by A. J. Downey
“You never find it tough to get into the book when you know what’s going to happen?”
“Sometimes, but not always,” I said.
The Instant Pot beeped and he straightened slightly, “Need to get that?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Ten more minutes.”
“Cool.”
He handed me back my book and I put it back in its place, taking up my tea.
“Your glass is on the table,” I said and he smiled, standing up and giving me space to do likewise.
We wandered over to the table and he picked up his glass taking a sip.
“Let me know if you don’t like it or if it needs more sugar or something,” I said.
“No, this is nice, actually. What is it?”
“Ginger and pear white tea.”
“Nice! It’s good, really good.”
“Thanks…”
6
Stoker…
She was beautiful, like, holy shit, unimaginably lovely. I don’t know what I was thinking but the memory of her from last Saturday night didn’t do her justice. She was simply gorgeous in the light of day, all woman with lush curves, the dress she wore hugging every line of her body ending in a flirty hemline at mid-thigh. I couldn’t get over it, but I really couldn’t get over how nervous she was, her posture unsure, her gaze fixed anywhere but on me as a light blush painted her cheeks.
She moved stiffly around her place and treated me like I was way out of her league even though I was pretty sure it was the exact opposite. I didn’t get it, like at all, but I wanted to figure her out so bad.
“So,” I asked, taking another sip of the spicy, fruity iced tea, “aside from letting your friends drag you to concerts with music you don’t necessarily like, what do you do for fun?”
She laughed a little and it transformed her into something otherworldly.
“I, um, I listen to music I do like, and I read, obviously… I like to make things, and fix things that are broken or unloved up into something useful again.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“I redid that chair and ottoman,” she said, gesturing to where she’d been sitting before.
“No shit?” I asked. “I never would have guessed. You did a good job, I thought it was store-bought.”
“Mm-mm.” She shook her head. “Two different yard sales and the fabric store. Same with my book cases and dresser. Old things refurbished, just like new.”
I looked around her place, and I mean really looked this time, and I had to say it was eclectic as hell, but it still all went together at the same time.
“Your place is nice,” I said. “Way nicer than mine. I should have you take a look at it and make some suggestions on interior decorating. Looks like a bachelor’s pad, for real.”
“I mean, that’s fair, isn’t it?” she asked. “You are a bachelor.”
“True, I guess.”
“I even built my own greenhouse out of reclaimed windows,” she said casually as she went to the fridge to bring out her pitcher of tea. I ambled on over for a refill and blinked in surprise at her words.
“That greenhouse out back by the stairs? You built that yourself?”
“Yeah, I really like cultivating orchids. I, um, I’m trying to –“She let out a shuddering breath and tried again, “If I trust you with something, I mean, show you something, would you promise not to tell on me?”
I set my glass aside on the counter and cocked my head. “Yeah, why would I narc you out?”
“I don’t know.” She crossed her arms, pitcher abandoned on the counter beside her. “It’s just something people do.”
“Not me.” I shook my head. “Snitches get stitches where I’m from.”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
“I’m trusting you,” she murmured, and checked her cooker thing. “It’ll keep a few minutes, come on.”
She refilled our glasses and led me out the door and down the steps. We went into her little greenhouse and she took me to a back corner. It was humid as fuck in here and hotter than it was outside. Oppressive, but beautiful, green and dotted with color and even some white blossoms. She stopped beside some delicate lacy blooms and I knew immediately what they were. Was hard to live in south Florida and not know what they were ‒ and it was illegal to have them.
“Ghost orchids?” I asked in a bit of awe.
“Started with one that I kiped from the swamp, but I’ve managed to keep it alive, and…”
“I thought these were impossible to cultivate in captivity.”
“They are, um, but I figured it out.”
“That’s nuts. You’re hella talented, Serenity.”
She blushed with pleasure this time and I liked the look on her. I was struck by how much I wanted that look underneath me, those lovely brown eyes of hers heavy-lidded with passion, a halo of her dark tresses scattered over the pillow.
Fuck, I was getting chub just thinking about it, so I shut it down quick and tried to hide it by swallowing some of my tea.
“Call me Ren,” she murmured, and took me on a little tour of her collection. While the Ghost orchid was obviously her crown jewel, she had quite a few other equally beautiful blooms, even if they weren’t nearly as rare.
“You’re something else, Ren.”
“Thanks,” she whispered, and with a smile that held the gentle light of the moon even though it was still full sun, she turned and led me back out into the yard. I caught her scanning the street.
“I didn’t think I heard the bike,” she said, closing up her little greenhouse, which was pretty fucking sturdy, all things considered.
“Oh, no, that’s my truck,” I said pointing out the old 80s Ford pickup. “I gotta bring my tools with me most of the time, so I don’t typically ride into work.”
“Ah, that would explain how you managed to sneak up on me.”
I smiled and we paced slowly back toward the stairs up to her place. A little old lady waved at us from a rocker on her front porch. Serenity lit up and waved back at her.
“That’s Mrs. Sedgwick, my landlady,” she said.
