Pretzel Logic Read online

  Slower, drawing it out, until she was whining almost as loudly as she had at the start.

  That’s when he sat up and turned, on top of her, pulling her legs around his waist. He lined up his cock with her pussy and thrust hard, holding still to savor it while he stared down into her brown gaze. He reached over and bumped the setting down on the butt plug, the vibration nearly triggering his own release before he did.

  “One more for Sir, baby. You know the rules.” He leaned in and started long-stroking her, pulling out until just the tip was still inside before thrusting hard, filling her, knowing the butt plug inside her would help both of them come.

  As he built up speed and force with every stroke, he leaned in closer to nibble at the base of her neck. He ground against her swollen clit at the bottom of every thrust, every gorgeous moan he earned in reply firing his own need.

  It took a few minutes, but her breath grew shallow, gasping, and then he felt the walls of her pussy contracting around his cock.

  “Good girl.” That was his cue to unleash, pounding into her, maybe not as hard as he once was able to, but enough he knew she’d enjoy it. It didn’t take him long to build up his orgasm, ending with one final, hard thrust as his balls pumped his load deep inside her pussy.

  Both of them breathless, she brought her hands down on either side of his head, catching the back of his neck with the cuffs and pulling him in for a deep kiss.

  “Love you, Sir,” she whispered.

  She already sounded half asleep.

  “Love you, too, baby. Forever.”

  By the time he had her released and cleaned up, she was nearly asleep. He crawled into bed, spooning around her, holding her.

  She nestled her body tightly against him and, for this little slice of a heavenly moment, he knew she’d sleep well tonight, no nightmares haunting and disturbing her.

  And so would he.

  Chapter Four

  “Wow. No offense? That’s the worst round I’ve ever seen you shoot, not counting your first lesson.” Sachi’s eyes weren’t visible behind her sunglasses and under the shade from the visor of the cap she wore. “Feel like talking?”

  “Didn’t sleep well last night.” They stood on station eight that Tuesday morning, and Brita had just shot an eleven for the first round of the day. She broke open her Baikal over-under twelve-gauge shotgun and caught the spent shell before it ejected.

  “Ah. Busy mind?”

  “You could say that, yeah. Nightmares.”

  Sachi removed her sunglasses. “Those are a freaking bitch, let me tell you what. I still have them, sometimes. Not only from recent events, either.”

  Brita balanced the shotgun on her shoulder. “How do you handle it when it happens?”

  Sachi shrugged. “Power through it, a lot of the time. I have a feeling you’re a lot like me. The ‘suck it up and keep it quiet’ type. Not wanting to ‘burden’ anyone with what’s buzzing in your brain. Amiright?”

  Brita nodded.

  “Sometimes, that’s not healthy. Actually, it’s never healthy. It’s a pretzel kind of logic, all twisted up. Even I’ll reluctantly admit that. The only way I get through it is I have to talk it out, with my guys, or with one of a few trusted friends I know who won’t freak out.”

  “Shrink?”

  “Nah, never found one I quite fit with. At least, not one who didn’t want to drug me into a haze. I don’t like drugs. I hate taking them. Dulls my senses, you know?”

  “For shooting?”

  Sachi grinned. “Well for that, too. I meant for my day job. But don’t let my opinions on that sway you away from one. Find someone who works well with you. That just doesn’t happen to be my particular path.”

  Brita wasn’t a particularly spiritual person one way or another despite being raised Episcopalian. She knew Sachi’s “day job” was a Tarot card reader for a New Age shop in Brooksville, and part-time paranormal investigator for them as well.

  Brita didn’t care about that, though. She wasn’t there to see Sachi for that, she was there to learn how to shoot skeet, and the woman was demonstrably excellent at that skill.

  And Sachi never tried to push her “woo-woo” on Brita. The only reason Brita knew that about her in the first place was that Sachi included it as part of their introductory talk in the name of full disclosure.

