Page 4 of Small Town Beast 2: Saverin’s Duet (Sins of the South)

She squirmed out of his grip and moved back to the bed. There she started putting on her clothes and fumbling around for her bag.

“Did you fuck him?” Absalom forced out, standing over her.

“How could I, when I’m this stuck on your fool ass?” Lorrie bit back without hesitation.

The pressure in his chest eased. He knelt and pried the tote bag from her hands. “You’re not goin’ anywhere tonight.”

“You don’t dare! Get your hands off me!”

“I swear to God you got me all the way fucked up tonight.”

“You wish I was white,” she said angrily. A damp patch spread where her cheek rested on his shirt. “If I was white, you would have married me. But I’ll never wish to be something I’m not. This is who I am, and you can take it or leave it.”

“I would never change a thing about you,” he said. “I just need to get to the right place, and then…then it can be better for us. But not yet. Not right now.”

“Whatever,” she said bitterly.

They fell into an uneasy silence. He stroked her back, her rapunzel curls, the rest of what he wanted to say halting on his tongue. Lorrie had nothing to lose by the truth; he could not say the same.

There’s no way to marry her and be King. You heard that cockroach Mulgrew. Plenty of those opinions around… they’ll never accept her, and you’ll go down like Roman.

Lorrie hugged him tighter. For all her words and fury, her heart was snared in the same fucking trap.

He had the insane notion to run off with her somewhere, right now, never to be heard from again.

“Just let me think on it. Give me time,” he said.

Instead of replying, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply.

Her tongue slid inside his mouth. Surprised but satisfied, Absalom gripped her around the waist and slung her legs around him, thrusting his dick in the seam of her legs.

Good, darlin’, let’s just get back to this.

Lorrie panted and clenched him tight with her thighs, and he absorbed her kisses and returned them back to her, stroking her hips, her breasts, cupping her face to take more, more…

Suddenly she shoved him away and scrambled upright, an ugly thought striking her like a thunderbolt.

“What the hell, Lorraine?”

“ Why did you marry her?” She cried.

His jaw clenched and his hopes sank. Apparently a couple kisses weren’t enough to get them past it. No shit.

“Lorrie. It was a leap-the-book thing. Just politics. I never slept with her, and I’m getting that shit annulled as soon as I’m where I need to be. Which should be tomorrow. If you just had a little patience you’d see I’m telling you the truth.”

“You really expect me to believe that?” Lorrie wiped her mouth on her hand. “You’ve never slept with me all these years we’ve been together. You’re a man. You’ve got your needs. I’m not stupid.”

“My needs ain’t your concern. I would never play you like that, Lorrie, come on.”

“So on your wedding night y’all just played Spades and took a nap?” Lorrie asked sarcastically.

“The woman drank so much she was asleep by ten. And even if she had been awake and stark naked covered in baby oil, I wouldn’t have touched her with the end of a bus.”

Lorrie began rifling inside her burlap bag. He waited in patient confusion to see what the hell she was about to do…Pull out a gun and shoot him? He didn’t wait long. Lorrie removed a small red book from the jumbled depths of her bag, and it was none other than her personal King James Bible.

“Swear,” she said, thrusting it at his chest. “Swear you’re tellin’ the truth.”

Absalom put his right hand on the Good Book and looked into her hazelnut-chocolate eyes. “I told you no lies, Lorrie.”

His marriage had been a political agreement between two clans, one he’d been forced to make, but he had never bedded that milk-faced Snatch Hill girl they forced on him.

It was their guns he wanted and the marriage was the price.

Why? He had no notion; the Snatch Hills were a shady bunch who delighted in pointless cruelty as much as they loved weapons and fighting.

Pondering the whys and wherefores of Snatch Hill logic would be like guessing why water was wet.

At any rate, Absalom planned to be rid of them at the soonest opportunity. And his wife would shed no tears; she hadn’t wanted the marriage any more than he had.

The sound of the Bible hitting the floor broke his musings. A horror-struck expression flashed in Lorrie’s eyes, which just as suddenly overflowed with sparkling tears.

“Lorrie, I ain’t lying– you don’t believe it?” he said, clasping her hands.

“It’s not that.”

“What, darlin’?”

“I kissed Mike,” she blurted.

A door slammed downstairs. Someone had turned the stereo down and another person was tuning a fiddle. There would soon be live music, and dancing.

“It was the day you got married. I was hurt. You hurt me,” Lorrie said.

Each pulse of blood in his veins came loud as a drumbeat.

He stared at Lorrie, wondering if she had ever looked more beautiful.

Women…They were all the same, weren’t they?

