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Carol Johnson was used to negativity. She was used to being cursed out, stared down, and shot at. And even before she’d changed her major, graduated manga cum laude, and became a whore for the mining company, she had never let the word “no” get in her way.
She hadn’t when Boyd Crowder said he’d rather drive a truck than work for her, she certainly hadn’t when Mags Bennett put on her little show for the whole goddamn town of Harlan, and she wasn’t going to let Raylan Givens in her hotel room, saying “no” into his drink, stop her from getting off tonight.
She'd thrown a bone at the Marshal because she was bored, half-drunk, and horny from a stressful day, and because she thought perhaps he was drunk enough to do it.
There was another woman in Raylan’s life, of that Carol was certain; he had that put upon look about him. He was a man with woman troubles and plenty of them. She had figured that he probably didn’t want to add infidelity to the undoubtedly long list of grievances against him, but at the rate Raylan drank and his telling hangover from that morning, Carol had wondered if he didn't live hard enough to take her up on her very generous offer.
After her little speech about Cat, when he just smiled like he was really thinking about it and set aside that pathetic plastic cup, she got into bed, thinking about baseball, firecrackers, and English literature. It was only when she got to the third subject that she began to touch herself.
Not that she was going to leave Harlan behind. No sir, she would not be doing that.
When she first met him, Carol thought that Boyd Crowder seemed like the kind of man who could love a woman beyond all reason, beyond all sense and sanity, because she was some ungodly reflection of himself.
Not that Carol wanted to be that woman.
She just thought maybe Boyd had that kind of wild, intense temperament, the kind of nature that loved too much and destroyed everything in its path. There was something romantic about that, something perverse, as well. Something Carol could really appreciate.
Boyd Crowder was a Heathcliff without a Cathy, unless of course his Cathy was Raylan Givens. That thought made Carol breathe out a smile and move her fingers lower.
Raylan on the other hand, when he wasn’t busy playing the doomed lover of an outlaw, was like a cowboy Fitzwilliam Darcy. With his polite smile and the way he dragged that skinny court reporter by the arm like he knew what was best for her, he exuded that repressed whatever-it-was women seemed to find so attractive.
Carol included. Her middle finger flicked across her clit, coming around in a slow circle.
Raylan’s obviously tortured past in Harlan County, a former miner who’d escaped to the goddamn Marshals, Jesus, was another square on her romantic hero bingo card. From what Boyd had tried not to mention, there was strife in the Givens household, probably long past domestic abuse. Raylan looked like a man whose father hadn’t loved him enough, over compensating with a tough attitude and a fake smile. He looked like a man who only saw women as something to protect, because he hadn’t been able to save his mother.
Carol almost laughed at herself, psychologist by way of the nineteenth-century novel. But she was getting side-tracked. She brought her thoughts back to the task at hand and her free hand up to her breast.
She thought about the way Raylan told his baseball story, like it was nothing at all. Sure, he wasn’t the aggressor, but Raylan’s third hit had ruined that boy’s life. He had anger inside him, more than his easy smile and snarky attitude would have most people believe. That anger was riding him hard on this particular assignment. Carol saw it in the way he looked at her and spoke about working in the mine. She was sure the hangover and the bruises hadn’t been helping either.
Where she didn’t see it was in the way he looked at Boyd Crowder, and that had surprised Carol, at first. With their history, and they way Raylan had spoken about Boyd, right in front of him, in the courthouse, had her thinking there wasn’t much more than bad blood and a lingering memory of friendship between them any longer.
But they’d worked shoulder to shoulder together down in that mine. And no matter what Raylan said now, or seemed to think inside his own head, she had not yet caught him looking at Boyd with more than vague annoyance across his features, maybe something like amused, but wary indulgence.
Two sides to every coin, Carol remembered Boyd saying earlier that night. Two sides, indeed.
She thought about what they were like as boys, coming out of the black with coal dust all over them, washing up together in the changing room, drinking out in the back woods ‘til they had to sleep or work again. She thought fleetingly of boys she’d known in her hometown in Tennessee, how young they’d seemed, and brave, even when she was their own age.
Then she remembered they were all men now, men her daddy’s age when he had died of the black lung. And she sighed, glad someone had been able to get out from under the mountain. She reminded herself for the hundredth time that day that was why she was gonna cut the top of the fucking mountains off, so nobody’s daddy would die inside one, or flatline in a hospital at 47 because the mountain was inside him.
Fuck, she thought, dragging her mind back to those Harlan boys, with their meaningful looks and their simmering anger. She squeezed her breast, drawing her fingers across her hard nipple.
Boyd’s anger was harder to pin down than Raylan’s. She thought, after hearing more about his apparent spiritual conversion the previous year and his losses afterward, that Boyd’s anger was directed at himself more than anything. There was a hunger inside him too, one she had seen immediately, but knew he hadn’t yet been able to find something to satisfy that hunger. Carol smiled wickedly, adjusting her hips, tilting her shoulders back, thinking maybe it was Raylan.
Yes, she was gonna assume it was Raylan.
They would meet up in a bar. It was as good a place as any for a sleazy fantasy such as this.
