by A. J. Downey
Stoker…
It didn’t take us any time at all to get her moved out of her place and into mine. She really didn’t have that much and I had plenty of room to spare. Of course, she wouldn’t hear of moving anything until we weeded out my place to make room for her stuff, swearing that she couldn’t abide by any clutter. It was okay. I would have pitched every fucking thing I owned if she’d asked it.
In the end, all I had to ditch was most of the worthless mismatched shit in my kitchen and a worn-out fucked-up chair in the corner of my living room that had been collecting junk mail. Her refurbished reading chair and ottoman fit in well with the rest of the black leather.
She was moving slowly, but determinedly, her body still healing from the accident, and it was really taking a toll on her spirits. The fragile and brittle happiness she had with me seemed thinner, more fragile than usual, even. I knew part of it was the fact we’d had to leave her greenhouse behind and she just didn’t feel right without her plants, her own space to hide in.
I loved my lovely creature but she was a creature of habit and I was afraid she was way overwhelmed by all of this newness. So, I enlisted some of the guys – both club and bandmates – to help me the very first chance I got. Now, we were headed in a pair of pickups back to old lady Sedgwick’s to break down her greenhouse and bring it home.
Meanwhile, back at base, she was clueless, as she was being inundated by the rest of the club’s ol’ ladies and Hossler, who were trying to blitz the house and get it up to her exacting standards. Truth be told, I needed those standards. I’d let the place go in my bachelordom.
“What are we going to do with the plants?” Rory asked.
“That’s what Galahad’s station wagon is for. Put them in the cargo bay and he’s gonna rush them to Serenity and we’re gonna hope we don’t fuck anything up.”
“You kill it, you know she’s gonna kill you,” Marlin grated, cig dangling from his lips. Cutter laughed.
“Don’t remind me,” I said with an intrepid sigh.
We worked hard, sweating our balls off and lucky us, between moving the plants and disassembling shit, it only took us a couple of hours to get everything locked and loaded.
Galahad had taken off way ahead of us once the plants were safe in his Subaru, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about them. I didn’t know if they could go into shock or whatever. I just knew the faster they got to Serenity, the better chances they would have, so I’d told him to get gone, if he wouldn’t mind.
“Lemme ask you something,” the captain said after we loaded the last board of the greenhouse’s frame into the back of my truck.
“Shoot.”
“What’s the rush on this?” he asked.
I sighed and stared at the pile of boards and some of the windows in the bed, before lifting the tailgate into place and latching it.
“Serenity is upset that I have every intention of dealing with the assclown that hit her.”
“And…?”
“And I’m hoping to bury her misgivings in a mountain of the good shit we do.”
“She’ll never know, y’know… That we deal with him, or how.”
“I know, and I don’t ever want her to think about him again.”
He nodded slowly.
“Let’s roll, then. Give her the distraction.”
“Let’s roll,” I agreed, relieved he was picking up exactly what I was putting down.
I went and said goodbye to Mrs. Sedgwick and we got in our trucks and on our bikes and headed back to Ft. Royal. Serenity was waiting at the curb for me to pull in the driveway. Galahad had the side gate open leading into my backyard and she was calling something back to him.
“There you are!” she called, and she looked like she was at war with herself on whether she wanted to nut-punch me or kiss me.
“Uh-oh,” I called out as she strode my direction. “I did this wrong, didn’t I?”
“Yes and no,” she said. “Are you really going to put the whole thing back together tonight?” she asked.
“Well, yeah. Gotta have some place for your plants to go, they can’t live in the back of his cage forever.”
“You’re certifiable!” she cried, but she was smiling again.
“Guilty,” I quipped, but I’d already dropped the tailgate and was passing off boards to the next guy and we sort of just fell in, old-school bucket-brigade style, passing things on down the line efficiently so it was all out back and ready for us to rock out my big master plan.
Some of the boys were standing around looking at the decrepit, half-rusting, old corrugated metal garden shed that my gramps had up in the back corner of the yard, which also happened to be one of the sunniest corners that this yard happened to get.
“Well, what’re you waitin’ for?” Cutter demanded from behind me.
“Pyro’s the demolition’s expert, figured he should have the honor,” Atlas grated.
“Ha, ha, fuck you, man. Hammer’s a lot different than blowing some shit up. Way less fun.”
I laughed. “I want to keep the bones, so no hammer really required unless it’s a claw hammer to pull nails.”
“Eh, might need a drill, too. Looks like whoever built it used some Philips and some flat head screws.” Galahad scratched the stubble on one cheek with his middle fingernail and looked a touch irritated.
“I got you,” I said, and looked down at Serenity. “Can you keep the iced tea coming?”
