by A. J. Downey
I went tit-for-tat on the clothing: her top, my tee, her jeans, my jeans, taking the opportunity to brush my palms over every inch of newly revealed skin with each article of clothing I removed. Her eyes closed as she gave herself over to the light sensations and I couldn’t wait to lay her down, to replace my hands with my lips, to taste her skin, to increase the cadence of those soft, breathy little moans of hers.
I guided her to the bed, laid her down, joined her on top of the covers, pressing her down into them as I kissed her, holding my body just above hers as I moved my mouth down over her skin, traveling down, down, down, to my ultimate goal.
I raised my eyes to look up her body, between her full and perfect natural breasts, to meet her deep caramel gaze. Her chest heaved with slow, deep, unsteady breaths as I flicked my tongue gently against her clit. She gasped, her eyes drifting shut as her hips rose unbidden off the bed. I wrapped my arms around her thighs and pulled her against my mouth, breathing her in, relishing her womanly fragrance as I stabbed my tongue at her wet and wanting core.
She tasted divine. Salty sweet, the cooling breeze off the water on a hot summer day. Her body shuddered in my grip as she took the pleasure I gave her. I loved that about her; the fact she took what I gave, but not only that – the fact that no matter what I gave her, she managed this overwhelming sense of gratitude for it. It both turned me on and made me slightly angry for her ‒ that she’d been deprived for so long that she felt the need to be so overwhelmingly grateful it was a palpable thing. That she ever had a reason to feel unworthy of this kind of attention, of feeling good, well, that shit chapped my ass and made me want to blow her mind just to make up for all the other motherfuckers who’d ever failed her.
She gripped the covers at her hips and tried not to writhe against my mouth, and I gotta tell ya, I loved her enthusiasm. She was shy and meek, sure, but only until the clothes came off. Then she was all in, letting all of her insecurities go for the time we were together.
She breathed heavily, the little moans at the end of each exhale music to my ears as I slid a finger up inside her, teasing her walls as they pressed around it tight, suckling at her clit delicately, carefully, trying to make her come for me at least once before I joined her.
God, I wanted to slide my cock up in her. I wanted to feel her wrap around me, warm and silken wet. I wanted her to ride me tonight, I wanted to feel the weight of her across my hips, her body pressing down on mine. I wanted to watch the play of expression through her warm brown eyes as she took her pleasure off of me and gave to me in return.
I wanted it all with my little orchid.
“Oh, God! Stoker!” she cried, and her body tightened around my invasive middle finger just that little bit more. She was so close. A few more swipes across her g-spot, another teasing lick or two and she cried out, sharp and needy, her lithe body arcing as though I passed an electrical current through it.
I didn’t let her down easy, I kept her oversensitive body overworked until she cried out and tried to get away from me. I laughed and hauled her back my way, shrieking, laughing, pulling her into my arms and kissing her soundly, my cock brushing the velvet skin of her inner thigh. I groaned and snatched a condom I’d stashed earlier on her window sill above the bed.
“Let me,” she murmured, taking the rubber disc from my fingers. I let it go and watched her, relishing in her hands on me as she smoothed the rubber down my length with her hands. I sucked in a sharp breath when she unexpectedly followed the sweep of her hands with her hot wet mouth.
“Oh, fuck, Orchid!” I threw my head back, breathless with the feel of her mouth on me. My own ponytail swept across my back, sending shivers across my skin, but I couldn’t resist the siren’s call of those eyes of hers looking up my body. She’d slid down the bed, and I put my hands to my lower back to keep from threading my fingers through her hair. I met her gaze and poured every bit of desire and trust I had for her into my eyes as she eagerly sucked my cock.
She was so beautiful in the dimming light of evening, her eyes sparkling with desire and determination, her back smooth and sweeping up into the perfect curve of her ass. She was like my personal goddess and oh, how I would worship her. She got me so close, right on that razor’s edge, but there was no way I was going to go over, not like that. I wanted so much more.
