Carter (Bourbon & Blood Book 3) (10 page)

With the last button freed, she slipped the sweater off her shoulders and let it fall to the bed. His hands moved from her hips to her waist, his thumbs sliding beneath the hem of the camisole she’d worn underneath. Josie pulled the camisole over her head. The contrast of cool air and his hot hands on her skin made her shiver.

“Too cold?” he asked.

“No… You make me shiver for a completely different reason,” she answered honestly.

He grinned at her then, the same sexy smirk that always made her either want to kiss him or choke him. It was definitely the former that was on her mind. Leaning forward, resting her weight on her palms, she pressed her lips to his. She kissed him slowly, molding her lips to his, savoring the sensation of his beard against her skin, the slight clenching of his fingers on her thighs.

Josie licked his bottom lip, her tongue gliding over the curve of his mouth. But Carter would never be a passive participant. She was on top, but when he kissed her back, his mouth hot and hungry on hers, there was no denying that he was in control. Her body melted against him, her breasts crushed against his chest, the hard ridge of his erection nestled at the apex of her thighs. She wanted more, she wanted to be naked against him, to feel him moving inside her, easing the ache that he created.

Breaking the kiss, she drew back. “I need to get these boots off so I can get these damned pants off. Remind me to only wear skirts with you from now on.”

Carter simply pushed her off him and onto the bed, still on her stomach. “Lift your hips.”

She did and he reached beneath her to unfasten her jeans. Within seconds he had them yanked down to her knees. She felt him behind her, heard the rasp of his zipper and then simply dropped her head to the mattress and moaned as he pushed into her.

It was like that every time. Right. Perfect. Her mood didn’t matter, whether she wanted him to be tender or rough. He just seemed to know without question what she needed from him. And at that moment, he was moving achingly slow, sinking into her inch by inch, filling her up until she could do nothing but grip the bedding and sob his name.

“Josie, let go baby,” he whispered, his hands stroking over her back, her hips. He was so tender and so gentle with her. “Let go.”

With his hands holding her hips steady, he set a slow but devastating rhythm—hard thrusts followed by an agonizingly slow retreat that only dragged out the pleasure. Josie couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. Hell, she could barely
breathe
. It was as if the entirety of her existence had narrowed just the two of them.

His hands moved from her hips, coasting up her back, her shoulders and then down her arms. His hands covered hers, his breath hot against her neck as he kissed the tender spot where her neck and shoulder met. When his teeth closed there, biting down just hard enough, she was simply lost. Her hips bucked beneath him. Her eyes closed and she literally saw stars as the pleasure exploded inside her, wave after wave of it. He pumped his hips again, twice more and then he stilled as well.

The weight of him was heavy on her, solid. But it felt good. It made her feel safe and protected, secure in a way that she rarely did.

She was in love with him.

It should have made her panic. It should have sent her running. But laying there beneath him, listening to the sound of his breathing, feeling the soft stroke of his hand on her skin, she willed the fear away. It would come back later and it would be ugly. But for now, she just wanted to enjoy the feeling of being in his arms in the small, perfect space he’d made for them.

J
osie left
the last store with another bag weighing her down. The annual Black Friday Christmas shopping with her mom was fun normally but today she was tired and cranky. And depressed. She admitted it. Realizing that she was in love with Carter should have been a happy moment, an exciting one. But it just left her petrified. What if he didn’t love her back? What if he couldn’t?

“You know, Josie, Myra Simmons’ nephew was very taken with you at church last week.”

Myra Simmons’ nephew made her skin crawl. “Mom, I do not need you to play matchmaker.”

Deborah stopped walking and placed her hand on Josie’s arm. It was her Mom face, her I’m-worried-but-you-can-still-decide-for-yourself face. “He’s a more suitable young man for you, Josie. I know you don’t want to be alone.”

She didn’t want to be alone. But she didn’t want to be with just anyone either. She only wanted Carter.

“I can’t. I just… I’m not interested in him that way.”

“Josie, you barely know him. You just need to give him a chance… You know he’s going to seminary. He’s going to be a minister.”

And there it was. The real reason for the push. “Mom, I know that you love being a preacher’s wife. You love being active in the church and taking care of the congregation… I don’t. I don’t want to do those things. I want to work around books and I want to go home at night and read more books. And I don’t want to feel responsible for everybody.”

Deborah started walking away, but Josie knew the conversation wasn’t over. When her mother got something in her head like that, she was a pit bull.

“It can be a very rewarding life, Josephine… It gives you strength and courage.”

