Now Leaving Sugartown Read online

  “Oh, ewww.” I squirm out of his hold and snatch the tub from the bench, attempting another runner, but once again I’m caught up in Sam’s thick, ropy arms—and yeah, if I’m honest it’s really not the worst place in the world to be.

  Sam takes us down to the ground, again with me kicking and screaming. The tub of ice cream flies out of my hands and across the hardwood floors. And then I’m pinned beneath him, his face is just inches from mine, his lips within kissing distance. He stares down into my wide green eyes. “Are we going to ignore what just happened?”

  “You want to discuss it in the parlour while you drink tea and eat cucumber sandwiches with my fathers?”

  “Cute.” He gives me a sly smile. “You okay with this?”

  “I’m okay if I get to eat my ice cream.”

  “Truce then?”

  “Truce,” I agree.

  He eases back on his heels and offers a hand to help me up. I knock it away in favour of diving for my abandoned tub of ice cream. I manage to snatch it up before him and I grab a spoon from the dish rack on the sink and sit back, driving my spoon into my prize. Three orgasms and a tussle mean that this is one calorie fest I have earned. Sam slides down beside me, shoving his spoon into the tub with such force I almost drop it. I whack his wrist with my cold cream–covered spoon.

  “Don’t make me hurt you, Mister.”

  “You know your threats are about as scary as Mr Whiskers, little Harajuku.” He grins at me, his eyes softening and crinkling in the corners. I wish he wouldn’t look at me like that.

  “Hey, that cat is scary as fuck,” I say, pulling my gaze from his and staring down into my ice cream. “She creeps me the hell out.”

  “That’s because she dislikes demon children.”

  “I am not a child.”

  “No, you’re certainly not.” He sighs.

  “Otherwise going down on me could be kinda awkward.”

  “’Cause it’s not awkward enough already?” He bumps my shoulder with his and I stare up at his gorgeous, tanned face: his square jaw, with just the right amount of five o’clock shadow, his bright blue eyes the colour of spring skies, his hair so soft you could get lost in threading your fingers through it, and his full lips belonging to one hell of a talented mouth.

  I really, really need to stop staring.

  “It’s not awkward,” I say quickly and stab at the ice cream again. “I was horny, you were horny, and you ate me out until I came. Twice.”

  “You’re gonna have to stop saying this shit. I’m getting hard again.”

  “You know I could take care of that for you. I happen to be very clever with my mouth, and my talents serving ice cream go well beyond dipping the perfect cone in chocolate and nuts.”

  “I’m starting to see why your boss hit on you so often.”

  “Thank god he didn’t look like you, or I never would have come home. I’d have married that ornery old bastard.”

  Sam raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “Come on, Sammy, it’s not like it’s news that you’re Sugartown’s most coveted bachelor. There isn’t a dry pair of panties in town when it’s time for school drop-off.” I do my best impersonation of the soccer mums that flirt with him on a daily basis. “‘Hi Sam, I brought you a Bundt cake, will you father my unborn children?’ ‘Sam, this heat wave is killing me. Why don’t you bring your giant fire hose over and you can hose down my uterus in your come?’”

  He guffaws. “God, I missed your mouth, Pepper.”

  “I’ll bet.” I wink and flex my fingers in an attempt to ease the frozen limb syndrome caused from clutching my ice cream too tightly. “I missed your mouth too, Sam.”

  “Just my mouth?”

  “No. Not just your mouth,” I say resolutely, and point my spoon at him. “But if you tell anyone that, I will be forced to hurt you.”

  “Understood.”

  I wait a beat, not sure I really want the words that are swirling through my head to come out, but I’ve always wanted the answer, so I let the question tumble out anyway. “Do you ever wonder what would have happened if I’d never left?”

  “Every damn day.”

  “Me too.”

  Sam sighs. “One of these days you’ll tell me why you left me high and dry.”

  “One of these days you’ll forgive me for it.”

  “One day,” he agrees. “But not today.”

  “Not today,” I decide.

  The shift in the atmosphere is tangible. Our carefree, playfulness is gone, replaced instead by the weighted silence and the heaviness of anger and guilt that runs like a river between us.

