by A. J. Downey
She blinked at me and swallowed hard, “I… I don’t know what to say…”
“Then don’t say anything. Just nod if I have your permission, and I’ll do the rest.”
She nodded emphatically and I laughed, reaching across the table, my hand palm up. She put her hand in mine and I curved my fingers and she curved hers and we just sort of held on to each other. Her lips pursed and she ducked her head between her shoulders slightly, her cheeks still flaming and I couldn’t help myself.
I got up from my seat, still holding her hand, and rounded the end of the table, sliding into the booth beside her. She blinked up at me in surprise, and I caressed the side of her face. No walls, no lies, nothing standing between us…
I kissed her and the tension drained from her body and she leaned into me. I put my arms around her and gathered her close and did everything I could to steal her breath away. I was blocking anyone’s view from the aisle, and the windows were shoulder height and so I tore a page out of Cell’s play book. Placing my hand on the top of her leg and boldly sliding it up to the juncture of her thighs. I pressed lightly over her clit with my fingertips and rubbed her until she squirmed in her seat. Half pressing against me harder and half trying to get away. Conflicted, confused, and I knew why…
Dating was one thing for a girl-next-door type like her, but sex? Sex was a whole new bag of bricks and sex with me would mean sex with Duracell, and her inhibitions were stopping her. Keeping her from having sex with each of us, let alone both of us together. She wanted us but feared judgment. I totally got that.
One roadblock at a time. I thought to myself.
She pulled back, breathless and I backed away just enough to see her face. She looked up at me, eyes dilated with desire and taking back my hand, I whispered; “Don’t ever have any doubt about my feelings for you.”
She sucked in a breath and the waitress set our food in front of us. I kept one hand on her knee under the table as much as I could while we ate, the topic of conversation shifting to something normal and safe; what she would do for her window she had to craft.
“What’s the place called?” I asked.
“Twice Sold Tales.”
“What about a cat with two tails sleeping between books on a shelf?”
She froze and looked at me, searching my face, her mind working on the problem and finally she said, “I actually really like that.”
I lifted a shoulder in a shrug and said, “Does that mean we’re going back to your place so you can work, or am I taking you back to mine to finish what I started?”
She nearly choked on her milkshake, coughing violently until her airway cleared. I pounded on her back until she eked out that she was fine and blushing furiously, tears from her coughing fit in her eyes, rasped out, “Your place.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded, “I’m sure.”
I nodded and gave her knee a squeeze under the table, while we finished up our meal. On the outside I was calm, cool, and collected but on the inside? I was a bundle of some seriously pissed off anxiety screaming ‘why!?’ at me, but also, I felt like I was seventeen all over again. Seventeen, with my first crush and about to hit a home-fucking-run.
I felt like I was on the top of Everest, standing on the roof of the world, while simultaneously about to be pitched off that very same roof. My palms were sweating, my heart pounding, and my mouth suddenly dry and just once in my life I wished I had Cell’s fucking calm – even if it did mean I didn’t feel a goddamn thing to go with it.
Hayley was still a little quiet while we finished our meal and I think I knew what about, but the middle of the diner, out in public, was neither the time, nor the place to talk about it. I took her back out to the car, nervous, but still excited… trying to crush down my rapidly inflating hopes.
“I need to make one stop,” I said as I pulled out onto the street. It felt weird to drive a cage after not for so long. Cumbersome and unwieldy, closed off and, well, caged in. I hated it, but it was worth it to hold her hand and know that she was warm enough… comfortable enough.
“Okay, what for?”
My turn to blush, “Ah, fresh supply of condoms…”
“Oh! Um, good idea.”
“Not offended?”
“No! I mean, why would I be?”
I gave her hand a squeeze and pulled into an open grocery store’s lot. I parked and pulled the emergency brake, turning to look at her.
“Be real with me?”
She stared at me and said, “I can’t imagine being anything else…”
“Do you think that by having sex with me, that it automatically requires you to have sex with Cell?”
“No.” She said firmly. “No, I want you… what scares me is I want Cell, too… I don’t know what to do with that. I mean, I wasn’t raised that way.”
I knew just what Cell would say to that, and I said as much. “You know, if Cell were sitting here with us, he would ask you, ‘Your parents coming to bed with us?’” I smiled as she predictably colored and cried, “No!”
“Would you lose your home?”
“No… I don’t think my dad would be very happy about it if he found out but…”
“But you’re curious?”
She turned to face out the window, as if not seeing me right then would be easier and I understood that. Her breath fogged the window when she spoke, and I watched her face, as best I could, by her reflection in the glass. The only reason I could was from the night pressing in from the outside.
“I dream about it.”
“About what?”
“You… mostly. I have for a long time. About what it would be like, to be with you but lately I find I’m dreaming just as much about Cell and about…” her voice faltered and I helped her.
“About what it would be like, the both of us together with you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want it?”
She shifted pressing her knees together, trapping her hands between her thighs. Nervous, afraid of being judged I’d imagine. She was with the wrong crowd when it came to hanging around the club if she expected judgment. That wasn’t how we rolled.