“C’mon Orchid, I need to be inside you.” I gripped her gently by her upper arms and helped her to her knees. She knelt on the bed in front of me and I kissed her. She kissed me back, following me as I lay back in the middle of her bed. She lay over the top of me and I palmed the outside of her thigh, above her knee, encouraging her to straddle me.
She did, our mouths clashing, tongues tangling, love and other natural drugs coursing through our bodies, a natural high.
“God, yes.” I sucked in a long slow breath between my teeth as she basically dry humped me while we kissed. She reached between us and lifted me off my stomach, angling me to take me into her body. She slid down my length slowly, and I was treated to the most beautiful sight, her face serene, her perfect tits bracketed by her arms, her palms flat to my chest as she rocked her hips and rocketed us both right into the fuckin’ stratosphere.
Her soft breaths, her moans, her feral little groans as I went over a particularly sensitive place deep inside of her ‒ she took her pleasure and it was a pleasure to watch her let go, be real, and to make her feel so damn good. It was my honor to be here, to be her man, to witness it. To hold her, to be so deep inside of her, to love her…
She gasped and the sound was a different quality than the ones before it. I could tell by the sound, by the constriction of her body around my dick that she was right there, so close, it was only a matter of time or just that last little nudge of my thumb against her clit to send her over the edge, plummeting through that warm waterfall of orgasm.
“Oh, my God! Stoker, yes!” she cried and I decided to hold off, to see if she could do it. I wanted to know if she could come on my dick without my playing with her clit.
“That’s it, Orchid,” I encouraged her from between gritted teeth. God, she was so sexy, her energy so bright… I was so close myself, and I would be damned if I came before her second orgasm.
She cried out again, wordless, a sight to behold, her head thrown back, her perfect tits thrust out, her long thick hair tickling the tops of my thighs. I shuddered beneath her as she squeezed down around me tighter.
“That’s it, baby,” I encouraged, but I wasn’t going to make it. I slid my hand between us, brushed my thumb over her clit and she cried out again, her pussy throbbing once around me, tightening just a little bit more. I was screaming internally, desperate for my own release, walking a fucking tightwire when she exploded into like a thousand points of light above me. I drove up once to meet her downward thrust, her pussy trembling around me, milking me fucking dry.
She could take it all. She could have whatever she fucking wanted, if only she would make me feel that way again…
She collapsed over me, her breath hot and even against the side of my neck as I held her to me. I chuckled, dark and deep, and murmured, “Look who’s on top…” and she laughed. It was the purest, most musical sound I’d ever heard. Pure magic.
The night was deep, insect song coming through the window. It was mild enough that the AC had been shut off and the windows thrown open. No need to use power you didn’t need to when it was all money for somebody else’s pockets.
Serenity was asleep against my chest, her arm across my body, curled like a contented kitten, adorable, and completely worn the fuck out. I absently stroked her silken hair while I stared at the ceiling, my mind spinning in lazy circles over the puzzle that was helping her heal. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I mean, the issues she had were big. Bigger than I’d ever seen and I’d seriously seen some shit – and until she was willing to trust me, to share, I wouldn’t and couldn’t know the scope, the magnitude, of her situation.
“I was in the library,” she murmured, s
tartling me. Thankfully, I didn’t jerk, I just froze up. I thought she’d been asleep!
“The library?”
“Yeah, when the shooting started. I could hear it, all of us could, these loud pops and bangs. The library was huge in my high school, and the way it was arranged, there wasn’t any place to hide, not really.”
I kept my mouth shut and her voice died. I was hoping with patience, she would pick up the thread of this bedtime horror story.
“There was an emergency exit: go right outside the library doors, to the left, down the hall, another left. It was an access hallway, two doors. One was the emergency exit, one led down to the boiler room and the janitor’s area. The librarian hustled us to the emergency exit, but somebody had chained the doors. There wasn’t any getting out.”
