Beware Falling Ice Read online

  Technically that wasn’t a lie, but she still felt a little bad about telling it.

  “I’m sorry he treated me different.”

  “It’s not your fault, Jus. He’s an asshole. He was the adult. Mom and Aunt Wyndie didn’t get along with him. Aunt Coral can barely stand him. It’s his problem, and it’s something I’ve…” She was drifting into full-on lying territory now and didn’t want to. “I’m an adult. I’ve moved on. I’m living my life the way I want to. It’s all right.”

  It wasn’t “all right,” but it was as all right as she could make it, and she didn’t feel like admitting anything else to him.

  Besides, that was in the past, and it didn’t matter any longer. Not now that she’d successfully faced down the demon from her past and realized that living well had truly been the best revenge.

  * * * *

  They only tolerated Uncle George for a couple of hours before heading out. Rachel and Justin knew Aunt Wyndie would not only not want that kind of gathering for her, she’d damn sure hate that it was George holding it.

  And in his own house, to boot.

  They ended up back in Vermillion at a small Italian restaurant, quiet, which suited Rachel just fine. She was tired of being forced to put on a fake face. At work was one thing, but she liked her job and the majority of people she worked with.

  In her personal life, Rachel only hung around with people whose company she enjoyed. No faking required.

  This…this required expert-level faking skills she wasn’t sure she could keep up with at that point in her life.

  She’d used up her reserves of those during adolescence and her teen years, then later during college.

  Justin again acted somewhat jumpy, like he wanted to talk but couldn’t make himself do it with Andrew there.

  Andrew noticed.

  “Would you like some alone time with your sister? I don’t mind, seriously. I feel badly I’ve been hogging her this weekend.”

  “No, it’s okay. Really.” He took a deep breath. “I wasn’t expecting this weekend to get so…crazy. Crazier. Totally nuts.” He glanced Andrew’s way. “Guess if you’re not running yet, you don’t mind too much.”

  * * * *

  “As I already told Rache, it’ll take more than crazy relatives to scare me off. I wouldn’t be worth having a relationship with if I ran for the hills over something like that.”

  Andrew wasn’t sure what Justin wanted to talk to Rachel about, but he knew there was something.

  He suspected he had a good idea what that something might be, but it wasn’t his place, and he wouldn’t go tossing out wild guesses that might be totally wrong. He’d just met the man.

  Although based on his years in the lifestyle, and time spent around a widely diverse number of people from all over the rainbow, his gut instincts told him his hunch was correct.

  When they finished eating, it was full dark outside, even though it wasn’t sundown yet. A cold wind blew, cutting right through the sweatshirt and jackets Andrew wore. Hurrying toward the rental car, he said, “I cannot believe anyone willingly lives in this shit.”

  He noticed Justin wasn’t in a hurry. “This is mild,” he teased.

  “Ease up, Jus,” she playfully warned. “I’m feeling the cold, too. He’s a native Floridian. This is full-on winter to us.”

  Back at Justin’s apartment, Andrew waited in the car, moving to the front seat while Rachel walked her brother to his door and hugged him, long and hard.

  Andrew bumped the heat up a little, too, while he waited.

  When she returned, she wiped at her eyes as she climbed behind the wheel.

  He reached over and rested his hand on her thigh. She placed hers over it and squeezed before buckling her seat belt and driving out of the complex.

  The ride back to Sioux Falls was mostly quiet, Andrew sensing how hard this was on her, leaving her brother behind yet again. Back at the room, they quietly packed and laid out clothes for in the morning before he gave her a good, hard spanking and then made love to her after she’d cried.

  The cousins had already checked out, so she wasn’t worried about anyone overhearing.

  As she fell asleep in his arms, Andrew nuzzled the top of her head.

  Please, don’t let me fuck this up.

  Because the more time he spent with her, the less willing he was to let her go.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Early Monday morning, Andrew was just about to roll over and wrap his arm around Rachel when her cell phone beeped with a text message.

  “Shit,” she muttered as she rolled away from him to grab it.

  Dammit. A chance lost.

  “Shit!” She turned on the light.

  That sounded serious. “What?” He propped himself up on one elbow.

  “Our flight was cancelled.” She got up and padded over to the window. He couldn’t help but watch the adorable swell of her ass and hips as she did.

  She really had a deliciously spankable ass.

  Maybe one day I’ll find out how fuckable it is, too. Hopefully without any ball-taps.

  As she pulled back the blackout curtain, she groaned. “Fucking hell!”

  “What?”

  She pulled it open wider and pointed.

  Suspecting he wasn’t going to like what he was about to see, he finally sat up, climbed out of bed, and walked over next to her.

  He stared. “Um…” He blinked. Frigid air oozed through the glass and poked at his bare skin.

  “Ice storm.” She turned from the window and headed over to where the TV remote was and turned the set on, to a local station.

  “…Yes, Robert. This system definitely caught some people by surprise. The school district has announced closures, as have many non-essential government agencies. But as we started telling people late yesterday here at Channel 9, there was a really good chance of a serious level of ice that we aren’t used to seeing this time of year, even here in Sioux Falls…”

  Andrew was having difficulty processing exactly what it was he was seeing. He’d seen snow on TV before, even though being a native Floridian meant he’d only seen flurries in real life.

