Restless Spirit

Published by Accent Press Ltd – 2012
ISBN 9781908262288

Copyright © 2012 Sommer Marsden

The right of Sommer Marsden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Xcite Books, Suite 11769, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY

Acknowledgements

For the readers who love my tainted,
damaged bad boys. Shepherd’s for you.

Prologue

He pulled me to him. Really pulled me. I slid across the crisp white sheets on my belly, randomly grabbing at folds of cloth as Stan pounded into me.

‘Stay with me, Tuesday,’ he said.

I knew he didn’t mean keep up, or come with him, or fuck with the same enthusiasm. He meant don’t go and
don’t go
wasn’t something I could consider.

‘Shut up, Stan.’

I felt it curling like a flame in my belly, my pussy, my thighs. The flashing, pulsing heat that always means I’m going to come. When Stan got behind me and manhandled me, fucked me hard but said sweet words, it always worked me up. When his fingers dug into the meat of my hips and he moved like a man possessed, my entire being seemed to thrum with the pulse in my neck and my belly.

‘Don’t tell me to shut up,’ Stan said, laying a hard blow on the flushed skin of my ass. But it only made it worse. It only made me worse.

I shoved my hand under my body, finding my clit with slippery fingers. I rubbed hard, way harder than I normally would if anyone were watching me. I thrust my body hard against my hand even as I tried to toss myself back against him. Impaling myself on Stan’s big cock. Throwing myself back into his strong hands. The sexual version of the Nestea plunge, just giving up and hurling myself back into empty space. The unknown.

My pussy started to seize up around him and he grunted, ‘Not yet, girl,’ and pulled free of me.

I made a noise like something feral, but the world turned suddenly and he had me on my back. The bulk of him, six foot three-ish of huge man, hovering over me and prying my legs wide. Stan settled himself between my thighs, finding my slippery slit with his fingers and then his cock.

His mouth came down hard and sweet and needy. ‘Don’t leave, Tuesday,’ he said again. ‘Or take me with you.’

‘Shut up, Stan,’ I said again. And to help him shut up, I wrapped my legs around his thick waist, opened my body to him, tightened my cunt muscles and as an afterthought, I turned my head, sucked his big finger into my mouth and licked it like I always licked his cock.

Stan, good old Stan, hissed like a scalded cat and whispered, ‘Christ.’

‘Fuck me, Stan,’ I said this time and he buried his handsome face in my neck and set about doing just that. His stubble scraped my flesh raw, his fingers bruised my skin, his bulk crushed the air out of me and it was perfect.

It was what I needed. To forget and to get lost. To open my body and close my mind and feel Stan’s broad slippery cock ramming into me like he was punishing me, but in the most delicious way, for leaving him.

When he pinned my wrists down by my sides and damn near smashed me flat with his 200 plus pounds. When he sucked the whimpers and the moans off my lips and swallowed them down. When he ground his hips in that way he has and rocked from side to side. That’s when I came.

‘You’re leaving me, Tuesday, aren’t you?’ he said.

‘Honey, we were never really together,’ I told him.

He sighed, his finger running over my dusky nipple making it stand up like some well trained thing.

‘I know.’

‘I know you do.’ I brushed my fingers through his reddish brown hair and he flared his hand over my belly so the muscles twitched.

‘Why, Tues?’

‘I’m too fucking damaged, Stan.’

He didn’t argue. Stan had been fucking me for months. And we’d been having this post coital back and forth for almost as long. He didn’t argue because for the most part, Stan knew I was right.

When he left he threw his final say over his shoulder on his way out the door. ‘You’re not damaged, Tuesday. You’re restless.’

Chapter One

Where I live it seems they frown upon a woman sticking up for herself. My ex, Phil, is the size of a tree. An angry tree. We tangled more than once and at first, the fucking and the danger and the thrill was enough to let me overlook the occasional drunken swing he’d take at me.

When he connected a bit too hard one Saturday night, I went to get checked. The white-haired, kind, emergent care doctor applied a butterfly bandage over my right eye where the skin was split and said softly – almost conversationally – ‘You know, bad things don’t usually get better.’

I’d swallowed hard and made up my mind. Fucking and danger and a tiny bit of thrill wasn’t worth this. Because Phil was just going to get older and broader and angrier, probably. And the hits would get harder and the instances more often.

I went home to pack. He made a deal of it. I dealt with his temper tantrum with calm determination. Phil decided I needed a lesson. He actually said that, ‘You need a lesson, Tuesday fucking Cane.’

