Drop Dead, Gorgeous Part 5

The scent from between her legs smelled as sweet as she tasted and made his mouth water. Jordan gently drove two fingers in between the folds of her warm p.u.s.s.y, and slowly stirred them inside her before pulling them out, and putting them in his mouth. His d.i.c.k was so d.a.m.n hard it ached, but he resisted the urge to push into her now. Jordan needed to make this last.

She was a gorgeous, dark beauty, who wore her hair cut as short as his, and she represented absolutely nothing that reminded him of the world he'd come from.

Lonnie spread her legs wide to accommodate him. Jordan greedily lapped his tongue against her c.l.i.toris, and then drove it in between the folds as far as it would reach. d.a.m.n! If all of her didn't tasted like apples.

"Jordan!" she gasped, holding his head in place. "You're going to make me c.u.m," she said, breathless.

He stopped, looked up at her and smiled. "Not yet."

Jordan wanted to be inside her when she came. He raised himself up and hovered over her and expertly guided his rigid p.e.n.i.s inside her. Jordan lowered his mouth to hers again, and slowly began driving himself into her, and then just as slowly, eased himself out to the tip.

"Did I ever tell you that you taste like apples?" Jordan said, after making love to her.

Lonnie laughed. "You've mentioned it."

"How the h.e.l.l does that happen?"

She shrugged. "You gotta eat a lot of apples."

Jordan was on a plane headed for Houston. He stared out of the window, shaking loose the memory that had taken root in his head. The last thing he needed to be thinking about now were memories of making love to Lonnie.

It had been that good, though. The two of them together had been so good that he lost his head over her, and got so caught up that he hadn't been paying attention to what was really going on.

"Can I get you another drink, sir?" the flight attendant asked him.

He handed her his gla.s.s. "No, thank you."

Lonnie rolled over on top of him, straddling him. Jordan privately willed his d.i.c.k to rise to the occasion of round two, but he was spent.

She grazed his mouth with soft, sweet kisses, occasionally dipping her tongue in between his lips, tapping the tip of it against his.

"You've got me sprung, Gatewood," she whispered. "There. I said it."

"What does that mean?"

She laughed. "Sprung? It means that I am your love slave. All you have to do is ask, and I'll come running because you s.e.x so d.a.m.n good."

She was teasing him. Lonnie started to kiss him again, but Jordan held her back.

"What if I want more than that, Lonnie?"

"What else is there, Jordan?"

"There's you. There's all of you."

"You've got me, baby," she said demurely. "And you've got your wife. What more could a man ask for?"

But he didn't have her. Not really. Lonnie was a bird who could fly away from him on a whim, and Jordan wasn't comfortable with that.

"I want you."

"Of course you do." She smiled. "You want what you can't buy or own. But you can borrow it."

"Until you say otherwise?"

"It's a good deal, baby." Lonnie seductively licked his bottom lip. "Take it or leave it."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Gatewood," Jordan's driver said, greeting him outside of baggage claim, taking Jordan's bag and holding open the back door for him.

Jordan climbed in and smiled at the nervous young man sitting across from him.

"Mr. Gatewood," the younger man said politely.

"How you doing, Bruce?"

He nodded. "I'm good, sir. Surprised." He smiled shakily.

"Surprised?" Jordan asked coolly.

"Yeah, that uh ... you'd ask me to meet you out here."

"You ever been to Houston?"

"No, sir." He swallowed.

Jordan looked surprised. "You're from Texas, aren't you? And you mean to tell me you've never been to Houston?"

Bruce Johnson couldn't have been any more than thirty, thirty-five maybe. Jordan hadn't seen or spoken to him in two years. Jordan glanced out of the window, staring out at the highway as the driver maneuvered his way into traffic.

Bruce smiled nervously. "I always meant to, but no. I've never made it down here."

Jordan studied him. Bruce was more than nervous. He was scared. And he had every right to be. "It's been a while, Bruce."

"It has, Mr. Gatewood. It has." He nodded, unable to make and hold eye contact for very long. Men with nothing to hide, or at least nothing to be ashamed of, had no problem looking another man in the eyes. Jordan didn't trust a man who couldn't look him in his eyes.

This man had let him down. The disappointment filling Jordan's chest almost took his breath away. A man like him, in his position, relied heavily on people he could trust. He counted on men like Bruce Johnson to deliver on whatever task he a.s.signed to them, and if they couldn't, he expected them to be truthful with him.

