Boys South of the Mason Dixon

  someone I could contact. Yesterday, he’d made that as clear as it had ever been.

  “Wanted to see if you were planning on running to Asher now that you’re free of me.”

  “No, Steel, I’m not. Asher doesn’t want me. He made that clear to me. I broke it off with you because you deserve to be loved by someone who is not me. With their whole heart, and not only half of one.”

  He released a nasty laugh. “Yeah. Fuck that. I don’t want anything to do with love. I’m over it. I can drink and fuck my way through life. Sounds a helluva lot more fun than dating you.”

  I tried to hide the humiliation he made me feel with his words because Steel had more substance than that. He was kind and could love someone for life. Steel could give a woman a home and a family. I knew that. It had been one of the reasons why letting him go had been so hard. But that woman should be able to offer the same in return. I’d never been able to do that with him. His brother always stood between us and would’ve probably stayed there forever.

  “You’re meant for more than bars and one-night stands.”

  He stared off down the road as the cars whizzed by, “I thought so, too, but you know what, Dix, I think I’ll like bars and a different woman every night just fine. That actually sounds good to me.”

  I guessed all men needed to be a little reckless before they finally settled down. This might have been Steel’s time to have a taste of that life. But I knew it wouldn’t make him happy. At least not forever. Daddy always said a man sowed his wild oats before he realized that the love of one woman was all he needed to thrive. When I’d been with Asher and thought we’d always be together, Daddy would warn me outright, “Don’t be planning a wedding and babies, Dixie. That boy has wild oats to sow before he’s ready for that. He goes out and comes back to you in the end, then it’s a love you can trust. You need to date other men, too. Might be more to life than Asher Sutton.”

  I hated hearing him tell me that. I would roll my eyes and ignore it. I couldn’t stand the idea of Asher being with anyone else. But that was when I thought fairytales came true, when I believed Asher was my future. My focus then returned to Steel, “Then I guess you can go see if that’s the life you want. It’s not my place to tell you what is right for you. You’re a grown man.”

  He turned to me, straightening his torso. “I just might thank you one day. For breaking my fuckin’ heart.”

  I had nothing to say to that. He began walking toward the town center. Or rather, swaying toward it. I considered following him, calling Dallas maybe to yank Steel from the street, when Asher’s blue truck suddenly emerged from around the corner. The Sutton boys always took care of their own. I was no longer needed so I climbed in my Jeep and quickly drove away. Asher didn’t want to see me. Steel even less. He’d said what he couldn’t say sober.

  I also felt a little better. This morning left me raw, the wound remaining wide open, but Steel’s words made sure that it would begin to heal. Steel had been an important part of my life for a year. We’d become a couple. And I wanted us to work, until Asher came back. Now I knew that had been a lie all along. Steel would now be a part of my past, and maybe one day I could remember this and not feel sad about it. But that’d be a while from now.

  Leaving this town was my only option. I had to make a new life somewhere else. I didn’t want to leave my parents. I hadn’t wanted to leave Scarlet either, but now she’d left me. I liked this place, I loved my home, but my life here had always been intertwined with the Sutton boys.

  A new town with new friends and a new independence would help me get on with my life. I’d tell Daddy tonight I was ready to commit to Clemson in the fall. He could pay the tuition and I’d start making plans to leave Malroy in August. My chest felt heavy from knowing I had to leave. Even though Asher would be leaving soon and finishing his last year at Florida, this town was still my connection to him. It was the place where he’d been mine.

  I looked in the rearview mirror as I came to a stop at the red light. Asher was outside his truck talking to Steel who was now more animated and yelling at Asher, while Asher remained calm and relaxed. Right now, they had to be both wishing they’d never met me. Dixie Monroe had been nothing but a problem. But soon I’d be gone and they’d be rid of me for good.

  Asher Sutton

  THIS WASN’T OVER with Steel. He’d cursed me, drunkenly ranted, and then asked for Brent to come get him. I left him there with him. Brent was probably who he needed right now. They both were hurting. They both needed to drink and forget. They could drown their sorrows together. Hopefully, they wouldn’t both wake up next to women they didn’t know. But then maybe that was what they needed after all. As long as they stayed away from the married ones. Bray was infamous for messing around with married women he didn’t realize were married. It was a miracle he hadn’t been shot yet. Brent and Steel were hurting, but they were both more cautious than Bray.