“She cool with me being here?” I asked.
Serenity laughed. “Probably overjoyed that I have someone over other than Linny. Come on, let’s eat.”
The food was good, the company fantastic. She turned the tables on me once we were seated, though.
“So, what’s life like in a motorcycle club?” she asked lightly.
“Structured,” I answered carefully. “Comfortable. At least for me. We live and die by our own rules when the majority of us don’t have a hope or a prayer of fitting in anywhere else. Citizen life just isn’t made for us.” I gave a half-assed shrug. It wasn’t much of an explanation but it was hard for me to explain at the same time.
Serenity chewed slowly and eyed me carefully. She swallowed gracefully and said, “I get that. Probably more than you might think,” she said softly. “The whole ‘not fitting in anywhere.’”
Now that I could believe. She was definitely, unabashedly, and uniquely her, and I liked that. Something was still nagging the fuck out of me about her timid nature, though. I’d figure it out eventually, though. Just time and trust. I was part of an outlaw MC – trust didn’t come easy to my kind either, so I knew it would be slow going. That was okay, though. I wasn’t in any kind of a rush and good things came to those who waited or some shit.
“How come?” I asked her and fixed her with a look.
“How come what?” she asked softly, shifting nervously.
“You’re beautiful, smart, funny, kind, and obviously creative and crafty. How can you not fit in anywhere?”
“I just don’t, at least, not really,” she said, and misery accompanied her tone.
“Okay.” I nodded slowly. “Fair enough.”
I didn’t like the silence that overtook us after that as we worked on clearing our plates. She’d made some Asian-inspired chicken dish with honey and garlic over rice and it was fuckin’ good. Made me
wish I knew how to cook better than I did. I mostly lived off of sandwiches and the occasional pot of spaghetti.
“Put some of your music on,” I suggested when the silence had stretched on too long.
“What?”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Florence + The Machine before, but the other gal you were talking about, Lorna something-or-other –“
“Loreena McKennitt?” she asked.
“Yeah! That one. Put some of her stuff on.”
“I mean, are you sure? She’s not exactly Saints of Corruption,” she said, and I was pleasantly surprised that she knew my band name. It wasn’t on the tee-shirt, just our logo: a skeleton robed in saint’s sweeping garb, holding an electric guitar, a crown of thorns as its halo.
“Pretty sure the band name isn’t on our tee, a mistake we were planning on fixing on the next run of ‘em we made.”
“Linny told me when I described the logo,” she said with a sheepish grin.
“I don’t really listen all that much to what I play,” I told her. “I’m willing to give anything a try.”
“Okay,” she said, giving a nod. She rose from her seat, and I followed her movements as she padded over the tile and across the threshold between flooring material. She went over to the bedside table and picked up a little speaker, pressing a button on the bottom.
“Powering on!” a woman’s electronic voice belted out of the little box, impressive with its volume. “Ready to pair!”
She set it down and picked up her phone.
“Paired!” the speaker declared. She scrolled through her music and let out a shuddering breath, hitting play.
The notes that filtered out were gentle and folksy with a definite Irish sort of flare. The woman’s voice was gentle and lilting. It was calming, soothing, and I liked it. It was different, but like anything else I'd encountered where Serenity was concerned – uniquely her.
“That’s nice,” I murmured and she smiled and shook her head, laughing slightly as she came to collect her plate.
“You’re just saying that,” she said.
“Am not,” I told her honestly. She giggled slightly and I had to smile.
We did the dishes together, listening to the soft strains of music, talking gently about life in Ft. Royal versus here around Ft. Lauderdale.
She was twenty-seven, went to work right out of high school and felt stuck like a lot of people our age. Blue collar, working poor, barely making ends meet. Survival a pain in her ass. Hell, if it weren’t for the extra coming in under the table thanks to the MC, I’d be a hell of a lot worse off than I was, so I could feel her.
She cleaned her small space while we talked and put everything to rights and I liked that about her. She kept her place so clean it looked like it belonged in a magazine spread. What she did have out to signify it was actually lived in looked like it could very well be staged that way.
I caught her hand when she turned to go back to our seats at the table and reeled her gently toward me. She was slightly reluctant, borne of nerves, leaning back from me, but I didn’t mean her any kind of harm.
I just wanted to dance with her. Hold her close, breathe her in, sway gently to the music.
I just wanted something solid and real with this woman, if only for a minute, before I had to let her go for the night. She made me want to get close, slip in between the plates of armor she wore and kindle an intimacy.
It seemed like it’d been a long time since she had it – if ever.
“What are you doing?” she asked, as I gently shifted my weight from one foot to the other with her in my arms.
“Shh, just dancing with this beautiful girl I met.”
“Oh,” she whispered, voice husky with surprise.
The way she looked at me, eyes wide with surprise, dark eyes, expressive and so alive, I could drown in their depths. I could deep dive into the bottom of her soul and suffocate and die, and never, not once, even consider resisting the siren’s call of her lonely heart that dragged me to my death.