Bruce Johnson had started to sweat under the weighted gaze of Jordan.

"Do you remember the last conversation we had, Bruce?"

Bruce's expression went blank. "Not really," he lied miserably.

Jordan had no respect for liars, either. "Unfortunately for you, I do remember it."

Bruce cupped his hands together between his knees.

"You told me that you'd taken care of her, Bruce," Jordan said gravely. "You promised me that I had nothing to worry about, and that you'd cleaned up the mess I'd left behind."

Fear flooded that man's eyes like tears. "I-uh..." His eyes darted back and forth. Bruce pursed his lips together. "The house was empty when I got there, Mr. Gatewood." He started talking fast, too fast. "I mean, I got there as soon as I could, and there wasn't anybody there, so I cleaned up the mess. I burned the purse and clothes, washed the floor. I thought that was all I needed to do. I figured that's what you wanted..."

The rage came out of nowhere, and before Jordan realized what he was doing, he drove his foot into the gut of Bruce Johnson. When the man doubled over, Jordan grabbed him by the collar of his s.h.i.+rt, and pulled him out of his seat and onto his knees on the floor of the car.

"You f.u.c.kin' lied to me!" Jordan growled. "When I asked you if you'd taken care of her, not clothes, not purses, not floors, but her, you looked me in the eye, and you told me something! What the h.e.l.l did you tell me?"

Bruce struggled to breathe. His mouth flapped open and closed before he finally made an audible sound.

"I-I told you ... that I did," he gasped.

"That you did what?"

"That ... I took care of her."

Jordan shoved him back into the seat across from him, adjusted his suit and tie, and casually leaned back, noticing that the driver was starting to slow down inside the parking garage of Jordan's hotel.

"If you'd just told me the truth, Bruce." Jordan shook his head in disappointment. "I'm not unreasonable, man. The truth I can live with, but lies make me sick to my f.u.c.kin' stomach."

The driver parked, and moments later, opened the back door for Jordan to get out.

"Lock it," Jordan told him, as he exited the car. "Call me and let me know when it's done."

"Wha-Hey, man! Mr. Gatewood! I'm sorry, Mr. Gatewood!"

As the driver pulled away from the curb, Jordan headed inside, ignoring the cries coming from the back of that car.

We Stand for Nothing Forty-two-year-old Frank Ross hadn't seen his father in nearly twenty years. Joel Tunson had never been a regular fixture in his life, but there were no hard feelings from Frank. The situation was what it was. He was a grown man. He knew how things worked in real life. Frank and s.h.i.+rley had met at a club, had a few drinks, shared a few laughs, and then got busy. She ended up getting pregnant, and the two of them kept on living their lives despite the b.u.mp growing in her stomach and the boy who'd been born as a result of their short-lived acquaintance. Joel came around from time to time when Frank was growing up, bringing him a toy truck or a baseball. He always took Joel out for ice cream, then dropped him back off at his momma's house, patted him on the head, and promised to spend more time with him in the future.

Colette had talked him into making this drive to see his father. "Don't you want to know the truth, Frank?" she asked, naked and straddling him. "I'm not saying you have to do anything about it, but wouldn't it be something if you really were related to a man like that?"

She was desperate and looking for an answer to the situation the two of them had gotten themselves into. The situation. That's what he called it. She didn't bother to call it anything, Colette just wanted out of it. She saw Gatewood as an opportunity, her own personal piggy bank, and a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel that seemed to go on forever. Frank was in that tunnel too, but he'd just learned to keep his eyes closed and pray that it would eventually come to an end, hopefully with him outside of prison walls, and not behind them.

He had gotten a card from Joel when he graduated high school, a card and a hundred-dollar bill. This address was on the outside of the envelope, and Frank had it memorized. The small house sat back off the street on a lot big enough to hold twenty houses that size. Frank pulled his car onto a patch of dirt, behind the old Buick already parked there. Frank spotted a large vegetable garden over to the side of the house, and an old doghouse toward the back. Overalls hung on the line. Never in a hundred years did he think he'd ever come to this place. And Frank sat in his car, realizing that he had no business being here now. This was wrong. All of it. He had no place in this old man's life, and Joel Tunson had no place in his. And neither one of them warranted anything remotely related to Jordan Gatewood.

"Get in the car, Frank," Colette demanded. She'd asked him to meet her in the parking lot of a convenience store just outside of Cotton.

