Read Online Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens - Free Book Online

and loving and saying they belonged to each other and always would. He saw that look the last time he was with her, when she peered at him under the willow at the church supper in June.
    He’d been surprised Teddy Bishop wanted to put him to work that very night and sorry he couldn’t find Addy to explain his departure and his plan. Birdie Brown was cool to Chester when he inquired as to Addy’s whereabouts, but she did inform him that Mizz Shadd was feeling poorly and went on home. He’d worried some, but as Teddy Bishop was driving him and Jonas Johnson out of the town after dark, he’d seen Big Zach Heron coming through the front door of Shadds’ little brick home and felt better that the family friend had been sent to check on her.
    It was not the beauty of Addy Shadd, though he found her charms considerable, that compelled Chester to devotion. It was the unspoken communion of their spirits he could not deny or explain. Since the first day he saw her, when she was twelve years old and minding the babies atthe Kenny farm, Chester knew she’d be his mate. He never told her that was the case, naturally. Having the soulship they did, he knew she understood and felt the same.
    Chester looked down into the frigid river under his sturdy boat and thought of the watery world below. He’d been told come winter the ice’d freeze thick, some said ten feet and some said two. Didn’t matter how many feet down that river froze, he’d be travelling back and forth on it because the rum had to run. That was business.
    Remy described the jalopy they’d get for him and how the best thing was to drive with the car door open. If the ice started to crack, a man had a chance in Hell of jumping to safety and not ending up fathoms deep on the silt bottom with the automobiles and corpses and cases of liquor from winters past. When he thought of the river bottom, Chester felt a shudder and could hardly force the picture of ruination from his mind.
    Chester paddled a little harder when he looked up and saw the dock approaching. He began wondering if he could use that old jalopy one Sunday to drive the fifty or so miles back to Rusholme to see Addy Shadd. He’d ask Remy when he saw him tonight. He smiled to think of how Addy’s face might look when he came motoring up to her little house on Fowell Street.
    He missed her like a limb. He thought of Addy in the schoolhouse on King Street. How she’d help the younger children sound out words and never be smug. He regretted he didn’t have the chance to spend the whole long summerin the field beside her, watching her bent over the neat green rows.
    Someday in the future Chester’d tell Addy in a whisper how often he thought of her like that, bent over in the sunshine, her perfect bottom waving back and forth and how he longed to touch her there. If she had a notion it wasn’t a sweet way to be, he’d tell her there was nothing they couldn’t do to each other that wouldn’t be sweet, because of the true nature of their love.
    At night, he’d lay down in his too-short bed and work his fist up and down his shaft, imagining that Addy Shadd was his wife. He’d caress her face and tell her she was beautiful and a treasure to him. He’d kiss her and feel her slick teeth with his tongue. He’d dip his mouth into the valley of her ear and chew the round lobe before he turned her to face away from him. He’d plant his hands on her hips and press himself into the cleave of her bottom, then reach up to fill his palms with her breasts. He’d whisper, “Bend over,” and she would, because he asked. He’d pull up her nightdress, exposing the halves of soft flesh and guide himself between them, gently thrusting until she pushed back and he knew she was ready to buck as hard and fast as he would like. Chester would explode with his imaginings and remind himself to start going back to church.
    He’d