Call Me Sugar Read online

  Published by EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ® at Smashwords

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2020 Lacee Hightower

  ISBN: 978-0-3695-0152-3

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Devin Govaere

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  For those who refuse to be afraid to love.

  CALL ME SUGAR

  Sugar & Sin, 1

  Lacee Hightower

  Copyright © 2020

  Prologue

  Today

  Springhill, Texas

  Keith Jacob Ryker

  Even in the darkest of silence … the heart understands.

  Acquiescent.

  Complaisant.

  Lust breathes inside me. My body is hard, aching steel as I crunch on ice, deliberately, vulgarly, well aware that he’s fighting like hell not to cringe at the one thing that drives him mad. One can almost hear a pin drop as he remains stationary, speaking to me in a silence that’s so powerful, so calming and soothing, that it’s almost meditative.

  Naked, bowing with hands clasped behind him, he kneels, respectfully, deathly still like a man praying at the altar. Cramps ricochet through the nape of his neck. Goose bumps blanket his back. Teeth stave off chattering as cold licks his face, his lips turning purple as the fifty-five-degree room spreads chills straight through his bones like a raging wintery blast.

  Despite the crispness of the temperature, the burning pain shooting up his neck like blistering flames, or the hard floor bruising his bare knees, he’s exactly where he wants to be, where he needs to be. Respecting, yielding, his mind conceding to the biting anguish, the discomfort, the torment.

  Like a garden gargoyle, he stoops before me, surrendering, waiting, patient and devoted, for the pangs, the cramps, and the stiffness to all fade away into sheer bliss and searing elation.

  My body trembles and aches with dark wicked desire as I swallow the last drops of a Crown and Coke, place the tumbler aside, then lower my hands around his windpipe. There’s still no whimper of a sound when I know he yearns to speak. There’s not an inch of movement when I’m certain everything hurts. This is all because these aches, these pains, are like a welcoming hospitality to me, to him, to us, and what’s to come. Placing more force around his neck, I look down to see him beautifully hot and swollen, his tip dribbling clear arousal.

  “Look at me,” I command in a menacing whisper. “Tell me what you need, boy.”

  When I lessen my grip, he replies hoarsely. “To hand you everything. To give you my body. To submit only to you.”

  My cock aches at the hunger in the piercing blue of his eyes, the urgency to leave his pretty thighs veiled in my marks spreading through me like billowing hot wildfire. His body is my temple—to use, to own, to take, take, and take again.

  He’s salvation, redemption, deliverance, an indulgence that’s sweet, rich, and delectable.

  And too good to only savor once.

  ****

  My father only requested three things from me on his deathbed. Take care of the house in town since Mom preferred it to the ranch. Buy every plot of land I could get my hands on to make the Ryker estate an empire, and produce some heirs to carry on the Ryker name.

  I’ve accomplished two of the three.

  The house in town is in pristine condition, despite sitting vacant the biggest part of the time. I’ve bought every business and piece of land that I can get my hands on, had apartments built, remodeled old run-down buildings, and turned real estate. Hell, I’ve even had a drive-thru car wash and auto parts store built that I know would bring a proud grin over Martin Ryker’s face.

  I’ve also completely transformed the dilapidated old museum at the top of the hill that I couldn’t give a shit about, my motives fully self-centered.

  I’m greed … pure and simple. Need … an everlasting fire, a dark clouded pit.

  All for a woman that I’ve loved since I was eighteen.

  I was one of those kids that was held back from kindergarten, meaning I was a year older than most of the others in my classes. According to my mother, an ex-elementary school teacher, holding a child back that extra year helped to hone social skills necessary for kids preparing to enter grade school, so where most of my classmates were only seventeen, I was already eighteen my junior year in high school.

  It was second period, if I recall correctly, when she sashayed through the door, late, grinning like a damn possum and muttering something about needing the bathroom. With her neck and cheeks covered in a deep pink blush, she stole my fucking breath. Her beauty hit me like a hurricane, confusing me, pulling me in opposite directions, and catching me between opposing needs.

  I’d grown up around this girl. Seen her a hundred times at my next-door neighbor’s house and never given her a second glance. But son of a fucking bitch could a few short weeks of summer vacation turn a girl into a woman. I knew I had to have her, to fuck her, to discipline her.

  Mine.

  Strands of shiny, straight brunette hair cascaded midway down her back like a magnificent waterfall. High cheekbones atop flawless porcelain skin showcased big captivating eyes in a shade of green that glistened like sparkling prisms of color. She was stunning. She held a beauty that could easily grace any magazine cover and outshine every one of their paper-thin models. Toned, shapely, and no longer the overly skinny girl I remembered, she was racked with curves in all the places a woman should be. Her hips were more rounded, more feminine, and just right to lift against mine, while her thighs had become longer, more muscular, and perfect for wrapping around my ass. And then there were her tits. Jesus, her tits. They appeared to be neither small nor large but simply two sweetly curved luscious mounds just ample enough to squeeze in the palms of my hands.