  The parking lot and cars below looked encased in shimmering ice. It’d be pretty…if it wasn’t…so…

  Much.

  “Well, crap,” Rachel muttered.

  “So…what does this mean, exactly?” he asked before he reached down and bumped up the heat on the room’s AC unit.

  “It means we’re not flying out today. And since the airline only flies on Mondays and Fridays, unless we drive to another airport somewhere, we’re not flying home until Friday.”

  “Then we can drive. Can’t we?”

  She didn’t respond. When he looked away from the window and at her, she was staring at him like he’d just sprouted a second penis.

  He had to glance down just to make sure he hadn’t sprouted a second one, or something equally horrifying.

  When he glanced back up again, she was still staring at him.

  “What?”

  “Drive?” Her tone sounded full of disbelief.

  “Um…yeah?”

  “You don’t have much experience in this department, do you?”

  “What part of ‘native Floridian’ did I not make clear?”

  “We cannot drive in that shit.” She pointed at the TV. “They’re salting the roads but it’s an ice emergency. Do you see many cars moving around out there?”

  He glanced out the window again. Actually, he didn’t see any cars moving around out there.

  “Do you really think we can go anywhere in this?” she asked.

  “Um…I’m going to go ahead and guess nooo?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Hey, you’re lucky I’m not awake yet,” he said. “I’d spank your ass for that eyeroll.”

  “Is that before or after you tried to kill us in a fiery car crash from driving on the ice?”

  He wouldn’t deny he loved her playful smirk. “How can it be fier
y if it’s icy?”

  “Oh, you have no idea. If the water main’s frozen and they can’t put it out—”

  “That was rhetorical snark.” He walked over to the bed, shivering a little as he did. He climbed back into bed and pulled the covers over him. “Well, if we can’t fly out, does that mean we can go back to bed for a little while? What time is it anyway?”

  “Almost five thirty.”

  “Almost five thirty?” He stared at her. “How can you act so fucking casual when you say that? ‘We just hit an iceberg. Godzilla’s eating Manhattan. It’s almost five thirty.’ And how can you even be conscious right now without coffee? What are you, some sort of demon or something? Did I spend the weekend having really good sex with an alien parasite or a thing that’s going to kill me and now I’m going to have a little demonoid sprout out of my chest?”

  “Because I’m used to getting up every morning at five for work, and it’s actually almost six thirty Florida time. Why? What time do you usually get up?”

  “Whenever the hell I want to, because I’m usually working until one or two in the morning. Jesus Christ, I’m seriously calling early mornings a hard limit right the fark now.”

  She smirked again. Hell, it was so freaking early and cold he couldn’t even manage morning wood over that adorable expression of hers. “Can you call a hard limit if you’re the Dom?”

  “Uh, yeah. Perk of the rank.” He pulled the covers back. “You want to come back to bed, or summon some of your familiars, you South Dakota demon girl?”

  “Ooh, talk hexy to me, bad man.” She walked over to close the curtains before she climbed back into bed next to him.

  Snuggling with her felt right. He even liked the way her shampoo smelled. “What are we going to do about breakfast?”

  “I was going to say we eat downstairs. The cousins left yesterday. I have to talk to the desk and extend our stay. And we need to venture over to Walmart and get you some freaking clothes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re going to freeze your ass off, that’s why.”

  “Not if I keep it planted right here in this hotel until Friday. Don’t they have a laundry here?”

  “We have a microwave and a fridge. That means we can get booze and food and stay shit-faced, if we want to. Just one little walk over to Walmart.”

  “I have to work. I can do it naked and in bed, but I need to remain a reasonable facsimile of sober.”

  “Okay. So I’ll get shit-faced and blow you while you do whatever you’re doing.”

  “Ooh, baby. You keep talking like that, you might make me start begging you.”

  “Are Doms supposed to beg?”

  “If they’re getting blown well and want to stay that way, uh, yeah.”

  She giggled.

  That made him smile. He was still too sleepy and cold to get hard though. “Shh,” he said. “Sleepy time now, sexy time later.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  From her tone he knew she was joking, but there was something he really liked about that.

  Maybe she’s the one.

  * * * *

  Maybe he’s the one.

  One-night stands—or one-weekend stands, in this case—weren’t her thing. Andrew had surprisingly slid right under all her usual defenses and before she knew it, he’d popped up right there.

  In her vag.

  And maybe more than a little in her heart, too, which was far more scary than being in her vag. At least she could make him wear a condom if she needed to.

  How the hell did she keep herself from doing something stupid like falling in love with him?

  She didn’t want to be in love. Being in love meant getting her shit together.

  She was doing a pretty good job of imitating a functional human being right now. She didn’t need a really nice guy coming along for her to fuck up her relationship with him and then shatter her closely held denial.

  “What’s wrong?” he muttered. “Did the demon comment offend you? Should I have said something more politically correct like ‘otherworldy-origined’?”

  Rolling over to face him and tuck her head against him, she let out a sigh. “I’m scared.”

