Growing up in Harlan County gave her a shared history with Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. A history that made the two Kentucky natives cynical to the outside world.
However, after meeting former Army Ranger, Tim Gutterson, Jolene 'Jo' Taylor's p...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Tim's reservations about continuing his relationship with Jo had fallen apart relatively quickly, as was evident by their current position. The two lay beneath his bedsheets, legs intertwined while her head rested upon his chest, fingers idly drawing patterns into the skin of his shoulder.
Although their trysts had become a semi-regular occurrence, this arrangement was a new development. It had become routine for the person whose house they weren't at to get up, get dressed, and immediately leave following completion; there was never any cuddling post-coitus.
Tonight, however, it seemed natural, so Jo stayed, and neither of them questioned this break in tradition.
"Saved your brother today," Tim announced, interrupting the silence.
That had Jo craning her neck to look up at him, her chin resting on his sternum so she could catch his eye. "Oh yeah?" She asked him to continue.
He told her about how Douglas Cooper had escaped from a birthday party of all things, then carjacked Raylan at a nearby gas station. She'd have to remember to mock her brother mercilessly for getting jumped by an old convict the next time she saw him. Then, of how their search for the escapee had taken them to Riverbrook where another criminal, Dupree, had taken a family hostage.
Should Tim have been sharing all this with a civilian and a lawyer to boot? Yeah, probably not, but Jo was related to law enforcement, and that earns a person special privileges.
"So, Raylan enters the home to talk Dupree down-"
"Of course he did," she interrupted with a roll of the eyes.
He continued as though she hadn't cut him short just to be smart. "It didn't go so well. The girl, Shirley-"
Jo, once again, halted his storytelling with a comment. "The former exotic dancer? Was she hot?" This second infraction earned her a pinch on the hip, which elicited a giggle from her lips, but she quieted down all the same.
"So, Shirley, the one-time exotic dancer, cuts off the lights and Dupree goes to shoot Raylan-"
"But you got him instead?" Jo liked the way Tim's brow wrinkled when he was frustrated, and it gave her all the more reason to continue teasing him.
"He stepped out of line, and I got to shoot him." The tone was jesting, but she could see that the joke didn't quite reached his eyes. That's when she realized he wasn't just telling her the story to boast about saving her brother's ass.
Jo's voice lost its teasing in an instant. "You okay with that?"
When Tim gently removed her head from his chest, and extracted her arm from his shoulder in favor of sitting at the edge of the bed with his back turned towards her, she understood they'd walked into sensitive territory.
You know one man who's served in active duty, you know the baggage they all carry. Growing up in the same household as Arlo Givens had provided Jo with a crash course in how desperate men can be after coming back from war, and how quickly they can fall off the deep end without the proper coping skills to handle their shit.
She knew Tim drank to diminish the memories of things he'd done in the same of peace, same as she did. Gathered that if she didn't defuse this particular bomb in a hurry, it would put a real damper on any relations they planned to have in the future.
Sitting up in bed behind him, letting the bedsheets pool around her waist, Jo asked in the gentlest voice she could, "do you wanna talk about it?" The only response she received was a short head shake in decline.
Of course he didn't. Just because she'd been to lazy to leave after they'd finished fucking, didn't mean they'd reached a level of familiarity that brought along confession.
He liked to keep his darker thoughts to himself, but who could blame him? And couldn't push for transparency because it wasn't her place; not that she wanted it to be, either.
"Well," she started, moving to wrap both arms around Tim's torso from behind and rest her chin upon his shoulder, "if you're not gonna use that mouth for talking, then why don't you come over here and find another use for it."
Tim hesitated for what she thought was a second too long in contemplating the offer, so she gave a sharp tug to his earlobe with her teeth to drive the implication home. The sensation seemed to nudge him out of his brooding because the next moment Jo found herself lying back on the mattress, his weight pressing down on her to eliminate any squirming, as he showed her exactly what his mouth could do aside from talking.
