since she didn’t have any Xanax, and lavender oil wasn’t nearly strong enough for this job, she stared at her plate for a moment before Andrew finally got her attention.

  “Are you all right?”

  She took a deep breath. She’d fully intended to slowly let it out, but it erupted as laughter she had to cover with her napkin, because she burst into tears that switched over to laughter again before she finally managed to get herself under control.

  “Yeah. Just…yeah.” She filled him in.

  He earned massive brownie points with her for trying not to laugh.

  “I’m really sorry about your aunt.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Worse, though, now I’m going to have to go both days.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s Uncle George. If Justin didn’t live around here still, I’d say fuck it. But I don’t want the cousins ostracizing him. You don’t have to come tomorrow, if you don’t want to.”

  “Like hell I’ll let you go alone.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. That’s kind of the whole point of me coming with you this weekend, remember?”

  “Yeah. Thanks. I hope you don’t regret it.”

  “If I was going to regret anything, it would be not checking the label on that bottle before handing it to you last night.”

  * * * *

  Rachel drove Andrew around downtown Sioux Falls again, even letting him talk her into stopping at a used bookstore downtown to kill a little more time.

  Eventually, they had to head south.

  The closer they drove to Beresford, the more Rachel felt tension ratcheting in her gut, tightening her nerves until she wasn’t sure she might not need to pull over and puke along the side of the road.

  “Are you okay?” Andrew asked.

  “God, I feel like such a pussy,” she said. “Not the good kind, either.”

  “Your uncle?”

  “Yeah. He was a jerk, but countless people have relatives who were jerks. That doesn’t mean they’re scared of them.”

  “You were thirteen when your mom died and you had to move in with them. You lost your dad five years later. That’s a huge trauma for a kid. I’d say your feelings are perfectly valid.”

  “I was kind of hoping for a ‘suck it up, buttercup’ kind of response.”

  “Sorry. I don’t think that’s what you need right now. I think you’re needlessly beating yourself up over some pretty valid emotions. You don’t need to explore them all in depth this weekend, but you need to let yourself have the freedom to experience them and not feel any particular way about having them. They just are.”

  She glanced at him. “I’ve gotten really good at stuffing my emotions.”

  “Then one of the first things you need to work on in the future is learning not to do that. I’d rather you be honest with me, even if you think it’s painful, than stuffing what you feel and not letting yourself work through it.”

  She stared at the road ahead. On either side, miles of rolling farmland stretched out under the threatening sky. They’d passed through several patches of misting rain so far, but nothing horrible. Although, based on how she felt, she wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up with snow by the end of the night, even though she hadn’t looked at the weather report that morning, between accidentally ball-tapping the guy she really wanted to be her boyfriend and Dom and then trying to sneak out of the hotel undetected.

  “Thank you for being so patient with me,” she said. “I really do appreciate it. I know the last thing you want is another crazy person.”

  “You aren’t my ex,” he said. “I’m completely willing to do whatever I can for you, because I can tell you want to change the way you deal with things.”

  * * * *

  Andrew felt horrible for Rachel, that she was under such stress. He knew that there wasn’t a lot he could do to take that stress away, other than to be there for her.

  On the other hand, inwardly his sadistic side was loooving the hell out of this.

  He couldn’t help it. It was funny as hell. Considering the most controversial thing that ever happened at his family gatherings was someone not putting enough seasoning in their potluck dish, he figured he could both support her and secretly snicker.

  George and Karen Gaele’s house sat on five acres of land, a nondescript house and nondescript property, no better or worse than any others around them. There were already close to a dozen cars parked scattered across the large front yard.

  When she shut the car off, she sat there for a moment, staring at the house.

  “They haven’t seen you yet,” he helpfully suggested. “We could take off and claim a flat tire or something.”

  “Smallpox? Godzilla attack?” She looked over at him and despite her smile, he didn’t miss the tight lines in her face.

  He took her hands in his. “When we get back to the hotel tonight,” he said, “I promise that I will distract you so you are unable to think about anything except what I’m doing to you.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  She took a deep breath, finally nodding. “Sorry I’m being so stupid about this.”

  “Stop that,” he said. “Lean on me.” He kissed her. “Okay?”

  She nodded again and reached for the door handle.

  A guy came racing out the door and charging down the front yard toward her, picking her up and swinging her around. From the way she greeted him, Andrew realized this had to be Justin.

  Finally, after the siblings had a moment together, they turned toward him.

  “Jus, this is Andrew Holt. For the weekend, call him my boyfriend.”

  They shook. Justin had the same green eyes and brown hair that Rachel had, and stood maybe four inches taller than Rachel’s five five, and built slim. “Andrew. Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming with her.”

  Andrew somehow managed not to snicker at that comment, his brain immediately going to a really wrong place. “Glad to finally get to meet you. Heard a lot about you.”

  “So how bad is Uncle George?” she asked.

  “Hadn’t talked to Aunt Wyndie in over five years, and he’s in there sobbing and putting on a show like he just sat on his pet dog.”

  “Grreeaat.” Rachel looked up at Andrew. “Uncle George is a drama queen. I guess I should have mentioned that.”

  “Well, this is shaping up to be an interesting day,” Andrew said, cracking Justin up.

  “I like him, sis. You sure he’s not your boyfriend for real?”

  She met Andrew’s gaze. “We’re still trying to decide that. If he doesn’t run screaming after this weekend, we can figure it out later.”

  * * * *

  Of course, it turned out that many of the cars already in the front yard were the cousins who’d stayed at the hotel. Including Morland and his brood, and Jack and Jill and their kids.

 
; They had only been there five minutes, and Rachel was in search of a cup of coffee for Andrew and herself in the kitchen when Morland walked in.

  So far, Rachel had avoided having to speak directly to her uncle, because he was currently surrounded by a sea of family. She did give her aunt a hug, though, and introduced Andrew to her.

  “You heard?” Morland asked by way of greeting.

  “Yeah, I’m—”

  “Damnedest thing I ever saw,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Thing jumped right through her windshield.” He leaned in. “I think she might have been a little tipsy.”

  “The deer?”

  “No. Aunt Wyndie. We’d met her for dinner. Supposed to head to Sioux Falls to the hotel last night, and she’d had a couple of beers with dinner. You know how she was. Couldn’t tell her nothing.”

  “Was she supposed to come here, too?”

  “Nah. She hated Dad. She gave me a card to give to Justin for her. We just had to drive the same way. She pulled out before we did, and we got caught at a light.” He leaned in. “It decapitated her.”

  Rachel leaned back, hoping she’d misheard him. “What?”

  “Yep. Looks like its hooves did it.” He drew a finger across his neck. “Blood everywhere. By the way, I have pictures of the wreck.” Morland whipped out his phone.

  Shocked, Rachel stared at him. “Pictures?”

  “Yeah. Of the wreck. And her.” He started swiping through his phone.

  “Wait a minute. You took pictures…of Aunt Wyndie’s wreck?”

  “Well, yeah. And of her. We came up on it right after it happened.”

  Rachel blinked, taking a moment to process that. “Why did you take pictures?”

  He stared at her like she was stupid. “I told you, we were right behind her when it happened. Once I realized she was dead, I took pictures. I thought someone, you know, might want to see them. Not like I could do anything to help her.”

  Her jaw gaped. “See them? Who would want to see pictures of her like that?”