by AJ Downey
The words left my mouth and my cheery mood shadowed. I couldn’t help feeling depressed. I only had a few more days of freedom left. I had gotten a taste and I so desperately wanted more, but I knew it wasn’t possible. I unfortunately belonged to Satan’s Last, a name that would soon be tattooed into my flesh to mark my title, once married.
“Bella, what are you not telling me?” Blake pried. “Why does your going back sound ominous?”
“Because it is,” I said, not believing I was about to share with this stranger, my private affairs. “I don’t want to go, I have to.”
The waitress interrupted us, took our orders and brought us another round of beer, which I finished about the same time I finished spilling my guts to Blake. A lone tear trickled over my cheek and Blake wiped it away with his thumb. He held his hand to my cheek and smiled. It was a comforting smile and for a brief moment I felt better for telling him my woes.
“I can help you,” he said, smoothing his hand down my arm, linking our fingers together.
“Let it go, Blake,” I told him, staring at his thumb trailing back and forth across my knuckles.
“Say you’ll spend one last night with me,” his heart-rending voice begged. “Give me one last night to remember, Bella. Please?”
“I leave in the morning,” I told him. “No stopping me.”
“I won’t stop you,” he agreed.
We ate our meals in silence and after, I followed him to his hotel.
No one had ever made love to me, and especially not the way Blake did. He took his time undressing while I watched his sultry, seducing moves, and then he painstakingly peeled the clothing from my hot sweaty skin, mapping my body with his tongue and breathtaking butterfly kisses. He actually treated me like I was something precious, like he cherished every minute with me.
I would never forget the feel of him as he hovered over my body, setting a slow, torturing pace, as sweat beaded on his skin and he moaned out my name on an arduous whisper. His face beautifully contorted, his eyes gleaming like the deepest blue oceans as his seed filled me more times than I could remember throughout the night. It was heaven I would not never know again. And for whatever reason he had been placed in my path, I was forever thankful, although it happened to be at an intersection where choice wasn’t mine and we would alas follow different directions.
I woke to the feeling of being watched and opened my eyes to find Blake staring into my face, his tranquil blue pools studying mine. I could smell coffee and noted that he was dressed. As I attempted to sit up, he placed his hand on my shoulder and pushed me down, covering my mouth with his, kissing me deeply for several long minutes. He allowed me to sit with my back against the headboard of the bed and handed me a takeout cup of coffee and opened his mouth to speak.
“Bella…” he looked away, as if trying to pick just the right words.
“You promised,” I reminded him.
“You can’t hold me to that promise,” he said, tucking my unruly hair behind my ear. “I was unable to make proper decisions for myself, due to improper blood flow.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I snarled, as he laughed, straddling my hips and trapping me beneath the sheets.
“I had a raging hard-on,” he confessed. “All the blood had left my brain, so I can’t legally be held responsible for anything I may or may not have agreed to at the time.”
“Urgh…” I pounded my fist on his chest.
He pried my coffee from my hand, set it on the bedside table and forced my hands behind my head. He was stronger than I had imagined, stopping me from wriggling out from under him.
“Come on Bella, be fair and give me one chance to plead my case. Then if you must leave, I won’t stand in your way…I promise.”
I don’t know what it was about Blake that made me even consider listening, but he had my full attention as he lowered my hands and held them to his chest as he spoke.
“Run away with me!”
“Are you…”
“My minute, so shut up and listen,” he scolded, then softened his tone. “I have friends in Canada, in BC. They just so happen to be members of a very prestigious bike club outside of Whistler. I talked to them this morning and we are welcome to stay with them as long as we like. There’s nothing keeping either of us here. I have been travelling from one end of this country to the other over and over for the last four years and I’m tired, I want a place I can call home and I want it with you. Think about it.”
“We’ve known each other all of two minutes, Blake.”
“What better way to get to know each other?” he asked, stroking his fingers across my cheek. “And if in time, we find out we don’t have anything in common, at least I helped you start over. You’re sitting at a crossroads. What is there to lose, Bella?”
