Hold (Gentry Boys #5) Read online

  I got my pants pulled up enough to be decent and took a peek into the hallway. When I was sure that the kids’ door was still closed the same way I’d left it, I picked Saylor up and carried her in bodice-ripping romance style to the bedroom.

  “I’m pretty much naked,” she whispered, trying to pull her gown over her skin.

  “You’re completely gorgeous,” I confirmed as I crossed the bedroom threshold and laid her out on the bed.

  I pushed her protesting hands away and got the remains of the silk nightie out of the way. I guess most men believed their wives were insanely beautiful creatures created just for them. But mine really was.

  “Let me see,” I insisted, getting my hands all over her until she stopped trying to keep any part of herself from me. Her hips had widened slightly after her pregnancy with the twins and her breasts were fuller. She was soft curves and softer skin, so superbly feminine that it was only natural to rest my head on her belly and pray that I’d get to stay there forever. I’d already vowed a long time ago to spend the rest of my life trying to deserve this. Saylor ran her fingers through my sweaty hair and let out a happy sigh.

  We’d grown up together, sort of. She lived in the one decent neighborhood of the shitty prison town of Emblem where my brothers and I struggled to survive on the desolate outskirts. I was a punk. All three of us were. Triplets born to a vicious scumbag of a father and a weak-willed junkie mother, we inflicted havoc on the town of Emblem and its daughters.

  Back in those bleak times, Saylor wasn’t slutty enough to catch my attention, not until the day when I used her to settle a bet with my brothers. It was the worst thing I’d ever done and that’s really saying something, but it rattled me awake in a way. I didn’t want to be that guy, the callous scoundrel who trampled everything decent in his path. I didn’t want to be my father. Six years later when we ran into each other, Saylor had no reason on earth to trust that I was any better than I’d been at age sixteen. I’ll always be amazed that she gave me the chance to prove otherwise.

  “Cordero. What are you thinking?” my wife whispered as she cradled my head against her bare skin.

  I propped myself up on my elbows and covered her with my body, careful not to crush her with my weight. Her mouth tilted into a smile as she bent her head and kissed the place just beneath my collarbone where a line of Latin script was tattooed across my upper chest. I’ve got a total of nineteen tattoos at this point and some of them are pretty damn impressive works of art. But it was this one that always caught Saylor’s attention, the one she always sought out and smiled over. She might not even be aware that she does it.

  In a blink I found myself tossed back in time exactly four years ago, to the night I sat beside her at the edge of a pool, my dick hard, my heart pounding, my head brooding over the question of whether I even had a right to look at Saylor McCann.

  “Vincit qui se vincit,” she read aloud.

  “Know what it means?”

  Her nose wrinkled as she tried to puzzle it out. “Something about winning,” she guessed.

  “Close. ‘He conquers who conquers himself.’”

  Her face was inches away from mine. “Have you? Conquered yourself?”

  “Sometimes,” I told her honestly.

  “Cord?” Saylor asked gently and there was a hint of concern in her eyes as she touched my cheek.

  I took her hand and kissed the smooth skin on the underside of her wrist, trailing my lips along the tattoo that she’d once gotten in answer to mine.

  ’Amor vincit omnia’.

  Translation: Love conquers all.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “I’m thinking about you. About our family. About the fucking incredible roller coaster of life.”

  Saylor’s smile would always be the thing I aspired to the most. She gave it to me now.

  “How did I get so lucky?” she said.

  I asked myself that question every time I opened my eyes and again before I closed them at night. I kissed her slow, ran my lips along her jaw and whispered in her ear. “You’re the dream, angel.”

  “Make love to me,” she pleaded in a hushed gasp and opened her body to take me in. I was ready. I slid inside of her and took it slow, bringing her to the blissful edge twice more before letting myself go. It would never get old, not with her. Not even when we grew old.