"What's going on, Colette?" he asked irritably.

"Just get in, dammit!"

She was more agitated than usual. Colette had always been high strung, but something definitely had her upset. He climbed in on the pa.s.senger side, and looked at her sideways. "Mind telling me what the f.u.c.k is going on?"

Their s.h.i.+ft ended hours ago, and Frank had settled into his place with a six-pack and the schedule to all the playoff games for the weekend.

"I got a call from Ed Brewer." She glanced at Frank. "You know him?"

Frank nodded. Ed Brewer had come on the force not long after Frank had joined. "I know him."

"He knows, Frank," she said, staring wide-eyed and frantic at the road ahead of her. "How the f.u.c.k does he know?"

Frank couldn't believe what he was hearing. "He can't know, Colette," he argued.

"He does, Frank. He called me, and he said s.h.i.+t that only you and me would know. He knows about Reggie." She shot a nervous look at him. "He knows about the money, and the drugs."

Frank's heart started to pound. If this s.h.i.+t was true- "He called Reggie by name?"

She nodded. "Reggie Rodriguez," she said, panicked. "Reggie's been giving you and Frank a cut." That's what he said. "Reggie's been cutting the two of you in on the action," she repeated. Colette raked her hand through her hair. "If I didn't tell him, and you didn't tell him, then it had to have been Reg," she concluded. "Right? I mean, he's the only one."

"But how would he even know to talk to Reggie?"

Colette had his head spinning with more questions than answers. Reggie was a meth dealer living in Cotton, but his small-town, country a.s.s distributed the s.h.i.+t all over west Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. Frank and Colette weren't sure how much money he made, because Reggie kept a low profile, living in his mother's bas.e.m.e.nt, and driving an old beat-up Mustang, but for a percentage, they turned a blind eye when they saw him coming. Not much. Colette had made enough to get her mother's roof fixed, and pay off her car, and Frank had been able to catch up on some child-support payments, and give the kids some pretty nice Christmases.

"Where're we going?" he asked, as she exited the highway.

"He told us to meet him here," she said, sounding preoccupied. Colette drove to a secluded spot off the Rio Grande River, and pulled up next to a black pickup truck. Ed was in that truck, but he wasn't alone. Jake Boston, a dude who'd transferred in from El Paso, was with him. Both men climbed out of the truck and walked over to the edge of the river, waiting for Colette and Frank to follow.

There was no sense in beating around the bush. This was exactly what it appeared to be, a good old-fas.h.i.+oned Texas shakedown. Colette trailed behind Frank, keeping her arms folded protectively across her chest.

"What's going on?" Frank asked, staring back and forth between the two men. Ed Brewer was around Frank's age, a white guy with brown hair and eyes. He and Frank stood about the same height. Jake was a brotha, short and stocky, built like a running back.

"You know what's going on," Jake spoke up.

Ed turned and glared at him for speaking out of turn. Then he turned back to Frank. "Your boy Reggie's got a big mouth when he's threatened with jail," Ed calmly explained. "We pulled him over off Highway 10 the other night for speeding. One thing led to another," he explained in that slow Texas drawl that Frank seemed to hear in everyone's else's voice but his own, "and we searched the vehicle." He paused for effect.

Colette groaned, and muttered. "s.h.i.+t."

"That's right," Ed said, looking briefly at her. "When we threatened to take him in, he offered us a deal." He turned to Jake. "The same deal he'd given you and Colette here."

"What deal?" he asked, thinking that the best way to play this was to play it dumb.

Jake laughed.

Ed didn't. "An idiot like Reggie is lucky to be alive, and he's even luckier to be walking around a free man," he said coolly.

"Then why didn't you just arrest him, Ed, for speeding, transporting meth, and trying to bribe two upstanding officers like yourselves?" Frank caught on to the game Ed and his sidekick Jake here were trying to run on them. They had the word of a drug trafficker making accusations against two of Cotton's finest. So, what the h.e.l.l did he want?

Ed's eyes narrowed. "We want what he's really giving the two of you."

Frank raised his eyebrows.

"He offered us pennies on the dollar, Frank."

Frank turned and glanced at Colette. Yeah. That's about all he was giving the two of them. Pennies. But it was enough to help out their bank accounts a bit, without drawing too much attention to either one of them.

"What's he really giving y'all?" Ed probed.