“I can’t,” I told him, though the idea of running away with Blake sounded perfect.
My uncle would track me down sooner or later. It was a great big world but not nearly big enough that I could hide from my uncle forever. Scenarios plagued my mind, changing my name, my appearance, my address all sounded so simple. But I would never be able to change who I was, who I’d become or my inevitable fate.
“Can’t or won’t?” he asked.
“You promised.”
We shared one last kiss, that lingered on for a lifetime before I pulled away, staring into his sad blue eyes. I watched as he took a card from his wallet and carefully tucked it under the lace trim on my bra. He tugged me brutally against his chest, placed his lips to my ear and whispered, “I’ll be waiting for you when you come to your senses.” Then he released me just as fast, stepping away, boarding his bike and wrenching on his helmet. His bike purred to life and I watched as it pulled onto the hard pavement and sped off into the distance.
With my helmet secured and my bike humming between my thighs, I looked to my left, in the direction of home, forcing a leaden sigh from my lungs. I sat for a lengthy taxing moment with my GPS clutched in my hand, trying not to think of the man my heart was now languishing after…stupid heart…stupid thoughts.
Struggling with which direction to take, left taking me home and right taking me to an unknown future, knowing that either one would change my life forever. I looked up at the sky, at the open field of blue, there wasn’t a cloud in sight. The cry from a lone hawk drew my attention. I was rapt by its beauty, watching it swirling gracefully in large circles, gliding free on the wind, like a sign telling me what I needed to do. I took a deep cathartic breath as I punched my destination into the GPS and with an indomitable smile, I hit go.
Jennifer Rose lives the glamorous life in Canada working as a writer and part-time office clerk/manager. A mother of three grown boys, she decided to give up cleaning, cooking and day to day household chores in favor of sitting with a favorite beverage, be it coffee or wine and her trusty laptop, after a friend and author convinced her that she had what it took to write romance novels, so she took a creative writing course and finally started writing.
The Spark
AJ Downey
Cutting through the night-heavy slipstream was an ever loving bitch. I hated the cold, and despite how layered up I was, it went right through me. I had been pretty much forced to ride home for Thanksgiving and really, I should be thanking my lucky stars it was just cold, and not raining, snowy or icy. I was up in the mountains, which was dicey in dry, clear conditions, what with all the switchbacks and all, but it couldn’t be helped. I’d promised the fam-damn-ily that I was coming and there wasn’t any way to know my cage was going to crap out on me the day before I left. Fuck that old thing, anyhow.
I gave the handlebars to my V Star Custom a gentle twist and leaned into the steep curve. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, A Yamaha? Ew… But I’d had a Harley before her that had died a sad death when a car had made a rogue left turn in front of me three summers before. It’d taken me almost a year to recover physically from that accident and a whole two more to recover financially, and once my
lawyer had landed me a hefty settlement? The first thing I’d done the summer before this last one was I’d gone out and bought me Betsy. She’d been a brand new model, right off the showroom floor, her tank a sleek silver just dark enough to kiss the color classification of ‘gun metal’ and I’d loved the way she’d handled more than my Harley before her.
Sacrilege, I know, but hey? Me and my club were sort of all about that. We were a bunch of lapsed Catholic girls that went under the moniker of the Saintly Sinners. There were seven of us and we’d all been classified with road names that were one of the seven deadly sins. The sin that best fit our personality, well, after a fashion…
None of us girls wanted to be known as gluttony outright or in my case, sloth. So instead, we’d gotten creative a little, and I’d ended up with Dreamer, which honestly fit me better. It wasn’t like I was lazy, I just had a really bad habit of letting my mind wander and take me places that were far removed from the task at hand. Which, by the way, is how I almost missed him. I caught a flash of brown to my right, along the side of the road that faded into light blue jeans. He was limping slightly and when my headlight swept past him, he turned around, wide eyed.
