by A. J. Downey
I wasn’t religious. I didn’t care. I just liked the way it looked.
I’d had a hard time swallowing any kind of religion as a believer with how awfully my God-fearing Christian parents and the ‘good’ Christian folk had treated me after… Well… just after. Even though I hadn’t done anything wrong.
I giggled and laughed as he joked and hosed me down with sunscreen, and after I felt dry enough, shrugged back into my black velvet burn-out kimono with its black-on-black floral patterns and light flapper-type fringe.
With it and my simple black flip-flops, I felt elegant and chic, even though I’d found all of it on clearance through one avenue or another and had probably spent forty dollars on all of it combined.
He passed the canister off to me so I could do Linny’s long, lean figure in her blue-and-white striped bikini even as some of the guys and their girls started to draw near out of curiosity.
“Hey, Ren, Linny. I’d like you to meet…”
The introductions were a little overwhelming with just how many people there were to remember faces and names.
I was worried when one of the youngest men, Gator, seemed to have a momentary spark of recognition in his eyes, but then he said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah! You were wearing the silver shirt last week!”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and nodded.
“Yeah.”
“Right on,” he said. “Welcome to the madhouse.”
I laughed a bit nervously and said the only thing I really could, “Thanks.”
It was a blessing when Stoker took my hand and led me down the beach, away from the crazy. Linny was situated and having a blast with a woman named Hossler, and flirting up a storm with a club member named Lightning. I never had to worry about her making friends wherever she went. She was beautiful, bold, brave, and absolutely fearless; everything I was not.
I sighed and let some of the nervous tension go, my fingers linked with Stoker’s as we walked to where the water met the shore. He’d left his hair loose and I had too; the breeze picked up tendrils of our long hair and swept it out towards the sea.
“You know, I don’t even know your real name,” I murmured.
“I was thinking the same thing just the other day,” he said. “I mean, I know your name is Serenity, but I don’t know your last name.”
“Weatherly,” I said. “And you?”
“Ah.” He laughed a bit nervously and said, “I’m originally from Louisiana, so it’s Michel.”
“Oh, I always liked that for a boy’s name,” I told him honestly.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, it’s unique. It fits you,” I said. “What’s your last name?”
“Arceneaux.”
“Michel Arceneaux.” I tasted his name and had to smile. “I like it a lot.”
“Yeah, well, stick with Stoker if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” I said with a giggle. “I’m actually pretty surprised. You don’t have an accent.”
“Ah, yeah. I wasn’t really raised around it. I had one more, when I was a kid, but I was made fun of enough for sounding ‘dumb’ that I ditched it pretty quick.”
I stilled a bit at that. I knew what that was like, all too well, although there was no changing the fact I’d grown up poor. Not as simple as changing the way I spoke… I envied him a bit that that was all it took.
“You cool with maybe leaving the beach for a couple of hours?” he asked out of the blue, and I cocked my head and shaded my eyes; even behind the black lenses of my sunglasses it was bright out here.
“And go where?” I asked.
“My place is only a couple of blocks from here. I figured it might be nice for you to get out of the sun for a bit and…” he hesitated and I stopped my leisurely stroll.
“And?” I prompted. He squared off in front of my, casting me in shadow, his hands on my ribs, thumb smoothing over the velvet and mesh of my cover up.
“I want to love you.”
My heart stopped.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he murmured, “and I want you to myself for a little while. Don’t have to go all the way. If you’re not ready I totally get it, I just really want some you and me time.”
“Oh, okay,” I squeaked out, stunned.
Wow.
“Okay as in?” he asked, trailing off.
“I’ll go with you,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Right on. This way, my lady.”
“I should tell Linny.”
“I’d planned on it. You think she’ll be okay?”
I cast my gaze back in the direction of the easy-up and Linny was in a full-fledged game of Frisbee, girls versus boys.
“Looks like she’s already been adopted as one of their own,” I said, laughing.
“She moves fast,” Stoker agreed.
“That’s Linny,” I agreed.
I worried about what I was going to say. I didn’t want to announce to a crowd of people that Stoker and I were off to have sex, be back later, ta-ta for now! I wasn’t crass like that. But Stoker was already miles ahead of me.
“Hey, Ren’s getting taken in by the sun a little, we’re gonna head to my place and chillax for a bit, get her out of it.”
“Okay!” Linny called and winked at me behind everyone’s back.
“Hope you feel better,” Faith murmured and I smiled and gave a nod.
“Oh, I’m sure I will. I don’t know how I managed to draw the genetic short straw being so fair in Florida.” I laughed it off.
“Be back by four. Food’s on then,” Cutter called, unloading his super-soaker water gun at his girlfriend, who yelled out, “Hey!”
“This way, Ren,” Stoker murmured and I followed him up the steps and through the marina lot to the street. We walked around two blocks up and stopped at a crosswalk on the boulevard, crossed first one lane, paused at the cement pad in the center separating the lanes, and as soon as traffic was clear crossed the next lane.
“Place is a little run-down, my grandparents owned it. When they died, they left it to me. I decided rather than sell it to move in and fix it up, but it’s just me, so it’s pretty slow going. Outside looks better than the inside. Put a new roof on it after that hurricane a couple of years back and painted it just last summer.”
