The Lover

“Slow down,” she told him, then giggled when he grabbed her ass with both hands and yanked her up against his hard-as- a-rock penis.

“I can’t slow down, baby. I want you too much.”

He kissed her neck as he rubbed her mound against his arousal.

“You can at least wait till we get to the bedroom,” she said. “I’ve had a long, rough day and I don’t want to wind up with my butt on the floor or slammed up against the wall.”

“Ah, baby, you like it any way you can get it.”

When he lifted her up off the floor, she wrapped her legs around his hips and tossed back her head when he opened his mouth and covered one breast through the thin material of her shorty pajama top.

Clinging to him, whimpering and talking dirty, Abby encouraged him to hurry as he carried her out of the kitchen, up the hall and into her bedroom. After tossing her onto the bed, he stripped off his clothes, and by the time he came down over her, she was naked and ready. Without saying a word, she reached out, encircled his dick and slid a condom over it. No matter how turned on Abby got, she never forgot to make sure she was protected. He liked that about her, that she took care of herself instead of expecting him to do it.

He thrust into her with one powerful lunge and nearly came right off the bat. She was hot and wet and tight. When she bucked up, he clutched her buttocks and held her for half a second before retreating and plunging again.

“I’m not going to be able to hold it much longer, baby,” he told her.

She slid her hand between her legs and stroked herself. “I’ll just help things along.”

He paused, allowing her to go at it, all the while whispering in her ear, talking the talk, exciting her. In only a matter of minutes, she came in a frenzy, crying, shivering. He jack- hammered into her for a couple of seconds, then came, the top of his head exploding as he jetted into the condom.

Once he was spent, he rolled off her and onto the bed beside her. She cuddled up against him and said, “Get some rest. Next time I’m not going to let you off the hook so easily.”

Ron reached over and stroked her belly, then delved his hand between her thighs. She was damp and sticky. When he fingered her clitoris, she whimpered.

“Set the alarm, will you, babe? I need to leave here before sunrise. We don’t want to run the risk of somebody seeing me sneak out your back door.”

“I’ll set it for four,” she told him. “That’ll give us time for a good morning fuck.”

Chuckling, Ron closed his eyes and hugged up to Abby, spoon-fashion.

Chapter 6 (#ufc7b371f-5FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)

Ever since her younger daughter had returned to Adams Landing and opened her own business—Robyn’s Fitness Center—Brenda Granger had made a point of taking an active part in several classes Robyn offered. Brenda’s favorite was the Saturday morning session where a group of women went from doing stretches together to alternating on all the various equipment—everything from the treadmills to the stationary bicycles. After the first hour, they took a water break, then after the second hour, many of them stayed on and had lunch together. Robyn provided fresh salads with low-fat dressing and yogurt for dessert.

Since Brenda had kept herself in shape all her life and had been blessed with a great metabolism, she hadn’t needed to worry about her weight until she went through menopause; then ten extra pounds had crept up around her hips and abdomen before she knew it. It had taken her two months of diet and exercise to get back down to what her husband laughingly referred to as her fighting weight.

As she stood back and watched Robyn, in her much-too-skimpy exercise costume, Brenda sighed, then took a hefty sip of bottled spring water. Her younger daughter resembled her a great deal, with a slender figure, full breasts and curly, jet-black hair. Thankfully, Robyn had also inherited her great metabolism, as well as her love for physical exercise to keep her fabulous body toned. She had gotten her height from her six-four father, just as her sister, Bernie, had. Robyn was five-eight, and Bernie was just a tad over five-nine.

Poor Bernie had not inherited her mother’s slender build or her great metabolism. Ever since childhood, Brenda’s elder daughter had been large boned and tended to gain weight easily, as R.B. did. Bernie was as much her father’s daughter as Robyn was her mother’s, in looks and temperament.

But both girls were equally disappointing to a mother who longed to see her daughters happily married and producing some grandchildren for her. After all, neither she nor R.B. was getting any younger. A woman of fifty-eight should already have several grandchildren.

At least Robyn was dating regularly, although Brenda didn’t always approve of the choices she made. Bernie, on the other hand, dated infrequently and seemed to let every good prospect slip through her fingers.

Brenda felt it her motherly duty to do what she could to help both girls find the proper mate. That’s why she had invited two very suitable young men to Sunday dinner tomorrow. Raymond Long was a fine man and not bad looking, despite being a bit of a nerd. He owned the local hardware store and could provide handsomely for a wife. Luckily, he had divorced that hussy wife of his before they’d had children. And it didn’t hurt that Raymond’s mother, Helen, had been one of Brenda’s best friends for ages. The other Sunday guests would include the new minister, Matthew Donaldson. Matthew was young, handsome, charismatic, and best of all, he was single.

“Are you staying for lunch, Brenda?” Abby Miller asked.