I brought up a hand and touched her cheek, her skin smooth and soft beneath my calloused fingertips. Her eyes fluttered shut, the lashes dark against her pale skin and she turned her face into that light touch like it was everything. She craved contact, and I knew the feeling, but not like this. I don’t think I’d ever met someone so nervous to be touched yet so touch-starved in my life.
“Can I kiss you?” I asked, my voice hoarse with my restraint, but after Faith, I couldn’t be sure what kind of trauma lurked in Serenity’s past. All I knew was I saw all the signs and that there was trauma there. Something dark and deep, something that set her apart from the rest of the world, kept her bound with fear and pain.
Her eyes flicked open and up to mine, her lips parting seductively even if she didn’t know it, and she asked, breath held, body and chest so still, “You’re sure?”
I didn’t understand how she could think herself so undesirable, but I damn sure wasn’t going to ruin the mood. Instead, I closed the gap between us slowly, carefully, inch by excruciating inch, giving her every opportunity to step back, turn her head, pull away – anything to stop me but she didn’t. She inhaled sharply, just before my lips touched her and it was like being struck by lightning.
The jolt of pleasure, amplified by anticipation, traveled straight from our softly touching lips to my dick, warming me through the chest, sensation cascading down my limbs as her hands slipped along my ribs to rest on my denim-clad hips. She stepped closer, tucking herself into the shelter of my body, and whimpered softly as I flicked my tongue against her bottom lip.
Her mouth opened to me, lush, warm, and inviting, and I took the invitation, kissing her like she should be kissed, tasting the desire, the want on her lips fused with the spicy fruity flavor of her iced tea.
Fuck, she was perfect.
7
Serenity…
His kiss was everything. As if it somehow wiped my slate clean, a new beginning just at my fingertips, if I were only brave enough to grasp it and hold on. It shook me to my core, suffused me with a warmth I hadn’t known for a very long time.
It scared me, how deeply his kiss made me feel, and I tried to hold on, I did, but the fear overwhelmed me to the point I jerked back, breaking the kiss, snapping the magic, the moment falling away and shattering around us.
He let me retreat graciously, his thumb smoothing soothingly against my cheek as I tried to regain my faculties and pull myself back from the brink.
“Um, wow,” I breathed, my chest rising and falling unsteady with the cascading thrum of my heartbeat, so strong I felt it in my spine and against the inside of my ribs.
“Yeah.” Even he gave a little nervous laugh. “A little more intense than I was expecting.”
“Mm, yeah,” I murmured, pressing the back of my hand to my swollen lips, trying to keep the sense memory of his lips against mine in place as long as possible, my eyes closing unbidden as I savored the lingering tingle.
“I want to see you again,” he said.
“I’d like that,” I whispered, lowering my hand, smoothing my other thumb against his ribs, over the butter-soft tee just above the waistband of his jeans.
“Yeah?” he asked, and he sounded uncertain.
“Very much so,” I murmured, my voice thick with emotion.
“Good first date,” he whispered, and I smiled in spite of myself.
“Best first date I’ve ever been on.” I was staring pointedly at the floor and raised my eyes to his; he was staring at me so intently it put a sudden knot in my throat.
“It’s late, I should have gone a while ago,” he murmured, and he was right. The light had grown dim in my little apartment, the reddish glow of the setting sun through my kitchen window painting the opposite kitchen wall in fire and heart’s blood.
“Stay with me.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them and he smiled, pleased.
“I mean, it only makes sense. Your job is here, and I’ve kept you out
way too late and I don’t really do sex on the first date, but I feel so bad I’ve kept you and –”
I was rambling, and he shushed me with a light touch of a fingertip to my lips.
“You had me at ‘stay with me’, and I just want to hold you,” he whispered.
My heart dropped into my toes. Just clean fainted in melodramatic southern belle style, hand raised to its forehead and all.
“I’d like that,” I breathed, amazed my vocal chords worked at all with how tight my throat was.
“Go put on something to sleep in,” he ordered gently and I nodded, suddenly struck mute, mouth dry as my brain caught up to what my heart had done.
Oh, my God. He was staying the night. I just invited him to a sleepover on the first fucking date. How desperate do I look?
“Shush,” he said. “Stop overthinking things. Just going to hold you, just going to sleep, just going to kiss you if you’ll let me. It’s all on you how far things go. Always.”
“Wh-why would you do that for me?” I asked.
He traced a fingertip along my hairline, starting at the part, running the gentle caress toward where my braid hung over my shoulder, tucking my errant hair behind my ear. His deep dark gaze roved my face, taking me in as if I were a work of art, and my heart wept with the beauty of it. With its desire for more.
Enjoy it while it lasts… my mind whispered. The past will catch up with you eventually, it always does.
I thrust the thoughts away when he began to speak.
“I get the impression you need a soft touch and a steady hand. I don’t think you’ve been treated very fairly.”
Oh, my God… does he already know?
I flicked my tongue over suddenly dry lips.
“Why do you say that?”
His eyes met mine, solemn, steady, an unspoken promise in their depths.
“Just a hunch,” he said, and there was no trace of deception.
