Oxygen Deprived (Kilgore Fire Book 3) (6 page)

She nodded again.

“Can you breathe?” Downy asked laughingly, poking Aspen in the side. “He took you down like a linebacker does a quarterback.”

“You suck,” she replied through a wheeze, rolling over to stomach, then getting her knees under her.

The sweater was a goner.

Her ass, though, looked to be perfectly fine.

Very fucking fine.

I licked my lips as the leggings she was wearing stretched tight over her ass as she pushed up to her hands and got to her feet.

I got up right after she did, watching to see if she’d fall or not.

Once I was sure she wouldn’t, I moved over to the oven, closing the door and turning off the burners, before I turned and left the room.

I got firewood from the front porch, stacked ten pieces next to the fireplace, and then went about starting a fire.

I had to laugh when I pulled out a box of paper plates, cups, and napkins that were being stored in the fireplace.

Then laughed even harder when I pulled out what appeared to be a teddy bear.

Once everything was safely removed, I turned the gas on and lit a paper plate, thrusting it into the fire.

As the paper burned, igniting the wood, a fire was roaring quickly.

“Where’d all that come from?” Aspen asked, pointing at all the stuff I’d removed from the fireplace.

“That looks like Lock’s,” Downy pointed to the now very dirty bear before stooping down to pick it up. “I left your groceries on the front porch.”

Aspen smiled, and we both watched as he stomped out of the house, Mocha hot on his heels.

We both looked at each other.

“You want to stay for dinner?” She asked softly.

I studied her face, as well as the hands she hadn’t stopped ringing since I’d gotten there.

“What are you cooking?” I teased.

It’d take some near excellent cooking to get me to stay.

I was fucking tired, and the only thing that might keep me up longer than twenty minutes was a good, hot meal.

“I can make anything in the freezers.” She offered.

I looked at the fire behind us, then back at her face.

“Okay,” I said.

“Great!” She cried excitedly. “Do you want baked chicken or taco soup?”

“Chicken,” I replied instantly.

She grinned, then walked around the door and hurried into the kitchen, her sweater gone.

“You might want to change your shirt!” I yelled at her, just now realizing that it had a sizable hole.

Her horrified gasp had me smiling, but it was her anger at having her most ‘favorite shirt ever’ ruined that had me laughing.

“Shut up!” She cried loudly. “They don’t make these anymore!”

I rolled my eyes, tossing another piece of wood onto the fire before I picked up one of the blankets Downy had tossed back onto the couch and followed her.

I studied her kitchen as I waited for her to return.

It was on the newer side of old, but, like my place, it was definitely in need of some tender, loving care.

Aspen came back into the room, a look of sheer annoyance on her face as she practically waddled into the room, a heavy winter cloak covering her body from mid-thigh up.

“You want this?” I asked her once she came back in the kitchen.

She looked at me, held up her hands, and gestured to the blanket.

“What, you don’t like this?” She indicated the jacket.

I grinned, then studied it.

“It looks like one of those jackets you get at the Ice Place in Dallas,” I said. “Did you steal it?”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “Not…
exactly
.”

I snorted.

“They had those out at Disney on Ice. And they make you pay for it if you don’t give it back,” I said.

“That’s true,” she said. “But I stole it from the ex. He bought it for his ex, but he never gave it to her.”

I snorted.

“That’s a lie,” I said. “He probably just didn’t want to hear you bitching about wearing another girl’s clothes.”

She pursed her lips, then shook her head.

“I’m not contemplating that right now,” she ignored me. “Now move over so I can get into the freezer.”

I moved, leaning my hips against the counter, unfolding the blanket.

Once I’d wrapped it around myself, I watched as she practically disappeared into the large deep freezer.

“When I got on house arrest,” she chattered. “Naomi brought me a shit ton of meat and staples,” she said from somewhere deep in the freezer. She emerged long moments later with her hands full of foil pans. “And I sat down and made a shit ton of freezer meals.”