  Brita didn’t care if Sachi worshipped the Flying Spaghetti Monster, as long as she was a decent person and could teach her how to shoot skeet.

  She also didn’t care that Sachi lived with not one, but two guys, even if she couldn’t explain to Sachi why that wasn’t a problem for her without outing people from the Suncoast Society.

  “You want to rest for a few minutes, pretend that massacre never happened, and then start over as if it was your first round?”

  Brita gratefully nodded. “Please?”

  They headed for the picnic table shaded by a small pavilion. There, Brita closed her shotgun and stood it in the rack before emptying the spent shells from her vest pocket into the garbage can.

  “You ever think about reloading?” Sachi asked. “It’s kind of Zen. I can kill three hours before I even realize it. You just get into a rhythm and go to town.”

  “I think you’re trying to sell me Bob’s reloader rig he has up in the office.”

  Sachi grinned. “Well, can’t blame me for trying.” It faded. “But in all seriousness, it is therapeutic.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Brita had given it some thought in the past but had never seriously indulged in more than thinking about it. Some days her pain levels were good enough she could clean her house.

  Some days were so bad that simply getting out of bed proved problematic. On those days, especially on days she had lessons scheduled, she had to fall back on heavier doses of over-the-counter pain meds and power through it, knowing she’d doubly pay for her overexertion the next day.

  Which was why she never scheduled two days of lessons in a row, and never scheduled lessons for the day before or after a skeet lesson.

  Giving up her skeet sessions were not an option. Next to what she and Ethan were exploring in the bedroom, or her personal shooting at the range, skeet was the next best thing to shutting down her brain.

  Plus Sachi was a hoot.

  Reloading, however, might be more of an energy taxer than it was worth. Someone like Sachi went through far more shells than she did in a given month. It was likely very economical for her.

  “I don’t mind giving you a private viewing of what it’d be like,” Sachi offered, her tone more serious now. “I have one like his. A reloader, that is. It’s not physically hard to use, either.”

  “Let me think about it. If I miss out, I miss out. I’m finally starting to feel like maybe I’m getting my groove back after a couple of years of hellish recovery.”

  “Ah. I can understand that. How’s your back?”

  “More my shoulder. My back doesn’t bother me so much when I shoot, but my right shoulder sometimes gives me damn fits.”

  “It sucked getting shot in my shoulder,” Sachi said. “Fucker couldn’t have gotten me in the leg or the ass. Noooo. Had to shoot me in my damn shoulder.” She snorted. “Bastard. I couldn’t shoot for a few weeks.”

  Brita couldn’t help but smile at the woman’s tenacity. Not many civilians who’d never been in the military or law enforcement could approach such an injury with that particular point of view.

  After a trip to the bathroom and a bottle of water, Brita cleared her mind and tried again.

  When Brita ended the round by dusting high house eight, Sachi smiled and held her hand out for a fist bump. “That’s better. Twenty-two is more like you.”

  “Yeah. I was beginning to think I sucked.”

  “We all have days like that. They always pass.”

  Brita was still in search of her first twenty-five, an elusive perfect round, but she’d take a twenty-two compared to her first miserable score.

  They headed back to the shelter s
o Brita could empty her spent hulls and get another box of ammo.

  “So what are you doing for the rest of the day once you leave here?” Sachi asked to make conversation.

  “Recovering.” Brita fished the last of the spent hulls out of her vest pocket and dumped them into the garbage. “I’m usually achy, between the shooting and the driving.” After dumping a fresh box of shells into her vest pocket, she checked her phone.

  No messages, but she had an e-mail from Gabe.

  Let me know what days work best for you and I’ll check my schedule. — Gabe.

  Followed by a list of links to items from Amazon.

  Yarn, crochet hooks, and a couple of other items.

  After shooting a twenty-three for her third round, and with her shoulder now throbbing, Brita called it a morning and packed up her stuff. She pulled through a fast food restaurant before getting on I-75 to head south, and while sitting in their parking lot to eat, she looked over the supplies list again.