“It gives
you
strength and courage. You. Not me. I just want books,” Josie insisted.

Deborah nodded. “You’re sure you won’t even have lunch with him?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

Deborah clucked her tongue. “Myra will be so disappointed. She really wanted to see you all get together.”

Not likely, Josie thought. Myra was just angling for a better social position within the church. Not that Myra was a bad person. She wasn’t. She was actually a very good person, but there was definitely a hierarchy at play amongst the female portion of the congregation. “She’ll adjust,” Josie said conversationally. “Mom, would you—never mind.”

“What is it, Josie?”

“I have to tell you truth. I’ve been seeing Carter.”

Deborah nodded. “I know that. I know you, and I could tell that something was different for you… Are you in love with him?”

Two middle aged men vacated one of the benches outside the department store and Josie made a beeline for it. She sat down and tucked the bags beneath her. If they were going to talk about Carter, it was best to do it there rather than anywhere in Fontaine where every set of ears in town would be pressed against the door.

“I don’t really know. I think so. But I’ve never been in love… I’ve never even thought that I was in love,” she admitted. “Is there something wrong with me?”

Deborah smiled sadly. “Josie, you were a year old when we brought you home. And you hated to be held… you hated for us to touch you. You’d cry because you were hungry or dirty, then you’d cry because we were feeding you, or changing you… I felt like the worst failure as a mother. I thought, in those moments when you were screaming like we were killing you, that maybe God had been right not to give me any babies. Clearly, I had no skill at soothing one.”

“I’m sorry I was so awful,” Josie whispered, feeling even more guilty than ever.

Deborah looked at her then with tears in her eyes. “But you weren’t, my sweet girl. You were only scared. No one had held you before. When you’d been fed and changed before, it had been rough or perfunctory at best. You were afraid because you’d never known what it was like to have someone touch you with actual tenderness… with love. So you cried every time, until one day, maybe a month or so later, you just didn’t. I was holding you and rocking you and you just let me. You stared up at me with those big grey eyes like you’d finally put two and two together and knew that we wouldn’t hurt you.”

Josie couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat. She clenched her hands together in her lap and just stared at the ground. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like, the patience and the faith that it had taken for her mother to keep trying day in and day out. “Everyone always told me how lucky I was, and I know they’re right,” she finally managed, “But I didn’t know how right.”

Deborah sighed. “And it stroked my ego, Josie. I try to be the best Christian I can be, but I have pride just like everyone else. And when people would say that to you, I should have stopped them right there and said that
we
were the lucky ones. But I didn’t. Because they always talked about our faith, being good Christians, about doing the Lord’s work. And at first, I felt like letting them have that little bit of sympathy for where you’d come from… I didn’t think it hurt anything. But I was wrong. It hurt you. Every time. And I was too blinded by my own piety to see it.”

“Why are you telling me all this now?”

Deborah squared her shoulders. “Because part of you is still that scared baby who doesn’t trust anyone that touches her gently. Is he good to you?”

“Carter is wonderful to me,” she said. “He really isn’t what people say he is, Mom. I’m not in anyway suggesting that he’s an angel or that he hasn’t sown more than his share of wild oats, but that’s not all there is to him.”

“Then invite him to church. If you want this thing between you all to last, you can’t just keep sneaking around forever… It might be fun. It might feel decadent and forbidden, but that wears off after a while, Josephine. Bring him to church and go from there.”

Josie tried to imagine how that invitation would go over. Not well. Not well at all. But she’d try. She had no other choice.

C
arter’s muscles
strained as he hoisted his end of the heavy cabinet onto the bed of the truck. Christ, he was tired. He’d lost count of how many pieces of heavy ass furniture he’d moved that day. At the rate they were going, they’d be out of stock before Christmas. Which meant more auctions, estate sales and stripping houses before demolitions. And all of that meant more time out of town and away from Josie.

Hell, maybe that was a good thing. They were into the first week of December. The idyllic Thanksgiving afternoon seemed like it was a million years ago. Both of them had been too busy or too tired to carve out a minute for one another since then. Sure, they’d texted and called, but it wasn’t the same as seeing her, holding her. But even that was growing frustrating.

A few stolen hours wasn’t cutting it anymore. He wanted to hold her through the night and wake up with her the next morning. He wanted lazy Saturday mornings in bed. Those were things that, if he was totally honest with himself, he’d never really wanted before. And he didn’t believe for second that she was actually ready to give that to him.