“That’s convenient,” I murmured.

My cell phone vibrated, and I pulled it out without looking at the display.

“Hey do you want…” I held up my finger and then put the phone to my ear.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Who was that?” My daughter asked rudely.

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and raised my hand so I could pinch the bridge of my nose.

“That would be my neighbor,” I said. “How are you, baby?”

“There isn’t any school tomorrow, and I was wondering if you could give me a ride to the mall,” Attie said snottily.

I looked out the kitchen window, saw that the snow was still coming down, and promptly said, “No.”

“Why not?” She challenged.

“Because you don’t need to be going out in this. Nobody knows how to drive in it, and I don’t see any reason to risk your life so you can go shop at the mall.”

“Mom said I could,” Attie snapped.

“Well, your mom,” I said patiently. “Doesn’t work in the emergency services field. She’s a checker at the grocery store two doors down from your house. She doesn’t see what I see when the roads get bad and people unnecessarily travel on them.”

My daughter, my sweet baby girl, had developed a deep seated hate for me, and I didn’t know why.

And this rude, mean thing wasn’t my kid.

This was Constance’s doing.

Constance was a pain in my fucking ass, as well as being very high maintenance. She also had that poor, pitiful me attitude.

There were times, like right now, that I wanted to point to this person she’d turned our daughter into so I could show her how stupid she was.

Still is.

When I’d been there, Attie had been a wonderful, sweet, caring little girl.

Now she was…whatever the hell she was.

Annoying was what I liked to call it.

“I hate you,” Attie promptly hung up.

“Well, that went well,” I muttered darkly.

I looked up to find Aspen’s eyes on me.

They didn’t look sad or even sympathetic. They looked almost aggravated.
Angry.

“Was that your ex?” She asked.

I shook my head.

“No,” I pushed my phone back into my pocket. “That was my daughter.”

“Your daughter said she hated you?” She gasped.

“Yep.”

To really get to know a person, you should get them to use a computer with dial-up internet to get a good judge on their character.

-Aspen’s secret thoughts

Aspen

Dinner had been nice.

I’d burned it a little bit, but as long as you didn’t scoop too deep, it was fine.

What wasn’t fine, however, was the way Drew was still…sad.

He looked almost defeated since his daughter had phoned.

“Do you want to play cards?” I wiggled my brows.

He looked at me strangely.

“What kind?” He held out his hand.

I handed him the deck, and he grinned at the picture of my cat that was on the front of it.

“Those are cute,” he grinned.

I nodded.

“They are. I got them for free,” I informed him. “I’m a product tester. My blog is a women’s lifestyle blog. I discuss everything from romance novels to consumer products aimed at women. I have a pretty large following, and I kind of got into product testing, now, too.”

“Like what?” He wondered. “What was the weirdest thing you ever tested?”

I pursed my lips.

“I get weird things all the time,” I pursed my lips. “But the most recent one was this little device that allows women to pee standing up.”

His mouth twitched.

“How’d that work out?” He wanted to know.

I shrugged.

“I read some previous reviews, luckily, and tried mine out in the shower the first time. However, the first time I tried to use it while wearing pants, I ended up peeing all over myself,” I admitted. “Which was one of the things I mentioned in my review.”

“Do you still use it?” He asked, shuffling the cards loudly.

I shook my head. “No,” I admitted. “I don’t have much use for it. I’ve never gone anywhere that didn’t have a restroom.”

“Never?” He asked.

I shook my head. “Never.”

“Not hunting?” He wondered.

Another shake of my head.

“Nope,” I said. “Dad was a little busy with his empire, and I didn’t rate on his scale of people that he wanted to spend time with.”

“When’s the day you get out of your prison?” He indicated the walls of my house.

“I have two more months before they’ll review my case for early release. It’s kind of like being on a probationary period for probation,” I sighed. “Then I get re-evaluated, and if I’m a good girl, I might get released. I was told that early release rarely ever happens, though. So it’s likely that I will have five more months.”

