by A. J. Downey
“Don’t,” Reaver said softly and broke me out of the familiar downwards spiral of thought I’d been about to go down. I dashed at my eyes.
“I should have been a better friend. Taken some interest not been such a self-absorbed…” His clear blue eyes went cold as winter’s ice.
“I said don’t,” he said, and I swallowed. I felt confused and Cutter finally helped me out.
“Don’t talk bad about yourself girl. Psychoanalyze yourself later. Right now you’re supposed to be having a good time,” he said and I blinked, bewildered.
“Was I?” I asked.
“Yep,” all three of them chorused.
“What does a maritime salvage operator do?” I asked Cutter, turning the conversation away from me.
“Well, for right now I’m a little sidelined by injury so I spend most of my time at the helm and at the radio, but we generally go out and tow disabled boats and ships back to shore or raise vessels that have sunk off the bottom,” he said and gave a stretch.
“It’s fun,” Pyro said with a grin.
“Pyro here is on my crew,” Cutter smiled.
“Sounds like fun,” Reaver said.
“Can be. Can also be a real pain in the ass…” Cutter went on to tell us about how there were a lot of maritime salvage operations in the area and how fierce the competition could be. Apparently it was also a really expensive operation to run.
Reaver and I listened and I polished off my second drink. The fish and chips had been amazing, and I was full and growing sleepy between the large meal and the alcohol. When there was a lull in the conversation I poked Reaver in the ribs.
“You still owe me something to sleep in.”
He smiled down at me and said, “So I do.”
“Oh this I gotta hear,” Cutter said and folded his hands behind his head, leaning back in the booth.
“Nope. Not your business,” I said and shook my head. Reaver smiled and squeezed my knee.
“Any place around here sell sleepwear?” Reaver asked.
“My girl clerks at a boutique up the street. Three blocks down. Might have what you’re looking for,” Pyro suggested.
Reaver scooted out of the booth and I followed. Cutter’s brown eyes followed my movements.
“What’d you want to do while you were in town?” he asked before we could get away.
“She wanted to try snorkeling,” Reaver said. Cutter grinned broadly.
“Tell you what, come by the marina around four tomorrow, I’d be happy to take you out for it. I have all the equipment. We can do it from the beach the party is gonna be at. You guys can hit the light house early in the day.” Reaver checked with me with a look and I nodded. It sounded good to me.
“Okay,” Reaver said. They traded numbers and Reaver and I left, following Pyro’s directions up the street to his girl’s boutique. It was still midafternoon so we had time to look around before things started to close. I needed to walk off our heavy meal and sober up some before trying to ride anyways.
Sultry Nights was the name of the shop and I blinked when we walked in, surprised. I mean I don’t know what I expected but this was a straight up sex shop! It had nightgowns and some of them were beautiful and classy but still sexy, which may be what Reaver had in mind… I looked up at him dubiously but he was smiling at what was on offer. He plucked something purple and satin off a rack and handed it to me.
I eyed him critically and looked at it and decided that, holy cow, it wasn’t bad. It had wide straps of the same material as the body that tapered down where it attached to the gown itself. The gown was shorter than I would normally wear anything. I mean I was raised to be modest, by my mother at least. My father had tried to instill his sense of adventure into his only child.
I remembered a time I had tried a sexy teddy on Andy and he’d told me not to be crude, that I was better than that and to have some modesty. I chewed my bottom lip while I looked over the satin night gown in my hand. It was short, yes, but it was also solid satin. The whole thing. No lace accents, just sleek shiny material and covered everything. My gaze flicked to Reaver whose expression was shuttered as he watched me. Assessing, calculating, like the way you look at the scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle searching for the next piece to bring more of the image together into a cohesive.
“What?” I asked.
“That one I figured would make you comfortable. So I’ll get that one for you, but the next one is for me Doll,” he said and the way he said it made me shiver.
“I only need one,” I said softly.
“It was a two-piece pajama set,” he said simply.
“So?”
“So I’m going to get one for me. Something I want, and you’re going to save it for when you want to wear it for me. You get me?” he asked.
I felt my brows wrinkle in confusion.
“I’m not sure I do,” I said honestly.
“I’ll explain it later,” he said with one of his cryptic smiles and held out his hand for the nightgown in mine. I handed it to him and he nodded, jerking his head towards the door.
“I’ll be right out,” he said with an enigmatic smile. I frowned at him and eyed him with mistrust and suspicion but I left the little shop and went next door.
Next door was a jewelry shop but it had some rather unique offerings. I slipped into the air conditioned coolness, relieved after the stifling heat and crushing humidity from outside. I stared into the case at what had caught my attention.
“You like?” the shop owner, a balding man with leathery brown skin and an ample spare tire around his middle asked. He was decidedly from not-America though I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to his country of origin. He could be African, he could be Middle Eastern, I just didn’t know.
“Where is it from?” I asked.
“Ah, that is a Spanish four Reales coin, set in fourteen karat white gold,” he said.
“A real Spanish coin?” I asked incredulous.
“Yes, it was salvaged off of the São José. Went down off the coast of Mozambique in 1622.” I blinked and looked at him.