  I didn’t want to go home and talk about Steel. He could tell them what he wanted when he was sober enough. What I needed right now was silence and my thoughts, but I knew I wouldn’t find any peace. As I turned my truck onto the dirt road that led to the lake connecting our land to the Monroe’s working farm, one that no one used unless Luke was fishing. At least not anymore. My brothers and I used to swim and fish there as kids, but those days were long gone.

  It had also been the spot where I’d taken Dixie’s innocence. She’d told me she loved me along that grassy bank. I’d told her I loved her, too, holding her naked body snugly against mine for the very first time. Most would say any teenage boy would declare love when he had a naked female in his arms. But I knew this moment had been special. It had been honest and real. I’d known I loved her before that moment. It had just fallen from my lips as emotions washed over me like a tidal wave. She hadn’t been my first, but she was my one.

  I turned off my truck lights and sat there in the dark watching the moonlight dance across the water. Dad taught us to swim here. There were nights when I was away that I’d close my eyes and think of just sitting here. Recalling good days made me less homesick, but it also kept breaking my heart.

  All of a sudden, movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned to see Dixie standing several feet away. She’d been sitting. I hadn’t noticed. But she was leaving now. I should let her go. It was best for both of us. The right thing to do. But I couldn’t. Not here and not right now. Not when some of my best memories came from this place. Here, I felt weak, my soul longing for what it couldn’t have. I got out of my truck and walked to her. She stopped, didn’t move, her gaze locked on me. The moonshine seemed to draw a bright halo around her, as if she didn’t belong to the night.

  “You come here often?” I asked. It was something I wondered about often. We had so many memories here. Did Dixie think of me when she came to the lake?

  “Yes, sometimes . . . some times more than others.”

  She didn’t have to explain that to me. After this morning with Steel, I imagined she needed to be alone, much like I did now.

  “You did the right thing,” I told her.

  “I know,” she replied, not needing my approval. “But it was the hardest thing to do.”

  “I wasn’t being condescending. If you’re out here worried about the shape you found him in earlier, drunk in the middle of town . . . he’ll be okay.”

  She gazed back to the water, her eyes no longer on mine. “He hates me now, maybe he always will, but he said today he might thank me in the future. I don’t think he meant it, but I’ll hope and pray that’s the case. Have to hold on to that.”

  Steel told me I was a selfish bastard and that he wished I would’ve stayed gone. He didn’t want my opinion or any other moral horseshit. He said that Dixie was free now, and that I might as well go take her since that’s what I’d wanted all along. I’d called Brent and let him take over. Steel was drunk, and sober or drunk, he didn’t want me there.

  “I’m leaving,” she said, her eyes b
ack on me, a determined gleam in them. “In August, I’m going to Clemson.”

  She was starting over. Getting away. That would be good for her. She’d make new friends and there would be other guys. She might even fall in love again. My heart felt like someone was squeezing it by hand at the mere idea of her loving someone else. But I had to let her go. “You’ll like it there. Beautiful campus. It was one of the colleges I visited.”

  “I can start a new life,” she said, nodding firmly, with determination in her voice. A life where I was no longer in it, unable to hurt her anymore.

  We make certain choices in life because we have to. Others are made on a whim. And the rest, if we’re fortunate enough, we think those through, taking our time to decide. I’m not sure which one of these scenarios made me close the distance between us, bring our bodies a breath away from one another, and cup her face in my hands. That face I’d never forget. The one I saw every night when I closed my eyes and stayed with me throughout the day. I thought of nothing else as I lowered my mouth to hers, capturing it with a kiss. I’d longed for this moment for what seemed like forever. I wanted her in my arms again, her body pressed against mine like this, and with a desperate moan, our kiss quickly escalated to a burning frenzy.