I listened to him talk and found myself surprised I wasn’t the least bit nervous. Now that it was just me and him, I was feeling calmer by leaps and bounds. I kept my fingers threaded through the spaces between his and we idly swung our conjoined hands between us as we walked. We were only two houses in from the corner off the boulevard and he stopped in front of a nice little white house trimmed in an aquamarine, the roof gray, the yard yellow and dying but neatly mowed, the flowerbeds mostly weeds, which made me a little sad and I had the desire to get my hands in the dirt.
“It’s adorable,” I said smiling. “You’ve done lovely out here.”
“Thanks, come on in out of the heat.” He opened the front door and I blinked.
“You don’t lock your door?”
“No need around here. Town knows who we are.”
“Oh. But what about all the people not from town?”
“We don’t worry about them, the locals would tell us if something was up. We take care of each other here.”
I stepped into the dimly lit and much-cooler interior of Stoker’s home and it was a definite time warp. The wood paneling on the walls, the carpet on the floors, and even the décor was straight out of the nineteen-seventies.
“Yikes,” escaped my mouth before I could stop it, and I clapped my hands over my lips.
“Hey, no,” he laughed. “Not offended. Not in the slightest. I told you the place could use a touch like yours.”
He closed the door on the bright sunshine and the hustle and bustle of the beachgoers and the little town outside and I felt more tension melt out of me.
I put my sunglasses up on to
p of my head and looked up at him somewhat shyly, but I’d like to think more in anticipation.
I wanted him to kiss me so badly and he didn’t disappoint, lowering his mouth to mine and kissing me like he was ravenous and I was a banquet laid out before him.
I leaned into him enthusiastically, letting my cares and worries fall away for the time being, concentrating solely on his hands on my body, his lips against mine; submerging myself into the sensations of his attentions.
“Gonna have to get you in the shower,” he murmured playfully against my lips.
“Oh?” I played along. I was not exactly feigning innocence, but more I didn’t understand the leap of logic.
“Mm, I want to taste every inch of you – just without the chemical tang of sunscreen.”
I laughed and whispered, “Lead the way.”
He did, walking me backwards, deeper into the house, his hands on my hips, leaving his flip-flops behind with a couple of strides, shrugging out of his leather vest and hanging it on a closet doorknob as we passed it. He slipped my kimono off my shoulders and hung it on the knob of the bathroom door as he walked me inside.
“Don’t judge.” He winked at me, going for the drawstring on his orange board shorts.
I giggled and said, “I wouldn’t dare.”
“I was talking about the bathroom,” he said with a broadening grin and I let my jaw drop with an indignant sound.
“You going to look at it?” he asked, when my eyes hadn’t wavered from his.
“Can’t,” I murmured, and pulled myself closer to him. “You look so good I can’t take my eyes off of you.”
“Pretty sure that’s supposed to be something I’m supposed to say,” he breathed against my mouth and we were kissing again. His shorts dropped to the ugly off-white and green linoleum.
He backed me against the bathroom counter, that faux marble-printed Formica that was chipped and even burned in a couple of places, though from cigarettes or a curling iron or whatever, I couldn’t tell. It wasn’t important. What was important was his hands running up my ribs, his fingertips rough with guitar callouses skimming lightly over my body until he encountered my bathing suit’s top and hooked his fingers beneath the band.
I felt a certain sort of thrill that I was about to have my top off in front of him. I was concentrating very hard at not staring at his cock which was flush and resting against his body, turgid and long, the girth – at least for me ‒ seemingly manageable, the length more than slightly intimidating, reaching nearly to his belly button.
God, he had one of those magic, long and lean torsos that went on for seemingly forever, that carved ‘V’ of flesh and bone drawing my eyes right to his length, which easily had to be nine inches or more.
“You alright?” He stepped between my legs, arms going around me, pressing my nude upper body against his, his cock, thick and hot, pressing against the bottoms of my swimsuit, the lycra material the only thing between us in that most intimate of places, driving me wild, my pussy giving a tortured little throbbing ache of anticipation.
“Fine,” I whispered shakily.
“You need me to stop, all you gotta do is say the word,” he whispered close to my ear and it was so hot.
“I don’t want you to stop,” I whispered back and turned my head in his hands to press my mouth tightly against his.
We made out, me sitting on the counter, for several minutes, his cock growing hotter the longer we made out. I gathered my courage and wrapped my fingers gently around him and he moaned into my mouth. I stroked him in my hand, long, sure strokes, gripping firmly but gently, the arousal from him slicking the palm of my hand as I rubbed it gently over the head.
He sucked in a breath between his teeth and shuddered, moaning, his breath rushing back out, fanning the side of my neck, the warmth of it sending a blush of tingling erotic energy out over my skin.
“God, I want you so much.” My voice was barely recognizable, tight and breathy, girly and needy.
“Hold that thought,” he whispered, pulling his hips back. I watched him as he leaned through the sliding glass shower doors with the swans on them and turned on the bathwater, pulling up on the thing to get the shower going. The tub came into focus, and God, it was awful, avocado green, the toilet white and clearly having been replaced, the sink set in the counter beside me rust-stained and old, original, and just as ugly a green as the bathtub.