The cabinet slipped, mostly because he was distracted, and he banged his knuckles on the tailgate. Biting back a vicious curse, he wrestled the damn thing into the bed and then headed back inside, leaving Bennett to secure it.

Heading for the workroom, he rinsed his bloodied knuckles in the sink there. Most of it was minor scrapes, but a good chunk was missing from one knuckle in particular. Getting sawdust in that would burn like a mother. Digging through the cabinet, Carter found the first aid kit that they rarely used and even more rarely kept stocked. Hopefully, there’d be a few stray Band-Aids.

The door opened and he cursed thinking it would be Bennett bitching at him for leaving him to deal with the cabinet. “I’m not in the damn mood, Bennett.”

“Not in the mood for what exactly?”

That wasn’t Bennett. Shit. Shit. Shit. The day just kept getting better, he thought.

Turning around, Carter found himself face to face with William Marcum. “I’m sorry for cussing. I thought you were someone else.”

William gestured to Carter’s bloody hand. “Looks like you’ve got a reason to. I’m assuming you busted that moving furniture and not smashing your cousin’s face in?”

“It was a cabinet, actually,” Carter replied. Moving away from the sink he leaned against one of the work tables. It wasn’t a social call. He knew that. “So what can I do for you?”

William didn’t pretty it up with niceties. “You can tell me what your intentions are for my daughter.”

Carter nodded thoughtfully. “That’s easier said than done… and it needs to be said between Josie and me. Not you. But I will tell you one thing… I don’t want to hurt her, ever. Whatever happens, I want to see Josie happy.”

“Are you in love with my daughter?” William demanded.

“If I am, I probably ought to tell her before I tell you,” Carter said. “I get that you’re concerned and I don’t blame you for it. But Josie is an adult and she’s entitled to make her own choices. For the moment, I’m one of them.”

William put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “For the moment? So you don’t see this as permanent.”

He wanted that. The realization that he wanted her forever cut him deep. Mostly because he knew she probably didn’t feel the same. Even if she did, she’d be too terrified to reach out and grab onto what she wanted because people might think badly of her and the man in front of him. Since Josie wasn’t there to take the brunt of his anger, he unleashed it on William instead. “Even if I did, I couldn’t have it… This town has made up their mind about me. They, and you, think they know all there is to know about me. And Josie’s so damn terrified to disappoint you that she’ll never publicly do anything that goes against her good girl image.”

William shook his head. “That’s an excuse son.”

“No, it isn’t,” Carter countered. “It’s reality. You don’t know. You have no idea just how broken she is. You’ve been so busy getting pats on the back for adopting the little orphan girl that you never even stopped to look at what it was doing to her every time someone said it!”

The anger and frustration was boiling inside him and Carter just let it go. “Yes, I drink. But I’m not a drunk. Yes, I like women, but I didn’t sleep with every one that crossed my path. I don’t lie and I sure as hell don’t go out of my way to hurt other people… but to every judgmental person in this whole damn town, I’ll never be anything but the bastard son of James Carter, a drunk, a cheat and a reckless dumbass who turned his back on the wrong man in a bar.”

“Son, you can be anything you want to be,” William said.

Carter turned away and placed his palms flat on the table. It was either that or punch something. “I already
am
exactly what I want to be… but no one sees it, and I’m tired as hell of trying to make them. You want to know what’s going to happen between me and Josie, I suggest you ask her. She’s been the one calling the shots from the get go.”

William started to walk away, but at the door to the workroom he paused. “Maybe people in this town don’t see who you really are… and I know they gossip and I know they judge. But this is a good place. People help each other here. They care about what happens to one another. And in all fairness, you’ve only ever shown them the aspects of you that would remind them of your father. If there is something different than that inside of you, Carter, maybe you need to let it shine for a change.”

Carter didn’t say anything else, just listened to the sound of the door closing. He needed to see Josie, and he needed to see her where they wouldn’t actually do anything other than talk. Whether she liked it or not.

J
osie gave
a sigh of a relief as Doris left the library. It was her weekly lunch with her sister, where they’d sit in Gruber’s Diner and plot all the ways to get Josie fired so they could hire Doris’ niece. Let them plot. It gave her a moment’s peace from Doris’ critical eye and constant hounding.

Standing behind the circulation desk, she looked up when the door opened, half afraid that Doris had come back. But it wasn’t Doris. Jordan Simmons was walking in, Myra’s nephew who wanted to take her out.
No. No. No. No. No.

She’d told her mother to nip that in the bud and she’d really thought that maybe they’d reached an understanding that day. Maybe not, she thought.

