Coaxing the Roughneck

And I can’t deny him.

I’m trying to coax him to the surface, though. Off the rig.

I can’t forget that.

This is a mission. My future hinges on this man leaving this place. There are worse ways for a man to be convinced of something, right? I’m not hurting him. I’m giving him my body—as much of it as possible, anyway.

I just have to make sure I’m not falling for him in the process.

Swallowing hard, I glance back over my shoulder and find Butch looming behind me, hands fisted at his sides, that thick protrusion jutting out from his lap and stretching the confines of his jeans. He’s right. I don’t think it could fit…well, anywhere, really. Lord, it looks like three Coke cans stacked on top of each other.

But I can’t pretend I’m not excited to watch him touch it.

I can’t pretend I didn’t have the best nap of my life in his arms, that steady heartbeat thunking against my forehead and lulling me to sleep. This is a good man. This is a man who houses a lot of pain, is rough around the edges, but wouldn’t hurt me for all the money in the world. Like I said, he would have done it by now.

He would have pushed my legs open and wedged that thickness deep, deep inside of me and rutted me hard. Then he’d be my true Daddy.

Why am I suddenly breathing like I’ve run twenty blocks?

I’m not wearing panties or they would be sodden. As it is, there is wetness clinging to the tops of my inner thighs, the folds of my sex. My nipples are in aching peaks and when I close my eyes, all I can think about is Butch striping my body with milky, white liquid, the way I watched a man do in a pornographic internet video once, when I was curious and lonely. I thought it might help me climax, but it didn’t. It only made the ache worse and frustrated me further.

Now I know what pleasure feels like.

Butch showed me—and I want more.

More than that, I want to give him some. Want to give him physical relief, as well as the emotional kind. Every time I ask about his time as a Marine, he shuts down, but there’s a tug in my gut, refusing to let me give up. He needs help.

He needs me.

That thought causes a lump to rise in my throat and I swallow past it, turning around once I reach the low laundry folding table. Butch is in front of me instantly, picking me up and setting me on the edge of the piece of furniture, pressing his face into my throat. Until I notice his huge shoulders heaving, sweat soaking through the back of his shirt, I don’t realize what a hard time he’s having, being this close to the top deck. The outside world.

“Hey,” I whisper, cradling his head to my neck. “It’s okay.”

His arms wrap around me like steel bands, crushing me to his much larger body. “Just give me a minute,” he says hoarsely. “I can…hear the waves. The water. It sounds close.”

So it does. If I listen closely, I can hear swells lapping against the side of the rig. To someone who hasn’t been topside in years, those crashing waves must sound like explosions. “Butch,” I whisper, running my hands up and over his thick back muscles, my heart twisting over the scars encountered by my palms. “Just focus on where we are right now. It’s you and me. And we’re in no rush to move.”

My fingertips travel over a particularly gruesome scar and Butch growls, low and dangerous, into my neck, freezing my movements.

“I’m sorry,” I manage. “Does that one hurt more than the others?”

“No.” He yanks me tighter to his body, so close I almost can’t breathe. “I was thinking you deserve a man with a smooth back. And then I was thinking how I’d carve him up like a fucking turkey, anyway. So it wouldn’t much matter.”

“Gosh, the romance of it all.”

He pulls back with a frown. “I’m telling you I’ll kill any man who touches you and you make a joke?”

“I told you. I’m from New Orleans. We don’t scare easy.” I attempt a smile to lighten his mood, put him at ease. “Anyway, you didn’t really mean it.”

“You don’t think so?” He leans in until our faces are a mere breath apart, eyes blazingly intense. “I had to kill a dozen men with my bare hands to escape the enemy camp where I was tortured. Tortured for two years. Daily. I have no qualms taking a knife to anyone who breathes on you.”

My heart pounds up against my eardrums, my adrenaline spiking, but I don’t break our eye contact. Two years. Torture. He doesn’t want sympathy, though. I can see it in the challenging bristle of his posture, the clench of his jaw. He’s daring me to utter one word of solace. “To carve up a man for breathing on me, you would have to leave the oil rig first,” I murmur, issuing my own challenge. “What would happen afterward? Would you be my man, instead?”