“I’m still waiting for an answer,” I growl softly when I notice that Connie is staring straight ahead, refusing to look at me. “This fucker messed with you on that third date? What did he do, Connie?”

Connie swallows, then takes a long breath. “Actually, he . . . he proved my Mama right,” she says softly, flashing me a cautious glance, then blinking twice and looking down at her hands folded in her lap. “He wanted to buy the cow.”

My ears pop from the pressure in my boiling head. “He . . . he asked you to marry him?”

Connie shrugs half-heartedly, then nods shyly. “Had a ring and everything. Went down on a knee in the restaurant. It was . . . awful. I didn’t know what to do. He put me in such an awkward position. Like he was trying to pressure me into saying yes.” She wrings her hands, then glances up at me, her eyes big and round. “Which I didn’t, of course,” Connie says like she needs to explain her choices from five years ago to a man she just met. “I couldn’t say yes. How could I possibly say yes after three dates? We’d barely spent a few hours together! You can’t possibly know about somebody that soon.”

“Yeah, you can,” I say without thinking, my possessive gaze locked on her sweet face. “Youcanknow in an instant. I knew it the moment I saw you.”

“Um, what?” Connie’s cheeks blush red and she hurriedly looks down at her hands again, wringing them desperately. “You knew . . . what?”

My throat constricts as I curse myself inwardly again, tell myself to shut the fuck up. But there’s something bubbling up inside me and I can’t keep the words locked up, can’t stop myself from saying things that can’t be unsaid.

“I knew you were mine.” The words burst out of me. “When I saw you at the prison. When I see you now. When I touched you. When I kissed you. When I fucking came for you, baby. I knew it in my body, in my heart, in my damn soul, Connie. You’re mine. I know it, and I think you know it too.”

“I . . . I don’t know what I know,” she whispers, looking at me with those blue eyes big and wide, those red lips trembling and twitching. Then suddenly she frowns. “But wait, I knew instantly that Patrick would never be the man for me. I knew it the first moment I met him.” Now she gulps, blinking rapidly, then paling. “So maybe youcanknow in an instant. Ohmygod, if you can know in an instant that you’llneverbe happy with someone, then maybe you can also know in an instant if you’ll . . . if you’llalwaysbe happy with someone.”

A grin breaks on my face. “Sounds right to me, baby.”

“Me too,” Connie says softly, the paleness leaving her cheeks as a warm blush takes over. “I don’t know why, but it does sound right, Xavier. It sounds right, and it . . . itfeelsright.”

“That means itisright,” I say, not sure where my words of eternal wisdom are coming from—my balls or my brain. “Because everything we do is about how it makes us feel. All this crap about logic and common sense, reason and rationality . . . it’s just a trick to hide the ridiculous truth that we’re all just apes trying to act sophisticated and serious.”

Connie giggles, then raises an eyebrow. “Well,youmight be an ape. But I’m a cow, remember?”

“Well, you’re my cow now, baby. Come here and give me a taste of that sweet cream.” My grizzly face broadens to a grin as I lean in and kiss her gently on the lips, running my tongue alongher mouth, teasing her open so I can get a taste. “Damn, you taste so good. Give me a little more, sweetheart. That’s it. Oh, hell, come closer, baby. That’s it. Oh, fuck, that’s it.”

Now Connie moans into my mouth as I kiss her deep and hard, my hand sliding under her sweatshirt and tee-shirt, fingers finding the bottom of her bra and popping the cups up over her boobs. She groans and arches her back as I cup her breasts and then pinch her nipples one by one, gently at first, then harder when I feel them tighten into hard points that I need to suck right now.

“Lie back,” I order, snapping off my seatbelt, then reaching past Connie and pulling the lever that reclines her seat back enough that she’s hidden from any prying eyes outside the truck. She obeys, and I pull her sweatshirt and top up over her breasts. Her perfectly round tits pop into view, pink nipples tight and pointy. They perk up as I pinch them, then they disappear into my mouth and I’m sucking hard, with desperate urgency, my hand sliding down the front of her track-pants, spreading her thighs and rubbing her mound through her panties, pushing the wet satin into her slit as she bucks her boobs into my mouth and starts to writhe and gasp in the seat. “Oh, fuck, you are so wet for me, baby.” I growl through a mouthful of tit. “I need to taste your pussy, sweetheart. Come on, let me turn you towards me, get these panties off so I can taste you, so I can taste what’s mine. All fucking mine.”

