Cheri on Top (16 page)

Chapter 20

J.J. looked down at their naked toes drawing cirlces in the dark water and sighed. “This whole day has felt like a dream, Cheri.”

“A real good one.”

He felt her nudge closer to his side and rest her head on his shoulder. They were now hip to hip, their arms forming an X behind each other’s backs, just like they used to do back in school. The moon was up, a sliver above the trees, but it was enough to light up each other’s faces.

“I heard you paid a visit to the Wimbley Real Estate offices this morning,” J.J. said.

“How’d you hear that?”

He laughed. “You can’t be serious. This is Bigler, sweetheart.”

“Hmmph.”

“Not going to tell me what transpired?”

“Just more of the same ugly stuff, I’m afraid.” When Cheri looked up into his face, J.J. was startled by the intense sadness he saw in her expression.

“Baby, what—”

She shook her head and looked away. “I confronted her,” Cheri said, her voice barely a whisper, her eyes focused out across the dark lake. “I don’t know what I expected, but all I got was more bullshit about how you failed to live up to your sacred vows.”

J.J. put his beer down on the freshly sawed boards of the dock. “That’s a fair statement.”

“What?” Cheri turned toward him again, her eyes flashing.

“I did fail. Miserably. I stood there like an idiot and said I promised to love and cherish her till death do us part when I knew it was impossible, since I couldn’t even manage it for the ten minutes it took us to get hitched. I never loved Tanyalee. Marrying her was the biggest mistake I ever made—well, second only to sleeping with her without protection.”

Cheri stayed quiet a long moment, looking down at her feet. “Did she tell you she was on the pill?”

J.J. shook his head. “I’m not going there, Cheri. Please don’t ask me to.”

She let go with a suddenly icy laugh. “Well,
she’s
sure as hell not going there, so if you want me to know what happened, if you want me to know the truth, you are the only way I’m going to get it.”

“I won’t ruin your relationshp with your sister. It’s between the two of you.”

He watched Cheri shake her head. “It’s already ruined, J.J. She flat-out told me today that she hated me and wished I was dead and that I was to blame for Mama’s and Daddy’s deaths.”

J.J. jerked his head back in horror. That was pure evil, even for Tanyalee. “You know that’s ridiculous, baby.”

Cheri shrugged. “It’s something I’ve always carried around with me. She was just rubbing it in.”

“That’s the craziest shit I’ve ever heard.” J.J. brought his face down close to hers, trying to get her to look him in the eye. “You were seven years old, Cheri. Your parents went to the beach and there was a gas leak in their rental—how in God’s name was that your fault?”

She flashed her eyes at him briefly, then looked away. “I’ve heard it from Viv, too.”

“Heard what? That you were to blame for them dying? Why the
hell
would Viv lay that guilt on a little girl? You’ve got to be wrong about that.”

Cheri shook her head, looking off across the lake. “The night after the funeral, I snuck down to eavesdrop on the grown-ups. Viv, Granddaddy, and Purnell were sitting in the parlor. Viv said it. I heard her. She said that Mama and Daddy needed to get away from me and Tanyalee because we fought so much, because I was such a belligerent and stubborn little girl who’d always resented sweet little Taffy, and the constant yelling and fussing was enough to drive my parents crazy.”

J.J. held his breath. All he could think was,
Oh, God, no.

“Viv said that all my parents wanted was a moment’s peace.” Cheri paused, swallowing hard. “And Purnell … Purnell said, ‘They got it, the poor souls.’”

J.J. brought his arm up around her shoulder, but Cheri remained stiff against him. “That was an incredibly insensitive and stupid thing to say,” he whispered. “Sometimes people lash out in their grief, and don’t realize what they’re doing. I’m so damn sorry you heard that.”

They sat quietly for a moment, their toes still circling in the water. Eventually, he felt Cheri’s breathing slow.

“That’s not the only thing Tanyalee told me today, J.J. She warned me that you would turn on me one day and she hoped that God had mercy on me when it happened.”

J.J. shook his head. “Of course she did.”

“Tanyalee told me she had a miscarriage and that was all she’d say.”

Cheri looked up at him again, her face a mask of resigned sadness. “I want to know what’s possible for you and me in the future, but I have to know the truth about the past first. You’re the only place I can go to get it.”

