The Tycoon (62 page)

She had never felt so thoroughly possessed.

Something was wrong.

When she had recovered enough to speak, she said, “Oh, my God, Drake. That was so scary.”

“Don’t say that,” he mumbled against her neck. “It was good.”

She couldn’t have done less. “I know. Scary good. I love it when you want me that much. You were so hot.”

“You were, too.”

“That’s scary, too. What’s wrong with us? With me , that you can do that to me?”

“Horny,” he said.

But there was more to it than that. She just didn’t know what. “Was it just sex or are we calling it something else?”

“Sex. Down and dirty.” He turned to his side, hauling her with him. “I wanted it to be dirtier. I wanted a repeat of Hawaii. I wanted to shove my cock clear up to your heart. I wanted to make you come a dozen times in a dozen ways. But so long without you caught up with me and I couldn’t fool around. I had to get right to the point.”

Something was definitely wrong.

But all she could think of was how much she adored him. She smiled and traced his lip with her fingertip. “You certainly made your point, cowboy.” She giggled and stretched her smooth front against his hairy one. “Wanna do it again?”

“Later. The sweet stuff comes next. Valentina bought a can of whipped cream.”

Shannon laughed. “You are awful. After the mess we made with that chocolate mousse, I don’t think—”

“What, you don’t like whipped cream?”

She traced the bow of his brown brow with her fingertip. “I love whipped cream, especially in all the right places.”

He kissed her, hard and quick. “Lets get up and eat. We need our strength. I’ve got some canned soup around here somewhere and some crackers.”

They heated chicken noodle soup and ate in front of TV. Soon afterward, they returned to bed. After playing games with the whipped cream and exhausting each other a second time, they drifted to sleep with him spooned behind her and her tangled in a web of his hairy arms and legs and thick bedding. She had never felt more sated or been more comfortable. Or been happier.

She awoke in the night, cold and dreaming and whimpering. About what, she didn’t know. Only half-conscious, she felt him pull her closer. She pressed her cheek against his arm, her back and bottom against the source of heat, felt him push her hair away from her neck, felt his warm lips near her ear. “You’re okay. I’m here.”

“Cold,” she mumbled.

He pulled the covers over her and she slid back into the dark blue, floating in semi-consciousness, aware of nothing but warmth and caressing and fingertips lightly fondling. She distantly felt him push her leg up, felt his fingers stroking her opening. She was ready to take him again. “Drake?” she said drowsily.

“Hm?”

She felt him shift, then he was inside her, thick and hard and hot and filling her and she felt more than warm. She felt complete. She sighed.

His hand pressed against her belly, he began to move inside her. Slowly, rhythmically. So exquisite it became a part of her dreamlike state. Instinctively, she moved with him, her body in tune with his. Soon, his knowing fingertips were stroking her where her flesh stretched around his penis.
Lust! Need! Heat so intense she could barely stand her skin.
Yet, she shivered. “Drake, Drake—”

“Shhh,” he breathed against her ear, holding her still. His arm came around her and his fingers found her clit and with a soft sigh, she came.

Then he stiffened and pulled her even more tightly against him. She barely heard him grunt, but knew he had climaxed, too.  “Stay inside me,” she mumbled. “Don’t leave me.

“I won’t. Ever.”

They drifted back to sleep.

Daylight came. He was no longer inside her, but they were still closely bonded. Something

was different. She had thought sex couldn’t get more passionate than it had been in Hawaii, but the only word she could think of that applied to last night was the word “desperate.”

“Morning,” he said softly.

She smiled. “Morning.”

“Last night was awesome. I can never get enough of you. I want you even in my sleep.”

She continued to smile like a loon. “Me, too.”

“We need to get going. The plane will be ready to fly at ten.”

They hit the shower and stood front to front in a tight embrace as glorious warm water poured over them and steam fogged around them. Emotion hung between them. She could feel his heart pounding against hers. He didn’t say what was on his mind, but she sensed the weight of it. Her own chest couldn’t have felt heavier if a boulder had lodged in it. It felt almost like sadness, a lot like surrender.

She had read somewhere that women were usually the first to say “I love you.” She had never said those three words to any man since her marriage to Kevin Barton, couldn’t recall if she had said them to him. This morning, they were on her tongue, but she feared the result of forcing them out of her mouth. She wondered how many times Drake had ever said them. He must have at least once. He had been engaged.

As he drove them to the airport, he keyed into his cell phone and told someone to pick up a fast breakfast for two and put it on the plane. By his clipped orders, she could tell he was strung as taut as a banjo. Was he worried about his deal in Lubbock? Or was it something else?

She thought back to how anxious he had been yesterday, too, even before what had happened in bed last night. Something was going on with him. Was whatever was causing his anxiety why they’d had such powerful sex? She cautioned herself to be open-minded. He would surely make himself clear soon.