Slithering into a man’s life, into his dreams, wrapping their velvet bodies around him so slowly, patiently, until they cut his fucking air off… Ah, Jesus…

Maybe it wasn't just a kiss. Maybe she’d fucked Mike too. More than once? Possible. Maybe even right before she came up here…

“Abi,” she gasped, cupping his cheek. “How can you blame me when you did the same?”

He shoved her down to the bed with such violent force she screamed— and then the door to the room exploded.

Absalom pulled his Beretta and fired.

There was screaming downstairs; he heard none of it, partially deafened by the roar of the handgun. Wait, no. That was Lorrie, screaming.

“HOLD YOUR FIRE!” someone roared.

A man wedged himself through the splintered frame and seemed to split into four; four blots of darkness that slid to the corners of the room. The smell followed them: beer and cigarettes, sweat caked into the fibres of Carhartt flannels, dirty hair and old boots.

“Easy,” smiled Hiram Snatch Hill, aiming his KelTec at the couple in the bed. “Just take it nice and easy.”

Absalom’s finger twitched on the trigger. His other hand reached behind him and squeezed Lorrie’s thigh, warning her to stay still and quiet.

“I thought you were out getting my guns,” Absalom said to his brother-in-law and co-conspirator.

“I got your guns,” Hiram said. “But I just thought I’d come to the Greasy Hog to talk some strategy. And I come to hear you’re upstairs with a girl that ain’t my sister.”

“So now what?” Absalom asked, his voice level as his heart hammered violently. “You kill me, you don’t have a rebellion. No clan on this mountain will follow a Snatch Hill. Roman will take your head.”

“Maybe. Or maybe not.” Hiram spat tobacco juice on the floor. “You think you can dishonor my sister with some colored whore? You’re outnumbered, Absalom. Stand down or we all shoot.”

“Abi, please,” Lorraine whispered desperately.

“If I go down somebody’s goin’ with me,” Absalom said, ignoring her. He’d stared down the wrong end of a gun many times. It wasn’t something a body ever got used to. And now, with Lorrie here…

Hiram raved, “You cockroach sonofabitch. Tomorrow we kick off your war, but here you are breakin’ charity with the Snatch Hill clan.”

Slowly Absalom got to his feet. Step lightly, boy. Hiram was an ape, but to a Southern man, family honor was a killing matter if it came down to it. He’d been caught red-handed and there was no way around it but to talk.

He said, “Call off your war dogs. This is what Roman wants; us fighting each other instead of him.”

“Roman ain’t got nothing to do with you dishonoring my sister!”

“Let’s talk, then,” Absalom said quickly. “Outside.”

Hiram refused. “We can talk right here and now, Green Tree. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot the both of you stone dead.”

“Wait!” Lorrie said suddenly, jumping out of the bed. “Excuse me. You got it all wrong, mister. You got it all backward. Absalom came to me tonight to help your sister, and that’s the truth.”

The room went dead silent. What the fuck, Lorraine? Absalom tried to grab her but she danced out of reach. “It ain’t his fault,” Lorrie told the astonished men. “He was doing your sister a kindness.”

“Don’t pay her mind; the girl is addled,” Absalom snapped.

“She don’t look addled to me,” said one of the men. “An’ she’s a damned mighty prettier than your sister, Hiram, no offense.”

Now all their attention was on Lorrie. What possessed the fool girl to open her mouth?

“What was that about kindness?” Hiram asked her dangerously. “You think it’s kindness he’s stuck up your cunt makin’ a fool out of my sister?”

“Leave her out of it,” Absalom said.

“TALK!” Hiram bellowed, jabbing the gun at Lorrie.

“Your sister…ah…she’s pregnant,” Lorrie fabulated. “She’s pregnant and she can’t have sex no more. So Absalom came to see me to work off some tension before tomorrow. Right?” Lorrie prompted. “Tell him I’m right!”

Of all the…

“Pregnant,” repeated Hiram. “You say my sister is pregnant ?”

If he made it out of this in one piece he was gonna spank Lorraine’s ass red as a cherry.

“She, ah, didn’t want it gettin’ around,” Absalom said roughly, shooting daggers at Lorrie.

“Sounds like a fuckin’ lie to me,” piped up one of Hiram’s men.

“Easy to solve it,” said Hiram. He pulled out his cellphone and dialed a number, throwing the call on speaker phone.

Lorraine stood wisely out of reach from Absalom, shaking like a leaf.

All eyes were on her now, even Hiram’s. The fuckers were all staring at her legs, her flat stomach exposed by the tiny little shirt, and the spread of her huge tits pushing out the cotton fabric.

She could hide behind her waterfall of hair but it made no difference.

Absalom knew exactly what the bastards were thinking but if they tried it he was going to kill every single son of a bitch in here.

“Come here, Lorrie,” he ordered.