J.J. sat perfectly still for many long seconds, until he knew he had no choice. Cheri deserved the truth. “Yes, Tanyalee told me she was on the pill. She miscarried a few weeks after the wedding but it slipped her mind to mention it to me. I only found out because her doctor’s office left a message on the answering machine.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“So I went looking for her. With a heads-up from Turner, I tracked her down at the Tip-Top Motel.”

“Where?”
Cheri’s eyes squinted in disbelief.

“Room 34 to be exact. With some guy.”

“Huh?”

J.J. tilted his head back and laughed. “That’s what I said.” His laughter mellowed into a sigh. “Yeah. Ugly, ugly, ugly. She never admitted it, but I’m pretty sure she was trying to get pregnant again real quick, thinking I wouldn’t notice it was the world’s first twelve-month human gestation.”

Cheri tilted her head and stared at him, her nose and mouth scrunched up. It made him chuckle. He kissed her wrinkled nose. “The answer to your unspoken question is no—we never had sex after that first time, so she had to go elsewhere for what she wanted. I couldn’t do it, Cheri. I didn’t love her—I didn’t even like her. But, I gotta admit, there was a part of me that…”

J.J. managed to stop himself, but knew he’d gone too far, and now Cheri was staring at him. She expected him to finish his thought. “Part of me wanted to get you out of my system, I guess. After what happened in Florida, I knew I’d be dead to you, that this town would be dead to you. I wanted to burn it all away.”

She raised a single eyebrow at him.

“I think I saw those months with Tanyalee as a way to punish myself.”

“For what exactly?”

“For ruining my chance with you—forever.”

J.J. gasped when Cheri slipped her small hand over his. Her skin was so smooth and warm. The delicate bones of her hands wrapped around him like a velvety ribbon, and her thumb rubbed the top of his wrist. “But she trapped you, Jay. She wanted revenge against me. You were just caught in the middle.”

“I wasn’t exactly a victim,” he said softly. “It was my decision to sleep with her in the first place. My penis. My mistake. My responsibility.”

With his free hand he reached over and touched the side of her face. He smiled at the smear of eggshell white that went across her cheek like war paint. Then he ran his hand over her paint-speckled hair.

“What?” she asked, slowly returning his smile.

“You’re covered in paint.”

“Really? Well, so are you. Here, let me help you clean up a little.”

Cheri was suddenly on his lap, her arms around his neck and her lips opening to his. J.J. grabbed her, the need in him immediate and fierce—until he felt himself falling straight over the edge of the dock and into the water.

“Hey—” The cold slapped him and he surfaced with the sound of Cheri’s laughter ringing in his ears. She was already swimming away, though she was laughing too hard to make headway with her sloppy strokes.

“Y’all in a load of trouble now, girl,” he said, heading after her.

“No!” she shrieked. “Stay away!”

A few loons decided to join in her protest.

“You want to play, do you?” As J.J. closed in on her, Cheri began kicking her feet hard and fast, shooting water into his face.

“No! Stop!” She was laughing so hard she could barely get the words out.

J.J. was suddenly aware that all this noise was the most beautiful music he’d ever heard, a crazy cacophony of loons, laughter, and lake water. He began laughing, too, gasping for breath as he reached one of her flipping feet.

“Gotcha!” He yanked her toward him and her sweet ass slammed into his belly. J.J. flipped her over and got an arm under her back, reached his feet down into the muddy lake bottom for leverage and began hauling her out through the reeds.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, her fingers already tearing at his shirt buttons.

“Somewhere warmer and drier.”

“What y’all fixin’ to do with me?” When J.J. saw the mischievousness in her eyes, his heart nearly broke apart. Here she was—tight in his arms, joy in her heart, her fingers doing their best to get his clothes off—and he wasn’t sure he could handle this much luck. He hadn’t felt this hopeful since the day he stood on her front porch in Tampa, and she’d answered the door, smiled, and threw her arms around him. “Ain’t made up my mind yet, sugar,” he said. “You got any ideas?”

“Yeah, I got a few,” she said, just before she put her hot lips on his cold, wet chest, and began kissing down his sternum, her tongue flicking at his ball bearing of a nipple until bolts of pleasure shot through his boxers.