6

XAVIER

“Oh, Xavier,” she whimpers as I grab her knees and turn her body, getting her legs up from beneath the steering wheel, pulling off her track pants and almost passing out when I see her pink panties dark at the crotch from how wet my baby is for me right now, how ready she is to be fucked, to be claimed, to be taken, to be owned. “Oh, please, put your finger inside.”

I want to put way more than my finger inside that tight little pussy, but I shake my head and rub her mound with the back of my hand, making her moan and mutter and then frown up from where she’s slumped against the driver’s side door, spread wide for me, those wet panties pressed into her slick slit.

“Your first time isn’t going to be in a grocery store parking lot,” I whisper as I grind my knuckles against her clit, then slowly start to roll her wet panties down her creamy smooth thighs. “Nothing’s going inside that pussy until my cock claims it, and that’s not going to happen in the front seat of a truck. You’re special, Connie. And I’m going to treat you special. Now let’s get these panties off so I can show you how a special girl gets treated, how a special girl gets licked, how a special girl comes for her man.”

Connie lets out a wide-eyed gasp, her face blushing red like her slit that’s now being carefully spread by my thumbs, held open for my tongue. My filthy words are doing something to her. I can see it on her face, feel it in her gaze, smell it in her sex. She’s glistening wet on her folds, her delicate hairs sparkling with nectar like a meadow on a dewy morning.

“You smell so good,” I growl as I bring my head close to her pussy, going slow so I can savor the moment when I taste what’s mine, touch what’s mine, take what’s mine. “Fuck, I’m going to come in my pants the moment my tongue touches your pretty cunt.”

“Oh, shit, Xavier!” she groans as I blow warm air gently on her pussy, then carefully lick her lengthwise with the flat of my tongue. “Oh,fuck,Xavier!”

She tries to buck her pussy into my face so my tongue slides into her, but I press her hips firmly down into the seat, shake my head while keeping my tongue pressed flat and thick against her glistening folds. I lap at her now as she writhes and moans, then slide my palms beneath her naked ass, raise her hips to my mouth, open wide so her entire slit is captured by my hungry maw.

I eat her like it’s my last meal before they execute me. Slurping like a wolf, I drink from her gushing spring, kneading her ass, licking her inner thighs, kissing her pussy lips, then taking her into my open mouth again just in time to feel her come into me, come for me, come like she’s mine, like she always was mine, will always be mine.

“Mine,” I rumble wetly into her ravaged pussy as she bucks up into my mouth. My fingers spread her asscheeks from behind as I suck her clit and help her finish against my bearded face. Her pubic hairs are wet and matted from our combined secretions, her sex and my saliva. I press my tongue hard against her slit, holding it flat against her until I feel her shudder and then relax as her climax works its way through.

Then I raise my head from between her legs, lean forward and suck her hard nipples carefully, finally getting to her lips and kissing her full on the mouth so she knows where I’ve been, knows that I’ve tasted her, am drunk on her nectar, addicted to her sweet drug. “Mine.”

“Yours,” Connie whispers as I break from the kiss long enough to let her breathe. Her eyes are clamped shut tight like she’s scared to open them, terrified to return to this world where she’s made a decision so far from the realm of reason that it’s got to be tearing her from the axis of sanity, breaking her brain in two with the conflict. “I’m yours, Xavier, but I’m so scared now, so worried about how we can ever be together. Being with me puts you in way more danger. They’ll figure out that I’m now your accomplice, and I’m a lot easier to find than you. But if they find me, they find you. It’s hopeless, Xavier. I’m a liability and you know it. Oh, it just isn’t my fate, Xavier. It’s just how the cookie crumbles for us O’Connor women.”

“You say that again and I will spank you so hard you will cry for Mama,” I growl, pulling my head away from hers and giving her a stern look. “To hell with your crumbling cookies. Fate wouldn’t have brought us together if there wasn’t a way for us to be together, Connie.”