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  “How many kids do they have in there?” I asked.

  “They have one of their own. Plus mine. Possibly some of the other kids that live here. And the brother’s kid stays over a lot too. So there’s really no telling,” he explained, watching as the door knob turned and a messy faced little girl with dirty blonde hair stood naked in all her glory.

  “Hello, Harleigh Belle. Where’s your momma?” Luke asked, apparently not surprised by the nakedness.

  “She’s cleaning up the kitchen. We had homemade funnel cakes!” Harleigh Belle screeched. “And I licked the egg beaters. Momma says I was lucky that she unplugged them before I got a hold of them. Daddy’s changing his pants because…”

  Her tirade was cut off by a small blonde woman with purple highlights that came up behind Harleigh, covering Harleigh’s mouth with her hand.

  “Hey, Luke. You’re early,” she said before her eyes turned on me.

  Then I watched in fascination as her eyes lit with sudden alertness and intrigue. “Hi, I’m Payton. Who’re you?”

  Luke shook his head, but before he could answer, Katerina launched herself from around Payton and hurdled into her father.

  “Daddy!” She exclaimed

  Luke picked her up and wrapped his large arms around her, smiling softly as Katy wrapped her arms around her father’s neck.

  Turning back to Payton, I extended my hand and said, “I’m Reese. It’s nice to meet you, Payton.”

  She shook my hand quickly and stepped back, allowing us inside. “Sorry it’s such a mess. We made funnel cakes for breakfast.”

  I smiled triumphantly up at Luke, then turned to survey the room.

  Amazingly, it didn’t look like a duplex from the inside. It looked like a normal house.

  The walls were painted a beige color, and a large deer head hung on the wall next to a family portrait of a man, woman, and tiny infant.

  “Oh, wow. She’s tiny!” I exclaimed.

  Payton walked over to the picture and smiled fondly. “Yeah, Harleigh was born premature. She weighed in at one pound and fourteen ounces when she was born at twenty six weeks.”

  My mouth fell open in surprise. “Holy sh-er…crap. Did you get one of those pictures with her hand through your wedding ring? When I was doing clinicals during nursing school, we had a baby that was born at twenty two weeks gestation, and they took a picture with the mother’s wedding band around her ankle.”

  She nodded and walked over to a collage of pictures over the fireplace, one of which contained a picture of a tiny hand clutching her father’s wedding band.

  The other showed her in a Route 44 Sonic cup.

  “That’s adorable,” I said. “How long was she in the NICU for?”

  “Seventy seven days,” I heard said from behind me.

  I turned to see a large blonde man with a scar running down the middle of his forehead standing directly behind me, standing next to Luke. He had a large German Shepherd leaning against one leg, and a little girl hanging on the other.

  He was a big man, too. Nearly Luke’s size but not quite. Smaller and more compact. About two or three inches shorter than Luke’s height of six foot three.

  I wonder if he ever gets called Harry Potter with that wicked looking scar down his forehead. Would he bonk me on the head with his ham hock fist if I said it?

  My mouth twitched, and his eyes narrowed. Almost as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.

  I pressed my lips together to keep the words from slipping out.

  I seriously had no control sometimes.

  “Max, this is Reese. Reese, Max,” Luke introduced us.

  I walked forward and extended my hand to him. “It’s nice to meet you, Harry.”

  Payton burst out laughing, and Max narrowed his eyes at me again.

  My hand covered my mouth before he could return the shake. “I’m so sorry!”

  Luke chuckled softly. “Reese.”

  “Nurse Doherty is a nurse at my school. She shot me in the leg at school two weeks ago,” Katy said proudly.

  All eyes turned to me and I blushed. “I didn’t shoot her in the leg, per se. I gave her the epinephrine out of her pen.”

  Payton nodded. “I’ve never had to do that in my years as a nurse. Not once. That’s pretty impressive.”

  Payton gestured to the couch that was covered in blankets and stuffed animals, and I sat.

  “I wouldn’t say I wasn’t freaked out. I’d never done it either, and I’ve been a nurse for six years now,” I expounded.

  She nodded. “When Harleigh was a baby they thought she was allergic to cats, but we found out that she had a mild form of asthma after further testing. Scared the crap out of us when the talk of anaphylaxis and EpiPens was brought up.”

  “My daughter, Rowen, had an allergic reaction to some antibiotics when she was two. I, being a nurse and all, knew what was going on as soon as it happened. That didn’t make it any easier for me to handle, though. I just knew more of what could possibly go wrong if it got any worse than the large rash that spread all over her body. Luckily, it only gave her hives and stopped there,” I said, leaning back until my head rested against the couch.

  I heard the front door close, seeing that the two men, as well as the children, were no longer in the room.

  When I looked back, I saw Payton’s eyes positively gleaming with excitement. “So…tell me how y’all met. Is he good in bed?”

  ***

  “Thank you for the ride,” I said softly, standing on the top step of my front porch.

  He shrugged. “It’s the least I could do since you enlightened me to the error of my ways.”

  I giggled. Payton and I had walked out nearly an hour after the two men had left, and got an ear full of Luke telling Max how funnel cake wasn’t an ‘adequate breakfast food.’