  Sam rises and tosses his spoon in the sink, and says, “Good night, Pepper.”

  “Night Sam.”

  I feel guilty for being the one to bring the mood down, but he’s not as ready for the answer as he thinks he is, because despite what he says, it’s what he doesn’t say that makes me know with one hundred per cent certainty that he’d push this, and he’d never agree with my reasoning for staying away.

  No. He’s not ready for the answers. And I’m not sure I’m ready to divulge them. Because that would mean that nothing had changed since the day I’d left. And I need it to have changed, because if it’s the same as the day I left, then that would mean I’m still in love with him. And I can’t still be in love with him.

  This thing between us can never happen, not really. The truth is, I’m sick. No amount of little white pills will ever change that. Sam might be the only man that ever makes me feel somewhat normal, but he deserves so much more than only a handful of happy days in an entire lifetime. And as much as not being with him might kill me, being with me will certainly kill him, if not now then further down the track, my disease will rip both our lives apart, and I want more for him than that.

  Five years ago

  WE SIT in my car in the school parking lot. We’re both quiet. It’s awkward. I’d forced Pepper to stay at her year twelve formal for a lot longer than she had wanted to. Hell, she didn’t want to go at all, but when the family applies enough pressure over something, you damn well feel it. At the house I had to pull her close and pretend like I wasn’t ogling her cleavage straining against her silk corset while everyone snapped pictures and Jack glared at me as if he wanted to take me outside and show me the meaning of eating dirt. Even Elijah had pulled me aside and ordered that I reel it the fuck in and do the right thing tonight. Whatever the fuck that meant.

  I think back on the way she pressed up against me as we danced. Pepper doesn’t do anything halfway. Not even seduction. Not that I think she was aware she was turning me on. But I knew the moment she felt my cock—rock hard and straining in my suit pants—pressed against her hip, because she pulled back with wide, glassy eyes to search my face. We shared another of those moments where our eyes say all the words we can’t, and then she curled in closer and left me wishing I was a better man, a stronger man. One who could give in and give her everything.

  I’m so fucking pathetic. I’m weak. I’m disgusting. Since she was fourteen, I haven’t looked on Pepper like a sister. I haven’t thought of her as anything but a woman I want so badly to bury myself inside of. And that is very, very wrong. She’s family; we grew up together. I used to draw penises and moustaches on her face with Sharpies when I was seven. I fought her battles in the schoolyard like any brother would. I kissed away the hurt when she fell over, I taught her how to ride a bike without training wheels, and when the adults in our family got so blind drunk they couldn’t see straight, I brushed her teeth, helped her change into her jammies and put her to bed.

  To everyone else Pepper has been like my sister since the day she came kicking and screaming out of Holly, but I haven’t seen her that way in a very, very long time, and as I sit beside her in the front seat of my beaten-up Camaro, I know there’s a special seat in hell with my name on it, because all I can think about is fucking her, and being so deep inside her neither one of us can breathe.

  “Sooooo,” Peppe
r says, breaking the awkward silence.

  “So ... ”

  “Are we just going to …?” she says.

  At the same time, I say, “Jake said there’s an after-party in the cane fields outside of town.”

  “Jesus, is it just me, or is it completely creepy that he likes to attend these things?”

  “It’s not just you,” I mutter, and then I wince, because I wonder if she thinks I’m just like Jake. Just as fucking sick. “So do you want to go?”

  “And spend even longer with these arseholes that made my school years a living hell? I’d rather give myself a hysterectomy with a machete.”

  “You wanna go get drunk by the falls?”

  “Oh god, yes,” she replies.

  I start the engine and throw the car into reverse. Pepper winds down the window and almost launches herself through it as she hangs out and screams at the couples scattered around the car park, “Go fuck yourself, Sugartown High!”

  She flops back down in her seat, laughing as she glances over at me. My smile is huge. I can’t wipe the damn thing from my face. I shake my head. She looks happy. It’s a nice thing seeing her smile, after all the shit she battles in her head on a daily basis. There was a time not too long ago where Pepper lay in a hospital bed, drugged up on every kind of painkiller known to mankind and none of us were smiling. I didn’t know if we’d ever see her smile again. So the fact that she’s beaming from ear to ear and the wind is whipping all her crazy Bozo the Clown-coloured red hair around the passenger seat of my Camaro, makes me smile too.

