by A. J. Downey
The piece he had bought for me was expensive, the body hand-painted with beautiful flowering vines and timeless, the blonde wood all aglow under its fresh, sparkly coat of sealant. I loved it. He’d even sprung for the hard-sided case, lined in a rich red velvet that was eye catching.
His mother had gifted me a warm natural fiber wool sweater that hung to mid-thigh and wore wonderfully like a dress. Paired with leggings, a thin brown belt I owned cinching it at the waist, it would make a wonderful dress and I adored it. Even though I couldn’t quite be sure that was what his mom had intended… even if she had purchased it or what have you before she learned about how her son and I had met.
His dad had gotten me a gift card to a popular music shop in Indigo City that still had vinyl records and CD’s not understanding that when Poe had said music shop, he’d meant where you could buy instruments and things for them such as guitar strings which I had been in need of, but that was okay.
His sister had gotten me a pretty pewter hair clip with acorns and leaves. Something my hippy bohemian-chic ass had loved.
Going above and beyond her wonderful Christmas gift, Trish provided us a swift exit from their parents’ house by giving me and Poe a ride back to the city, dropping us off in front of his apartment building.
“Thanks, Trish,” he said, going back to her open driver’s side window, hugging her through it. “Call me if you need anything,” he said.
“It was really nice to meet you, Saylor!” she called back to me, waving and I smiled.
“You too!” I called, and I meant it. I liked his sister. She was quiet but sweet.
I had most of the gifts to both him and me in my backpack. My hand in a death grip on the case’s handle that held my new lute as Poe trudged through the piled snow at the curb to reach the icy sidewalk where I stood.
Trish pulled away, her Volvo angry at the foul driving conditions and slip sliding a bit on the icy street.
“Slow and steady, Trish,” Poe muttered looking after her.
“I would really hate driving in this,” I remarked. “Maybe it’s a good thing my car is already totaled? Saved me the trouble of doing it myself.”
Poe laughed and took my lute case from me, tossing an arm around my shoulders.
“Let’s get inside and warm up,” he said. “I know just the thing.”
“Please tell me it involves getting naked and horizontal in bed,” I said.
“You read my mind,” he affirmed.
Well, actually, I only half read his mind. As soon as we were inside, he turned and handed my new instrument back to me and went into the kitchen, switching on the electric kettle to heat some water. It was cold in here! So he asked me to turn up the heat.
“Want me to find homes for some of this?” I asked, turning up the dial on the thermostat.
“Yeah, could you? I’ll make us some hot tea and we can get cozy.”
“I should get some laundry going, between you and me we have a load.”
“Sure.”
It was domesticated bliss. I mean, it felt really good just the two of us in the too-small space getting things accomplished.
“You know since I had this year off, next year I’ll be working Christmas unless I can find a guy who worked it this year to trade off with,” he said from the kitchen.
We made small talk about how scheduling for holidays worked at his job while he made up some hot tea for the both of us. I got the washer running just as he came around with two steaming mugs.
“Find something on TV we don’t care about so when we finish our tea and start making out, we don’t care about missing it?” he asked.
“God, it’s like we’re made for each other,” I said and winked over the rim of my mug.
Now that the apartment had warmed some, we hung our coats, took off our shoes, and whisked our socks into the filling washing machine before settling onto the bed and taking up our mugs from our respective nightstands.
“I would kill for a couch,” he said.
“Oh, and a living room, with a corner and some instrument stands?” I said wistfully.
Poe smiled at me, this charmed smile, and said, “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever been brave enough to dream with me instead of for me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean every time we talk about a bigger place or a house, you say things like ‘this would be good for you’ or ‘I can picture you in X’ it’s never included you or your things and I really want it to.”
I felt my shoulders drop and my expression soften as I stared into his deep green eyes. Not that the color was deep, which it was, but more the emotion in them as he looked at me was unfathomable.
The fact that he turned that type of gaze on me melted me like chocolate, and I felt as though everything was slanted in his direction. I ran to him, rich with the warmth he instilled in me, as I set my mug aside and slid over the covers to straddle his lap.
He quickly set his mug aside and leaning back against the wall at the head of the bed, put his hands on my waist, gazing up at me with equal parts love and lust. I turned a decidedly different type of molten under that gaze, capturing his face between my hands, running my fingers through his hair and gripping handfuls of it to tilt his mouth up to mine.
I kissed him, pouring every ounce of joy, every drop of the devotion I had for him into it. My tongue sweeping past his lips, rubbing tantalizingly against his as he groaned into my mouth, kissing me back with intense fervor.
His hands smoothed over my hips around to my lower back, down to cup my ass. His strong fingers gripping it, urging me to dry hump him like a horny teenager which wasn’t a big ask. I rubbed myself over his growing hardness through our clothes and I know the both of us became more aroused for it.
It was a slow burn, teasing; a torturously sedate build. His hands delved below the waistband of my jeans as far as his fingers could reach before getting trapped, and I hummed into his mouth in a desire for more. I smoothed my hands down his body so I could unbutton and unzip my jeans to give him better access.
