“I can’t be the star in your sky when you’re the only star left shining in mine.”
“Any one of those boys wanted to push me around, I’d say bring it on. Hell, I’d pay for one of ‘em to move into my house. They don’t even have to do me; just walk around so I can watch. Maybe in a towel.”
“Ally placed her hands over her ears and changed, “La-la-la, not-listening-to-the-story-of-my-brother-proposing-while-doing-the-nasty-one-more-time, la-la-la.”
“There it is! Done! And you didn't even have to fuck me.”
He stared at me.
“But you can still fuck me if you want to,” I offered.
He kept staring at me.
“Like now. Fucking me now would be good,” I prompted.
He kept staring at me.
“Hello?...Calling Kai Mason, girlfriend needs a good fucking, right...about...now.”
That's when he spoke.
And this is what he said.
“God, I love you.”
“You tore my sheet.”
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
“I don’t want a new one. I think I’m going to have this one bronzed.”
“You keeping me alive tonight?”
He’d opened and was out the door but he turns, his eyes locking on mine.
“Even if I die doin’ it.”
“Jules’s eyes turned to Vance. “I’ll go somewhere.”
“No,” Vance replied.
“I’ll go somewhere safe,” Jules went on.
Vance got close to Jules and put his hand on her belly. “You think I’m missin’ a minute of this Princess, think again.”
I swallowed hard, hard.
“Then keep me safe,” Julies whispered.”
“I’m sorry I fought you, Mace,” I whispered. “But now that you’re mine again, I’m never going to let you go.”
“Get out here, babe, I wanna kiss you.”
“I had to soften him up because, for whatever reason, all the Rock Chicks had an alternate Hot Bunch guy, Indy's was Eddie. Roxie's was Vance. Jules was Luke. Ava's was Lee. Mine was Mace.”
“Nope. That’s right, girl, Shirleen does not understand. So what trauma are we up against now?” Shirleen’s eyes moved to me. “You havin’ too many orgasms or what?”
“And, just like then, after she started singing, it hurt to listen.
But it was a beautiful pain.”
“There was something very sexy about Mace going commando.
Very sexy.
Down Mace Slut! My brain commanded”
“I fucked up and hurt you. It won't happen again.” His fingers tensed around my head and his deep voice dropped low. “I promise you, Kitten, it won't happen again.”
“Broody Mace looks pleased?” I asked. We all knew what that meant. Been there done that, had the t-shirt.
Stella had been laid.”
“You're their fucking daughter! Do they not know how precious you are?”
“Bitch your tee is the shit.”
“Don't call Mace's Mom a bitch.”
“We need to boil water. We need clean towels,” Ava announced, following too. “She ain’t birthin’ no baby! She’s got a gunshot wound!” Indy shouted. “I know that!” Ava shouted back. “But we need a sterile environment.”
“Herb nodded. “Problem is, you knocked up your girl. That’s the only way women’ll allow you to get away with a Justice of the Peace.” Herb looked back to Hank as many of the men coughed to hide their laughter. “That’s the ticket, son, only way to save us all. Start workin’ on makin’ a baby.”
“Christ, I forgot how fucking good you feel when you're beneath me.”
“My heart went into my throat. I leaned back against Luke, his arm moved to wrap around my chest and we watched two people we both cared a lot about. They were in love, they were healed and most of all, they were outrageously happy.”
“But it’s mine,” he whispered against my cheek and then his mouth moved to my ear. “All, fuckin’, mine.”
“Do you think we're getting back together?"
"Getting? No," Mace answered then continued,
"Back together? Yes”
“A year ago, I was too busy thinkin' about how lucky I was that someone as beautiful and talented as you let me into her bed to be bossy. Now I know you love me, I can be as bossy as I want.”
“Last night, instead of sleeping,he just lay behind her, listening to her breathe and thinking that sound was sweeter than any song he’d ever heard her sing. And his Stella had a beautiful voice, never heard better.”
“We needed to talk about a lot of things and I needed not to have sex with him again. I was beginning to think I was giving him the wrong impression.”
“Last night you sat there singing to me 'nothing to hide, believe what I say' and not ten hours later you're standin' in front of me lyin”
“One thing you can say, Stella Gunn," Dixon remarked, now his mouth was twitching " You're pure, fuckin' rock 'n' roll.”
“What I’m sayin’ is shit happens to couples. In any relationship there’s ebbs and there’s flows. You want that relationship to work, you put on your life jacket and ride it out.”
“Mace never struck me as an affectionate type of guy. Like Luke, if you told me Mace would be affectionately demonstrative in a touchy way in public, I would have laughed. But there it was, proof positive.”
“Well, first of all,” he began, “I really…I really like you.” He looked into my eyes in a seeming effort to transmit the true meaning of each word straight into my psyche. All muscle tone disappeared from my body.
Marlboro Man was so willing to put himself out there, so unafraid to put forth his true feelings. I simply wasn’t used to this. I was used to head games, tactics, apathy, aloofness. When it came to love and romance, I’d developed a rock-solid tolerance for mediocrity. And here, in two short weeks, Marlboro Man had blown it all to kingdom come.
There was nothing mediocre about Marlboro Man.
He had more to say; he didn’t even pause to wait for a response. That, in his universe, was what a real man did.
“And…” He hesitated.
I listened. His voice was serious. Focused.
“And I just flat don’t want you to leave,” he declared, holding me close, resting his chin on my cheek, speaking directly into my ear.
I paused. Took a breath. “Well--” I began.
He interrupted. “I know we’ve just been doing this for two weeks, and I know you’ve already made your plans, and I know we don’t know what the future holds, but…” He looked at me and cupped my face in his hand, his other hand on my arm.
“I know,” I agreed, trying to muster some trite response. “I--”
He broke in again. He had some things to say. “If I didn’t have the ranch, it’d be one thing,” he said. My pulse quickened. “But I…my life is here.”
“I know,” I said again. “I wouldn’t…”
He continued, “I don’t want to get in the middle of your plans. I just…” He paused, then kissed me on the cheek. “I don’t want you to go.”
I was tongue-tied as usual. This was so strange for me, so foreign--that I could feel so strongly for someone I’d known for such a short time. To talk about our future would be premature; but to totally dismiss that we’d happened upon something special wouldn’t be right, either. Something extraordinary had occurred between us--that fact was indisputable. It was the timing that left so much to be desired.
We were both bleary eyed, tired. Falling asleep standing up in each other’s arms. Nothing more could be said that night; nothing could be resolved. He knew it, I knew it; so we settled on a long, lasting kiss and an all-encompassing hug before he turned around and walked away. Starting his diesel pickup. Driving down my parents’ street. Driving back to his ranch.”
“It would evidently take more than a political regime, more than dire poverty to stop a woman from wanting to be well-dressed: it was a desire as old as the world, as old as the desire for children.”
“To most people any radical change is even more odious than cynicism. The only way between the horns of dilemma is to persist at all costs in the ignorance which permits one to go on doing wrong in the comforting belief that yb doing so one is accomplishing one's duty / one's duty to the company, to the shareholders, to the family, the city, the state, the fatherland, the church. For, of course, poor Hansen's case wasn't in any way unique; on a smaller scale, and therefore with less power to do evil, he was acting like all those civil servants and statesmen and prelates who go through life spreading misery and destruction in the name of their ideals and under orders from their categorical imperatives.”
“Hug your children...Kiss your mothers and fathers, your brothers and sisters. Tell them how much you love them, every day. Because every day is the last day. Every light casts a shadow. And only the gods know when the darkness will find us.”
“It was the Dutch of this era who invented the idea of the home as a personal, intimate space; one might say they invented coziness.”
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