I grabbed my baseball bat from grade school and gave him a good whack in the knee. When he didn’t’ stop, I did the other – just to even things up. Then I left.

I’d moved into the local boarding house while I decided what to do. A lot of the locals in our sorta-big-but not-big-enough-to-be-a-real-city-suburbs thought I was a rogue. Thought I’d taken the law into my own hands. Funny, but no one thought twice about Phil waling on me if he saw fit. But what can you do? Most people are fucking crazy.

I hooked up with Stan for several reasons – he was pretty cute, he stuck up for me with the gossiping busy bodies, he was hopelessly gaga over me and he was a wall of man who’d provide good muscle should Phil come sniffing around.

I ended up deciding to drive to Allister Lake and take care of my grandmother who’d been in failing health. She’d been asking forever, I’d been putting it off. I made up my mind to just do it, and then she died. A sudden heart attack had taken that option from me. My nan was gone. Her house was mine. And I had a chance to start a brand new life.

I threw the last of my clothes in the suitcase on my final night at the boarding house and looked up to see Annie in the doorway.

‘So, you’re really going then?’

‘I am.’

‘Stan looked pretty upset.’

‘Stan was pretty upset. But Stan wasn’t my knight in shining armour.’

‘He wanted to be.’ She compressed her already thin mouth into a hot pink lipsticked line to show her disapproval.

‘They all do until they take a swing at you for being too loud or wearing a too-short dress.’ I zipped my bag.

‘They’re not all like that,’ Annie said.

‘Enough of them are.’

I kissed her wrinkled cheek, smelling of powder and lavender toilet water, and off I went. Into the wild blue yonder. Just me, a beat to shit black and tan ’76 Grenada, and my overstuffed duffle bags.

‘What will you do out there?’ she called after me from the front porch. The sky was whipping itself up into a sudden August storm.

‘Whatever I can,’ I yelled, pulling out. ‘It’s not like waitressing at Dom’s Diners is anything to beat.’

‘You gonna write?’ Her dyed red hair whipped back from her too-thin face. Annie had been dropping weight. It worried me. She smoked like a chimney.

‘I’m gonna try. Thanks for everything, Annie!’ I yelled. ‘You know I love ya.’

She waved me off but at the last minute she yelled, ‘I love you too Tuesday Cane … you lunatic.’

I hit the road. I had a three hour drive before I hit Allister Lake. It rained cats and dogs the whole damn way.

Allister Lake is huge. The surrounding town not so much. The locals who own the original plots around the waterfront refuse to sell of any of their lots for new building. What survives is the original layout from the 50s. With the exception of a few in-law houses and guest homes that locals had added on over the years, looking at original photos of the town you see pretty much the same landscape. Very odd, very rare and very cool.

I pulled into Nan’s gravel drive feeling that twinge of guilt that came when I thought of her. All the shoulds crushed down on me. How I should have visited more often, how I should have made up my mind sooner to come stay with her, how I should have come immediately. Nan had been my only family left barring some distant relations and now she was gone too.

‘Orphan. Fucking orphan,’ I said to myself.

I saw movement in my headlights but couldn’t make it out and then it was gone. The white light painted abstracts on the A-frame home that I remembered fondly from my childhood and teenage visits.

‘Home sweet home,’ I said to my car and climbed out.

I dragged my duffle bag in and found the key on my ring. The lawyers had sent it along, but it didn’t matter, I had my own from once upon a time.

The last time I’d been here I’d been eighteen and had managed to snag three locals before traveling back home. I remembered them vaguely. Big corn-fed men who did things like hunt, fish and swim in ‘cricks’ to cool off. I snorted and rolled my eyes.

‘Let’s try not to do that this time, Tuesday,’ I said. ‘But then again,’ I sighed, dragging my bag behind me, ‘What the hell.’

‘What the hell what?’

I jumped, screamed and dropped my keys. I took a swing at the guy before he could dodge and ended up cuffing him good upside the head.

‘Jesus, Tuesday, your nan would spank you if she saw you hitting your friends.’

‘Wha–’

He held something up and I saw it was a small lantern. It had sorta kinda been behind his bulk when I clocked him.

‘Hey, Tuesday.’

‘Adrian!’ I yelped and threw myself into his arms. Those three local boys I’d mentioned? Adrian had been one. Tall and leanly muscled like a street fighter, he stood about a head taller than my five foot ten. His shoulders weren’t broad but strong as hell and the lantern lit up his brownish red hair and his dark brown eyes.

