Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning

by Susan Fanetti

  On this day when Mo had endured the true end of her uncle’s legacy, yet another wake to send off the last remnants of who Dave Quinn had been, how much he’d loved his family, how much trouble he’d tried to carry on his shoulders alone, Brian took her to this fairyland.

  They walked the bike in and he stood it near a tree, then they made their way through the tall, lush new flowers. He knew all their names; his mother, and then his sister, both avid gardeners, had taught him. Bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush, coreopsis, canola flowers, goldenrod, and more, in wild clusters of waving clutter.

  It had been years since they’d come, but it looked all the same, untouched in their absence. Brian almost wished he’d had the truck today, so they could have stopped and picked up some burgers and shakes, and spread out a picnic. But this wasn’t a place they came with the truck. They wanted no sign they were here, or that they’d been here. This was a place they came to be quiet, to sit together and talk, which was what Mo needed today.

  She sat on an old round rock at the edge of the natural pond. Brian sat on the ground beside her. She didn’t speak, so he stayed quiet, too, and waited until she was ready to let out her thoughts. They watched the water striders skim the surface of the water, and the dragonflies’ iridescent wings shimmer rainbows as they dipped and dived. Little ripples of fish kisses chased the insects’ trails.

  After several peaceful minutes, Mo suddenly slid off the rock, as if she’d simply given up. Before she crashed into him, Brian caught her and pulled her onto his lap, into his arms. “Hey, sweetheart. Okay?”

  She coiled around him at once, straddling him, twining her arms around his neck, and kissed him. Her mouth was open, demanding he open his. He understood—she didn’t need to talk. She needed this; more than romance or desire, this was a need for solace.

  Brian clasped his arms around her and gave her what she needed.

  It wasn’t enough. Soon, she tore her mouth from his with a gasp and stared at him, frowning.

  “Talk to me, Mo. I’m here.”

  She shook her head. “Fuck me, Brian.”

  “Wha—here?” The ground was rocky, so close to the pond, and the reeds and wildflowers bore leaves with burred edges and sharp points. He was not about to put her on the ground here and fuck her.

  But she was already undoing the ties of her halter, exposing her perfect tits, and her hips rocked and rolled on his lap, grinding down on his cock, which had gone hard at the first contact of her mouth to his.

  He wasn’t going to put her on the ground, but they were absolutely going to fuck.

  He helped her open her jeans and get one leg out of them and her panties, and then he opened his jeans and pulled his cock free. As she sank down on him, he latched onto her nipple and sucked that sweet tip between his teeth.

  Her back arched in his arms. “Aye, oh aye,” she gasped, and clutched his head to her as she rocked and bounced on his lap. “Suck me, oh harder.”

  Brian held her close and sucked as if he could feed from her, and she moaned lustily with every pulse of his mouth. But the way she slammed her body over his, the desperate frenzy of each lift and drop, each twist of her hips, each grind—she was fucking the shit out of him, and he could hardly keep up. Mo was enthusiastic in bed, and she rode him fairly often, but what was going on now, here in this peaceful glade, was something new. It almost wasn’t even sexy, though it was erotic as hell.

  He let go of her nipple and went for the other, resting for a second between them to grab his breath. “Shit, Irish!”

  “Don’t come, don’t come,” she begged.

  That was the thing—he wasn’t close. He was as hard and as sensitive as he’d ever been, so that every slide pushed pleasure to its breaking point, and he was entirely turned on, but what Mo needed from this fuck, whatever it was, served as a governor on his own release. She was chasing something. Not just an orgasm, not just intimacy. Something that maybe didn’t have anything to do with him.

  He held her and suckled her and let her use him, but he didn’t get off.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God!” she cried, and threw her body backward, over his arms. He felt the spasms of her climax around him, gripping and releasing, fluttering beautifully, and he still didn’t come.

  When her body softened, she lay back in that bow for another few seconds, heaving breath into her body, and then she sat up. Feeling his heft still hard inside her, she moaned softly.

