Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(50)

When his smile broadened and morphed into a look that said touché, she decided maybe he wasn’t a total knob, so she smiled.

His arms still around her, Badger looked over her head. “Dad, I got club stuff. Can you take Adrienne back to the B&B for me?”

“Sure, son. You do what you need to do.”

Badger put his hands around her face. “Sorry, babe. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, and I’ll explain what I can, okay?”

“Okay.” He took her hand, and Adrienne and the entire Ness family walked through the Spring Fest grounds toward the parking lot.

Darlene drove an ancient Suburban, and they were headed to it when Badger pulled up to a hard stop, yanking on Adrienne’s hand to get her to do the same. She’d let her mind wander a little, running over the tension of the day, and his sudden, forceful movements startled her.

“Fuck.”

She looked up and saw him staring across the lot, so she followed his eyes and saw a police car—or, she guessed, it would be the Sheriff out here, not the police—pulling into the field that was a makeshift parking lot.

Again, Badger said, “Fuck.” Then he turned to his dad. “You guys get moving.” With a quick kiss to Adrienne’s head, he headed back, walking quickly, toward to heart of the fair, and, she assumed, the Horde.



oOo



Badger wasn’t home for hours. When he finally came in, he came right to her, and she knew what he needed. He wrapped her up tight and lifted her off the floor, his face buried in her hair where it lay on her shoulder. For a moment, he simply held her, and she him. She knew not to question him. He would talk when he was ready. In the meantime, she could feel the tension in his muscles, the way they vibrated under his skin, and she hooked her legs around his hips, giving him permission.

When she did, he relaxed a little and carried her to their nest. Since she’d already been dressed in what passed for her pajamas—a pair of Badger’s boxers and a plain cotton camisole—he had her undressed in seconds. She lay and watched him take his clothes off, too. He had a little ritual, even when he was hot and horny like this. He folded his kutte and laid it on the back of the loveseat. He pulled off his boots and set them neatly next to the love seat, their toes tucked underneath. He took his socks off, then his jeans and his boxers. His t-shirt he always left for last. She’d never asked why, but she didn’t think she had to. It was his chest. Even now, after weeks—months—of being together, even though she’d caressed and kissed it, had rubbed into it the special cream Tasha gave him to keep the scar as supple as possible, even though she’d lain sleeping on it, her cheek on the uneven flesh, even so, he had a small, lingering shyness about it, and his shirt was always the last thing he took off.

When he, too, was naked, he came down to the floor and lay on her, his hard length insistent against her stomach and side. Wet and ready as soon as he’d picked her up, she tried to shift so that he was positioned to enter her, but he stopped her with a hand on her hip.

“Hold on, babe. I need more than a fast f*ck.”

She raised her eyebrows. A ‘fast f*ck’ is usually exactly what he needed when he came in and grabbed her right away. “What do you need?”

“I need to give you what you need.” He brushed her nose with his, then brushed his beard over her cheek. “I need to make you come and come. I need to feel you need it. I need you to need me. What I do to you.”

Her cheeks flamed, which sucked. She hated getting blushy. But she was a little embarrassed. They hadn’t done much talking during sex, other than random cries of “Yes!,” or “Oh, God!,” or whatever.

Badger was even quieter than she was, usually, his own sounds little more than grunts and groans. Not that those weren’t outrageously sexy. He’d never talked like this, though. And she had no idea what she’d even say if he wanted her to.

It wasn’t the idea of sexy talk that embarrassed her nearly so much as the way her entire lower half had clenched hard at his voice, low and raspy with desire, saying words like that. She could feel wet trickles moving over her folds as she lay under him. He must have felt it, too, on his leg, because he grinned and pushed a hand between them, sliding over her. She gasped and clenched again.

“Yeah. That’s what I need. Okay?”

Not knowing quite what she was agreeing to, Adrienne nodded.

He flicked one finger over her clit, making her whine. “That feel good?”

She nodded.

“Tell me, babe. Tell me how it feels.”

He did want sexy talk. She didn’t know what to do. She was twenty-four years old, and she might as well have been ten years younger, for all she knew about this stuff. How lame was it to have been a twenty-four-year-old virgin?

Plenty lame. She knew that for a fact. Despite what she’d wanted with Badger, she’d tried to be with other guys. She’d had boyfriends, who thought her reserve was mysterious, or a challenge, or just cute.

And she’d never overtly intended to—what, save herself?—for Badger. She wasn’t that stupid. She’d practically thrown herself at him for the first couple of years. Scratch that—there was no ‘practically’ about it. She’d thrown herself right at him, and he’d set her aside time and again. So she’d intended to find somebody else. And she’d thought she had a few times. Until it got to the getting squelchy part of the relationship, and she’d freaked every time. And every time, she’d been dumped on the spot or shortly thereafter. Guys did not like to be told no when they’d gotten their hands in a girl’s pants. Apparently, that was a deal-breaker. At least no one had ever tried to force her. One had tried to persuade her a bit vigorously. That had been a dumping-on-the-spot.