We went tit for tat, exchanging an article of clothing for another chance at putting lips against skin, to revel in each other’s warmth as the cold pressed in on the small apartment from the outside. We laughed and giggled our way through getting out of our pants. Neither of us wanting to let go of the other as we struggled to peel the clinging cotton denim off our legs – shoving it all into a heap off the side of the bed, dying sweetly at every new kiss, lick, or touch against previously hidden skin.
“God, baby you feel so good,” he whispered harshly against my ribs as I leaned way back, straddling him once more, but almost overwhelmed by his hands and his lips on my body. I wanted him inside me so badly, but I was enjoying the sweet torture, the exquisite agony of wanting him, of having his stiff cock in contact with my pussy, of sliding myself up and down the hot velvet length of him in foreplay – but not penetrating me. Not yet.
Good God, I wanted it, though. I wanted to feel him move inside of me. I wanted to love him and be loved by him until we lost all sense of time and space and the room fell away, and it was just down to the feel of his body in mine, against mine, the touches, the panting breaths, the feral cries of pleasure and the sparks and stars behind my eyelids.
“I know it’s wrong to want it, but I want you just like this,” he declared. “No barriers, just skin on skin and I don’t know how to feel about the fact that I want it so bad.” He grunted and thrust against me by way of emphasis. Sliding against my wetness, the feel of him nude against me sending delightful shivers up my spine as he confessed, “I’ve never wanted it with anyone before. I’ve never wanted something so much in my life.”
He was asking my permission while at the same time too afraid to ask outright, but he needn’t have worried – I wanted the same thing. I had an IUD, and I knew how effective it was, but I had always been so afraid of getting pregnant. Of bringing another life into this world when there were days I cou
ld barely take care of myself, I almost always insisted on another layer of protection for peace of mind.
Sliding him inside of me without that extra layer sent a thrill through me. As though we were suddenly indulging in the forbidden, and the thrill was two-fold for me. The fact that this was my choice, my decision, that I was the one to hold the power however slight and that he had conceded that power to me when he could have so easily forced the decision. God, it was so sexy, so erotic, and as I felt him go deeper, inch by inch, I think I was the wettest I had ever been in my life.
“Fuck, Saylor,” he gasped and swiped his thumbs in an encouraging caress against my hips as he drove upwards to meet my downward stroke, sending a little shock of pleasure through me, causing me to throw my head back to surrender just as readily to him as he surrendered himself to me.
It was beautiful. It was everything. It was the most complete sharing of myself to him, and I felt, in equal measure, of himself to me that I had ever had the grace and good fortune to encounter.
I felt so fortunate, so loved, and I loved him back with a slow, languorous roll of my hips, living for the slide of his dick against my inner walls that I clenched around him, gripping him, making it good for us both as best that I could… and God he gave good dick. Thrusting up just enough as I came down to nudge just that little bit further. Opening me up, sending pleasure and euphoria swirling through my entire being, my body like a night-blooming flower, unfurling under his touch which was as gentle as the touch of the light of the moon.
Silvery and sweet, gentle and magic. I lived for his touch and the caress of his gaze as he watched me move above him, his hands constantly touching, sweeping over my skin, smoothing out the goosebumps that raised on my flesh, warming me where I started to chill.
I leaned over him and pressed my mouth to his and he didn’t hesitate, his hips rising and falling off the bed to keep the spark of joy alive, fanning it to a flame that rose higher and higher, generating enough heat so that when I spread my wings, I could ride the thermal even higher than that.
God, I was getting close. So close. So close that all I needed to do was reach fingertips up to touch the sun.
“That’s it, baby,” he murmured in encouragement as my physical fingertips pressed against my clit.
I arched up, leaning back, his body driven into mine as far as it could go, the contact of my fingertips against that sensitive bundle of nerves driving me full on into the warm golden glow of the sun, my feathers burning, my resolve evaporating as I burst into shredded ribbons, the streamers falling beautifully apart, fluttering back down to earth, spiraling down until I coalesced back into my body and the safety of his arms.
21
Poe…
She cuddled against me in a blissful silence. As in she was so blissful, she couldn’t speak, and I was close to feeling the same except I had the opposite thing going on the chatter. Like, I suddenly couldn’t wait to talk more about where to move to. All because I couldn’t wait to start my life with her. I couldn’t wait to the point I wished we could head to the real estate office right now and get an agent looking for us because we weren’t entirely doing awesome on our own.
I felt that now she was really on board and willing to dream with me, that it was time to really get off my ass and to make those dreams a reality.
She cuddled closer and sighed happily, and I chuckled and kissed her forehead and asked, “So, now that it’s settled and you want to move with me, I gotta know, what’s the most important feature of a new house for you? Big kitchen? Master bedroom? Open floor plan? Because this isn’t going to be my house, baby. It’s going to be our house, and these are important things to know.”
