For some ungodly reason, it seems like I still have tears left and they quickly fill up my eyes and spill over onto my cheeks, where Leo’s thumbs swipe them away one by one as they fall.
“Uuugghhh, I hate crying. Crying is so dumb. Tell me about your day,” I demand, pulling away from him so I can stand in front of the hall mirror, wipe my own cheeks and get my shit together, considering I need to prepare myself to come clean about the award.
“Well, you’re not the only one who had an eventful day,” he says, coming up behind me and watching through the reflection as I dry my tears and wish I could be a pretty crier, like women in movies. “It seems poor Buddy had his hands full after Emma Jo’s announcement when the whole town filed into the station and every one of them confessed to Jed’s murder.”
My eyes meet his in the mirror, and when I see he’s not kidding, I whirl around to face him.
“What? Are you serious?”
Leo laughs, but it’s not really one filled with humor. It leans more toward exhaustion and frustration, which is evident when he runs his hand through his hair in his signature “I’m about to lose my shit” move.
“Dead serious,” he replies, then quickly winces. “Sorry, bad choice of words. So, yeah, everyone rallied around you and confessed to the murder because they felt bad about blaming you now that they know you came home to help Emma Jo and the reasons why. And I can’t take any of those people seriously which means I still don’t have a prime suspect, a reason for the murder, or a murder weapon.”
My heart starts beating faster and my palms start to sweat as soon as he says murder weapon. I glance over at the empty hall table and my stomach immediately gets tied in knots.
“Leo, I-”
He moves in the blink of an eye, swooping me back up in his arms and cutting off my words with his mouth. Just like every time he kisses me, I lose all sense of reason and I lose myself in him. He deepens the kiss and lifts me up against him, my legs automatically wrapping around his waist as he moves us through the house, stopping at the base of the stairs to break the kiss.
“Whatever you were going to say, can it wait until tomorrow?” he asks, hefting me up higher with one arm and bringing the other one up to smooth his palm down the side of my face. “This has been a shitty day, at the end of a shitty week, and right now, I don’t want to think about murderers or the meddling people of Bald Knob. I don’t want to think about anything for the next ten to twelve hours but getting you naked as fast as possible, sinking myself inside of you, and forgetting about everything else around us. Right now, I just need you, Payton.”
Jesus, how do you say no to something like that?
“So what you’re saying is, you want me to distract you with sex?” I ask, looking down at him with a smile as I run my fingers through his hair.
He smiles back up at me and I lean down and kiss him while he grabs onto my ass with both hands and carries me up the stairs.
I forget about the secrets I’m keeping when he lays back on the bed and pulls me on top of him so I’m straddling his thighs.
I forget about murder weapons and suspects when I lift up just enough to unbutton his jeans, slide down his zipper, and reach inside his boxer briefs to palm his hardness and pull it out.
I forget about my life in Chicago and how whatever this is that’s happening between us will never work out, when he pushes my dress up to my hips, slides my white lace underwear to the side with one hand and clutches my hip with the other to position my body over him.
I forget my name and what day it is when he thrusts his hips up, filling me so quickly and perfectly that his name comes out as a gasp when I almost forget how to breathe.
He holds tightly to my hips, slamming me up and down on top of him until there’s nothing I can feel, nothing I can do, and nothing else I care about but taking away his worries and making him forget right along with me.
It’s fast and it’s hard and it’s wild, and somewhere along the way, Leo rips my dress the rest of the way off of my body and tosses it across the room, pushing himself up to sitting so he can slide a lacy cup of my strapless bra to the side and latch his lips to my nipple, sucking it into his mouth. I move up and down faster and harder in his lap, gripping his hair tightly in my fingers until we’re both covered in sweat, moaning and muttering each other’s names.
When he pulls my nipple harder into his mouth and moves his fingers between my thighs to rub and slide them against that perfect spot, I come with his name on my lips and he quickly follows, pumping up inside of me and jerking his hips between my legs until we both get lost in blissfully mindless oblivion.