  Jennifer Boylan had grown into a beautiful sight to behold.

  Eleventh grade quickly became the onset to a new four-way friendship like none other. Three weeks in, and Jason Lee, Jen Boylan, Rylee Fisher, and I were joined at the hip. We were true and lasting. We were laughter and sorrow, comfort and worry. We were friends, not only for a season but for life.

  But Jen … she was different. From day one, there was something special in that girl—a smile that sometimes made me forget to breathe, a warmth, a genuineness—that made me think about love, lust, family, and a future.

  She was my sugar but filled my head with sin.

  I was no virgin. I’d had my hands on a woman before, my dick inside more than a few, but my body burned with an ache for her in ways that weren’t normal. Ways that made no sense at the time and made me feel as if I’d been punched hard in the chest. I dreamed of kissing her until her lips were red and swollen and biting the lobe of her ear until she whimpered. I held dark fantasies of caressing her breasts then sucking and twisting them between my teeth and fingers until she screamed. I longed to squeeze her tight butt cheeks between my palms before bruising them with my belt so she couldn’t sit for a damn week.

  It was only a few short days after senior graduation and the beginning of summer when our party of four tragically became a party of three and exactly ten days after Rylee Fisher’s memorial service when Jen allowed me to tie her up, spank her ass until it was black and blue, pelt the inside of her thighs until tears streamed down her cheeks, and then take her virg
inity and fuck her so hard that I thought for sure I’d ripped her in half.

  That day changed my life forever.

  Needs swam inside me, needs that were dark and deep, disapproved, frowned upon, and unmentionable in this part of the country. They filled me with demons. They suffocated my mind. They left me struggling in a battle that I couldn’t win, one that I had to accept and give in to what I’d once considered a sin, a vice.

  Hence, I would no longer have a relationship with Jen Boylan. I cared way too much for her. And I would no longer disregard those feelings that burned hot inside me. For that person.

  Jen ultimately left the town of Springhill after watching her best friend laid to rest and moved to Dallas to pursue what would become a rewarding career as a paralegal for one of the top criminal defense firms in the city.

  And me? I stayed right here in Springhill where I was born and raised and where my father wanted me, in lieu of earning a college degree. I had a comfortable life, one that I valued and respected, and the only life I knew—ranching. Then I made a selfish shit move. I convinced Jen to give up her job, leave her home and the city she once claimed she wanted to retire in, and move back to a town full of bad memories to re-open a museum she’d hated her entire life—for a man who selfishly still burns for her.

  But a man who’s also ached for another … for over fourteen years.

  Chapter One

  14 Years Earlier

  Springhill, Texas

  Jennifer “Jen” Boylan

  Putrid, revolting, nauseating … I swear I can already smell it … the scent of cinnamon.

  And the distance—it’s always the same. Too close. Too quick.

  Excruciating.

  Painful.

  “Two hundred sixty-one. Two hundred sixty-two.”

  Yellow roses are blooming and fragrant to the left of us, the aroma adding a soft sweetness to the light breeze as we wander through the beaten path that winds around the park. Cornflowers with their drooping pale purple buds are swarming with bees to our right while three bushy-tailed squirrels scurry around a park bench, playing chase, before running up the trunk of an oak tree. The weather is perfect, not too hot yet, and the grass is a deep shade of green from the recent rain.

  Yet, my heart beats so forcibly that my chest may burst as I think of poor Wendy in The Shining when her husband tells her he’s not going to hurt her but only going to bash her brains in. And I know just as clearly as I know I’ll continue watching the horror movies that I take way too seriously that, just like every other time, Jason will be right on the money.

  There are three hundred and fourteen steps from the left edge of the rusted swings to the front door of the Springhill Heritage Museum.

  “Two hundred-seventy,” Jason mumbles determinedly, his fine blond hair dancing and glistening like golden sunshine. “Two hundred seventy-one … seventy-two … seventy-three…”

  “Hey!” Keith’s tone is loud and brazen as he overrides Jason and his tedious counting, which isn’t, and has never been, the least bit interesting to anyone other than himself. “Homer at the store told me he’s gonna carry fireworks this Fourth. Mainly just Black Cats, Roman candles, and shit. Hell of a lot better than having to drive to San Alba.”

  “I like that drive.” Woodstock, Peace, & Music stretch tightly across Rylee’s t-shirt, emphasizing what is already an impressive chest. “Seriously, it’s somewhere to go.” Her body tenses like it always does when she’s had another battle with her mother, more often than not over her weight. “Besides, we can get some more of that chocolate saltwater taffy. Mom won’t ever buy it for me when she shops in San Alba. Says it will only make me have cellulite on my thighs.”

  Driving thirty miles up the highway is, sadly, considered going somewhere when you live in a town of roughly three thousand, and Rylee couldn’t be more right about one thing. Chocolate taffy is delicious and being anywhere besides Springhill is a plus.

  “Rye, your thighs are beautiful.” I take a step closer so only she can hear me. “You’re beautiful. And you know I’d give my right arm for some of your cleavage. Always remember that your mom’s criticism is just the vodka and pills talking. Nothing more.”