J.J.’s feet hit hard ground and they cleared the water without a moment to spare. His knees were on the edge of giving out, not because the woman in his arms was a burden—Cheri barely weighed anything—but because his dick was getting so hard he had forgotten how to put one foot in front of the other.

“I thought maybe we could take a shower together,” she said, biting down on his other nipple. “The grout’s dry.”

“Oh, fuck, that’s the best grout-related news I’ve ever heard.”

She giggled, and the second her lips left his flesh he pulled her higher and clamped his mouth on hers as they tackled the front steps.

“Keet!”

The squirrel had returned to lodge her most recent complaint with the landlord. J.J. paused the kiss long enough to address her. “Now you just hush for once, you bossy thing. This is none of y’all’s business.”

He placed Cheri down on the porch and they both began ripping their sopping wet clothes off their bodies. As he peeled everything off, J.J. was suddenly relieved that he’d left his wallet, phone, and keys inside the cottage before they’d gone to the dock.

Moments later, he was still struggling with his boots and socks as he watched Cheri scurry through the living room, bare-ass naked, past the ugly green couch under a clear plastic drop cloth, and down the hall to the bathroom. The vision of her pink and perfect little body made his hands shake, which only added to the frustration with his wet bootlaces. He grabbed the wet condoms from his jeans pocket, and ran through the living room, water flinging with every step.

*   *   *

The feel of J.J.’s solid flesh under her soapy fingers was glorious. The sensation of hot water pounding onto their cold skin made her shiver with pleasure. The erection pressing up against her belly had her dizzy with lust. It had been many months since she’d been with a man, but it had been many long years since she’d been with J.J., and she had no intention of waiting a second longer.

“Have you figured out what you’re going to do with me?” she teased him.

“Hell, yes,” J.J. said. “I’m gonna make up for lost time, Cheri. I’m gonna make up for every month that went by that I didn’t have you to laugh with and love and make hot and wild love to.”

“That sounds like a big job.”

“Fortunately, I have everything I need.”

“Yes, you do,” she said.

J.J.’s hands slid up and down the sides of her body. His palms cupped her ass, pressed into her hips, brushed down her thighs and up again. She was well aware how hungry he was for her—he was eating her up with his hands, devouring her with his eyes, consuming her with his lips.

“I want you bad, Cheri.”

“I want you, J.J.” Her pussy throbbed. She felt like she was going to come just by being in close proximity to the heat and desire shooting off his body.

“Tell me,” he growled into her ear.

“I always have. I always will.”

“What? You
what
?”

“I love you, J.J.”

He moaned into her mouth as he kissed her. She threw a thigh up around his hip. After many long moments of that kiss—building up, mouths on fire with the taste of each other, tongues pushing and teeth nipping—the mood switched. The kiss slowed. The touch was loving and gentle.

J.J. pushed her away slightly, then spun her around so that her back faced him, and pressed her shoulders down. Cheri gasped as she felt him spread her thighs apart with his knees. She slapped her hands against the tile wall, and shuddered with pleasure at the feel of his hands sliding down the back of her legs. He was kneeling behind her …

The instant his hot tongue slid between her pussy lips, she came, bucking and moaning and pressing back against his mouth. It was too much! Too fast! She laughed at herself at the crazy pace of this! It usually took her a long time and lots of concentrated attention to get her to orgasm.

With J.J., it was nearly automatic.

He chuckled softly, his mouth still pressed to her sex, the vibration tickling her as she came down from the orgasm. Slowly, he removed his lips from her, slid his hands up her legs and stood, reaching over her to turn off the water. He threw the shower curtain open and grabbed a towel, helping Cheri to stand upright as he dried her off, alternating swipes of the soft towel with soft kisses. She did the same for him, and then he picked her up and carried her across the hall into the bedroom.

Dark. Silent. Peaceful. No curtains on the windows. No neighbors. Not a stitch of clothing between them. J.J. laid Cheri down on her back and got up on top of her. He was there, so solid, so warm, so loving and gentle, as he scooped her into his arms.

“Don’t take yourself away from me again, Cheri. Please don’t do it.”

She shook her head, tears welling in her eyes, overwhelmed by the feel of this moment. Somehow she’d come full circle in the span of a week—home, love, a place in the world, the right man to belong to. She opened her legs to J.J., as if she were opening herself up to the possibility of being completely alive, completely present. Her heart felt so full she thought it might burst at the seams.