“I wouldn’t miss it.” Brenda smiled warmly at Abby, although she didn’t especially like the woman. Abby wore too much makeup, dyed her hair that phony blue-black and wore clothes that screamed trailer trash. And there was a rumor going around town that Abby was secretly seeing another man while her poor husband was off in the Middle East serving his country.

The others staying for lunch began making a circle in the middle of the exercise room floor. Brenda glanced around to ascertain just who was still here so she could decide who she wanted to sit by. One by one, she ruled out the women she did not want to talk to for the half-hour lunch session. Definitely not Abby Miller. She crossed Renee Michaels off her list immediately. That woman didn’t have a brain in her silly head. Besides, it was a known fact Renee was a slut. Deputy Holly Burcham was another no-no, but only because she was sitting beside Renee, as was Amber Claunch, whom Brenda liked.

“Hmm …” Brenda spotted Bernie’s secretary, Lisa Wiley, and started in her direction, but stopped the minute she saw Cathy Downs sit beside Lisa. Cathy was a sweet person, but she would bore you to tears with her incessant chatter. The woman never stopped talking—about her children, her husband Lieutenant John Downs and her latest diet. The plump chatterbox tried every new diet craze that came along and did her best to convince everyone else that this one was the miracle cure for overweight women.

As her gaze traveled the completely formed circle, she suddenly saw her perfect spot, right between Amy Simms and Thomasina Hardy. Brenda hurried across the room, then paused and looked from Amy to Thomasina.

“Would y’all mind making room for me?” Before either could reply, Brenda squeezed in between them, forcing them to separate enough to make room for her.

Amy smiled pleasantly at Brenda. “Yes, please, join us.”

“We were just talking about what happened to that poor girl, Stephanie Preston, from over in Scottsboro,” Thomasina said.

“It’s the world we live in.” Brenda shook her head sadly. “When I was a girl, you never heard of anything like that happening around here. Northeast Alabama was one of the safest places on earth to live. Why, my folks never locked the doors and we slept with the windows open and never worried about somebody breaking into the house.”

“All the article in this morning’s Daily Reporter said was that she’d been murdered.” Amy looked right at Brenda. “You don’t know anything else, do you? Something you could share with us?”

Brenda smiled, hoping her expression conveyed to these ladies that she did, indeed, know something very important about the murder case. Although she knew no more than they did, being the sheriff’s mother, as she had once been the sheriff’s wife, afforded her the privilege of pretending to be in possession of top-secret information.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing I’m at liberty to share with y’all,” Brenda said. “There are many things that can’t be shared with the public or it might jeopardize the case. I learned years ago, as R.B.’s wife, to keep my mouth shut.”

“Oh, Brenda, come on,” Amy cajoled. “Isn’t there some little something? You know we’d never tell a soul.”

Brenda shook her head, then leaned over and whispered to Amy, “Well … No, no, I can’t. Sorry.”

“We understand,” Thomasina said. “Besides, I’m not sure I want to know the details. Rumors are that she was naked when they found her, and you know what that usually means—it means she was probably raped. Poor girl.”

“Wonder if they think her husband killed her?” Amy said. “I tried to pry something out of Jerry Dale last night, but he wasn’t talking. I told him, what good is it for me to be the DA’s wife if the DA never tells me anything.”

All three women laughed.

“Did somebody tell a good joke?” Robyn asked as she pulled the serving cart behind herself.

“Not really,” Brenda replied. “It was just nervous laughter.”

“We were talking about that poor Stephanie Preston,” Thomasina said.

Robyn retrieved two salads in plastic containers from the serving cart, then handed one to Thomasina and the other to her mother. “You know, when she came up missing and all those searches didn’t turn up anything, I had a feeling she was dead. It gives me cold chills to think about what happened to her.” Robyn handed Amy a salad.

“We were trying to dig information out of your mother, but she won’t tell us anything,” Amy said.

Robyn eyed her mother speculatively, the corners of her wide, full mouth turning up ever so slightly. Brenda knew that expression only too well. It was Robyn’s shame-on-you-Mama look.

“Being members of the sheriff’s family doesn’t necessarily mean we’re in possession of any more information than the average citizen,” Robyn said, then winked at her mother.

Brenda let out a mental sigh of relief that her daughter hadn’t given her away. But then Robyn had been Brenda’s coconspirator all her life, backing her up, keeping her secrets, sharing in her love for gossip. Bernie had been the tattletale, always telling R.B. everything. Her elder daughter had never learned the art of telling socially acceptable little white lies. Like R.B., she could be too in-your-face blunt and brutally honest. That detrimental trait wasn’t very appealing to most men and was probably one of the reasons Bernie couldn’t find a husband. That and the fact that Bernie needed to lose twenty pounds.

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