“I am totally judging your bathroom,” I said and he laughed, straightening up and holding out his hands to me. I slipped mine into his and hopped down from the counter and went to him. He bent and kissed me again and the lightheartedness slipped, falling away as passion and deep emotion welled to take its place.
His hands trailed down my body, skimming over my hips, his long fingers plunging into the waistband of my suit bottoms and skimming them down. They fell in a pool at my feet and I stepped sideways out of them.
“Come on,” he whispered, and helped me step up and over the deep lip of the tub, over the metal track set on its edge. I stood with warm water beating on my back as he stepped in after me, sliding the door shut behind us.
His hands washed me, his lips ravaged mine, and I was content to just stand there forever, kissing ardently, his hands skating over my body warmed by the water.
He washed me gently with soap and his hands, teasing me between my legs with soapless fingers, backing me into the corner of the shower and kissing me, fingertips teasing against my clit with a firm touch, my head and shoulders pressed against the wall, his other arm against my lower back, pulling my hips out, tilting them back, supporting me for better access to my pussy.
He touched, licking and biting my lips, feasting at my mouth until it no longer satisfied him and he moved down my jaw, along the side of my neck, nipping at my shoulder, kissing down my body, paying attention to my breasts, moaning softly as he worked my body to a near-fever pitch with his mouth and his hands.
“No, lean back, I got you,” he growled when I tried to straighten up, and I did as he told, leaning back into the wall as he went to his knees in the tub.
“Trust me,” he said, looking up my body at me. “I’ve got you.”
I yipped when he draped my leg over his shoulder, going on tiptoe and feeling totally off balance.
“I’ve got you,” he said again and did the same to the other. “Lean back into the wall,” he ordered, and I did, effectively sitting on his shoulders as he flicked his tongue out to taste my most intimate parts.
“Oh, God!” I cried and leaned my head back, my breath coming in ragged pants as he dipped the tip of his tongue inside me, running it up the seam of my pussy lips to tease that little kernel of sensitive flesh at the apex of my thighs.
I gasped, a throaty cry escaping my mouth as I buried my hands in his hair and pulled his mouth tighter against my body.
God, yes! That felt so good.
He slid his middle finger up inside me and I cried out, trying to hold still, feeling like I was awfully precarious, perched on his shoulders like I was, but he held me fast. One hand and his mouth working my body, the other arm wrapped around the outside of my thigh, his hand pressed to the top of my leg, holding me steady.
“Stoker!” I cried, breathy, on the precipice of release and he growled, encouragingly.
I jerked in his grasp, the electrical impulses coursing through me, carrying pleasure, overloading all my synapses at once. I saw stars at the edges of my vision, despite the fact my eyes were squeezed firmly shut as I trusted him to hold me up and I tried not to flop like a landed fish.
I came back to myself and looked down at him, his eyes closed as he nuzzled the inside of my thigh and placed a reverent kiss against it. He smiled when he looked up at me.
“You good?” he asked and I blinked.
“How can you even ask that?” I asked, and he laughed.
“I meant to stand up on your own,” he said. “I’m not done with you, yet. Not by a long shot.”
I swallowed hard and
nodded carefully, after taking the time to decide if I was okay to get down.
It was a little awkward getting down off his shoulders, but not too bad and he was there to catch me, keeping me steady, pressing me back into the corner, the walls propping me up as he got back to his feet.
He shut off the shower and, holding onto me, slid the door back on its metal track. He whipped one of the towels off the towel rack and wrapped me in it. The large beach towel swallowed me and instantly absorbed the water beaded on my flushed skin.
He stepped out first, grabbing his own towel, and helped me out of the shower. I carefully stepped out onto the warm, shaggy bathroom throw rug set by the tub and scrunched my toes into it out of habit.
“I want you in my bed,” he murmured, stepping into me, holding me close, and dipping his head so he could claim my mouth with his.
“Mm,” I half-whimpered, half-moaned against it with want and he took a step back, fingertips trailing along my arms, beneath my forearms, the tip of his middle finger of each hand trailing down my inner arm along a razor’s path – God knows I had thought of it enough times; I’d just never been brave enough to follow through.
I closed my eyes and immersed myself in the tickling sensation as he drew that feather-light touch along each palm, all the way out along my middle fingers before twisting his hands upright to thread his fingers in the spaces between mine.
I felt gratitude that I’d managed to hold on and be here long enough to meet a man like him and smiled as he tugged on our joined hands gently, leading me from the bathroom across the hall into his bedroom.
It was like any other bachelor pad. Pretty much precisely how you would picture a rock musician’s bedroom to be – a black blanket tacked over the window, the bed unmade but inviting, black sheets, an orange and black Harley-Davidson fuzzy blanket the only other blanket to be seen.
“Condom?” I asked and he nodded.
“Got plenty,” he said with a half-smile.
I rolled my eyes slightly and said, “Not surprised.”
He pulled me in close and murmured, “Knew you were coming, have to keep you coming.”
