He tossed me to the side, rolled me to my belly, pulled me up to my knees and drove back in.
I flipped my hair to the side (or, with all that black spray in it, it more like shifted to the side), looked back at him and breathed, “I can’t suck your blood like this.”
He kept thrusting inside me even as he grinned and said, “My blood is all in one area of my body now, baby. But you wanna suck that, I’m good to lie back and take it.”
“No, no,” I said hurriedly (or more like, moaned hurriedly). “Carry on.”
His grin turned wicked and his hand slid from my hip down, around and in, and it was then I stuffed my face in his bed and got makeup all over his comforter.
I didn’t think he minded.
“I don’t know. That’s all Larry saw. But she’s still with him.”
It was Monday the week after Halloween. Hix had had his kids back, but that day, they’d gone again to Hope. All of them, including Shaw for the first time since he moved in exclusively with Hix.
Hope was doing her thing, Hix was doing his.
And it seemed to be working.
This meant he could resume Monday Night Football at the Outpost with his buds, Toast and Tommy. He’d brought me. Donna had showed. So had Hal and Ashlee.
And now he was telling me Larry had seen Mom with Kavanagh Becker getting a coffee at Babycakes.
I hadn’t heard from her since the Sunnydown incident.
Maybe this was why.
“So, you think she got her meal ticket, you made your point you’re not gonna take her crap or let me do it, she smartened up enough to take heed of your official position, and she’s doing what she has to do to try to settle in with this guy for the long haul?” I asked.
“Been in the woman’s company not even a handful of times, sweetheart,” Hix replied. “Got no clue. You said she’d come and go. It’s been a while. She ever go for this long?”
I looked to my beer and muttered, “She didn’t keep a schedule.” I looked back to Hix. “Sometimes it would be long enough I’d think that was the end. Then she’d come back.”
He wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and dipped in close. “Just givin’ you the info on what Larry saw. Keepin’ you apprised. Didn’t do it to bum you out. But just to repeat, she tries any more shit, we’ll deal.”
I held his gaze and nodded only to have my arm cuffed on the other side and hear Toast say, “It’s Monday Night Football, people. Serious conversations are verboten.”
“Her first Monday Night Football and the chick is breakin’ all the rules,” Tommy, on Toast’s other side, teased.
“Shush,” Toast hushed Tommy. “You might scare her off and she’s a chick that doesn’t glare at the plate of nachos like she can make it combust with her eyes or act like she doesn’t want to shove her face in it and eat it all herself. Be gentle with this unknown entity, Tom, she might bolt.”
“Right,” Tommy said. “Sorry, Greta. You can get serious with Hix all you want. Don’t glare at our nachos and make them combust.”
Through my laughter I assured, “Your nachos are safe, boys.”
“No they’re not,” Donna declared, pushing through Toast and me holding a salad plate and commencing scooping half the remains of the nachos on it.
“Hey! You’re hoggin’ it all!” Toast shouted.
“I told you to move it down my way,” Donna reminded him, licking melted cheese from her fingers.
“Then it wouldn’t be smack in front of me,” Toast returned.
“Betty-Jean, another plate of nachos, yeah?” Hix ordered, and when I looked to him, I saw his eyes on the bartender.
“Got it, Hixon,” Betty-Jean replied and shuffled to the electronic cash register to put our order in.
“Stop being logical, Sheriff, it kills the fun of gettin’ up in Donna’s shit,” Toast demanded.
“Oh, don’t you worry,” Donna returned. “I’ll do something else you feel you need to get up in my shit about. Like continuing to root for the Cardinals.”
“Don’t make me puke,” Toast retorted. “The Cards? This is Broncos country.”
“It is not. It’s Chiefs country,” Tommy fired back.
“Dude, give it up with the Chiefs,” Toast advised, turning from me to Tommy. “The Broncs are where it’s at.”
“You grew up rooting for the Chiefs. You only switched to the Broncs like, four years ago. Where’s your loyalty?” Tommy replied.
“It’s Seahawks all the way,” Hal put in from down the bar.
“Yeah!” Ashlee cried. “They have the best colors for their uniforms.”
“Are you shittin’ me?” Toast asked.
“No,” Ashlee retorted. “That green is amazing.”
“Someone shoot me,” Tommy requested of the ceiling.
“Okay,” Ashlee agreed. “Hal, give me your gun.”
Hal started laughing.
Toast and Tommy dipped a shoulder hunched Hal and Ashlee’s way and began to launch in.
“You’re welcome,” Donna said, and my eyes swung to her. She motioned between Hix and me with her plate. “Carry on.”
She then went back to her seat on the other side of Tommy and tucked into her nachos.
I turned to Hix. “Your friends are da bomb.”
His eyes lit. “Did you just say da bomb?”
“Yes, because they’re da bomb.”
He burst out laughing.
I watched, grinning at him the whole time.
And when he quit, he dug into the nachos.
I did too.
That Wednesday night, I watched Hix walk up my front walk and I did it with more than my usual admiring eye, and not because there was more than usual to admire due to the fact that there was always a lot to admire about Hixon Drake.
I did it because I could tell by the line of his body and the look on his face that something was wrong.
I stayed where I was like I always stayed where I was when Hix came to me at night (these being the nights I didn’t go to him, which was most of the time when his kids weren’t with him).
I was under a blanket with a sweater and scarf on, my tea on a heating pad beside me, my book forgotten on my lap as he made his way to me.
He bent deep and took my mouth in a quick, wet kiss before he turned and did what I’d trained him to do. Sit and give me his order of what he needed.
But this time, instead of folding into the chair beside me and telling me he wanted beer, bourbon or food, he collapsed in it and stayed silent.
He was wearing his sheriff’s shirt, a thermal under it, and a cool brown leather jacket with his badge pinned on the outside of it.
I approved of his winter sheriff’s uniform.
I did not tell him this.
I noted softly, “It looks like a bourbon night.”
He didn’t turn his eyes from the street.
He stared at it for long enough for me to get more worried then lifted his hands and rubbed his face, which made me definitely worried.
“Hixon, darlin’,” I murmured.
He dropped his hands but kept his eyes to the street when he said, “Faith came in today to ask if there was any progress with the case.”
Oh boy.
I hadn’t seen Faith since the murder. Her mom had called to cancel her appointment, which was every six weeks and would have fallen three weeks after Nat was killed.
It had been way longer than that and she hadn’t been in. I also hadn’t bugged her to reschedule.