“Oh hell-o,” I uttered, although he’d never be able to hear it over the purr of my engine. I downshifted and slowed my roll and made to pull up alongside him when I saw the blood. He had a gnarly cut above his eyebrow, and it bled freely down the side of his face. His Jacket was scuffed in an all too familiar pattern to me and one check of his boots pretty much confirmed it for me.
“You lay your bike!?” I called out.
“Yeah!”
“Shit, man; you okay?”
“I think so,” he called back, but he looked seriously dazed. Didn’t detract from the fact that he was seriously handsome though.
“Think you can ride!?” I called, walking my bike alongside him. I didn’t even hesitate, or stop to think that maybe this was a bad idea. It wasn’t in my DNA.
“I think so!” he called back over Betsy’s rhythmic chug.
“What’s your name?”
“Kyle, you?”
“Dreamer, get on! I’ll get us to the next town, we’ll see if we can’t get you some help.”
“Thank you, Dreamer; I appreciate it.” He got onto the back of my bike and did everything right. I smiled, and checked him out in my rearview. He seemed a little at a loss as to where to put his hands.
“Hold on to me, Kyle. I appreciate you’re a gentleman, but I ain’t no lady!” He laughed and put his arms around my waist, I squeezed the clutch, put her into gear and we moved out onto the deserted highway.
The nearest town was a small one and high enough in elevation that there was already snow on the ground. The small roadside inn was a bit worrying, the parking lot awfully full, but the ‘no’ part of the vacancy sign remained unlit, so I held out hope that we would score a couple of rooms.
“Wait here, I’ll get us some rooms.”
“Thanks,” he grunted. He got off my bike so I could, and I leaned her onto her kickstand. I got off and turned and he gave me a weak smile. He looked like he was a hurting unit, so I made double time into the office.
“I need a couple of rooms,” I said smiling at the young kid who was inn keeper for the night.
“Wish I could help you out, Miss, but I only have one.” He looked apologetic and it was kind of adorbs…
“Two beds?” I asked hopefully.
“Nope, a single queen and it’s a smoker’s room.”
“Shit, well, I’ve been in worse and beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll take it.” I looked out the window toward Betsy; Kyle leaning heavily on her, his butt planted firmly on her seat, legs stretched out in front of him, head bowed. He cradled an arm up against his body, like his ribs hurt, and I chewed my bottom lip.
He probably should go to a hospital and get checked out, laying your bike down was seriously no joke. I know, I’d been there, not counting the sudden stop into the side of that Toyota. The first time I ever laid my bike I’d walked away with some shredded leathers, a hell of a bruise and one scrape that thankfully hadn’t left much of a scar. I let my eyes roam up and down Kyle while the kid behind the counter printed paperwork and ran my card through. A flicker of light made Kyle turn his head as the ‘no’ lit up on the vacancy sign out front. My eyes had been drawn to it too.
“Thanks,” I said, signing my life away and snatching the key off the counter.
“Have a good night,” the kid said and I went back out into the frosty air.
“Only one room and one bed, that going to be a problem?”
Kyle looked me up and down, “Not hardly,” he said with a rakish grin.
“Cool, let’s get in there and get you looked at.”
I dug through my saddle bag and came up with my canvas haversack, which pretty much held one change of clothes, two if I got creative on how I wore things. From the other side, I dug out my first aid kit, which was also canvas and had quite the assortment of things I thought I would never need. Let’s hear it for being over prepared. It wasn’t exactly a necessity in my line of work, but whatever.
“Come on, let’s go get you cleaned up.”
Kyle pushed heavily to his feet and followed me down the bottom floor row of rooms. I stuck the key in the lock of room 106 and let us in. The room reeked of stale cigarettes and was somewhat stifling but I ignored it.
“This was the only room they had,” I mentioned for his benefit.
He grunted, “No worries, thanks for this.”
“No problem, I’m sort of worried you need a hospital though, Dude.”