  Clicking on the links brought up her Amazon app on her phone, so she added all of the items to her shopping cart and hit the buy now button.

  Her preferred shopping method, when she could utilize it. It meant no fighting her way through a crowded store.

  No driving.

  No thinking.

  No stress.

  She replied to the e-mail.

  Thanks, got them ordered. I’m free next Tuesday and Thursday.

  And she included her address and phone numbers.

  Setting her phone aside, Brita finally hit the Interstate to head home to Sarasota. To her, a morning shooting with Sachi was way better than any session with a shrink could have been. Far more productive, as far as she was concerned.

  For tonight, Brita knew she’d sleep like the dead, between exhaustion and the cathartic effect of sending the majority of seventy-five clay disks to their demise with lead shot.

  And Ethan was sleeping over that night. He would bring dinner home with him.

  She always slept better with him, regardless of which bed they slept in. Lately, she’d realized she slept just as good in his bed as she did her own.

  I should talk to him.

  Logic and love and every cell in her body told her that moving forward with him, to whatever the next step was, should happen.

  Yet…

  Not even her parents knew how bad things had been for her with her ex in high school. How he’d threatened to kill their pets and make false sexual harassment claims against her dad, which could have ruined his Air Force career.

  Trying to get away from him, at the time, had felt helpless, hopeless. If she’d told anyone what she was going through, he would have denied it and made her look crazy, all the while likely going through with at least some of his threats.

  Now, as an adult looking back, she realized she should have immediately told her parents what was going on. But she’d been so deeply bamboozled by him and felt that she had no one to turn to that she’d tried to shoulder the burden on her own.

  Pretzel logic.

  And that experience had colored every romantic relationship she’d had since then.

  Including the one she had with Ethan.

  Usually, guys couldn’t put up with her long enough to see the real her.

  Until Ethan.

  When she took the Fruitville Road exit, she realized she’d automatically selected the lane that would take her on to Ethan’s house, instead of sliding all the way over to the left to make her turn south toward her condo complex.

  Maybe I need a dog.

  She’d been thinking more and more about that lately, too. She’d resisted getting pets for years, first because of being in the military, then college, then due to her work.

  All excuses, valid or not, to hide the truth, that she feared anyone being able to have emotional leverage over her.

  Except…Ethan wasn’t that kind of guy.

  Ethan loved animals and had been all for her adopting a dog when she’d mentioned it a few months earlier when they happened to see an adoption fair at a local shopping mall one Saturday when they were out. Not to mention he’d brought it up before that.

  Several times.

  Like every other emotional decision in her adult life, she was taking her sweet time…

  At about the same rate frozen molasses flowed uphill.

  * * * *

  Before Ethan left work, he texted Brita to confirm her order. Tonight was Chinese, and she usually ordered the same thing nearly every time. On the odd night, she might change her mind.

  Hence the text.

  No change tonight.

  While sitting in his car and waiting for the interior to cool down, he phoned the order in. If traffic held, he’d arrive just as their order was being bagged and set on the counter to await him. Today had been skeet, meaning Brita would likely be in a cuddly, tired, achy mood tonight. Couch time, then snuggling in bed.

  Fine with him.

  Any time he spent with her was welcomed time.

  When he arrived at her condo, he let himself in and set his overnight bag down in the foyer before heading for the kitchen. “It’s me,” he called out.

  “Okay.”

  He hesitated, hearing the exhaustion in her voice. Instead of unpacking their food, he set the bag on the counter and went in search of her. He found her in the spare bedroom where their shared workbench was also their gun cleaning station, sitting at it with her Baikal completely disassembled. She’d opened the bedroom window and turned on the ceiling fan for ventilation.

  At his house, they used the bench in his garage, where he had a custom-installed ventilation hood and fan over it to suck away fumes.

