Five Mountain Daddies Read online

  Still, I feel better just for having told someone. I can’t get rid of these lingering doubts, but I can at least mute them a little bit. Telling someone about it definitely helped a lot already.

  I’m not going to let myself get in the way of my own happiness. Right now, these five guys are making me really, really happy. And nothing else in this town can do that for me, so I might as well embrace it. I’ll try and quiet my doubts the best I can.

  12

  Ryan

  You guys really have to start calling first,” London says, looking at me from the passenger seat of my truck.

  I grin a little bit. I showed up at her work again, this time after she got off. She should have known I was coming, since I asked what time her shift ended, which I feel like is warning enough.

  “Are you embarrassed of us?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head. “Definitely not.”

  “So then be proud. A handsome man picked you up from work.”

  She sighs. “You know people are going to talk, right?”

  I shrug a little. “I guess I don’t care that much.”

  “You should.”

  She frowns at me and I just smile. I know she doesn’t know me very well yet, but it’s funny she brought that up. I sit in silence for a few minutes, just driving out toward my workshop.

  Finally, I decide to speak up. “I used to care,” I say softly.

  She looks over at me, surprised. “About what?”

  “About what people thought.” I chew on my lip. “Which is surprising coming from a drug addict, right?”

  She shakes her head. “That’s not the only thing about you.”

  I glance at her, a little smile on my face. “You’re right. Before I got into drugs, back when I was younger, my parents brought me up really religious.”

  She looks a little surprised. “You didn’t mention this before.”

  “I was young back then.” I take a deep breath and let it out. “When I fell into drugs, it killed my parents. People at church talked nonstop about it, you know how it is. Even good people end up gossiping when they get into big groups.” I think back to all my time spent in church, to the high ceiling in the chapel, to the sounds and the sermons. Those were good days, or at least they were peaceful days.

  “I remember caring so much what everyone thought about me at church,” I say softly. “I was terrified of letting anyone down, of making a mistake. I lived a long time in fear.”

  “What happened?” she asks.

  I shrug. “I grew up, I guess. I still believe, and I still go to church sometimes, but I let go of that part of my life.” I laugh a little bitterly. “Maybe becoming an addict helped that process.”

  “Do you ever miss it?” she asks.

  “No,” I say honestly. “I was a different person. I was young and I didn’t know any better.” I grin at her, slowing the truck to pull down a long gravel drive. “Now I know that it’s better not to give a fuck what anything thinks, and to live your life the best you can.”

  She smiles at that and we head down the drive toward my workshop in silence. We’re coming up to it from the other end. Last time we hiked through the woods to get there, but this time we’ll go right in through the front.

  I park the truck and we get out. From this angle, my shop looks more like a modernist cabin in the woods, with flat, sloping roofs and big windows in the front.

  “It’s pretty,” she says. “I was too busy looking at the sculptures to notice the building.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’m proud of it. I designed it myself.”

  “Really? I didn’t know you were an architect.”

  I laugh. “I’m not. I hired someone to help, but the overall design is mine.”

  She follows me inside. The whole space is basically one giant workshop, with a bathroom in the back, a single office room with a couch that I sleep on sometimes, and a kitchen room off to the other side. Mostly though, the place is one big room, with my machines, my half-built sculptures, and other scraps lying around.

  “It’s a goddamn mess,” London says, laughing.

  I can’t help but laugh at that. She’s totally right. I can be really scatterbrained sometimes, starting one thing before moving onto the next thing, and I have a tendency to leave stuff lying around. The workshop is a mess since I’m in the middle of so many projects.

  She wanders into the space, stepping over scrap steel, and puts her hand on my latest piece. “This is really cool,” she says. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m calling it yet.”

  The piece is made of several long, flowing steel beams, although really, they’re flat and gracefully curved. They’re natural-looking, almost like a clump of grass.

  She smiles and moves on. I’ve been obsessing with natural forms lately, and she passes a group of interlocking circles and ribbon-like forms, something that looks like a human hand, and another bending and curving set of interlocking circles.

  “How do you even do these?” she asks.

  I show her my tools, my torches and other equipment. “I don’t know where I learned to do all this,” I tell her honestly. “I think I just picked it up from years of messing around.”

  “How does someone mess around with stuff like that?”

  “I worked on cars,” I say, laughing. “Mostly older ones with steel bodies and frames, so I was doing a lot of welding, and I guess it went from there.”

  She nods and leans up against a desk, head cocked to the side. “This is really pretty,” she says finally. “Do you bring a lot of girls in here?”

  “No, not at all,” I say honestly. “I can’t remember the last person I brought in here.”

  “Really?” she looks surprised. “This feels like such an easy way to pick up chicks.”

  I grin. “You think that’s what I do? ‘Pick up chicks,’ is that what the kids call it these days?”

  “Shut up,” she says, laughing, “and yes, that’s what I think you do.”

  “Ouch. You wound me.” I walk over to her and push her back up onto the top of the desk, sitting her there. “You think so little of me.”

  “No,” she says. “I just heard about you guys.”