  Her hands slid under my shirt, soft palms caressing my skin. I could hear my own voice in my head telling myself this had to stop, but no part of my body was listening. I couldn’t force myself to do it even if I wanted to. She was leaving, moving on and I’d soon become a memory for her. That was all I knew. Maybe this was desperation, a futile echo of two people who’d loved each other deeply and were forced to let it all go. Nothing mattered to me in this moment—the past, present or future—because right now, with the moonlight playing on her face, a heavenly host surrounding this place where we’d spent so many carefree nights in the arms of the other, there was nothing but Dixie and me. If I had to choose a long life or this one last embrace with her, I’d choose this moment time and time again.

  Dixie Monroe

  THE ACHE I felt for Asher to touch more of me battled with the trembling from being in his arms again. I couldn’t get close enough. His hands moved down my arms and squeezed my waist, Asher’s tongue sliding over mine as every nerve in my body came alive. My hands gripped his back, desperate to get closer and make sure there wasn’t any space between us, not an inch.

  Asher grabbed my bottom and jerked me up against him. His hardness pressed into my stomach. I could feel the throb of his erection, my panties dampening even more. He lifted me gently, up and down, his pelvis rubbing against me. Asher’s fingers bit into the flesh where my shorts had ridden up. I made noises I didn’t know I was making, moving a hand to the front of his jeans to feel his bulge in my hand, the thickness of him in my palm causing him to lower me and my feet to touch the ground again. Terrified that this was over, that whatever control he had lost had come back, I began to open my mouth. But before I could say anything, Asher grabbed my shirt and ripped it over my head, his dark, hungry gaze locked on every inch of my body. “Take off your shorts,” he demanded, discarding his own shirt, and already working the buttons of his jeans.

  He watched me as I lowered my shorts. They fell on the grass beneath our feet, his eyes following their descent. “Panties, too,” he ordered and I quickly tugged them to the ground. We stood there naked, Asher’s eyes devouring my flesh.

  I wanted his hands on me, his mouth, his body inside mine. “Asher,” I began to plead.

  “I want to kiss and lick every inch of your body. I want to take all night with you. But I need to be inside you, Dixie, right now,” he said before I could add anything else.

  I stepped closer to him and placed a hand on his chest. Tilting back my head, I stared into his eyes. I was no longer the same girl he once held and loved in this very place. I was older, stronger. I wanted everything from him, and I was not afraid to ask. “Fuck me, Asher,” I said.

  His eyes blazed, his hand firmly grabbing my hair, but with enough gentleness not to hurt me. “You want me to fuck you?” he asked, the heat in his eyes turning into molten fire.

  “I want to still feel you in me tomorrow. I want each step I take to remind me that you were inside me.”

  “Jesus,” he hoarsely whispered. He then spun me around by a handful of my hair, his other palm landing firmly on my butt, the sudden smack ringing through the air. I squealed from the shock and pleasure. “You like that?” he asked, doing it again.

  “Yes,” I replied breathlessly.

  His hand kept smacking my butt, each slap stinging more than the one before it, my thighs beginning to feel the wetness between them. When he stopped, he put a knee between my legs and aggressively pushed them apart. His fingers searched for my wetness, a single digit climbing to the pulse of my clit. I cried out, my body bucking. He twisted, then pinched the quivering bundle of nerves, growling in my ear, “You’re soaking wet from your spanking. You like it when I play rough.”

  “Yes,” I panted, “I like it all.”

  Trapped in his arms, we moved us to his truck. He jerked open the passenger door and all but threw me on the worn seat, before covering me and opening my legs, both his hands prying them apart. I was desperate to have him inside me. I wanted anything he could give me. I’d let him do whatever he wanted.

  “Tell me to fuck you again,” he said, his eyes lifting to mine, their color even darker now.

  “Fuck me,” I replied without hesitation.

  With one hard move, he pushed his length deep inside me. We both cried out as I clawed at his back, needing him to stay there. “God, that’s tight,” he breathed.

  “I want to be sore tomorrow,” I said again.

  “This pussy is mine. And by the time I’m done with this pussy, you’ll remember me for days.”

  He gently slid from my body until the tip was almost freed, before he pounded into me again. He grabbed my hair and tilted my head back, our eyes locked on each other. With each plunge and firm rock of his hips, we remained unable to look away, needing that closeness.

  “This face,” he said as he slammed into me, “always this face. It’s all I see.”