  Payton and I had had a good laugh about Luke’s expectation of his child not eating junk food when he wasn’t around. In fact, it was quite comical to see how surprised he’d been at hearing Katy tell him about how good the funnel cakes were. And what type of donut was her favorite, as well as favoring Twinkies over Hostess cupcakes.

  “Oh, the pleasure was all mine,” I informed him.

  Luke leaned down for a kiss, brushing his lips across mine twice before we heard the sound of a diesel truck pulling into my driveway.

  Of course that’d be when Weston came.

  Of, fucking, course.

  Chapter 13

  If you open your heart to a man, he’ll probably try to stick his dick in there, too.

  -Reese to Tru

  Reese

  November- The week before Thanksgiving

  “Hello?” I snapped angrily into the phone.

  “What’s wrong?” Luke asked as soon as I answered.

  I sighed. “Nothing. Listen, I’ve got to go.”

  Silence met my statement, and I knew that lie wasn’t going to go over well with him, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

  I was pissed.

  So pissed, in fact, that I was ready to punch something.

  Anything.

  I’d started my day out sick. As I had for the last eight days. Luckily, I was at the end of my illness.

  Sadly, I still had no energy to deal with people’s shit.

  I had the flu at the worst possible time. This was the week that I usually started planning my Thanksgiving, but I couldn’t do a single plan when I could barely hold open my eyes.

  My mom was still on the road to recovery with after her treatments, so I was the last person she needed to be around with her compromised immune system. Which meant no help from anyone. Mom, dad, or sister. I suffered alone, none of them even knowing I’d been sick.

  Although, that was the way of life for a single parent, and I was used to it by now.

  So, of course, what better time for me to get the flu?

  Saying that I was no longer ‘sick’ wasn’t really accurate. It just meant that I was no longer running a fever, but still having th
e tiredness and utter lack of desire to move.

  I was glad to finally be able to breathe again. That and sleep without my head pounding.

  And bonus! Rowen had one more day of school until she was out for break.

  Then someone had knocked on my door, and I’d stupidly gotten up to answer it.

  My day had gotten even worse when I’d answered it and found Weston on the front porch.

  The man responsible for making my life a living hell for the past four months.

  At first, it’d only been Weston being Weston.

  Then his wife had gotten into the picture, and that’s when my life had gone from awesome to shit. I’d been high on life after the night I’d spent with Luke. Then, from the moment Luke had left, leaving me to deal with Weston on my own, I’d had nothing but trouble out of him since.

  I’d started getting anonymous reports about a week later from CPS about my daughter having bruises on her arms and legs from where I’d supposedly ‘beaten’ her with a broom stick.

  The bruises had morphed into burns from where I’d held her hands over burners on the stove when she wouldn’t listen. Or stuck her feet into hot, boiling water.

  The week after the second report to CPS, Weston and his wife, Anita, moved to Kilgore to ‘be closer to their daughter.’

  I’d hated Anita as soon as I’d met her.

  She was everything that I wasn’t. And a bitch to boot.

  A catty bitch that I didn’t want anywhere near my daughter.

  And oh, my God, could she play up the pregnancy card. The more I saw her, the meaner and meaner she got.

  I knew she was the one behind the false allegations to CPS.

  That was how I’d gotten to know Shiloh. Shiloh was married to one of Luke’s fellow officers, James.

  She’d assured me that the false allegations were being investigated, but that still didn’t stop the threats from coming.

  One good thing that had come from them moving closer was Weston not pursuing full custody. He’d been happy with having her on his weekends, and I’d been grateful.

  I didn’t want my little girl to be in the middle of a tug-a-war match between us. Especially not when she was finally getting to be around her father more, like she wanted.

  One good thing to come out of it all was Luke and I getting closer.

  He’d been my rock over these past four months.

  The shoulder I cried on each time a new false report on me came in; not to mention a great support system.

  And Rowen loved him.

  However, right now, I just wanted to lay here and wallow.

  Then, like the pain in the ass cop that he was, he called back.

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Reese,” he said quietly.

  Almost too quiet.

  “Just…not over the phone. I’ll tell you. I promise. I just don’t want to talk about it over the phone,” I said hesitantly.

  “Fine, I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said, and before I could tell him no, he was gone, and I had the sound of dead air in my ear to prove it.

  Fuck.

  My eyes closed in exhaustion, and the next thing I knew, I was being woken up by a large, warm body sliding into the bed behind me.

  Luke felt divine.

  I was freezing my ass off, and his body was like a large, not-so-compact, space heater that fit the contours of my body perfectly.

  As always, anytime his body was close to mine, especially skin to skin, my body started to respond.

  It didn’t care that I was tired.

  “You’ll get sick,” I muttered sleepily.

  That’d been my argument all week to keep him away from me.

  At first I hadn’t even told him I was sick. I was too sick to talk on the phone. The only strength I found in the past eight days was to wake up enough to get Rowen off and on the bus, feed her dinner, and get her to bed.

  It wasn’t until the fifth day that Luke had showed up on my doorstep.