  “Ah, yeah, the rumors,” I say, grinning. “Everyone loves to talk.”

  She rolls her eyes. “I’m just saying, I get it, and I don’t care.”

  I pull back and watch her for a second, not sure how to react to that. “What do you get?” I ask.

  “This is what you guys do,” she says, hopping down off the desk. She casually walks through my shop, looking at my things as she talks. “I thought more about it, and it makes sense. You guys like to find a girl that won’t stick around long to pull into your world, show a good time, and then she’s gone. No strings attached, lots of fun. Right?” She looks over her shoulder at me.

  But I’m not smiling. “Is that what you think?”

  “Sure,” she says. “And I’m okay with it, really. I’m having a lot of fun with you guys.”

  I take a breath and let it out. I don’t know why I’m getting annoyed, or why that really upsets me, but it does. I hate that she thinks she’s just some game to us, when really, that’s how this all started.

  She’s not wrong about what she’s saying. In the past, that’s exactly what we’ve done, though not exactly so explicit like we’re doing here. We’ve all gone after the same girl before, just to see who can get her first, and sometimes that ended up with some of us sharing her. And yeah, that was no big deal, and it always ended at some point. And we meant to do that with her, too.

  But hearing her say it out loud just feels so damn tawdry. I’m not fucking happy about it, and I wish she didn’t think of herself that way.

  I have no way of changing that without sounding like a psycho. I can tell her that we’re all starting to really like her, that we want to keep her around for as long as she’ll stay, but I don’t want to scare her away. The idea of five guys like us wanting her is prob
ably weird enough at this point, and she’s clearly worried about what the town thinks. If I start talking about wanting her for longer, then it might just freak her out.

  “What’s the matter?” she asks, stopping a few feet away.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “I can tell it’s something.”

  I force myself to smile. “Can you?”

  “I can read you like a book.” She grins at me, and she’s so fucking cute. I step closer to her, slowly closing the distance between us.

  “Okay then, what am I thinking right now?”

  She smiles at me, slowly backing up. “You’re thinking something dirty.”

  “I am?” I cock my head, still coming toward her. “I don’t know about that.”

  She runs into one of my sculptures and stops. I step right up to her, coming close, hands on her hips.

  “Tell me what I’m thinking,” I whisper.

  “You want to do something bad,” she says. “Something really bad.”

  “That’s right,” I say, reaching up to take a fistful of her hair. “I do want to do something bad. Tell me what it is.”

  She bites her lip. “You want to turn me around.”

  I slowly turn her. She puts her chest against the sculpture, the sheer mass of the steel beams acting like a solid pole. She puts her hands up against it.

  “How did you know?” I ask, still holding her hair. I move my hand down to cup her tight ass.

  “And now you’re thinking about taking off my jeans.”

  I release her hair and unbutton her from behind. I slowly pull them down over her ass, her perfect, firm little ass. She gasps when I get them all the way to the floor, and she’s wearing nothing but a black thong. I stand up, cock hard, hands cupping her ass.

  “Now you want to spank me,” she whispers.

  I grab her hair and I spank her. Not too hard at first, but she groans.

  “You want to spank me hard, until my ass is red.”

  I’m so fucking hard as I spank her. First the one ass cheek and then the other. She groans, gripping the sculpture, and when I’m done I drop to my knees, pull off her panties, and tongue her pussy.

  She groans as I lick her every inch. I slap her ass again, this time with my tongue inside of her cunt, and she gasps. “You want to do that again,” she says.

  I do what she wants, slapping her ass, teasing her with my tongue. I stand up and slide my fingers inside that tight pussy, pulling her head back, kissing her from behind.

  I release her hair and step back. “You want to stay right there,” I say to her. She watches over her shoulder as I slowly take my jeans and my boxer briefs off, revealing my fat, hard cock. She bits her lip, pussy glistening and soaking as she arches her back, pressing her ass out for me.

  I step up close again and slowly slide my cock inside her. She gasps as I fill her up, and I push in slow, not wanting to go too fast at first. She groans and wiggles her hips as I slide all the way in. I kiss her again, kissing her neck, pulling her shirt up to tease her breasts, and she looks over her shoulder at me.

  “Now you want to fuck me,” she says, her eyes wild with desire.

  I grab her hips and I fuck her. I pull her hair and slap her ass hard, and she leans over, grabbing onto the sculpture, moving her hips back against me. I rock into her, ripping her tight pussy to pieces, making it rough as hell.

  I reach around her hips and start to rub her clit, her hair in my hand as my cock works deep inside of her. I kiss her neck and press her face up against the cold steel of the sculpture. I fuck her hard and fast, rubbing her clit, working her.

  She bucks her hips back against me, wanting every inch. She’s such a greedy, dirty girl, and it drives me fucking insane. She’s got such a tight little pussy, a nice, firm ass, and perfect little tits. I want to come inside this tight cunt so badly I can barely breathe, and she’s not making it any easier with the way she’s fucking moaning.