  Later, as Saylor slept serenely in my arms, my thoughts strayed back to Emblem, as they often did when the day was done and only darkness awaited. Memories were the reason I still had nightmares, although they weren’t as graphic or frequent as they once were. In those nightmares there was always the pain of hunger and the acrid taste of desert dirt. There was always a terrible villain more foul-breathed and violent than any fairy tale. I was always small there, always even more desperate to protect my brothers, Creed and Chase, than I was to protect myself. Sometimes as my mind shook itself free and I curled my arms more tightly around my sleeping wife, I would need to whisper ‘It’s over’ to myself before I could return to sleep.

  But then the next day, sometimes I would remember the battles that still haunted me. And I would wonder if that was true, if the worst was really over.

  Or if somewhere in the uncertain future loomed the fiercest fight yet.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CREED

  They wanted blood tonight, or something even more personal. Right after my set I headed down the back hallway but a bunch of drunken ASU coeds were blocking the way. The two bouncers who were supposed to keep order back there were so busy trying to touch some tit they didn’t have time to be useful. I preferred the Scottsdale venues to these college crowds but the money was too good to pass up. I’ve been headlining on Thursday nights here at The Hole for about three years but lately the place has been getting too fucking rowdy.

  Or maybe I’m just getting too fucking old.

  “Creedence!” shrieked some tottering blonde I’d never seen before. She lurched around with a couple of other girls as they tried to keep each other upright. Then she clumsily flashed a pair of pert tits, her glittery scrap of a shirt getting bunched around her neck.

  “Creedence!” she howled again and pointed to her chest just in case I missed seeing the offer.

  “Jesus,” I muttered, shaking my head and feeling sorry for whoever raised that stupid girl. I just wanted to get myself and my guitar the hell out of there. You’d think the titanium band around my left ring finger would discourage the groupie crowd but either they didn’t notice or considered it a challenge. Whatever the case, they’re wasting their time, all of them.

  I was making some headway toward the exit and so far had managed not to kick anyone in my way. Then some wiry chick with a thick streak of magenta in her brown hair grabbed me around the waist and started to climb like she was scaling Camelback freaking Mountain. I could have shaken her off with ease but I was trying to figure out how to do it without being rough enough to hurl her to the dirty tile.

  “Holy shit,” breathed the girl, exhaling a cloud of peppermint Schnapps, “Sick. You’re like a damn wall of muscle.” Then she wrapped her skinny legs around my waist and started acting like I was the bucking bull at a rodeo so I decided I was done being pleasant.

  “Get off,” I growled, pushing her legs away.

  But no, this one decided such rejection was merely an opportunity. She duck-faced her thin lips and rubbed her bony body harder. “I’ll get you off, baby.”

  No thanks. I smacked her hands away from my crotch and leveled her with a stern you-ought-to-be-ashamed-of-yourself kind of glare. “Have some god damn self respect.”

  She was like a human octopus. Seriously, it was sick. Octo Girl took the arm I’d just detached myself from and wrapped it around my neck while she pushed her other hand down my waistband and flicked her tongue next to my ear. “Self fucking respect? You sound like someone’s fucking dad or something. Makes me so wet.”

  Gross. Disgust. On every measurable level and beyond.


  I would never hit a female but I was done being molested tonight so I wrapped my right arm around the body of Octo Girl and unmerged her parts from mine. She slipped down and landed on the floor with an unfortunate ‘Oof!’ and then swiveled around to glare at me. I knew that glare. It had a ‘Can’t believe you passed this shit up’ kind of flavor. I’ve become immune. I come out to play music and that’s all. The other performers can decide a pussy collection is part of the after-show and that’s their business. I’m not interested. If everyone could see what I’ve got waiting for me at home they would know better than to even try.

  One of the bouncers, a gruffly bearded pit bull named Edgel, got his act together and decided to clear a path. He urged the girls to one side of the hallway and stood in front of them like a hairy velvet rope.

  “I got ya, Creed,” he shouted with a grin full of capped gold teeth.

  “Appreciate it,” I grumbled as I squeezed past.