“How much?” I asked. There was something beautiful about the misshapen coin, it was set with a cross but so worn around its edges that the towers and lions set in the four quadrants made by the cross were nearly indistinguishable. I couldn’t even tell you what was on the back of the coin.
“Ah, you cannot afford,” he said looking me over. I blinked. Rude!
“How much?” I repeated.
“One thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars,” he said. Reaver spied me through the shop window and I smiled faintly. He came in and the man frowned.
“No you leave! You leave now!” he told him and I was really stunned by his audacity.
“Relax!” Reaver said, putting up his hands.
“He’s with me!” I said over the older man’s protests that the biker get out of his shop.
“Then you leave too!” he shouted.
“But I want to buy the necklace!” I said and he scoffed.
“You cannot afford! Out! You leave…” he stopped when I held up my black AmEx and blinked.
“Yes. I can afford it and I want to buy it,” I said calmly. Reaver looked at me and grinned, a bit of pride shining in his true blue eyes. The man went to the window and got the pendant down and took the card from my hand. He wrapped the pendant carefully and rang me up.
“I don’t spend my daddy’s money often,” I muttered, Reaver grinned.
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me Babe. You buying it because you want it that bad or to shut the old man up?” he asked me.
“I think a little bit of both,” I said honestly and signed the receipt. The man had been eying me suspiciously while he’d slid the card like he didn’t expect it to go through. Then he looked at the back and saw my picture on it and his eyebrows went up.
“Thank you and let that be a lesson to you!” I said and took the little bag from him. He stared after us wide eyed as we left his shop.
“That looks both old and expensive,” he commented.
“I like old things.” I shrugged a shoulder, “It’s about the only thing my mother and I have in common. Antiques,” I said.
Reaver snorted as I put my little prize away.
“Your mother is an antique.” He said. I finally took a look at the rather large bag in his hand.
“What did you get?” I asked. Whatever it was it was a lot bigger than two night gowns.
“Someday I’ll show yah. If you’re really, really nice to me.” He smiled and I laughed. That was the Reaver I knew and loved. Joker and incurable flirt.
“Ready to go back?” he asked.
“Yes but not to turn in, it’s too early for that. I thought it might be nice to take a walk on the beach.”
“Sounds good,” he said as we walked back to his bike.
“Can you hold these without peeking?” he asked.
“I can’t make any promises.” He fixed me with a cold look and I felt about three inches tall. Like the biggest disappointment in the world.
“I won’t look. I promise.” The words were out of my mouth and I wasn’t at all surprised that I meant them. He smiled at me and ruffled my hair and I rolled my eyes and scoffed.
“You’re going to have to teach me that trick!” I complained.
“Mmm nope. All mine,” he said and I smiled. “C’mon Doll,” he held out a helmet and we made the ride back to the bed and breakfast.
I went into the bathroom and changed into my bikini. It was white, and I slid my olive green shorts back on over the bottoms. I threw on a light tan crocheted cover up on and let it hang off my shoulders. Really I just wanted to have it in case the wind coming off the water got too cool.
Reaver met me out in the bedroom, a pair of cut off green camouflage pants slung low on his hips I blinked and realized he had tattoos along his hip flexors, the very top of them peeking above the waistband of the low slung pants.
I blinked when his hands went to the fly and he started to undo it. My eyes snapped up to his face, alarmed. He gave me the most devil may care grin and said,
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours…” I scowled at him.
“One, I don’t have any tattoos and two, you’ve already seen mine,” I told him. His smile faded around the edges.
“Trust me Baby, I’m not going to forget it so long as I live either. Still happy to show you mine.” His smile lit back up and I smiled back.
“Only if I can put it in my mouth,” I said taking a step towards him. I thought maybe I could catch him off guard, that maybe, just maybe I could beat him at his own game. No dice. His expression turned frosty and imperious and he sucked in a breath. I felt my smile fade around the edges and he asked me in a too quiet voice,
“Do you want that? Because I really, really want that,” he said. I opened my mouth to reply and the look in his eyes stilled me.
“I want you to think about it Baby, really think about what you’re going to say, because once you say it, there aren’t any take backs,” he said and I felt a little thrill of fear. Reaver played for keeps. I knew that, but it was easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees and Reaver was like that too.
It was easy to forget how intense he was under his laughing affectation. Reaver ran deeper than any man I’d ever known. He was complex and layer after layer of mystery. I closed my mouth and looked at him solemnly.
“I don’t know what I want,” I told him and it was the truth. He nodded.
“That’s okay too,” he said.
“Right now I want to go for a walk. Feel the sun on my skin…” I said and he smiled, just like that, the intensity of a moment before whisked away as if it had never been. He held out his hand and I tentatively took it. We went out the door and down the stairs, out to the beach. The sand was unbearably hot on my feet at first but then I grew used to it.
We walked along the water’s edge, bare feet cooled by the warm surf. Reaver held my hand and I held his back with both of mine. We were quiet, soaking in the beauty and serenity. Letting the water pull the stress from, just everything, out to sea.