  “Yeah,” she whispers. “I guess.”

  Another quickening of my pulse has me not only grabbing at Rylee’s arm but squeezing the life from it. “Rye, I hate this place so bad. I swear he’s a serial killer. He could chase us with an axe or feed us poison cookies and bury our bodies underneath the building. Let’s go back to the park or find something else to do.” Rylee looks at me with an unreadable expression then sighs. We both know that I’ve watched way too many horror movies with my dad and have an imagination that’s almost comical, even to me. We also both know that there’s not a damn thing around here for four teenagers to do during the middle of the summer.

  Time flows like raw honey in Springhill, Texas.

  Brown, nearly black, hair falls in soft natural waves down Rylee’s shoulders as her hazel eyes meet mine with that pitying look she’s so good at.

  “We won’t stay for long, Jen. You know we never do. It’s just something to do besides sit in the park all day or at home. And I can almost promise that Ryker isn’t going to sever our heads or drain our blood.”

  “Still … I’m so out of this boring-ass town the minute I graduate,” I grumble, meaning every word. “I wish we could both pack up and move to the city right now.”

  Victory shines on Jason’s dimpled face like he’s just won a chess competition. He reaches for Keith’s shoulder and squeezes gently, almost sensually, something he does quite a lot.

  Jason and Keith share an unbreakable bond of friendship that’s pronounced, clear-cut, and deep, as if they’re soulmates or twin flames, always backing each other up, always there when one of them needs something, sometimes going so far as to finish each other’s sentences. “Never fails, dude,” Jason says in his deep warm voice. “Exactly three-hundred and fourteen steps from the swings to the front door.”

  “Who gives a flying fuck?” With lightning speed, Keith lurches forward, jerks away from Jason, and kicks at the ground with his boot like he’s irked. More than anything, I want to be the one reaching for his shoulder, touching him in that sensual way before my fingers run through the lustrous waves of his hair that always remind me of a deep-roasted coffee.

  My stomach clenches with dread and my hands become trembly and hot as I watch the flashing “open” sign.

  “I’m not going in, you guys. Seriously. Not today. Think I’ll just walk home.”

  Keith waits for Jason to lead the way through the door with Rylee at his heels then takes my hand in his but only for a few seconds. “Come on, sugar. Let’s go give ole Jigsaw a hard time. Maybe he’s got some more of those cookies he claims are for customers that never come look at any of his boring old shit.”

  “Boring ole dusty shit,” I add with sarcasm. “And cookies quite possibly laced with cyanide.”

  Keith grins at me, his eyes glistening like rusty copper pennies, both of which make me think of him kissing me senseless. “And corpses underneath the building, rotting, their flesh decaying.”

  I return his smile, fully knowing that there are no corpses, no poisonous cookies, no serial killers inside, but I’m nevertheless filled with dread.

  Something—or actually a number of things—scares me about the Springhill Heritage Museum and creepy old Daniel Ryker, who owns the place. First, no one seems to know much about the old man besides the facts he’s supposedly retired from the Navy, seems to have plenty of money, and is a recluse, hardly ever being seen around the town of a little over three thousand. Not even Keith—who ironically shares the same surname but not blood—knows anything about his personal life. Nor does Rylee, who lives right down the hill and comes in to visit and chat with the old man just as a reason to get out of the house—and away from her mother’s emotionally draining drunken binges.

  Some claim he’s an ex-serial killer and has bodies
buried underneath the museum or behind his house on Mulberry Hill. Others swear he has a wife hidden somewhere in his house, chained to an old rusty bed where he keeps her locked up while he’s gone. Oak and mesquite trees surround the secluded old house built in the early 1940s, and the museum is a pier and beam structure, both offering the perfect places for makeshift graves. Of course, all the stories and rumors are outlandish and nothing more than small-town hearsay that kids concoct while drinking, smoking weed, or sitting around another bonfire at Keith’s ranch killing time.

  Beauty parlor, bullshit chitchat is common in a town like Springhill.

  The museum is a medium-sized building that once housed a feed store back in the 1920s. Nestled behind a small residential area, it’s old, run-down, and smells of dirt and mildew the instant you enter the door. Dingy brown water stains speckle the ceiling, the paint peeling off the walls. And then there’s the so-called art, which, in my mind, is a joke and nothing more than old dusty crap that is of no interest to me.

  The city… Shit, I can’t wait.

  Second, it’s rare, almost unimaginable, to see anyone visit the place. Ever. Springhill is a small little town in the far section of Southwest Texas. There’s no movie theater, bowling alley, or Walmart, and only two grocery stores, one of which is nothing but a shop-and-rob, as my mother claims. But one thing the town does have is a slew of newcomers—a shit ton. Oil is booming. Field offices in and around the small town are opening it seems on every vacant lot of land. The town has seen a twenty-five percent population increase, and families from all over the country continue moving in every week. So much so that real estate prices have doubled and mobile home parks are popping up in and outside of town to accommodate the housing shortage.