  I pull her hair hard and rock myself inside of her. I can tell she’s close as my fingers work her clit faster. I love this pussy so much I can barely take it any longer, but before I can lose myself completely, she starts to come.

  London comes with her whole body, and it drives me crazy. It’s a shiver that starts in her legs and works its way up through her limbs, pulsing and exploding, making her moan loudly as my cock slams into her. She’s so fucking sexy, with that tight little ass of hers, and I don’t stop, I don’t relent. She comes hard, groaning my name over and over again

  When she’s done, before I can come, I pull out. “Turn around,” I say. “On your knees.”

  She does what I say eagerly. She gets down on her knees and opens her mouth as I stroke my thick cock. I come easily on her tongue, thick spurts of pleasure, and she wraps her lips around my head, sucking my every drop out.

  She groans and swallows my cum. I gasp, stepping back, whole body ringing with my orgasm.

  She stands up, and I realize we’re both sweating. I grin and she presses herself against me. I kiss her slow and deep and wrap my arms around her, pulling her tight.

  I hate that she thinks this is all I want from her. But truthfully, I do want this, so fucking badly it hurts. I want that cunt more and more and more, every second of every day, but it’s not just that. I want London too, the way she laughs, the way she smiles. I want her to look at my art and to kiss me.

  It’s strange, this deep feeling of attraction and attachment, but it’s here and I can’t get rid of it, even if I wanted to

  13

  London

  Dad smiles at me over his glasses. “Thanks again for doing this, honey. You really didn’t have to.”

  I smile back and shrug. “No problem. You guys didn’t have to take me in for another summer, but you did.”

  “We’re happy to have you home,” Mom says. She opens up the menu and starts to scan it, although I’m sure she knows what she wants to eat already.

  Marko’s is the only restaurant in town that my parents like. Well, maybe they like other stuff, but Marko’s is the only place they go. Practically everyone knows them, and it was like wading into a sea of their smiling best friends before we could get a table. I don’t know how many people acted all surprised to see me, and commented on how much I’ve grown.

  I shouldn’t be annoyed about it. People mean well, even if it is obnoxious. They’re excited to see me, since I haven’t been home at all in years. And plus, this night is for my parents.

  I scan the menu myself, and note that it hasn’t changed since the last time I was here. When the waitress comes, my dad asks for waters, and I ask for a glass of wine. My mom gives me a look but doesn’t say anything.

  “So honey, how’s work?” Dad asks before my mom can start in on me for ordering a drink.

  “Good,” I say. “Maggie and her family are really nice.”

  “Is it busy?”

  “Surprisingly, yeah. I had no clue there was such a big tourist industry in Leadwood.”

  “Well, we have the mountains, so I guess people come out here for that.” Dad smiles and looks back down at the menu.

  My drink comes quickly, and I take it gratefully. The waitress winks at me, and I swear I’ve seen her before, probably the last time we ate here. I look around the room and sigh.

  I just don’t see the appeal of this place, but I try not to judge too much. It’s a basic American restaurant, bar in the middle, tables around the sides, booths on the edges. There are a bunch of TVs playing sports, and it’s relatively loud, or at least as loud as Leadwood gets. Aside from Club Sheets, of course.

  I recognize a few people at the bar. I think I went to high school with one or two of them, and as my dad talks about a recent patient he had, I realize that I definitely know a couple of the guys. I think their names are Arnold and Slater but I’m not positive. I’m sure they went to school with me though, way back in the day.

  And they keep glancing at me, talking to each other, and grinning over here. I don’t know what th
ey want, but it’s starting to bother me. They have that look on their faces, like they know something about me, and I suddenly feel my paranoia rear its ugly head.

  We order our dinner and I smile while listening to Mom talk about her friend’s new grandchildren. I try not to imagine that it’s a subtle suggestion, since she knows I’m not the breeding type.

  I drink my wine, trying to keep a bad mood at bay. This dinner is a treat to my parents for letting me stay with them, so I have to keep a smile on my face.

  Fortunately, the food comes soon, and I forget all about the guys at the bar. I order a second drink, and get another look from my mom, but I don’t care. I’m actually having a decent time. Dad’s telling funny stories about patients on drugs, which is always great, and the food’s really not bad. I’m actually starting to feel at home again.

  After we’re finished, I excuse myself to use the bathroom. Two glasses of wine will do that to a girl. When I’m done, I step out of the ladies’ room and start back toward our table. Before I can leave the little bathroom hallway, though, one of the guys from the bar comes out of the men’s room.

  It’s like a nightmare. He looks at me, looks away, and does a double-take. His eyes brighten and he starts to grin.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t London.”

  I smile back at him, mind racing. “Arnold, right?”

  He nods, clearly pleased. “Heard you were back in town.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Sure, for the summer. You haven’t been around in a while, huh?”

  “Yeah, I mean, guess I’ve just been busy at school.”

  I feel uncomfortable right away. He’s bigger than me, with squinty eyes and a square jaw. He’s wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, your typical trashy local outfit, and he’s grinning like a moron. I’m cut off from the rest of the restaurant by him, and I feel cornered.