  Tears stung my eyes. There was so much he was saying in just those few unguarded words.

  “Is this what you wanted?” he asked as he brought my body closer to its release. “Am I fucking you hard enough?”

  “Yes,” my breaths were shallow, my orgasm so close it was hard to keep my eyes from closing in ecstasy.

  “You’re so goddamn wet. Turns you on, doesn’t it, to be spanked and fucked this hard?”

  “Just by you,” was all I knew how to say.

  He growled, satisfaction rumbling deep in his chest, and then began moving faster, his breaths quick and heavy. “I want to fuck you forever. Be right here inside you until the earth stands still. Nothing is as good as this.”

  I clawed at his arms, the first tremors of my orgasm taking hold. Moving in like a warm tide inside me. My mouth fell open in a cry, but my eyes stayed on him. I wanted Asher to see what he did for me, how being with him was the only pleasure I ever wanted. As I felt apart in his arms, shuddering and chanting his name, my knees pressed into his ribs, arching higher and higher to feel him as deeply as I could. Asher then freed his own release, bathing my thighs and stomach. He didn’t look away, groaning my name through the shudders that caused his body to jerk.

  I sat up and wrapped my arms around his waist. He’d regret this now. I knew him well enough to expect that. Before he could do that, I needed him to hold me one last time. His arms enveloped my frame and we stayed like that longer than I’d hoped. And when he finally pulled back, I didn’t need to look into his eyes to know it was all over.

  “I’ve never felt that connected to anyone. Never will,” he said, his honesty surprising me. “I can’t . . . not now . . . not with Steel the way he is. Dixie, there can’t be more than this.”

  I replying tenderly, “I know.”

  He closed his eyes and rested his
forehead on mine, “I love you, Dixie Monroe.”

  This was when I should have told him the same. But I’d already done that, and it’d changed nothing between us. I said instead, “I come here most nights.”

  He stilled. I waited as he thought that through. He then replied, “Not sure I can resist that.”

  “Good. I’m glad you can’t.”

  I wanted more of this. If it was all we could have, I was okay with that. My body was still humming from the pleasure, the addictive experience of having sex with Asher feeling like a pain killing narcotic.

  He then added, “If we do that, I’m afraid I won’t know how to stop.”

  “Good. I’m glad you can’t resist me,” I teased.

  He laughed, his arms tightening around me. “I’d have probably cracked before now if you’d told me to fuck you like that. My dick has never been that hard. The sound of your sweet voice asking me that . . . it’s a damn miracle I didn’t throw you on the grass and gone at it right there like an animal.”

  “Next time, maybe try that. I’ll even get on all fours for you.” I knew I was taunting him. But the image of him behind me made my tender spots begin to tingle again.

  “Dix, don’t say shit like that after the pounding I just gave you. You’re gonna be sore and all I can think about is doing it over and over.”

  I wanted him to think about me all day tomorrow. To be as crazed with lust as I would be by the time he got here. I let my hands fall as I sat back, “You’re right. I need to get home.”

  He sighed, got out of the truck, before reaching for my hand to help me out. His gaze shifted to my body where he’d released all over me, while my eyes traveled to his penis which was once again hard and erect.

  “I’ll clean you up,” he said, finding his shirt where he’d tossed it in the grass. I stood and let him wipe me down, knowing he wanted more. I was leaving Asher Sutton wanting me.

  “Get dressed,” he said, his tone sharp. I turned away before he caught me smiling. I took my time, looking over my shoulder, always finding him watching me.

  “I’ll see you later,” I told him, heading for the path that wound up to my house.

  “That’s it? Not even a goodnight kiss?”

  I stopped and flashed Asher a big teasing grin, “If there’s a kiss goodnight, I’ll most likely beg you to fuck me from behind.”

  He ran his hand through his hair and exhaled. Blew a long breath into the darkness, “Dixie Monroe, you’re gonna kill me.”

  “Night, Asher,” was all I said. I hurried along the path, letting myself fully absorb the reality of what we’d decided to do. What we had was no longer a fairytale. It would end and I’d be destroyed once more. But for now, Asher was mine. A small part of him belonged to me again. A part I could feel and touch, and that had to be enough.