“Good afternoon, Josie,” he said smiling. It wasn’t a bad smile. He wasn’t a bad looking man. But he left her completely cold.

“Good afternoon, Jordan. Is there something I can help you with?” Keep it professional and get him gone, she thought.

His smile widened. “My aunt and your mother have been trying to do a little matchmaking…or didn’t you know about that?”

No keeping it professional. She’d give him points for at least getting to the point. “I was aware of that, Jordan, but I’m sorry that’s just not something I really want to pursue right now.”

“Josie, I know we haven’t spent a lot of time together… but I have a tremendous amount of respect for you. You’ve accomplished so much.”

No, she hadn’t. She was a passable piano player because she’d been forced to practice until she just wanted to vomit. She’d gotten a college degree and had graduated with a decent GPA mostly because it was a subject that she loved and that came easy to her. Nothing about that was grand or especially noteworthy. Unless he was implying something else, and if he was, it was going to get ugly.

“Given the very rough start you had in life, it’s really amazing to see just how far you’ve come.”

He was going there, Josie realized. He was actually going there.

“Jordan, I don’t think—.”

“Josie, I have every intention of completing seminary by the end of next year… and I’m not looking to date women who don’t understand what it means to be a Godly wife.”

And he clearly didn’t intend to date women who ever wanted to speak because he didn’t intend to shut up.

“I’d really like to see if we’re compatible, Josie… I’d like to take you to dinner this weekend so we can start to get to know one another.”

Start to get to know one another.
He had yet to even ask if she wanted to get to know him. “I am very flattered by your offer, Jordan, but I explained this to my mother and she should have passed it along to Myra. I have no interest in being a minister’s wife. I do know exactly how much work goes into that and how hard it can be to meet those standards. I don’t want that kind of life, Jordan.”

His smile never wavered. “You’re very young, Josie, and I know that temptation can be so strong, but if you pray about it and ask for God to speak to you and show you the way—.”

“I don’t need God to show me the way on this one,” she said sharply. “I don’t want to date you… the truth is, I’m s already seeing someone.”

She didn’t know who was more stunned by the admission, her or Jordan. It hadn’t been her intention to say anything about Carter. But it felt good.

His smile wavered. For the first time since he walked in the building, Jordan Simmons looked like maybe he wasn’t going to make the sale. “I didn’t realize. You’ve never brought him to church with you.”

There was an accusation buried in that. But Josie elected to ignore it. “He doesn’t attend church.”

Jordan drew back like she’d told him she was contagious. “I heard the rumors but I dismissed them. You can’t possibly be seeing Carter Hayes.”

“It’s none of your business who I’m seeing, Jordan,” she said pointedly. His tone, his posture, and the dismissive way he’d said Carter’s name, as if he were a non-person, just rubbed her the wrong way. “I think you should go. This conversation is over.”

Jordan’s entire demeanor changed. His face softened, his expression taking on a hint of contrition and even tenderness, which was just bizarre. When he grabbed her hand, holding it so tightly she couldn’t pull away without hurting herself, he said, “Josie, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Let me make it up to you. At the very least, I can take you to lunch.”

She shook her head, “That isn’t necessary. Please let me go.”

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, an old fashioned and, coming from him, frankly creepy gesture that made her skin crawl. “I’ll see you Sunday,” he said.

Josie watched him turn and walk away wondering what the hell that had been about. But when she turned, she realized exactly what he’d been doing. Carter had come in through the library’s side entrance and was standing just far enough away to have only seen their exchange and not heard it.

Walking toward him, Josie could see the banked fury in his expression.

“Carter, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong,” she said.

“No. I’m not… Isn’t that the kind of guy you want, Josie? Someone that doesn’t embarrass you? That doesn’t reflect poorly on your raising?” His voice was low, but there was no disguising just how mad he was.

“Jordan came here to ask me on a date, but I turned him down,” she stated. “I don’t want him.”

Carter shook his head. “Wanting isn’t enough, Josie.”

He turned to leave and Josie felt panic clawing at her. “Carter, don’t walk out on me… not like this.”

“Then walk out with me,” he said. “Right now.”

She couldn’t. If she left the library she’d lose her job. Giving up her independence and moving home with her parents wasn’t an option. “I can’t do that. Carter—.”

“Forget it, Josie.”

He left, the door slamming behind him, and it didn’t feel like just for the moment. It was big and ugly and felt like a hard goodbye.

“I’m not ready,” she said in a whisper. She wasn’t ready to go completely public with their relationship but she wasn’t ready for it to end either. “Dammit.”