  He’d been angry that I wasn’t returning his calls, thinking I was running. Of course, I hadn’t been, but he hadn’t known that.

  When he’d seen me, though, he’d understood.

  He’d left me alone, reluctantly, seeing the merit of not getting sick himself.

  Now, though, my reprieve was over.

  He chuckled, pressing his hard cock up against my ass.

  “No I won’t. You’re not breathing on me,” he teased. “There doesn’t have to be any kissing involved. I can’t get sick from fucking you. I’ll do you from behind. I won’t be breathing in anything contagious.”

  I wanted to laugh, but I was too tired. Not tired enough, though, to lay there and let him take me.

  It might be exquisitely nice. In fact, it was sounding better and better by the second.

  “Bodily fluid is bodily fluid,” I mumbled.

  His hard cock was freed from the confines of his underwear with deft movements on his part, and he started sawing it in between my legs, making me squirm.

  We hadn’t had each other in nearly two weeks.

  At first it was because he was busy with work. Then I’d gotten the flu and refused to have him around me to keep him and his daughter healthy.

  Which led us to now.

  Both of us so horny that he was willing to have sex with a sickly woman, and I was willing to let him.

  His hand that’d been at my waist pulled me back until I rested fully against his big body.

  With slow movements, he worked his hand down my belly until he found the edge of my panties. Dipping his fingers just barely underneath the band, he teased the tip of my slit while moving his hard cock between my legs.

  He was so close to touching me where I needed him to the most that I started to rock with his movements, wanting that touch more than I wanted my next breath.

  “Please,” I said roughly.

  I felt him grin against my hair as he finally allowed his fingers to slip between the lips of my sex.

  My hand went down, slipping between my legs so I could massage the head of his cock each time he moved his hips forward.

  With the first touch of my fingers against his length, he hissed in surprised pleasure.

  “God,” he groaned. “This’s been the foulest week and a half I’ve had since I lost my virginity when I was sixteen. Knowing what I have…what I’m missing, has been the worst kind of torture.”

  I smiled and rolled, trying to displace him, but he rolled with me, hovering over me with his hand still in my panties.

  I groaned in defeat. “Just once I could be on top.”

  He bit the back of my neck, causing my sex to quiver in anticipation.

  Being on top was never good for Luke. He liked being in control, and I liked giving it to him. It was only on a rare occasion that I was on top, and even rarer if we finished that way.

  His fingers wiggled, finding their way to my entrance, and I squeezed my eyes shut tightly as one digit slowly penetrated my core.

  I clenched down tight on his finger, quivering in anticipation.

  “Please,” I moaned. “I need it.”

  His teeth skimmed the cord of my throat before biting down softly, giving me just the tiniest hint of pain as he slowly sank his finger inside of me to the webbing.

  “Jesus,” he hissed. “You feel so good.”

  I ground my clit into the heel of his hand, causing him to growl.

  With a few experimental thrusts, he started curling his finger towards my belly button, working that hidden bundle of nerves that he always found with little to no effort.

  I’d not been able to find it in thirty years, and there the man was, finding it every single time he wanted to find it.

  My core started to slowly leak with each movement of his finger.

  Then one finger turned to two, then three, then four.

  I liked it when he pushed my boundaries like this. I was always so tight after we went more than a couple days, but he knew exactly what I needed.


  When he lifted up partially, I pushed my butt in the air and curled my knees up until my ass was nicely displayed for what I knew was yet to come.

  “You’re ready, Reese?” He asked.

  His voice was like velvet against my spine as he worked his way down until he reached the band of my panties.

  Then slowly he started to remove them, bringing them down until they came to a rest at the bend of my knees.

  He growled incoherently as he dragged his tongue up the inside of one thigh, and down the other.

  “You’re pussy looks lonely,” he mused, running his tongue back up my thigh again until it just grazed the outside lips of my sex.

  Frustrated, I let my hand sneak down until I was massaging my clit, so turned on that I didn’t care how I got it, as long as I did.

  He grabbed my hand and pinned it to the bed before I could even get one full rotation in.

  “Ah, ah,” he chided, running his thumb from the top of my perineum down, sinking it fully into my core.

  I squeaked and pushed back, riding his thumb as he help my hand captive.

  I was working myself back against his thumb, burying him as far as I could make him go.

  Like a woman possessed. Searching for only one thing.

  However, just before I could teeter over the edge of the cliff he liked to keep me on, he withdrew, sensing my orgasm’s nearness.

  Then I felt the head of his cock brush against my ass, pushing slightly on my asshole before he reined in his large dick by fisting it roughly.

  Brushing his rough knuckles against my clit, I gasped as he slowly lined the crown of his cock up with my entrance, and sank inside.

  My breath squeaked out of my throat as he stretched me, his large hands gathering up my hair before leaning forward over my back, and fucking in and out of me unhurriedly.

  The feel of his hot, hard, cock moving out of me in slow, delicious movements had me on the verge within a few short thrusts.

  He worked himself in and out, pulling out completely before he sank back inside, stretching my opening each and every time.

  I bit down on my pillow, holding back a scream as his one hand stayed fisted in my hair, keeping my head in its position before running down my back and circling my hip.