I held her a little tighter and kissed her forehead. Shit, I couldn’t imagine. The fear alone, the terror…
“I didn’t stay. I should have, but I needed to find Kyle ‒ he was my boyfriend. I was so scared for him. I knew he was in the science wing, I just needed to get there. I went for it, down one hallway, the shortest route, cutting through the cafeteria.” She gulped and shuddered against me.
“You ain’t gotta tell me anymore if you don’t want to, Orchid. I don’t blame you if you’re not ready,” I told her.
“I… I found him in the cafeteria. He, uh… he died.”
“Shit,” I breathed. I held her tight.
“I didn’t understand, at first. I mean, he was so gentle, and he loved me so much… he never said a thing to me. He never – I didn’t know. I still don’t know how he could have done such a thing.” She sniffed and I felt a wet splash in the center of my chest from where a tear dripped off the end of her nose.
“It’s okay,” I whispered and held her close.
“That’s just it,” she said. “It’s not okay, and it’s never been okay since… right up until I met you. Now, it feels like –” She took a shuddering breath as if she needed to gather her courage. “Now I feel like there may be hope for some kind of a normal life for me and that scares me so much.”
Because if I left now, if I ditched her… she didn’t have to say it. It clicked. I got it, and I have to say, the fierce visceral reaction I had to the thought of leaving her cold, like this? Not only no, but hell no. No way, I thought savagely.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I promised her.
“You say that now,” she said with a cold, hollow laugh that held no happiness, no joy, just bitter disappointment that tasted of the same ol’, same ol’.
I didn’t like that, so I spit it out, figuratively speaking, with a derisive “Tch! I’m not going anywhere until you tell me to go, Orchid. That’s a promise.”
“Please, don’t make promises that you can’t keep,” she whispered.
“I never do.”
And I wasn’t about to fucking start now.
People. They called us, the MC brotherhood, the savages… I was thinking I needed some help. Some advice. Good thing I knew just where to go for it.
I’d be making some calls in the morning.
15
Serenity…
I sighed, hanging my purse up on the coat rack. Returning to an empty apartment sucked, even after only having had Stoker here the two nights. I would see him again, Friday night. After I got off of work and headed to Ft. Royal.
I had the weekend off, so there was at least that to look forward to. Today had sucked, though. Sucked so hard, in fact, that Linny was coming over with the Margarita mix.
Taco Tuesday was about to go down with my best friend to lament the absolute horrid new working conditions at my store.
I heard her car pull up outside halfway into dumping the ingredients for the taco filler into my pressure cooker. She let herself in with a gusty sigh and demanded, “Where are the glasses and where’s my blender?”
“Where they always are, bitch. Get it yourself!” I retorted.
“Some best friend you are!”
I rolled my eyes. “Please,” I said. “I am way up on best friend points. Food will be ready in like ten minutes.”
“You cooked! Okay, you are way up on best friend points. Food over drinks any day.”
“Exactly,” I said, as I went about setting up a taco bar on my kitchen counter.
She busted out the blender from the cabinet underneath, in the corner of the kitchen and I asked her, “Bring out the hand mixer while you’re under there, will you?”
“Oh, hey, you got it.” She dragged it out and set it up on the counter. I went for it and put the mixing blade attachment thingies into it, made sure it was turned off, and plugged it in for when the pressure cooker went off. Nothing shredded chicken, pork, or beef like a hand mixer, and in absolute record time.
Today’s offering from the protein gods happened to be chicken, pressure-cooked in taco seasonings and salsa. I set to work on gutting two avocados to make some guacamole.
“You gonna do that thing with the mayonnaise?” Linny asked.
I snorted, “Always. What kind of unrefined savage do you take me for?”
“I swear to God, that is like the most ridic thing I have ever heard of but it works oh-my-God good.”
“I told you!”