“How can you love me? I mean how do you know?” I asked and he looked down at me. He stopped for a second and considered me and then continued our walk.
“The moment I saw you it was… I don’t know… It was electric. I had to know you. I just knew.” He smoothed his hair down over his forehead, head bowed. “I don’t know how to describe it. You’ll just have to trust me.” He looked at me and stopped our stroll. “Do you?” he asked me.
“Do I trust you?” I asked a smile curving my lips.
“Yeah.”
“You know I do,” I said, tone slightly chiding.
“Why?” he asked me.
“I don’t know, I just… I just feel like I can,” I said and tilted my face up to his. I cocked my head to the side and considered him.
“Will you talk to me?” I asked.
“About what?” he asked.
“Anything. Everything. About yourself… I feel like I hardly know anything about you but you dropped everything for me. Brought me here… who does that?” I asked.
He shrugged and started us walking again and was silent for a long time.
“I…” he stopped and I waited patiently for him to start again…
“Hayden, Baby, you’ve got to understand I’m a fucked up individual…” I stopped and pulled on his arm.
“If I’m not allowed to talk bad about myself you aren’t either,” I said. The look he gave me was one of sorrow.
“Can I ask you for something? You can say no… but…”
“Ask me,” I said.
“Can I kiss you? Once, before I tell you what you want to know,” he asked and his blue eyes were cracked wide open, the truest emotion I’d ever seen out of him rushing through their depths.
“I… I would like that,” I confessed. He smiled and tipped my face up with gentle fingers beneath my chin.
His lips hovered over mine, his breath fanning across them, a whispered promise of things to come. He breathed me in and closed his eyes and mine slipped shut as well. When his mouth grazed mine it was like fireworks went off behind my eyes, the sparks fizzing from my mouth, along the surface of my skin in a pleasantly buzzing current of electricity. I gasped and he took it as an invitation, deepening the kiss, his tongue sweeping past my lips.
I sucked it into my mouth and moaned, melting against him. His arms folded around me and pulled me snug against him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and marveled that a simple kiss could feel so good. His hands smoothed up my back from my hips to my shoulders and back down until he held me by my lower back.
He drew back from the kiss slowly as if waking from a dream and chastely kissed my lower lip then top lip with these sweet little pecks before straightening. We were silent for a long time, searching each other’s eyes. He smiled faintly at whatever he saw in mine but then his expression darkened, growing distant and cold.
“I have six patches on my cut but I’ve killed seven men,” he said at last, swallowing.
“Okay…” I said, very still. “Why?”
He blinked at me as if he hadn’t considered my asking.
“I grew up in a trailer park.” He started us to walking again. “My mother crawled into a bottle… booze bottle, pill bottle… didn’t matter. Her husband, my stepdad, was a dick. She hooked up with him when I was one. No fucking clue who my real dad was. Anyways, Rick would tie one on and… Well when he got done beating on my mom he’d start in on me. Wasn’t pretty. He’d use whatever was handy, most of the time his belt.” He was quiet for a really long time and I continued to hold his hand in both of mine.
“The scars on your back?” I asked softly.
“Yeah, him,” he answered and sucked in a long breath. We paced forward along the water’s edge and he continued his story.
“He was always telling me how fucking worthless I was, how fucking stupid and it got old. Watching my mom turn into what she is… It got old. Thing was, when Rick got started on me he was always on about how it was going to make me a better man. How he was going to toughen me up.”
We continued along at a leisurely pace across the wet sand and I closed my eyes. I had seen the scars and though faded they spoke of a brutality that I didn’t want to even imagine a young Reaver going through.
“He never counted on me taking his lessons to heart,” Reaver said and I looked up sharply at him.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I learned to cope. Internalized all his garbage. Something inside my head just finally cracked and one night, when I was in the kitchen, he was piss drunk off of something and he started in on me. I was seventeen. My mom was pulling the late shift at the bar and Rick started in on me about how I would never amount to shit,” he paused.
“I played football in high school and hooked up with this girl Aimee. She was sweet and kind and just everything I wasn’t used to. I got her pregnant and Rick was really on a roll about that. Anyways, I was fucking scared about being a dad, I mean, what the hell did I have to offer a kid!? Look at how I was raised.” Tension radiated down Reaver’s arm and I bowed my head, waiting patiently for him to continue. When he didn’t right away I asked a question.
“Why did you ask me if you could kiss me?” I asked softly.
“Because I’m pretty sure when I finish telling you this, you’re not going to want to have anything to do with me,” he said. I looked up sharply and the look in his eyes said it all. Whatever he had to say it was going to be bad, really bad and I was almost afraid to hear it.
“I wanted to know what it was like, just once, if it was going to be the only thing I got to hold onto of you for the rest of my life,” he said and I think my heart broke a little from not just his words but the raw anxiety in his face. I nodded in understanding and he swallowed and pressed on with his story.
“Anyways. Rick didn’t think I was listening to him. I was doing my damnedest to ignore him and that pissed him off. The next thing I know he’s got me from behind and has me pinned face down on the kitchen counter and I just… I cracked,” his voice cracked and I squeezed his hand.