I nodded. “I sometimes want to put one of those on my daughter.”

I shot him a look.

“Don’t,” I blurted. “This is the best time of her life and she doesn’t even realize it. She’ll forever have these memories to fall back on…to wish that this time in her life was still her present instead of her past.” I continued. “When I was sixteen, I had the best of all worlds. My brothers loved me. My parents loved me. I was sheltered from everything that could ever do me harm. All my bills were paid, and the only thing I had to worry about was what to wear to school the next day that would make my boyfriend want to kiss me.”

He shuddered. “I don’t want to think about my daughter kissing anyone.”

I laughed.

“You know she’s most likely already done that, if not even more,” I observed dryly.

He shot me a look.

“Take it back,” he ordered.

I laughed at him.

“You’re deluding yourself if you think those thoughts haven’t crossed her mind,” I teased.

“She’s fifteen!” He boomed furiously. “She shouldn’t be having those kinds of thoughts.”

“I thought you said she was sixteen,” I challenged him.

“She isn’t…yet. She will be in six days,” he muttered under his breath.

“So she’s sixteen,” I told him. “And she’s not just going to randomly sleep with guys. If she’s anything like most sixteen-year olds, she’ll have her first sexual experience, realize it’s not as great as it was made out to be, then never really think about it again.”

He shot me a dirty look, knowing I was lying.

I held my hands up in peace.

He then quickly changed the subject…sort of.

“So you’re telling me your
real
first experience was that horrible?” He asked carefully.

I grimaced.

“Yes,” I said, nodding my head for emphasis. “It was so horrible, in fact, that I cried for nearly four hours afterward.”

“Why?” He pushed, stretching his legs out in front of him in front of the fire.

The move put his arm along the back of the couch where my shoulders rested, and I felt a shiver run up my spine when his hot skin brushed the skin of my neck.

“The usual, I guess,” I shrugged. “I was a virgin. He was big and didn’t care that I was inexperienced. He pretty much used me.”

He grumbled something under his breath.

“What?” I asked.

“I said not everyone with a big cock acts like that asshole did,” he said more clearly this time.

My eyes widened as he turned away, studying the fire in front of us.

Did he have a big cock,
I wondered?

My eyes went to his lap, but the blanket that was bunched up at his waist didn’t really give me the best of views.

“No,” he answered my question.

“No what?” I questioned.

“Nothing,” he muttered.

“Tell me!” I ordered him.

I was a persistent devil, if nothing else.

He looked over at me, studying my expression, then grinned before shrugging.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me...” he said.

“Tell you what?” I asked
. “I don’t have a cock, big or small.”

He shuffled the cards in his lap before dealing out an even hand to the both of us.

“Let’s play War,” he taunted.

I laughed in his face.

“Ok, that’s fine,” I repositioned myself. “But what was it you wanted me to tell you?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, looked around, then looked back at me.

“I’ll tell you whether I have a big cock or not like you are wondering, if you tell me about your worst sexual experience, and you can’t count high school.”

My jaw nearly hit the floor.

Or at least my boobs.

“What?” I asked in outrage
. “I wasn’t wanting to know that!”

He gave me a look, and my blush gave me away.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “but I’m not usually so forward with people I don’t know really well.”

He snorted.

“You think I go around bargaining to tell people about my cock to get them to tell me something?” He laughed.

I shrugged.

“I don’t know you all that well, do I?” I asked. “You could be getting all the girls to be your friend, and then you start threatening to tell them about your dick and get them all weirded out.”

He muttered something under his breath, and I sighed, crossing my legs, as I flipped the first card in my stack over.

He flipped his first card over, and I growled when he won the first hand.

“Does your telling me about your dick come with a story?” I challenged him, causing his eyes to come up to mine.

His eyes were so beautiful.

They were a light shade of gray with a ring of a color I hadn’t quite decided yet. Maybe green…or blue. In different lighting, it looked like the color changed.