“Boyd,” Raylan would say as the other man sank onto a stool, his customary greeting.
“Raylan.” Boyd would smile, loving the way the Marshal’s name rolled off the tongue. “You just come from Ms. Johnson’s?”
Carol smiled indulgently, and why not stick herself in there as well, it was her fantasy. Her hand moved from her breast down her ribs and hip, to draw lazy circles across her thighs and stomach.
“Yep,” Raylan would pop that “p” and take a sip of his drink, exhaling through his teeth. “She came on to me in the hotel room. I thought I should get the hell out of there for a while.” Not that he really would, he took his job way to seriously for that kind of shit.
Boyd would tip his head and mutter into his drink, “She propositioned me in the back of her Cadillac Limousine.” His eyes would be full of something that Raylan wouldn’t be able to identify, but it would be deep and dark.
Carol shivered, and dipped her finger into the wetness growing between her legs. Then she pressed harder across her clit, stifling a gasp.
Raylan would laugh and not even bother asking Boyd if he took her up on the offer. Not that he did, goddamn him.
They would slowly get drunk together, talking about nothing and never quite meeting each other’s eyes until maybe the third or fourth drink, when they’re both just this side of gone. Both quietly thinking about times gone by, getting stupid in the back woods, or drinking and fucking in whatever little bar and brothel they’ve got outside Harlan. They’d be a little turned on and not quite sure what to do about it.
Raylan, of course, would run away, begging off to take a piss. But Boyd wouldn’t be far behind, his intent clear. He would catch Raylan by the arm just as they come through the bathroom door.
Their lips would meet in a desperate movement with too much force, too much feeling. Their arms would tangle across each other’s shoulders and sweep back, grasping at anything they could hold on to. Again, Raylan would back off, unsure of himself, eyes wide with the realization of just what was happening. But Boyd would forge ahead, and push him up against the tiled wall, clamoring to get closer.
Carol finally lost the ability to keep herself silent. Now palming her clit, she drew two fingers inside, searching for the sweet spot and letting out a moan. She heard Raylan hear her, waking with a short gasp and some kind of guttural reaction when he realized what she was doing.
A wave of pleasure hit her hard.
Christ, fuck it, she decided, not caring what the man heard. She moved her body to her customary rhythm, taking in her breath in short little gasps, barely hearing the moans that it rode out on. Her skin grew tight and hot and she closed her eyes, feeling them roll.
“You’re mine,” Boyd would murmur, hard into Raylan’s ear. The Heathcliff thing again. “You have always been mine, will always be mine,” he would avow, kissing him long, running his fingers through the short strands of his hair.
They would remember whatever it was Boyd had done for Raylan on his last day in the mine. This would prove Boyd’s words were truth and they would tremble together with the knowledge of it.
And Raylan wouldn’t gainsay him, closing his eyes in surrender, huffing loudly and struggling to loosen his belt. He would groan when Boyd’s lips travelled across his neck and down to his collarbone; he’d long ago undone his tie and shirt collar.
“You and I, Raylan,” Boyd would say, “whatever souls are made of, yours and mine are the same.” He'd reach up to draw back a strand of hair that had fallen into Raylan’s eyes. It would be an intimate gesture, one that would make Raylan realize just what was going on.
“How long you been in love with me, Boyd?” he would ask softly, realizing what the darkness in Boyd’s eyes meant.
“How long have you been telling yourself you ain’t in love with me, Raylan,” Boyd would reply with some annoyance, the edge of his words impatient and sharp.
Raylan would kiss him, hard and sure after that. And, because this was Carol’s fantasy and she was almost goddamn there, Raylan would turn the tables on Boyd, press him up against the wall, all slicked up and ready.
There would be so much heat between them, so much want.
Carol could barely think about it anymore, the images playing across her mind one after another, the setting changing, mutating into everything she wanted all at once. She imagined Raylan inside Boyd, Raylan inside her, Boyd somewhere nearby, the heat and obsession in his eyes, in his hands…
The orgasm ripped through her, harder than she usually could produce in herself, and it tore out her throat in a ragged cry. “Shit,” she cursed, riding out the last crests of pleasure.
She lay still for a moment, smiling in the languid afterglow, inordinately pleased with herself.
Raylan, the real one, who wouldn’t come into her bed, coughed awkwardly and grumbled, “You always carry on like that when you’ve got company in the next room?”
“You wanna know what I was thinking about, Deputy?” Carol’s question was slow with satisfaction. She rolled onto her side, feeling that delicious slickness move around inside her, and wiped her hand off on the spare pillow. No one would be using it anyway.
She heard Raylan stir, shifting in that uncomfortable hotel armchair, and there was a long pause, more like he was thinking about pretending he didn’t hear her than actually saying yes. “I’m sure that I do not, Ms. Johnson,” he finally replied. His voice was louder with insincerity as he added. “It was kind of you to ask, though.”
Carol giggled quietly to herself, this man still so passive aggressively polite. She knew he was angrier than he’d been all day. And she hoped it was because his cock was hurting.
It served him right for turning her down.