“I know it’s probably really dumb,” she whispered, “but I really like that one I found before we went to your parents.”
“The Burrington Heights one?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“How come?”
“I think part of it is what you told me,” she confessed. “That it comes from what used to be a rough neighborhood. I actually like that it needs work. I mean, I know it’s a pain in the ass to do that kind of remodeling and I know it can be expensive, but that kind of thing is what can really make it ours. Doing as much of the work as we can ourselves would save on labor and – I don’t know… can we just go look at it?”
I was silent for a second to let my brain catch up and sort through the pros and cons of everything she’d just said when she added the most adorable and whimsical little girl, “Pleeeeaase?” that just absolutely did me in.
I laughed and said, “I could never say no when you ask like that.”
She laughed slightly too and said, “Good to know.”
“So, let’s go take a look at it,” I murmured, and she looked up at me.
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“You mean it.”
I laughed again. “Of course, I mean it!”
“God, I love that it’s so easy to love you,” she said, and I thought it was a weird thing to say before I stopped to really think about it and I guessed, in a way, she was right. Some people made it a real pain in the ass to love them and I just wasn’t that guy. I didn’t need to make things difficult for the sake of being difficult. Saylor didn’t have anything to prove to me. Just like I didn’t have anything to really prove to her. We were just comfortable with each other. We’d clicked. Two peas in a pod.
She was really easy to love herself.
New Year’s Eve was spent at the 10-13 with the rest of the guys and their women. We all pretty much agreed we wished Thanksgiving and Christmas were an option for all of us, but blood relations like mine still demanded attention – except the older I got, the more I questioned why. If the ones you were born to made you so damn unhappy through no fault of your own, why push it?
It was a question I sometimes thought I had the answer to, but then I would go second guessing myself. The short answer was, for some of us, it wasn’t worth pushing ourselves into the situation at all. For me, I loved my mom and dad. I loved my sister, too, and while it wasn’t worth it some years for me, I couldn’t and wouldn’t give up hope that my mom and dad who weren’t bad people, would work on their more obnoxious flaws.
I knew I wasn’t perfect, but goddamn I was tired of my mom and dad saying judgy shit to Trish only to have her call me crying. She was doing her fucking best and her ex was seriously a goddamn psychopath with some of the shit he was pulling to make her life miserable. The latest was to enlist our own fucking parents against Trish to get his own fucking way when it came to the custody arrangement with the boys.
It was ugly, and I was over it. I was glad that the one holiday during the winter season I got with my club and my woman was mine. No parents. No judging. No fuckery except the fun kind.
It’d been a much-needed night for the lot of us to cut loose.
As soon as the holiday was over, and things were back to normal – the first day off I had that everyone else was back from their holidays – I took Saylor with me to the realtor’s office so we could do more than just talk about it and could get crackin’ on a plan for the rest of our lives together.
The rotten luck she’d had in life had seemed to lift with the changing of the year and the house she’d so wistfully had fallen in love with in the Burrington Heights district of the city was not only still available, it was right up our alley in price – including the home-improvement loans it would take to really make it ours.
We got to take a look, and even I was in love with it when I laid eyes on it in person, and the more animated Saylor got with her suggestions – all extremely modest and doable – the more excited I got. Still, I wasn’t going to take what the realtor had to say about it at face value. I called up Backdraft and we made a second appointment to walk through and have a look at things.
I’d waited with bated breath while my club brother walked through with us. Blaze had tagged along at my request because he’d likely be doing a lot
of this shit with us. As my best friend, I think he’d have been pissed if we didn’t let him help out – plus I had to admit, he had a lot more home-improvement know-how than I did, just not quite as much as Backdraft who was a true jack-of-all-trades, and practically a master of all of them. And no, none of us knew how he did it.
They’d both agreed there wasn’t anything out of pocket about the place, and I’d be insane not to put an offer in. Saylor had practically jumped up and down for joy.
We’d sealed the deal and lucky us, with it being fucking January the owners had taken it solid. We’d gotten it slightly below asking price and apparently, they were just thrilled to have it gone so soon.
“Looks like your luck is turning, baby,” I’d told Saylor when I’d gotten home that night and she’d tackled me onto the bed, and it was the hottest sex to date.
We’d closed on the house last week and it was a done deal.
Now it was Thursday night, the club was holding church and part of the discussion was moving day for me and my girl who was out on the sidewalk singing her fucking heart out to anybody passing by on the street.
I don’t think I’d ever felt so alive. I felt like the world was our damn oyster and there was nothing but laughter and smiles going on around the table.
“You look the happiest I think I’ve ever seen you, man. Looks good on you,” Oz declared.
“I know for a fact he ain’t ever been this happy, and it does look good on him.” Blaze winked in my direction.
I shook my head and agreed, “I am happy.”
“So, what’s the big plan, then?” Skids asked.
“Well, I’m paid up until the end of the month. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to get into the new house as-is before dropping another month’s rent and go from there.”
“How much stuff we talking?” Youngblood asked.