  If this were a crowd of men I’d have no trouble barreling my way through the horde, but fists and brute force aren’t really in order when you’re up against a pack of drunk twenty year old girls.

  The original tit flasher gave it one more try and then offered me the same baffled glare as Octo Girl before her friends hauled her away from her own humiliation. The sight of her made me sad in a weird way. She probably had doting parents somewhere on the planet and they wouldn’t be excited to see how their little princess was behaving. In my head I pictured some sallow middle-aged couple from Iowa or somewhere wringing their plump corn-fed hands and wailing, ‘Oh honey, how could you?’

  Yeah. I really must be getting fucking old.

  I waved to Edgel just before stepping out into the night, grateful to realize that the keys to my truck were still in my back pocket because I sure wasn’t going back in The Hole tonight for love or money.

  My truck was parked on the next block, like it always was. There’s too much risk of getting boxed in somehow by parking in the small lot beside the bar. I never wanted to hang around longer than I had to. Right around the corner I passed a quartet of men and women who looked a few years older than the university crowd. They were dressed like they’d spent a gray cubicle kind of day inside one of those towering downtown Phoenix office buildings.

  “Great show, man,” one of the guys said and the others murmured in agreement.

  “Thanks,” I muttered with my head down because, like my wife says, I still don’t know how to take a damn compliment. I probably never will.

  When I finally got inside my truck and set the guitar carefully on the seat beside me I managed to exhale and relax a little. I loved performing as much as ever; I just had some trouble handling all the shit that came with it sometimes. That was why I’d never taken any of the touring offers and couldn’t bring myself to return calls from that California music agent.

  I turned the key and the buttery sound of the engine revved up immediately. I’d bought it about two years back, the first semi-new vehicle I’d ever owned. Sometimes I got nostalgic for the old, rambling pickup I used to share with my brothers, Cord and Chase. Those warm feelings probably didn’t really come from the rusty eyesore that got towed to the dump some time ago. But that old tin pile signified an era of liberty when the three of us managed to bust out of our childhood and find something better than the Gentry curse we’d been born to. We’d done it together, which was how we’d done everything, ever since the first spark of life twenty-six years ago. When we were kids Chase used to claim that it was inevitable that we’d all die on the same day. That was bullshit of course, like so much of what came out of Chase’s mouth.

  I chuckled over the memory of my brother’s crazy declarations. God, I missed my boys. Cord and Chase were still here in town and even though I saw them whenever I could we all had our own business going on. I’ve got nothing to complain about though. Life has been pretty damn good to me for no reason at all.

  After carefully nosing the truck around the pedestrians littering the street, I headed toward University Drive and switched the radio to the CD setting. Alan Jackson immediately started belting out his best and I smiled because he was Truly’s favorite. She must have had this playing the last time she used the truck. The thought of her all sprawled out and sexy, waiting for me on our bed, caused my heart to perform a little flip in my chest, like it always did when I was on my way home to her.

  She’d offered to come along and watch me play at The Hole tonight but I knew she was tired. She had a long day, between her fashion design classes in the morning and then her internship up in Scottsdale. When I planted a kiss on her head she gave me one of her divine Truly smiles. That was the smile I sang for and worked for and woke up in the morning to see. It was mine and I planned on keeping it as long as I breathed.

  “I’ll come right home,” I promised, wishing at the time that I didn’t have to go anywhere at all.

  “I’ll be waiting,” she answered with her playful Southern lilt as her eyes pointedly fastened on my crotch.

  With a promise like that it took a lot for me to walk out the door and drive to Tempe. My dick was rather unhappy with the delay and it was a chore to focus on the music.

  My fingers tapped the steering wheel in time to the song as light from a streetlamp caught the metal of my wedding band. I knew this song well. I’d sung it once, for her. It was the very first time I got up on a stage with my fists clenched, my nuts in a bunch, waiting for any excuse to jump down and take a swing at the first fucker who had something smart to say. Then I’d looked over the nameless sea of faces before me and saw her. Truly Lee always shone with the kind radiant beauty that men have fought brutal wars to win. When she gave a slight nod of her head and that incomparable smile I found the calm that relaxed my fingers out of a fist and led them to the guitar strings.