“I… I think I do, but really, I just want you tonight if that’s alright.”
“More than alright. This is all at your pace, baby.”
She bowed her head, a wry smile on her lips. “Duracell seems to be in a big hurry.”
I smiled wryly too, “Patience was never his thing.” Going fast, stirring shit up, and instant gratification was more his speed.
“No, no it isn’t,” she agreed laughing.
The mood lightened, the tension in the small space lessening and I felt like I could breathe again.
“Want to come in with me, or just want me to run in?”
“I’ll come in,” she murmured and reached for the door handle.
I liked that. That she was willing to be brave, with me… for me… I knew she was the one.
Chapter 12
Hayley
It began to rain, the swish-shush of the windshield wipers in the close dark of my car a soothing sound. Blue’s hand was warm and heavy in mine. A paper bag with lube and condoms sitting between us on top of the emergency brake handle.
I deferred to him when it came to the purchase. While I wasn’t a virgin, I couldn’t exactly claim to be experienced either. There was history there. History and reasons behind my choice to abstain for much of my twenties, so it’d been quite a while, jeez, I think a year and a half? Maybe two, since I’d last been with anyone and maybe five or six years before him.
Painful memories, for sure.
I knew I had hang ups about sex and relationships, but I couldn’t help them. Of course, I wasn’t a teenager anymore. I wasn’t naïve. I just wish I could go back there. I wish I could do it all again. Blue didn’t deserve the neurotic girl sitting beside him. He deserved a confident woman, a fierce one, like Melody or Everett… Like Hayden or Shelly.
But oh, god… How I wa
nted him.
I was torn, afraid he would be like the two I’d had before…
I know, pathetic right? Twenty-eight, going on twenty-nine and only ever been with two men… and about to be with two more.
“We don’t have to right now… tonight…” he said and I startled, realizing we were stopped. I blinked and focused outside the window, realizing we were behind the club, parked on the asphalt track, off to one side by the squat outbuilding next to the big shop building.
I’d been here a few times before. The first time for Melody’s wedding. A few other times to help her with taking photos of Rush’s furniture.
“I’ll take you home…”
“No! No, don’t do that. I’m just nervous… I guess.”
“I think it’s more than that.”
For a long moment the only sound inside the car was the rain drumming down on the roof. I turned and looked at Blue whose beautiful gray eyes were leeched colorless by the blueish lights on the back of the shop building. He silently searched my face concern his paramount expression.
“No,” I shook my head, he didn’t deserve to be lied to again, even if it had been a white one so I changed tact, “You’re right… It is but it’s not you, not at all, it’s really me.” He leaned back, the leather of his coat creaking, rasping against the upholstery of my car’s seat and I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed my forehead. I shook my head and let out a frustrated sigh.
I said, “That came out all wrong, but it didn’t, but it did… Um, god, why can’t I do this right?” I laughed but it was an anxious thing and Blue took my hands away from my face, taking both of them into his and rubbing across the backs of my fingers gently with his thumbs.
“Hush, no need to be anxious. It’s just you and me in here with the dark and the rain. Just listen to it for a minute. Close your eyes…”
I didn’t want to close my eyes now. I just wanted to look at him. His gaze gently urged me to do what he asked and so I did. I closed my eyes and listened.
“That’s it,” he soothed when the tension and anxiety began to drain from my muscles. I breathed and listened to the wild thrum of the rain on the roof and window and just soaked in Blue’s calming presence. “When you’re ready, just talk to me.”
I licked my lips, “Isn’t there some kind of rule about talking about your exes when you’re on a date with a man?”
“We aren’t normal people, me and mine… Pretty sure you’ve noticed by now.”
“Maybe that’s what drew me to you in the first place?”
“Maybe. I know what drew me to you.”
“What?”
“Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t say you were beautiful and that was the first thing I noticed, but really what caught my eye was your spirit. Like calls to like and I don’t know, I guess I recognized a certain amount of beautifully broken in you.”
It was an ugly truth, but he made it sound so pretty; poetic almost. I nodded, an incredible sadness washing over me, then fading. Like a wave crashing onto the shore before receding back out into the dark.
“What broke you, Hayley?”
“I’ve only been with two people,” I confessed and swallowed hard. He was silent, patiently waiting me out and I somehow found the courage to go on, despite the humiliation of it.
“My mom died when I was fifteen, and I started working at the diner after school to help my dad. It, um, didn’t leave a lot of time for dating and I’ve always been shy. So when T.J., one of the cutest boys in school, started to pay attention to me I was kind of smitten, you know?”
Blue remained silent, and though I couldn’t look him in the eyes, I could feel him watching me. His thumbs never stopped making those soothing motions, lightly encouraging me across the backs of my fingers back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“I wasn’t popular, so we had to keep it a secret… or so he said and I believed him. You know? I didn’t want to cause him trouble and I certainly didn’t want the wrath of the mean girls. I was seventeen, and high school was everything back then.”
I pursed my lips and closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I let the breath out slowly and bucked up, this was so painful. “He was my first and it was all a trick to get me into bed with him. There was a bet going around inside his circle of friends that he couldn’t get me to put out and…” Tears sprang to my eyes. I hated this part. I hated even more what I’d done because of it.