  “You’re insane,” I say, then I feel my smile fall because I’m pretty sure it’s not kosher to call a crazy person, well … crazy. “Shit. I’m sorry—”

  Pepper laughs, loud. I don’t know if she’s upset or if she’s just genuinely fucking with me. “I think the technical diagnosis you’re looking for is bipolar.”

  “Pepper, I didn’t mean …”

  “Relax, Sammy, a bird doesn’t get upset if you call it a bird. It is what it is.” She shifts in her seat until she’s kneeling up and leaning over into the tiny backseat behind us, searching for booze. I automatically slow the car. One, because her delectable arse is thrust up in my face and two, because I hate the fact she’s rummaging around a moving vehicle while I’m trying to drive. Also, her arse is in my face. And I may harbour feelings for her that I like to keep on a very tight leash but, fuck me! How the hell am I supposed to see that and not touch it? “Now, if we’re doing this thing right, pull into Dave’s. I’m not getting drunk on beer.”

  “What’s wrong with beer? You and I have been stealing beer from Jack and Elijah since we were kids.”

  “Sammy, Sammy, Sammy.” She shakes her head in mock disappointment. “I just finished high school, and we are no longer kids. That right there is cause for celebration.”

  She’s right. It is. And it’s not.

  “Dave’s it is then,” I say and make a U-turn. She squeals as the car lurches her sideways and into my lap. “You might wanna buckle up, Little.”

  After I collect a bottle of Jack and two scotch glasses that I promise to return tomorrow—or he’ll charge me interest on every drink between now and when they come back to him. I hand Pepper my bounty and drive as fast as I can, without getting arrested, to the falls that sit about five kilometres east off the road out of town. It’s private property, owned by some arsehole dairy farmer who likes to come down and chase the kids away with a shotgun, especially when they’re hung-over to all hell the following day.

  I grab our booze and stash it and an oil-stained blanket from the boot into a backpack, along with Dave’s scotch glasses. I give Pepper my suit jacket. It dwarfs her the second she slides her arm through the sleeves, but at least she won’t get eaten alive by mosquitos. We set off through the winding dirt path to the falls. We’ve come here off and on throughout the summer since I was a kid. Ana said Dad and his old MC club buddies used to bring their kids here for booze and bonfires, though that was a tradition that was pretty much eradicated by the time I was old enough to remember it.

  Pepper’s still wearing those fucking crazy spiked heels, and I have to help her over several huge boulders, but it’s probably wiser if she keeps them on because there’s broken glass littering the ground beneath us. Eventually I hand her the backpack and tell her to climb on my back, ’cause at this rate the sun will be up before we make it there.

  We make it down the steep, winding trail to the bottom of the falls, and set the blanket down on a patch of tough grass. We’re close enough to feel the water mist over us when the wind picks up. Behind the rug is the remnants of a fire, ash and a circle of charred stones to keep the flames contained within. I stand and gather up some sticks and dry leaves from the thicket of trees farther back, and then I rummage around in the backpack and pull a lighter from my pocket to start a fire. I stare at the twigs as they catch alight.

  My mother died in an explosion when I was little, and I watched my dad try and leap into the burning building to save her. Shortly after that I’d almost been burned to death when I’d taken Holly and Jack’s dog, Snickers, too far into the cane fields and they’d been set alight. I made it out with minor burns. Snickers died protecting me.

  Fire used to terrify me, and then I found something way scarier than flames to fuel my nightmares: the thought of losing Pepper, something that almost came true the day I walked in and found her bleeding out all over her bed.

  I turn around and find Pepper’s removed my jacket and her shoes. For a half-second I’m struck dumb by her fucking incredible tits in that corset. I mentally slap myself upside the head and stare instead at her dainty, pale feet.

  “Even your feet are perfect,” I mutter.