  I was already a goner by that point, had been from the first night I took her home and played every kind of sex combo ever invented. In bed our chemistry was off the charts, although it took my head a little while to wake up and realize that once I looked at her I wouldn’t be able to look anywhere else. Truly was so much more than a body and a face. She had love and passion and humor. She could have done a thousand times better than me.

  The condo that we bought shortly before our Valentine’s Day wedding a few months back was cradled down in the quiet shadows of South Mountain, a world away from the boisterous college corridor. When I got out of the truck I paused for a moment to stare at the red lights of the antennas atop the mountain. You could see them from just about anywhere in the valley. There were cars surrounding me in the parking lot but there was no noise. I could sense the wilderness of the mountain preserve just on the other side of the stucco perimeter wall. Something about the smell of the creosote and the brief yips of some nearby coyotes caught me off guard. Suddenly I was tossed back in time to the scene of a thousand campouts with my brothers in the wide, raw desert that surrounded Emblem. Those weren’t good years. Thinking of them now made me uneasy.

  I pushed away the gloom and whistled a little as I walked to the front door. It was all decorated in frilly Truly-style with a spring wreath that cradled a painted wooden heart that read ‘Love Lives Here’.

  The musky scent of one of her sensual candles hit me as soon as I got the door open. Our neighbor was a sixty-year-old widow who made a living selling shit like dildos and flavored body oil. Truly bought a few things every month to help her out.

  “Hi there, handsome,” purred Truly Lee Gentry as she posed in the archway between the living room and the kitchen. The black lace corset with red trim showed off her hourglass figure and her black hair spilled in soft waves over her shoulders. The garters and black stockings ended in the most whorish stilettos this side of the red light district and she started to slide her black thong down right before my eyes.

  Be still my fucking heart.

  “Damn, honey,” I swore, slamming the door at my back and getting my shirt off a millisecond later. “If I would have known to ex
pect all this I would have blown every traffic light in the east valley.”

  “I warned you I’d be waiting,” she teased and then balled the thong up in her hand before tossing it at my head.

  I would have caught it but I was busy getting my pants down. “You got any other warnings?”

  “We’ll take care of them in there.” She started walking toward the bedroom, her bare ass winking erotically with every swaying step.

  I caught up to her and pressed my dick against her soft flesh while my hands found a hot target between her legs. “We’ll take care of them out here,” I growled into her ear, enjoying her shudder of arousal and the sudden slickness on my fingers.

  She was putty in my hands as I nudged her into the kitchen, toward the quartz countertops.

  “Bend over,” I ordered when we got there.

  “Creed,” she protested, glancing over her shoulder while biting a corner of her lip. I answered by flipping her around, dropping to my knees and giving her a long, deliberate lick that got her thighs shaking and her chest heaving.

  “I feel like I ought to get down and thank the lord for giving you so many talents with that mouth,” she panted in her sexy drawl. “It deserves to be honored.”

  I withdrew my tongue and pulled her down to the floor with me. “Think I’ll claim a reward then.”

  “What reward?” She was straddling me now, those luscious tits practically spilling out of the tightly pulled corset, the muscles between her legs already quivering on the brink of climax.

  I relaxed onto the cold tile, stretching my arms up and linking them behind my head while I watched her. “You’re gonna ride me like the hot devil, sweet girl.”

  Truly raised a perfectly arched dark eyebrow. “I don’t believe the devil is used to working for it, Mr. Gentry.”

  I said nothing. I unlinked my hands, seized her curvy hips and pushed my throbbing cock inside of her with enough force to make her throw her head back with a curse and a moan while her fingernails dug into my chest. But her body told the story about how she loved it. I didn’t marry this girl because she was the hottest piece of ass on the planet but the fact sure was a rich bonus.