‘Kiddo.’

‘You’re the same age as me,’ I said.

‘Three months older.’

‘Wow. Ancient.’ I unlocked the door and before I could do it, he stooped to grab my bag. ‘What are you doing out here in the dark?’

I flipped the light inside the front door and nothing happened. Shit.

‘I was in the barn and saw your car.’

‘Why were you in the barn? And where are my goddamn lights?’ I growled, getting frustrated. I flicked the switch again as if I could magically pump power into the house.

‘Your nan’s lawyer hired me to be the caretaker until the house was occupied. Out here at the lake, damn, the critters move in fast.’

He moved past me in the dark and I felt the brush of his hard body against mine. A surge of lust rose up in my belly as I remembered our few nights together. Naked, sweaty and rolling around in the oddest places. An unfinished house, the bed of his pick up, under Nan’s apple tree out back. Heat flooded my cheeks and when I said, ‘Where you going?’ my voice sounded funny.

‘I’m gonna go flip the breaker so you have juice. I had to shut the place down but for the sump pump. No use in paying for electricity that no one’s using.’

He opened the cellar door and turned at the last minute. ‘And Tuesday?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Sorry about Nan.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ I said around the lump in my throat.

‘Be right back.’ Then he was gone like a hero in a horror movie. His big fine self, his kind smile and his lantern. And me standing in the dark.

‘Hurry,’ I whispered.

I heard him moving around below the wide planked floors like the world’s largest rodent. I shivered. Way to freak yourself out, Tues … My mind had conjured images of rats and mice, water bugs and spiders. All the creepy crawlies that came with shut up cabins and lakeshore living.

‘OK!’ I heard Adrian call but nothing had happened.

‘OK what! There are no lights!’

‘Flip the switch again,’ he yelled and I heard a deep chuckle that slithered to the pit of my belly making me feel horny.

‘Great,’ I growled. I flipped the switch and my grandmother’s sconce lights lit up her living room. Correction –
my
sconce lights.

‘Work?’ he said from the doorway.

‘As you can see.’

‘Good deal.’ He walked into the kitchen and I followed, leaving my bag by the entertainment centre in the living room.

The thing about A-frames is they have very few vertical walls. The walls tilt and it can be unsettling at first. But the main room was big and wide and open, with ceilings that arched way over my head. I passed the small nook on the left that my grandmother had used for an office and then I was in the kitchen, a fairly open space split into an eating section and a cooking section by an island.

I sat in the wicker rocking chair while Adrian checked the pilot light and the stovetop. He made sure I had candles and matches and turned the water back on in the sink.

‘If you need anything, you let me know. I’m still out in the barn. I guess I’ll be moving out soon, though.’ he said and smiled.

‘Do you have somewhere to go?’ I asked softly. The economy had been shit. I imagined it was the case even in a small place like Allister Lake.

‘Not at the moment.’

‘Then stay as long as you want,’ I said. ‘It’s not like I need the barn.’

He took my hand and said softly – in a tone reserved for lovers, or at least former lovers –’Stand up, Tuesday. Let me see you in the light.’

I stood and he studied me. My cheeks grew hot, my pussy wet, my belly buzzed with nerves. Nothing quite compared to the feel of a man’s intent gaze on you. Especially one as good looking as Adrian Weston.

‘You look damn good, kid.’ Then he kissed my forehead and turned to go. ‘There’s some wine in the pantry. Some hard stuff too. Tons of canned and packaged food. You know your Nan, always stocked for an–’

‘Event,’ I finished. ‘Weather or social,’ I laughed. My grandmother had believed in being prepared food-wise for any event, whether it be a blizzard or an impromptu dinner for eight.

‘Right.’

At the door he turned and pinned me in the cage of his arms. My back was pressed to the green front door, his sinewy arms planted on either side of my head. ‘Damn, you look good.’

‘You too,’ I said swallowing hard. My body insisted I hadn’t just had sex with Stan. My body insisted that I hadn’t had sex in months … nay, years!

‘I’m right over there if you need me,’ he said and kissed my lips.

It was a soft and proper kiss. Just enough to get my body revving like a muscle car engine. And at the very last second, he slipped his tongue between my lips to touch it to mine and I shivered.

‘Night, kid.’

‘We’re the same age,’ I whispered as he loped across the big lawn to the barn.

Great, how was I going to fucking sleep knowing that Adrian – hot, talented, willing Adrian – was asleep on my property? I had no idea.