  She stares at me with a curious expression. Jesus, I really need to learn how to apply a filter. She probably thinks I have some creepy foot fetish. I sit down on the blanket beside her and pull out the booze, hastily pouring us both a drink. I try not to be a complete fucking creeper as I watch her lip purse around the rim of the glass, but I’m not sure it’s working.

  “Sammy, did you really bring me here just to get drunk?”

  “Yeah,” I say, but we both know that’s not true. I should have taken her home. I should have been strong enough to do the right thing.

  Pepper picks up the bourbon and takes a long pull from the bottle. Her glass is empty, and though we’ve gotten drunk plenty of times before, it never seemed as weighty as this. “Maybe you should pace yourself there, Little.” I reach out and grab the bottle from her, swigging back a hard gulp. I close my eyes and relish the burn. It’s the reminder I need to keep me from putting my hands all over her. When I open my eyes, she’s on her knees in front of me.

  “Maybe I’m tired of pacing myself.”

  “Don’t.”

  Do it. Just fucking do it, and we can finally both have what we want.

  “Don’t what?” she asks, innocently, though her eyes are anything but.

  I pin her with a hard glare. “You know what.”

  She takes her hands and gently wedges my knees apart, fitting herself into the space between them. Her breasts spill over the top of her corset and god help me do I want to take them in my hands and lick, and suck, and devour her pale white flesh. Pepper leans forward and I jerk back, resting my weight on my hands behind me. Her breath catches. “Is the thought of being with me really that horrible to you, Sammy?”

  She thinks I don’t want her? How in the fuck could she think I don’t want her? Is she fucking kidding me? My cock’s one breathy Pepper sentence away from busting free of my tux and pounding so hard through her vagina it creates its own exit tunnel.

  “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever fucking seen,” I admit, and that’s all it takes for me to lose my heart completely to this incredible, stupid, crazy, amazing woman. That’s all it takes for me to fully grasp the lengths I’d go to for her. That’s all it takes for me to lose my head completely.

  I transfer my weight
to one arm and weave my fist through her hair with the other, pulling her close and mashing her lips to mine. She lets out a startled cry but within seconds she’s climbing into my lap and grinding her hot-as-fuck pussy against me. Pepper loosens my tie and pulls it free from my neck, throwing it somewhere behind us. She fists my shirt in her hands and yanks it open. Buttons go flying and I smile against her lips. I always knew she’d be fucking wild in the sack.

  Once I’m free of my shirt, I’m shoved onto my back. Pepper sits astride me, and I can’t help but rock into her. Closing her eyes and flinging her head back, she rides me as if there isn’t four layers of fabric separating our bodies. Increasing her pace and writhing harder, Pepper uses my cock to push her closer to orgasm. I can’t do anything but watch, feel, and fight like hell not to embarrass myself and come in my pants.

  I reach up and tug at the bow in the front of her corset. It doesn’t free her breasts like I’d hoped it would. I slip a finger behind the little hooks down the front of the corset and pull. One by one they spring free, until the heavy silk falls away and her beautiful tits are in my face. I cup them, roll the soft pink nipples between my thumb and the edge of my forefinger, and then I come up on my elbows and take her nipple in my mouth. I suck hard at the rosy flesh. Pepper lets out a moan as she rocks faster.

  “Oh fuck, Pepper, baby, you gotta stop moving or I’m going to come in my pants like an overexcited teenager.”

  Pepper stops moving.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” I mutter into her soft flesh. “Christ. I’m sorry, Little.”

  I need to do this right. The night in the Roberts’ pantry was all kinds of fucked up. It led to her being treated like a pariah by an entire school, and that’s all on me, because I knew better. I knew better and I did it anyway, because I couldn’t have her in my arms and not touch her, couldn’t not be inside her in some way. The problem wasn’t just that it was the wrong time and place; it was the wrong way to go about it, and it was a shitty first introduction into something so fucking incredible. Her first time should have been memorable. It should have been pulled from her slowly, giving her mind time to wrap itself around sensation and pleasure. I know it was more than a year ago, but I make a mental checklist of all the dates she’s been on since that incident in the Roberts’ pantry. It’s a very small fucking checklist. As in, zero.