When they boarded the immaculately clean plane, she saw a big McDonald’s sack sitting on one of the seats. No gourmet breakfast this morning and no steward to serve it. He scowled at the sack and mumbled an oath.

After nothing but chicken noodle soup and crackers for supper, she didn’t care if it was cardboard. She was famished. “It’s fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with McDonald’s.”

After they were airborne, he let down the Formica-clad table between their chairs and began unpacking the sack of food. He handed her a breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee. “Breakfast of champions, he said.

“Egg and sausage. And a biscuit. What’s wrong with that?”

They ate in silence. After they finished, he folded the table back into place and moved to the seat beside her. He held her hand, but he stared out the window.

The flight was short. Just before they landed, he told her his plans. He would inspect windmills already under construction on his family’s land and sign leases for more. Then he would meet with the Lubbock company that wanted him to invest in wind turbine engine construction. He wanted her to see the wind farm, wanted to know what she thought.

After the smoothest flight in her limited experience, they stepped out of the plane into chilled air, bright sunshine and a brilliant blue sky. An upbeat attitude fought through the doldrums. Looking across the landscape toward the distant horizon, she had never seen land so flat. Or so treeless. “Hunh. That must be why they call this part of Texas the high plains.” She smiled up at him.

He gave her a quick kiss on the temple. “You’re too smart.”

“I know. I get it from hanging out with you.”

The murky mood of earlier seemed to have brightened.

A rental car, a white SUV, awaited them. As they left the airport and started away from

Lubbock, the windmills that heretofore she had seen only in pictures became the view. Tall columns topped by three giant turning blades. For as far as the eye could see, they filled the landscape and the skyscape, marching off into the horizon. “Wow,” she said. “There must be hundreds. I can’t even count them. I had no idea.”

He seemed to be as fascinated as she. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

He drove them miles out of Lubbock, passing vast flat and barren fields, marred only by more windmills.

“This is it,” he said, driving off the highway onto a dirt road. “The Lockhart cotton farms. What do you think?”

In front of her lay more unplanted fields of red earth and a closer view of the windmills. He behaved as if he sincerely wanted her opinion. And she didn’t have one. She kicked her brain into gear. “Can you still grow cotton with all of these things here?”

He nodded. “We’ll soon be planting. The windmills won’t interfere.”

The windmills’ sleek minimalist profiles presented a sort of beauty against the brilliant winter sky. Some of the blades turned lazily, while others spun at a pace. The capriciousness of the wind, she supposed. “What if the wind doesn’t blow?”

“The wind always blows here. Only a major shift in the jet stream would change it. Too much wind is the more likely problem. Either way, the energy company that’s doing this says they’ve got it handled.”

She had now been around him enough to recognize skepticism. “You don’t think this is going to work, do you?”

“I don’t know. We started this about seven years ago. The first phase is finished and the leases are paying off. But I can’t keep from thinking of the facts. They’ve been doing this wind and solar shit for thirty years. Spent billions. And they’re no closer to making it work on a grand scale than they’ve ever been. I’m afraid it’s kind of like hunting unicorns.”

“They don’t make electricity?”

“That’s not the issue. Nobody seems to have an organized plan. There’s no support system. No practical way to deliver the energy they produce with consistency. A universal collector and transmission system is so expensive to construct, it might not be possible, even for the government.”

“So the answer to my question is you don’t believe in it.”

“I haven’t made up my mind. I haven’t seen any data that makes me think we’re even close to replacing oil and gas or coal with wind and solar energy. My dad keeps reminding me that there’s no green energy that will get a seven-forty-seven off the ground. And he’s right.”

“But that isn’t true. Grammy and I watched a TV show about a thing in space that’s entirely solar-powered. It’s up there now.”

He gave her a frown. “I must have missed that, but it’s bound to be experimental.”

She smiled, hoping to add some humor to the mood. “That’s because you don’t watch enough TV. The stuff you hear about green energy is that it’s all good.”

He shook his head. “All I know is these wind and solar companies are going broke every day, even with government help. My dad also keeps reminding me that it’s all political. He calls it a money-laundering scheme for politicians. They have to talk it up to the public. Otherwise, the bastards might get lynched for how they’re wasting taxpayer money.”

“But aren’t they putting people to work? Isn’t that one of the goals?”

He shook his head again. “Compared to oil and gas companies, the number of people employed by green energy companies would fill a teacup. And the payrolls don’t come close to oil and gas. These turbines you’re looking at right here?” He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the horizon. “Pennington Engineering stood up the windmills, but the turbines were manufactured in China. No American worker earned a dime.”

He looked at her directly, the crease between his brows a deep dark line. “And this is what I’m here to make a decision about. When Pennington first approached me for seed money, the plan was for the turbines to be made in the USA and employ hundreds of locals. Somewhere along the way, that changed. So now I have to decide if I want to put my family’s money into something that employs damn few Americans in America. My dad and brother have strong feelings about that.”