  “You didn’t come.”

  “No. But you did.”

  She smiled. “I did.”

  “You feel better?”

  “I do. I don’t … know what that was.”

  “It was what you needed.”

  “You’re what I need. Always.”

  She kissed him, and this kiss was romance. Soft and sensual, her tongue caressed his mouth. Her hands slid from his head to his shoulders, down his chest, up his arms, and she began to move again—this time slowly, almost lazily, like a sensual dance. With a push, she put him on the ground, following, lying on top of him, still writhing—and now, now this was romance. This was desire. Now she was with him.

  And he was right there, ready to go.

  Her breasts moved over his chest. Her tongue tangled with his. Her hands gripped his arms, pressed her weight into them. And her body—god, her body.

  He couldn’t be still. Clamping his hands on her hips, he thrust up into her, controlling her rhythm, adding his own, until his finish plowed him under, and he shouted into the lowering sun.

  “Fuck, Mo,” he gasped as she scattered kisses over his face. “What you do to me.”

  “Love you. That’s what I do. Just love you.”

  “And I love you.”

  “And that’s why we’ll always be okay.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  1974

  “Fuck, Irish,” Brian muttered against her shoulder and bit down as he thrust forward again, going deep again before he began to soften. “God, there’s nothing better than this.” His hand slipped up from between her legs and smoothed protectively over her already swelling belly. Every pregnancy, she seemed to show a bit earlier than the attempt before.

  Still lost in the throes of her climax, Mo could only reach back, twist her fingers in his long hair, and moan.

  They hadn’t meant to get pregnant this time—Mo liked to time it so she’d have the baby, if she had the baby, at the beginning of summer, but this time she’d gotten pregnant in the spring, so if things finally went as they were supposed to, this baby would be born in January, which would mean her students would have a long-term substitute for the spring term. But she and Brian had taken a long weekend ride to Kansas City for a bike show, and she’d forgotten her pills at home. The thought of returning to condoms hadn’t thrilled either of them, and they’d already decided to try again in the fall, so they’d taken the risk.

  Four days without her pills, and she’d gotten pregnant. She was certainly fertile. Her doctor told her that was very good news for ‘eventually’ being able to have a baby. Eventually. He said that word like each miscarriage were no more momentous than a lost game of checkers.

  This one was ten weeks along now. Eighteen weeks was the furthest she’d yet been able to go. She’d be a wreck until twenty weeks, at least. But she’d keep her wreckage inside. If she let on to Brian how scared she was, he’d wrap her in padding and not even let her walk on her own.

  Mo set her hand over Brian’s on her belly.

  “Everything good?” he asked.

  “Everything is grand.”

  With a gentle pat and a kiss to her shoulder, he eased himself out of her and rolled to his back. Mo followed, turning over and settling on his chest. His arm hooked around her. This was her favorite spot on earth.

  “We should get up soon,” she said with a disappointed sigh. “I’ve a lot to do—and you as well.”

  A few times last year, Brian had gone out riding with a friend he’d made on his way home from the war: Dane Nielsen. Since th
e weather had turned this spring, and Dane had left the Air Force, their trips had been occurring more often—at least once a month—and they’d picked up a few other friends along the way as well. Now it was a group of four, all of them war vets.

  Though none of the others had women, Brian, unwilling to be without her even overnight anymore, had brought Mo on quite a few of those weekend rides—including the bike show in Kansas—but not since they’d found out she was pregnant. Brian would not consider letting her ride with him now, and frankly, Mo wasn’t interested in doing anything that created any avoidable risk to this baby.

  She liked Collie, Dane, and John just fine, they were a lot like Brian, and she loved riding with her man. She also loved how incredibly randy he got after a long ride. That engine rumbling between their legs for hours on end really got his motor running—and hers—and they always had their wildest sex after a day on the road.