“We used his room, his parents were out of town and I thought it was beautiful, right? It only hurt for a minute, but I bled, you know, and it got on the sheets and when I went to school on Monday,” the tears fell, I couldn’t stop them… “The sheet was flying from the top of the flagpole and everyone was laughing at me and calling me a slut.”
I pulled my hands from his and pressed them to my face which was burning with fresh shame. The horror and embarrassment was unreal. I missed my mom, my dad wasn’t doing the best and was all about the diner. I fell into a deeper darker depression that I couldn’t get out of on my own. I was alone, and lonely, and two months before my eighteenth birthday I slit my wrists in a hot bath and tried to make it all disappear.
Blue held me to him, his arms around me, hand in the back of my hair kneading my scalp as I wept bitterly into the front of his leather jacket. It’d been years before I let another man in, and the results then weren’t pretty either. I’d loved him. We’d even been engaged… until I found out that he had been cheating. His excuse? I was perfect wife material, good breeding stock, but I was boring and didn’t make him happy. I made his parents happy though, so I guess there was that.
My dad had gone after him with a knife from the kitchen and had chased him all the way up the street. He’d spent the night in jail for it, but I’d never seen Beauregard again.
Blue weathered the storm of my past beautifully and dried my tears. The look on his face and in his eyes one of admiration. I didn’t understand that.
“Let’s go inside,” he murmured. “We don’t need to do anything tonight, but I would really like to hold you, and I’d really like to have you in my bed regardless of how many clothes we do or don’t have on.”
Chapter 13
Blue
I got out of the cage and went into the back to pick up my cut where I’d laid it across the backseat. I swung into it as I went around to get Hayley’s door for her. I’d been honored that she’d opened up to me about something so painful and really glad she’d opened up to me and not Cell. Still, it didn’t stop me from being angry on her behalf. It also didn’t stop me from wanting to bring it to Cell.
He could be creative in his cruelty and while he was no caped crusader, any excuse would do to rain misery on a son of a bitch. Cell had some methods to his madness. One of them was to work inside the system. The system being the club’s system – not the legal one. He did what the fuck he wanted, got off on not getting caught by the ‘man’ but used the club as a sort of measuring stick so he didn’t go too far. He was as useful to the club as they were to him, so it proved to be a pretty mutually beneficial relationship.
I opened up Hayley’s door and held out a hand to her. She took it and stood, the rustle of paper in her other hand causing my heart to skip a beat before racing to catch up. I took the bag with the condoms and lube and led her to the door at the end of the building that would let us into what I called the barracks.
“Bathroom is here,” I said touching the door. “There’s another one just like it at that end of the hall on the other side.”
“Which one is yours?” she asked softly.
I drew her down the hallway nearly to the opposite end and stopped at my door. I unclipped my keys from where they hung near my wallet chain and stuck the right one into the lock, giving it a twist.
The door swung inward with a slight groan. I could have oiled the hinges, but why? Noisy hinges were an early warning system. Sure to wake me up if anyone came in here. Being an ex-con had left me a light sleeper out of necessity… Before prison, I�
�d like to sleep like the dead. After? I was still lucky to sleep the whole night through even though we’d been out a couple of years and more now.
My room was pretty simple. A king sized bed, a dresser, and a couple of nightstands. The TV mounted to the wall next to the closet, a small cabinet under it to hold the Blu-ray player and the wireless speakers I had for my phone so I could play music.
The furniture all matched and was all made by Rush when he’d seen that I just had the mattress and box spring on the floor. It was all nice stuff. Old, weathered, distressed gray wood that’d been reclaimed from somewhere. I stepped aside and let Hayley in the door, watching her as she stepped into the center of the room and turned, taking it all in in the soft glow of the beside lamp.
I tossed the bag and its contents from the grocery store onto that bedside table before I let my jacket and cut slide from my shoulders. Closing the door, I twisted to hang them up on one of the three hooks set into the back of it. When I turned back, Hayley was holding out her coat, scarf, and purse. I hung them up for her and she tucked her hands into the slightly oversized sleeves of her sweatshirt, slightly hunching her shoulders. It was chilly in here, so I chose to think it was that and not fear or unease that caused the left of center body language.
“Cold?” I asked her. The doubts eating away at my edges.
She gave me a half charmed smile and nodded. “Yeah, and still nervous. I suffer from depression and anxiety. I kind of can’t help it.”
I went to her and folded my arms around her, holding her close and sighed, the feeling of her in my arms a balm to the soul. She laid her head on my chest, and didn’t push away, but rather leaned into me, melting into me in a way that made my heart take off like a rocket ship.
I kneaded her back through her sweatshirt, starting low by her hips, working my way up on either side of her spine, my heart leaping again when my fingers found the end of the material and touched against her petal soft skin.
She rested her forehead against me and let out a pent up breath and I wanted her with a deep, longing ache. I smoothed my hands slowly up the sides of her neck, her pulse thundering against my palm as I tilted her face up to look at me. I covered her mouth with my own as soon as I could and drank her in.