“Nah, I’ll be sore in the morning, that’s for sure, but I don’t think there’s anything broken and there doesn’t seem to be anything a hot shower won’t fix.
“Sit down, and let me have a look at that cut.”
His generous mouth, now that I could actually see him, curved up into a smile. I dropped my haversack and the first aid kit on the bed and motioned to the only chair in the room. He dropped into it with a wince and leaned back. I switched on the lamp beside him and turned his face into the light.
“Doesn’t look like it’ll need stitches, but I am going to have to clean it up. Gimme a second,” I muttered. I backed off of him from where I’d practically been straddling his lap and undid the chinstrap on my helmet. With that weight off my head, I stripped off the red bandanna covering my hair underneath.
“Nice,” he commented and I turned sharply.
“What?”
“Your hair color, it’s nice. I couldn’t see it out there. Your eyes are nice too.”
I felt myself blush, I wasn’t exactly used to getting compliments. I shrugged out of my jacket and cut and laid them out on the bed. The rose and angel wings folding in on themselves. Our club’s colors were a red rose, white angel wings sprouting from either side of it, constricted by barbed wire. A crooked halo held up by a pair of free floating devil horns over it all. The top rocker proclaimed ‘Saintly Sinners’ loud and proud and the bottom rocker ‘Denver’ after the city we claimed as home.
I swept my hands through my dirty blonde hair and away from my gunmetal blue eyes and sighed. I pulled half of it up at the top and used the hair elastic from around my wrist to do the job my bandana and jacket had done on the road, getting it and keeping it out of my face. My hair was long, closer to my waist than my mid back, and I typically trapped it with my leather coat to keep it from tangling in the wind.
“Be right back,” I murmured, “I’m going to go wash my hands.”
I pulled off my gloves and dropped them on my jacket and cut, tossing my clear safety glasses into the bowl of my helmet next, before walking into the small bathroom and flipping on the light. I scrubbed my hands with hot water and the little hotel bar of soap that was provided. Using the bathroom mirror, I watched Kyle as he painstakingly shrugged out of his leather jacket and let it fall behind him, slouching in the chair. He was already moving better, like he was in less pain, and that
was encouraging.
I shut off the water, shook my hands into the basin and dried them on the fresh hand towel. Kyle was watching me curiously the next time I looked. I frowned, I couldn’t really take stock with all that blood on his face, so I grabbed the washcloth I’d wet with some hot water and brought it over to him.
“Look at me,” I ordered and returned to my position of practically straddling his denim and leather clad thighs. He looked up obediently and I sucked in a breath. He had the most startling dark blue eyes. I’d thought they were dark brown in the low light, but no, they were a deep, sapphire blue, so dark as to be almost indigo.
“You have quite the pair of eyes yourself,” I mentioned, carefully wiping the blood from his cheek. He smiled and flashed the most adorable set of dimples. I smiled back and gently pushed his dark brown hair away from the cut over his eyebrow. It was silky soft, and I admit, I combed my fingers through it a few more times than was absolutely necessary.
Kyle closed those indigo eyes and relaxed under the touch, his hands finding my waist and simply resting there, over my jeans and chaps. I felt a little thrill go down my spine and take up residence in my stomach where it burst into a fit of butterflies.
“That feels good,” he said, “I’ve always been a sucker for having my hair played with.”
I smiled and got down to business, tending his cut, wiping at it gently with the rough washcloth, he flinched and I sucked in a breath, “Sorry, has to be done, and if you think this is bad, wait until I bust out the antiseptic.”
“I can handle it,” he said and I chuckled.
“I’ll just bet you can.”
We were quiet for a time as I ripped open packaging and brought out the styptic pencil. I sighed and warned him, “This is going to sting like a son of a bitch.”
His hands tightened on my hips, steadying himself as much as me, and he said, “Thanks for the warning and for taking care of me.”
“No problem,” I said and touched the styptic to his cut. He sucked in a breath and hissed, but he got points for holding still.