  However, she was the only woman in the group, and all the endless talk of bikes and war was not her cuppa. And then there was the fact that they all, even Brian, forgot about her after a few pints, while they were deeply immersed in war stories and arguments about how to maximize torque, or whatever it was they went on about. Mo quite frankly could not wait for her man’s friends to find themselves some women so she’d have somebody to talk to—and to complain to.

  She didn’t hold up much hope; none of the other men was what she would call a catch. But today, Dane was coming to their house for a visit—and bringing a girl. The odds that the men would want to ride out on their own for a while, and probably head straight for the VFW, where Collie was practically affixed to a stool, were high. Mo and Dane’s new girl would be on their own for at least a couple of hours. She intended to evaluate this girl and, if she turned out to be worthwhile, put all her effort into enlisting her to Dane’s cause. And her own.

  But right now, Brian took a deep, slow breath and tightened his hold on her. “Not yet. I’m not ready to let you go.”

  She smiled and snuggled closer, deciding they had time for a few minutes of lazy Saturdaying. She let her hand wander the terrain of his torso—the ridges of his scar, the chasms and slopes around his muscles. She dropped lower, through the thatch of hair between his hips, and dipped past his softening cock to scoop her palm and fingers around his balls.

  A purr of pleasure escaped his lips as he kissed her head. “Love the way you touch me.”

  “Love the way you feel,” she answered.

  His hold of her tightened even more. After a few quiet moments, he murmured, “I’m happy, Irish.”

  “Me too.”

  ~oOo~

  “Do they do that a lot? Just go off on their own like that?”

  Mo smiled and gathered up the empty bottles and glasses from the new picnic table. “Trust me, love, it’s better that they do. You can’t leave two bikers with a whole sunny afternoon free to sit and stare at their rides. They’d be miserable and make us the same. This way, they’ll ride, get it out of their system for the day, and leave us in peace to make dinner.”

  Dane’s girl, Joanna, picked up the ashtray and the rest of the stray mess from their drinks and snacks. “But the afternoon wasn’t free. We’re here for a visit. We should be visiting.”

  “And we are.” She held the door open and let Joanna pass through first.

  Joanna was a pretty woman, about Mo’s age—though she was only guessing; she hadn’t asked outright yet—with long, straight ginger hair and big blue eyes. They tilted down at their outside corners, which gave her resting expression a touch of melancholy.

  Joanna upended the ashtray over the bin and dumped the contents. “It seems like they went out to play, and left us here to cook and clean. That doesn’t bother you?”

  “Are you looking for reasons not to like Dane?”

  “No. He’s sweet, and he’s … really good at lots of things.”

  Mo chuckled. “You mean in bed.”

  She laughed outright when Joanna’s cheeks turned bright red.

  “Yeah, he’s amazing in bed. But I don’t know … it’s the 1970s, you know? We’re almost three-quarters through the century. Don’t you think it’s time for all the ‘man of the house’ crap to die?”

  Mo had been married for nearly five years to a man who took his manliness very seriously. She’d also out-earned him for most of those years. And, while she’d never admit it outright, she’d been relieved when he’d gotten the job at Hoff’s—a job he liked—and had brought home a paycheck bigger than her own, for the first time since she’d started teaching. The disparity had worn hard and heavy on Brian’s sense of himself. He’d been raised with certain ideas about what it was to be a man, and a husband, and he upbraided himself for falling short. It wasn’t that he resented her work—he’d always been proud and supportive—but he was ashamed of himself.

  So yes, she was happy that he earned more than she. Her own sense of self had little to do with her paycheck and everything to do with how she had the chance to make the world better each day she taught.

  Mo considered herself a feminist. She absolutely believed, without a doubt, that women should be able to do any work they had the brains, skill, talent, strength, or stomach to do, they should be paid as well as men to do it, and they should be able to both work and have a family if they wanted.

  She absolutely did not believe that a man was less of a man if he didn’t earn well, or a woman less of a woman if she did. She absolutely did not believe that the home was innately the domain of women and the wide world was innately the domain of men. All those traditions and expectations had been created by men who wanted to keep women out of their way. She absolutely believed that.

