Page 8 of Ridin' Solo
I cranked the playlist on my phone and moved about the kitchen efficiently, getting everything together. While it baked for an hour in the oven, I could get things moved around in the guest room and lift some weights. The new house I’d bought was an old three bedroom and two bathrooms. I figured I only needed one guest room. The other could be made into a weight room. I preferred a gym, but the long hours of law enforcement made a home gym more feasible. The last thing I wanted after dealing with the public all day was to go to the gym and deal with people stealing my squat rack.
My phone kept buzzing throughout my set of bench presses. I ignored it, knowing it was just social media notifications. It had been two years, and yet I couldn’t quite let go of my previous life entirely. Keeping track of the people I used to call friends was a habit, if only to provide a counterpoint to the life I led now. I’d chosen to go a different direction and seeing how they lived, played out in selfies and late night video postings, usually reaffirmed that I’d made the right choice.
The only posts that got to me were the ones where they were on some tropical vacation or a yacht off the coast of Capri. I still missed those carefree days where everything was a party. What I didn’t miss was the bone-deep sense of dissatisfaction with myself. Money couldn’t buy self-respect, but I was finding hard, honest work could. And that was enough to spur me on to drop the phone and get back to a set of bicep curls before the oven timer went off.
My new life was quieter, simpler, and more traditional. I couldn’t hide out in Auburn Hill forever, but it was working for me so far. One day I’d have to let my two lives converge and figure out how to reconcile both sides of me, but for now, I’d never been more satisfied with my life.
Even with Captain Oakley Waldo giving me grief every step of the way.
4
Oakley
Frustrating didn’t even begin to describe how I felt at the end of a workday now that I wasn’t riding solo. The transition to having a partner could always be a bit difficult, but a partner who had the face of James Dean, the body of Thor, and the smooth flirting skills of Matthew McConaughey was even more rocky. And the bastard kept calling me Oakley instead of Captain or Lee like everybody else in the department. He was like a thorn in my side that just kept scratching away at me all day until I collapsed at home in a heap of frustration and annoyance.
The only thing getting me through this week was knowing I had tomorrow off. The four walls of my house could be my sanctuary, blocking me from the existence of Wyatt Smith for a perfect twenty-four hours. In fact, just the idea of a Wyatt break was making me feel downright giddy. Like the night needed to be celebrated.
The freezer held another home-cooked meal from Mom, and the cabinet above the fridge had the treasure of a brand-new bottle of wine I’d bought awhile back and had never gotten to. I sat and ate in perfect solitude, enjoying a first glass of wine and then pouring a second. Unfortunately, my thoughts weren’t cooperating, and they kept straying back to the tall, dark, and handsome officer I now had to spend my days with.
I didn’t want to think about him.
He vexed me. He turned me inside out with a simple smirk on his ruggedly handsome face. He left me with an itch below the skin I couldn’t seem to reach.
The doorbell rang, and I nearly fell off my chair. Eyeing the wineglass, I pushed it further away from me on the table and stood up to get the door.
“Gonna be a good night, sugar.” Poppy, the town mail carrier, stood on the other side of my door, shoving a nondescript brown box in my hands with a wink. I frowned, not understanding why she would hand deliver a package tonight when she normally left packages in a bush where I wouldn’t find them for a solid week.
I closed the door while she whistled a happy little tune back to her mail truck. The label on the box said it was from the Hardware Store. Closing my eyes on a full-body shiver of embarrassment, I knew exactly why Poppy had showed up on my doorstep, the little gossip monger. The Hardware Store was the online sex toy subscription box company that had come to town a couple years ago.
“I didn’t order anything,” I sighed to the empty house.
Great, now Poppy was spreading the word that Captain Waldo was getting busy solo in her little house in the woods.
“Please, dear God, don’t let that get back to Mom or Dad.”
I dropped the box on the table, narrowly missing my wineglass, and eyeing it like it was a live animal. One full circle around my table and I resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to open it. The box came addressed to me, after all.
And truth be told, I was just the tiniest bit excited to find out what was in the box. Lenora Sutter, the owner of the company, had a reputation for having high-quality staples and some of the most amazing products you couldn’t find elsewhere.
Ripping the box open, I found a note above the tissue paper.
Amelia shouldn’t be the only one getting some. Xoxo, Vee
Of course. Who else would send me a sex toy but my youngest sister, Vee? Okay, well, Amelia would too, but she was otherwise occupied with a husband and a new pregnancy. I shook my head at Vee, though she obviously couldn’t see me. Putting the card aside, I opened the tissue paper and took out an object that had me perplexed. The thing was Barney purple and had several arms, legs, and buttons, all encased in a silicone shell so smooth my skin wept tears of jealousy.
I held the device outstretched between my thumb and finger like it might bite. And knowing so little about sex toys, maybe it could bite. Wasn’t that a fetish? Reaching with my other hand, I found my wineglass and took a not-so-healthy large swig, finding that I needed the liquid courage to continue. I set the thing—vibrator, dildo?—down on the table and rummaged around the box until I found some directions. Yes, I needed step-by-step directions to know how to work my new toy.
Once I’d given the little booklet a thorough read-through, I had a better idea of how to use it, though I wasn’t sure I wanted vibration in all the places it promised. My wineglass was empty again, so I refilled it, finishing the bottle, and headed to the living room.
“We’re going to do this,” I announced to the room. And to myself.
I put the toy on the coffee table and hustled about my house, finding candles, a lighter, and my personal laptop. The candles would set the mood, the wine would provide the courage, and the laptop would play a fun porno to set the scene. I’d always said: if you were going to do something, do it right.
Once I logged in to a site Amelia had told me about a few years ago but never visited, my eyes nearly fell out of my head. My God. There were so many categories of porn. Did I want knotting play? What the fuck was that? Did I prefer threesomes? I tilted my head, considering. Nah. I should probably just start out with something more vanilla. Something to ease my way into this pool of porn. Sitting down on the couch, I found a title that looked like it might work. I hit play and settled in.
Apparently actual acting wasn’t required as the sex started nearly thirty seconds into the scene.
“Oh yeah. That’s it, baby. Mmm. Right there.”
