Rachel Gibson: Crazy On You

Tucker didn’t like to talk about his past-didn’t really talk about his life. During the course of normal conversation, whenever anyone asked about his life, he just said he didn’t have much family and changed the subject.

He thought of Lily Darlington and the way she touched Pippen. The way she looked into his eyes and touched his cheek and told him she loved him bigger than the stars. Tucker was sure his grandmother had loved him, but he was equally sure she’d never threatened to kick ass on his behalf. He’d had to kick ass on his own behalf. He’d always had to take care of himself.

He was a man now-thirty years old-and he was the man he was because of the life he’d been dealt. He knew a lot of guys who’d come back from Iraq or Afghanistan and had a hard time adjusting to life outside of the military. Not Tucker. At least not as much. He’d learned long ago how to deal with shit thrown at him. How to cope with trauma and how to let it go. Oh, he had some really dark memories, but he didn’t live with them. He’d worked them out and moved on.

He stripped to his gray boxers and climbed into bed. Everything he had, he’d earned. No one had given him anything and he was a content man. He fell asleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow, and at some point, when he was warm and comfy and deep into REM, Lily Darlington entered his dreams. She wore red silk and her hands touched his face and neck. She looked into his eyes and smiled as she cupped his cheek. “You’re cold, Tucker,” she said. “You need to warm up.” The dream started nice and innocent but quickly turned hot and dirty. Her hands slid across his chest as she lowered her mouth to the side of his neck, and the things she whispered against his throat weren’t in the least innocent.

“I want you,” she whispered as her palm moved over his chest, down the side of his waist, then back up again. “Do you want me?” Her touch was soft and slow, frustrating, sliding back and forth and driving him mad.

“Yes. God, yes.” He ran his fingers through her hair, bunching it in his hands as she kissed his neck and inched her hot palm lower-lower, down his stomach and belly until her fingernails scraped his skin just above the elastic of his underwear.

Her fingers slide beneath the elastic waistband and she wrapped her soft warm hand around his extremely tight erection. “You’re a good boy with dirty hands.”

His heart pounded in his chest as he shoved her against the wall and into her. All caveman aggression and hunger. In his dream she loved every second of it. She met every hard plunge of his hard dick with insatiable greed, shoving her hips into his, begging for more and moaning his name. “Tucker!” she screamed in his head-and his eyes flew open. He sat up in bed, his lungs pulling oxygen into his chest and his pulse pounding in his ears.

A sliver of light sneaked beneath his blackout blinds and streaked across the dark room. The sound of his heavy breathing filled the space around him. He’d just had a wild sex dream about Lily Darlington. Obviously he’d gone without for too long, and he’d lost his mind. He didn’t know her. She was a single mother. He felt like a pervert.

A pervert who needed to get laid before he lost his mind again.

True to his word, that Sunday afternoon at around four P.M., Deputy Tucker Matthews knocked on Lily’s front door. She opened it and stood in stunned silence, like she’d suffered a blow to the head.

“Is Pippen around?” He had a new basketball tucked under one arm and a pair of silver aviators covered his eyes-eyes that were a warm brown and creased at the corners when he was amused, like when she’d threated to shoot him the other morning.

Lily was so shocked stupid that he’d kept his word that all she could utter was “Ahhh, yeah.” Her shock couldn’t have anything to do with him looking so good. She’d seen him yesterday, knew he was good-looking. A scar creased his forehead from the middle of his right brow to the line of his short brown hair. This, along with his rough, masculine edges, kept him from being a pretty boy, but allowed him enough intrigue to give a girl bad thoughts about body searches. So why did she feel so rattled today? He was wearing that same hideous gray Army sweatshirt he’d had on yesterday, with frayed sleeves, a torn neck-and he looked like he’d just dragged himself out of bed. He was all rough and scruffy and definitely needed to shave. “You’re here,” she managed.

“I told you I would be.”

Lily was five feet six inches tall and she noticed he was just a few inches taller-perhaps five ten. What he lacked in height, he made up for in pure, unadulterated hotness. So much hotness that it lit a little fire in her stomach and heated up her pulse. She held the door open for him and shocked herself further by wondering what he’d look like with that horribly ratty sweatshirt ripped off and his wrist cuffed to something. “Come in and I’ll get him.”

He took a step back instead. She couldn’t see his eyes but color crept up his neck to his cheeks as if he’d read her mind. “Tell him I’ll be in the driveway warming up,” he said and turned to go.

No doubt, her inappropriate thoughts were written on her face and scared him. They scared her too. “Pippen,” she called out over her shoulder, “Deputy Matthews is here for you.”

He stopped a few steps down and glanced back at her. “You can call me Tucker.”

No. No, she couldn’t. The guy was probably all of twenty-five, and she was thinking of him shirtless and cuffed to a bedpost. It made her feel a bit pervy. Although, to be fair to herself, she’d never had such a good-looking guy show up on her porch before. Not even when she’d been twenty-five. Not even the rat bastard she’d married, Ronnie. And even though she hated to admit it now, Ronnie had been damn fine.

“I’m coming,” Pippen hollered as he raced past his mother, shoving his arms into his jacket.

Lily shut the door behind her and leaned against it. Well, that had been weird and awkward. Yesterday she’d been fine. She’d seen him, seen that he looked much more like a faux cop from a Playgirl magazine than a real one. She’d acknowledged his good looks to herself, thought about body searches, and managed to speak like an intelligent woman. At least today she didn’t have rollers in her hair and half her makeup on her face.

Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a white cable knit sweater, jeans, and a brown woven belt around her hips. If she’d known company would appear on her porch, she would have done her hair and put on some lipstick.

She pushed away from the door and moved across the living room to the couch. On the top of the oak coffee table and across the back of the red sofa sat little teal bags with the logo of Lily’s spa embossed in white in each center. Several rolls of teal-and-white cellophane and bags of trail-size beauty products lay on the couch cushions. She moved the rolls aside and sat.

Tucker Matthews wasn’t company. He was the next door neighbor who was playing basketball with Pippen in the afternoon so he could sleep in the morning. He’d given Pip his word and he’d kept it, which was more than she could say for her son’s father, who didn’t pay attention to trivial things like court orders and visitation and keeping his word. He worked on Ronnie-time, which usually depended on the latest slootie pants he’d hooked up with.

Yesterday, when Lily had walked outside and seen a stranger in her driveway playing ball with her son, she’d been a bit freaked out. Today she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Pip wanted a father so desperately. He loved any male attention, and would be crushed when the deputy tired of playing, took his ball and went home for good.