  However, she lived in the world as it was, and she loved the man she loved. She saw where philosophy met reality, and understood that lasting change could only happen in increments. If change happened too quickly, if that meeting of philosophy and reality was a crash, everything fell apart. Change had to happen where room was made. She absolutely believed that, too.

  “I do,” she answered Joanna now and got an ice tray from the freezer to refill their glasses. “But if you want a man who’s ready to let that crap die right now, or maybe even to help kill it, I’m going to suggest that a biker bar wasn’t your best hunting ground. You shouldn’t’ve fallen for a biker-farmer who’s done four years in the military and seen combat. You’re not going to find many ‘new men’ any of those places. You’re going to find men like Brian and Dane. If you fall for a man like that, you’ll have to adjust your expectations accordingly, be patient, and find your occasional chances to nudge them toward the future. We’ve got, what, twenty-six years before the new millennium? Well, then, we almost have enough time.”

  Joanna’s expression had shifted several times as Mo spoke, from burgeoning offense to challenge, to curiosity, to, finally, humor, and she laughed as Mo finished. They sat at the kitchen table, and Mo poured the last of the fresh lemonade over the ice in their glasses.

  “I guess I can’t argue with that. Manly men are just so foxy, though. I can’t help myself. I love Dane’s hair, and his rough hands, and his tattoos, and his bike, and the way my mother nearly has a heart attack every time she sees him. I’m not sure I’ve fallen for him, though. Not yet.”

  Mo smiled at the characterization of Dane as a manly man. She didn’t see him that way almost at all. Yes, he was a biker, a farmer, and a war vet. Yes, he had tattoos. But he was shorter than Brian and slender. Not much bigger than Mo, in fact, and his long blond hair was so pale and pretty it took years off his look. But he was scrappy like Brian, and he certainly had traditional ideas about the roles of men and women, and was just as invested in what it meant to be a man as Brian.

  “How long’ve you been seeing each other?”

  “A month, just about. I do like being with him—he treats me like a princess, and he is damn near majestic in bed. It’s just that he can be such a caveman when I don’t do what he wants. We’ve already had a couple big fi
ghts, both times because he’s so bossy. I feel like, if I let myself fall for him, I’ll be giving up a lot of myself.”

  “Why? Is he so bossy he’ll keep you locked up in the house?”

  “God no. If he was that bad, I would’ve kicked his ass away before now. I think he’s fine with me working—my mom owns a boutique in Tulsa, and I manage it. He hasn’t said anything troubling about that. But he’s just always putting himself between me and the world, you know? Like I’m helpless without him. And then, on the other side, is shit like this—you and I just met, and he just rides off into the sunset with his buddy for who knows how long. What if we didn’t get along? Why isn’t he taking care of me now, when it would be appropriate, but he won’t let me open a door on my own?” Joanna leaned in. “Seriously, Maureen—one of our big fights was because he got snitty when I wouldn’t wait for him to come around his truck and open my door. I told him it was a stupid tradition and I was perfectly capable of getting out of a vehicle on my own, and he was furious. How am I supposed to wait for that to change?”

  “You had it out, aye? Stood your ground?”

  “Yeah. There was shouting. Over such a stupid thing.”

  “But you made up.”

  “Yeah.” The way Joanna’s mouth twisted into a saucily nostalgic grin, Mo knew the making up had been extremely enjoyable.

  “And does he insist you wait for him to get your door now?”

  Joanna blinked. “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Then you don’t have to wait for it to change. It already has. You gave him a nudge, and he moved. And that’s how you do it.”

  ~oOo~

  An hour later, Mo and Joanna were beginning preparations for dinner. They’d been chatting nonstop, talking about families and jobs, music and television, all the easy topics new acquaintances lean on as they try to understand whether acquaintance might become friendship. It was an unusual experience for Mo, and an unexpected delight. She’d not had any truly close friendships with girls or women since she’d left Belfast, and had come to think she wasn’t capable of it. But talking with Joanna, she could feel a bridge being built between them.