Smolder (St. Martin Family Saga) by Gina Watson

slow now. As much as Camp loved her animalistic behavior in bed, he was in awe at this new Jenny. She rocked slowly back and forth on his cock in a leisurely erotic dance that, coupled with her moaning, had him shattering around her within minutes. When she turned around to lower him to the bed, her eyes smoldered with desire. She was a glowing cinder as she rode him, seeking her release.
    ≈
    The next morning Jenny left Camp in their bed at the estate and drove to a place that held the memories of her past. She stood in front of the remnants of the farmhouse where she grew up. She recalled running in the tall grass, chasing butterflies with a net. She stepped on something hard and looked down to see the now rusty metal pan she had used to feed the stray cats. Her mother had caught her sneaking food out to the cats and told her that if she didn’t stop feeding them, every cat in town would be in their yard. Jenny had hoped for that and kept feeding them.
    She walked around to the backyard. The old swing set mimicked a frown with its saggy plastic seat and broken chains. The rusty old slide had warped. She saw the spot where Andrew had passed countless hours at the tire swing under the pecan tree. Jenny walked over to it, tested the strength of the rope, and climbed into the tire. She sat on the swing and thought about what she had set into motion so many years ago.
    Fate was a powerful force. An inescapable one.
    Jenny remembered when her parents died and the news sank in that she would be the sole guardian of her autistic brother. She was eighteen and had horrible thoughts about how she could be set free. She’d hated her brother back then and wanted to leave so many times. Had wanted to get out and just run. Had wanted to be free of the responsibilities. Free of the bonds. Free of… She squeezed her eyes closed, but the words had already sprung to life. She had wanted to be free of Andrew.
    She sat in the tire swing and rocked until her body was numb.
    ≈
    Camp awoke alone in their bed. Jenny’s side was cold. Wherever she was, she’d been gone for a while. He got up and went in search of her, but when it was clear she was nowhere on the property, he called her cellphone. She didn’t answer. He called the hospital, but she wasn’t there. He drove to her home in Baton Rouge, but that proved a bad choice; she hadn’t been there either. The thought crossed his mind that she was the type to dive into work to escape, so he called both the lounge and the worksite, to no avail. She’d vanished.
    He’d called Clay to see if he could get any information by running background information through the aid of one of his police friends. He didn’t know what else to do.
    He was relieved when Clay texted him her childhood home address; she was listed as the current owner on the tax rolls. The property was twenty miles outside of town in secluded pine woods. When Camp turned onto the road, he saw her car and was instantly relieved. He wondered where she could go—the house couldn’t be safely explored. He got out of the car. The wind carried the smell of old wood char to his nostrils.
    Camp heard a rhythmic squeaking and followed the sound around to the back of the house. There, under a pecan tree, Jenny swung on a tire, her legs pushing just hard enough to keep her moving. He crossed the yard and stood in front of her. When she looked up, he saw her tear-stained face.
    She sat quietly swinging and although he had many questions, he didn’t prod her. He dropped to the ground and leaned against a thick pine, content simply to offer his support. After twenty minutes or so, she started to talk.
    “We used to make smiley-face pancakes on our birthdays. Didn’t matter whose birthday either—Mom, Dad, me, Andrew. We all got pancakes. It was hard when they died. Andrew didn’t understand death, not in the typical sense. I didn’t understand it much myself at eighteen.”
    She sighed, but kept speaking. “He didn’t understand