We bantered back and forth as I added some salsa and about a tablespoon of mayonnaise to the avocados, mashing everything together with a fork.
“So.” She cut to the chase. “What is with this new manager of yours? Does she need to get laid or what?”
“Definitely, she needs a Stoker in her life,” I said, and couldn’t help but smile at the thought of him.
“Ahhh, now there is something worth talking about,” she said, hitting the switch on the blender and drowning everything out. I rolled my eyes because, for once, I had something – or someone – exciting to talk about.
The blender died and I cut right in, “I am so scared I am dreaming and I am going to, like, wake up any moment when it comes to him.” I said.
“Oh, yeah? He as dreamy in bed as he is to look at?” She turned from where she was pouring Margaritas into two pint glasses and bounced her blonde eyebrows lasciviously.
“More.”
She laughed and held out a glass to me, I took it, and she clicked hers against mine. We drank and she said, “Okay, no holding out on me, I’m gonna need details.”
“Oh, gawd! Linny! How detailed do you want?” I asked, maybe a little unprepared for this. I took a healthy swallow of my boozy drink to fortify myself.
“Uh, detailed. I feel like I spill all my tea to you and girl, you never have so much as a drop to give me. Well, now the tables are turned so, spill,” she ordered.
I sighed. “God, where to begin?”
“Start with the good shit, talk about the sex.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Best I’ve ever had, that’s for sure.”
“Nice!”
“Don’t you want to know other things? Like what he does for work or...?” I left it open-ended and she laughed.
“Fine, give me the mundane details then.” Talk about a melodramatic sigh.
I filled her in as I finished cooking, then filled her in some more over dinner. She sat back in her chair when I got to some of last night.
“Wait, he actually said that? You’re not making that up. For real?”
“Yes! I told him I trusted him with the key to my apartment and he came right back and said it was the key to my heart he was after.” I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, half afraid she would burst out laughing, that she would call it cheesy or stupid but she didn’t.
“Awww!” she cried instead and put her hands to her chest. “I would kill to have a guy talk to me like that!”
“Right,” I said nodding, the easy smile slipping from my lips as my anxiety and my fear rose to the surface.
Linny sighed, mightily, and looked me over. “Goddamnit, Ren,” she said and I looked up sharply. “No! Not you specifically, more those fucking assholes. I swear to
God, the more they fucked you over, the more afraid they’ve made you to be happy and you deserve it. To be happy. More than anyone I know.” She covered my hand with both of hers where it rested on the table.
I pursed my lips and nodded at first, but finally shook my head.
“Augh!” The sound she made was so frustrated and I knew the feeling. “You make me so damn mad sometimes,” she said. “You let these creeps live rent-free in your head, let them ruin things that they couldn’t even touch without your permission first, and you give it to them.”
I stared at her, open mouthed.
“I –” I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry, Ren.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s how I feel. You are so bright, so smart, so caring and funny and it is just tragic as hell that all of that is so wasted because you live in fear all the time that, what? Someone is going to have something to say about it?”
I couldn’t look at her. I felt as if my happy, the good time I’d been having was being sucked down the proverbial tubes.
“Please don’t look at me like that,” she said, and looked, I don’t know, scared?
“Like what?” I croaked.
“Like I just crushed you.”
“Um, well.” I gave a nervous laugh.
“Shit.”
“You kind of just did,” I said, and my eyes started to well.
“No, no, no, Ren I didn’t mean it that way!”
“No, oh, I know you didn’t but you know me… I, um, I think I just need to process.”
She looked crestfallen, and I knew that feeling all too well right now.
“You want me to go?” she asked, meekly.
I nodded, not trusting my voice quite yet. I mean, not anymore.
“Ren, please –”
“I can’t, Linny. Too much right now. It’s just too much.”
“Shit.” She closed her eyes and her shoulders fell.
I needed her gone, I needed her to leave, I needed to be alone, to think, to process…