  He walked over and kissed her hello. “Baby, I thought you were supposed to wait and let me help you with that.”

  “I got it apart and cleaned and then my brain stopped working.”

  She sounded dejected.

  “I brought our dinner. Let’s eat, and I’ll put it back together for you after we finish.”

  He’d never shot skeet with her, or been able to go with her to watch her shoot, since he worked weekdays. But he’d helped her break down and reassemble the gun dozens of times and knew its workings intimately. She’d even pulled the trigger mechanism out of the stock, something they didn’t usually do.

  She seemed to read his mind as she watched him. “I looked at my notebook and realized I hadn’t done a full break-down in over six months.”

  Ah.

  “This can wait. It’s not going anywhere. Going to go Dommy on you, now, baby. Let’s eat.” He helped her up from the padded barstool and herded her into the guest bathroom to wash her hands.

  “Maybe I like when you go Dommy on me sometimes.” She stared up into his eyes.

  Her sweet brown gaze always melted him and he’d be a damned liar to deny it. “Yeah?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He gently kissed her. “Gonna let your big, bad Dom put your gun back together for you after dinner?”

  She smiled, but he saw the pain in it, the physical pain she tried to mask from him. And he realized her eyes were a little red, like maybe she’d cried before he got home.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He wondered exactly how long she’d sat there at the bench, frustrated at herself, at her body, and too proud to set the gun aside and just wait for him.

  Beating herself up. Twisting her guts into knots because she saw herself as some sort of burden to him, when that couldn’t be any farther from the truth.

  He carefully caught her hands, kissed them, then pressed them to his chest. “You realize I love doing stuff for you, right? That’s kind of the deal. Makes me feel good. Makes me feel like your hero. Sometimes I get frustrated at you for not letting me do more.”

  “I’m no mooch.”

  “I get that. No one could ever accuse you of that, either. But I can’t take your pain away. I will forever feel guilty that I didn’t shoot that fucker sooner. So while you’re trying to twist yourself int
o knots over everyone else, just remember that this guy, right here in front of you? He loves you. Putting your gun together for you? That’s easy.” He drew her in for a kiss. “Especially when I want to keep doing things for you for the rest of our lives.”

  Her gaze seemed to be searching his face, and for a long moment, she didn’t reply. “What if this is as good as I ever get? For the rest of my life, what if this is as ‘healed’ as I’ll ever be?”

  “You’re alive, and I love you.”

  When she tried to tug her right hand free, he released it. She stroked his cheek, still staring into his eyes. “So I have a Dommy boyfriend, huh?” she eventually said.

  He wanted to throw back his head and howl with success, or pick her up and swing her around, crush her in a bear hug.

  Keeping all those reactions internal, he instead leaned in and traced her lips with the tip of his tongue, lightly, until a soft sigh escaped her and her lips parted for him. Then he closed the kiss, taking his time, waiting for the press of her body against his before he cupped her ass with his hands.

  “You have a very Dommy boyfriend, baby,” he said when he finally ended their kiss. “A very Dommy boyfriend who loves meepin’ or sleepin’ with you every night, whatever you feel like.”

  She caught her lower lip under her teeth for a moment, and a flash of fear rippled through him that maybe he’d miscalculated and stepped a hair too far over the line instead of pressing right up against it.

  He shouldn’t have doubted her. “Maybe I want my very Dommy boyfriend meepin’ and sleepin’ with me every night.”

  It felt like he couldn’t breathe, like they stood at the edge of a cliff.

  Boyfriend.

  She’d said it.

  Not just boyfriend, but Dommy boyfriend.

  She didn’t continue, staring up into his eyes.

  Finally, he had to say it. “You tell me.”

  Her gaze drifted away from his face, but he waited her out. Eventually, she stared up into his eyes again. “Let’s start talking about moving in together. Permanently. I liked your idea of me renting this place to snowbirds instead of selling it outright.”