  “I thought you grew up in this shitty, illegal weather?”

  “About us.”

  “I was trying to give you an easy out.”

  “Is this where I insert the joke?”

  “Maybe, because my cock’s too cold to want to play right now and insert into anything other than thermal underwear. Please tell me Walmart sells thermal underwear.”

  She finally looked up into his eyes. Sweet brown eyes.

  “Please tell me we didn’t fuck this up?” she softly asked.

  That seemed to wake him up a little. “I’m not playing you. I’m not interested in wasting time playing relationship games. You know I had a really bad time before, so no offense if I don’t offer you your own key just yet.”

  She snorted. “Good. That means you won’t expect me to clean your house.”

  “I suspect there’s at least one or two fuglies in your emotional history, from what I saw this past weekend.”

  She felt her face heat. “Yeah,” she softly said. “Maybe.”

  “Okay.” He snuggled her closer. “We won’t fuck this up as long as we take our time and just sort of be us. No pressure, no games. We were friends, and now we’re…”

  “Fuck buddies,” she said, finally chuckling.

  “Monogamous fuck buddies,” he clarified. “And play partners.”

  “Absolutely.”

  He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. “I’m still declaring early mornings as a hard limit,” he said. “During weekends, when you’re not working.”

  “I can live with that. I like to sleep late on the weekends.”

  “See? Negotiations are easy. Why do people have to complicate shit?”

  “I don’t know. You still want me to call you ‘Sir’ when we get home?”

  “I was hoping for Sir Domly Disinfected Dick, but I can live with Sir for short, if you don’t mind it.”

  He did make her laugh. He definitely had that going for him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so much, so hard, and for so many consecutive days.

  I could get used to this.

  * * * *

  I could really get used to this.

  She even felt right snuggled in his arms.

  “Sorry about that,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, kind of my fault for not remembering there were two bottles on the nightstand. And it did lead to really hot shower sex, so I consider us even.”

  “I’ve never really let anyone get close enough to me that I had to tell them about me.”

  Her scared tone more than anything dragged his mind fully back into the realm of the awake.

  Tipping her face up so he could look into her eyes in the dim light from the TV, he said, “Whatever you tell me, regardless of how things end up eventually working out between us, it’ll never go any farther than just us. I promise.”

  “Thanks.”

  He brushed his thumb over her chin. “Was there someone else besides your uncle at the festivities yesterday that I should go take a drive and visit as soon as the fucking roads defrost so I can punch their lights out?”

  She smiled, but it looked sad. “Sorta not kinda.”

  “That’s a heck of an answer.”

  She snuggled more tightly against him and told him about his prime target—George Gaele—and how he’d treated Rachel once she and Justin were living under his roof.

  And bless her heart, how she’d stood up to the son of a bitch, even as a kid, and held her own against him. And how her aunt and cousins had followed George’s lead in treating her like crap, directly or indirectly.

  “I’d had enough shit to deal with losing Mom, and was a surly-as-hell teenager, and could fucking outshoot the nutbag, thanks to Aunt Wyndie. Plus, I knew how to gut a deer. Again, thanks to Aunt Wyndie. So after tha
t night in the kitchen, Uncle George must have realized he probably shouldn’t lay hands on me in any kind of way because he was so fucking fat and slow even back then that I could have turned him into sushi before he could take a second step toward me.”

  “So he didn’t beat you or physically molest you?”

  “No. Although he did give me a lot of emotional beatings over the years. He thought he was using Justin as a weapon against me all these years. Treating him like a son, and treating me like shit.”

  “What about your aunt? Didn’t she ever question that?”

  “I will admit that I used being a surly teenager to my advantage against him to remind him not to try touching me again. She only saw my behavior. He was always careful not to do it in front of her. But she was pretty cold to me, and so were my cousins.”

  He nuzzled the top of her head. “Can I go kill him now?”

  “No killing. It’s over with. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye this weekend.”

  “I noticed. I figured he was afraid of me.”

  “I think he was. You could have kicked his ass.”

  “A damn cheeseburger could have kicked his ass. What is he, close to five hundred pounds? I’m surprised they didn’t have to rent a U-Haul to carry him in.”

  “He wasn’t that big. Now all that’s left is for me to try to get over it once and for all in my head. I spent a lot of years stuffing and ignoring what I’d lived through. I had Justin to focus on. Then when I moved, I could ignore it and not deal with it. I didn’t have to, living down in Florida. I could shut down that part of my brain and not think about it. Yesterday finally drove home that I built this up a lot more in my head over the years by not dealing with it. I was really glad to see that living well is still the best revenge, and all of that.”

  “You can say that again.” He kissed the top of her head. “You know, I’d like to backtrack a little.”

  He felt her tense in his arms. “About what?”

  “The whole ‘monogamous fuck buddies’ label.”

  “And?”

  “I was kind of hoping we could go with boyfriend and girlfriend. I can understand if you don’t want to change up our play dynamics yet. But honestly? Despite all the aggravations and irritations and misadventures, this has been the best weekend I’ve had in a long time. And it’s because I spent it with you.”