“You bet,” she murmured and drifted to the back slider to go into the house.
“I’ll hit the garage and start bringing out useful tools,” Hope said, with a faint but proud smile.
“I’ll go with ya,” Hossler agreed.
We got to work.
If there’s one thing I learned working construction, nothing ever goes one hundred percent according to plan or smoothly, but, on occasion, it actually did, and this ended up being one such occasion. My plan had been to strip the old garden shed of its shell and to use the bones to put up her existing windows, utilizing the bones of her greenhouse as an expansion to give her more room – once I could pour another cement pad to join up with the existing one where my granddad’s shed used to be.
I expected there to be a hiccup if the windows from the old greenhouse would be too few or too many to encompass my gramp’s old garden shed’s skeleton but the gods, or whatever, smiled upon us, it was almost a perfect fit. We got the fan up and centered first, because Serenity said that was one of the most important parts of a working greenhouse, and then it went together almost like magic from there.
It was dark by the time we slid her roughed-out workbenches of old timber and warped plywood in there, but it was enough to get her existing plants moved in by flashlight and the light of the fire from my old rusting hulk of a backyard firepit, while most of the brothers and old ladies enjoyed a cold one to cap off their job well done.
“You’ve really outdone yourself,” my little orchid murmured, her arms going around my waist as she leaned into my side. I put my arm around her and caressed her arm. She was beautiful in her favorite faded black hippy dress that she loved to wear around the house. I kissed the top of her head as we looked at her relocated little greenhouse.
“Excited to fill it again?” I asked.
“Yeah. The plants should be okay overnight in the back of the station wagon and Galahad said he could leave it parked here for a couple of days which will give me plenty of time to get everything sorted. I thought we were going to wait, though.”
“We were, but I couldn’t. I knew how much it was chewing you up not having your own space around here,” I said, and she glanced up sharply. She visibly flinched, just the look in her eyes and the expression on her face, and I chuckled.
“Don’t read more into it than what I just said,” I told her.
“I can’t believe everyone –”
“I told you,” I said gently, cutting her off, “this is what it is, being club, and belonging. I know you haven’
t had much of this, that you’ve had a rough go of it, but those days are over, baby. Those days are gone. You belong now, and we take care of what’s ours, protect our own, and are here for each other no matter what. This is how it’s supposed to be, this is how it is.”
She let her eyes wander across the fire-lit backyard and over the faces of my crew gathered around the flames. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, gazing at the little reclaimed window greenhouse with its solitary hanging lightbulb, dimly lighting the interior. That’s why I’d chosen to retrofit my granddad’s shed. It had power to it, no ugly orange extension cord running up a support pillar to an outlet on the porch like she’d had set up at her old place. I was planning on fitting her with something essentially state-of-the-art while keeping her rustic eclectic vibe alive and well.
It was the least I could do. Her feeling calm, feeling safe, having a place of her own to go was important. So said Marlin, and he was the expert when it came to anxiety-riddled abused women – at least among us. Charity and Galahad had had a lot to add, but it all amounted to the same.
Trauma was trauma, and Serenity had it in spades, even before the shooting at her school. All the years of bullying and mental abuse, all the emotional abuse, the systematic and intentional psychological chipping away at her self-worth and her psyche… it left her with a serious case of C-PTSD, PTSD’s insidious and harder-to-diagnose big ugly cousin. Often mishandled as depression with generalized anxiety disorder, it didn’t react the same to the general medication and treatment for the two.
I’d done some heavy talking, heavy thinking, and some solid research, and knew that this change of scenery, this new life with me, was just the beginning. Serenity didn’t know it yet, but I’d talked to my boss, we’d fudged some paperwork and we were getting her onto my insurance, and as soon as she was ready? We’d make her an appointment with the same shrink lady that’d been helping Faith. The one that specialized in trauma.
It was time for my little orchid to stop just living. It was high time for her to be transplanted to a place where she could thrive and I knew that she was ready for it. She’d said as much, told me how she wished that the doctor’s visits and physical therapy to deal with the aftermath of the car crash she’d been in could lead into more, for the other stuff.
Well, here we were, and I was going to make it happen, come hell or high water. I wanted her to do better, to be better, and I wanted to grow and be better, for her and with her.
“I love you,” she said finally, on a soft exhalation of breath, her eyes slightly unfocused as she stared over the new arrangement back here.
“I love you too,” I murmured, giving her a gentle squeeze. “Let me take you back in the house and show you just how much.”
She shook herself as if waking from a dream and looked up at me a bit stricken. “But we have guests!” she protested and I chuckled darkly.
“We have crew and my bandmates over; they’re family, and they know their way around the place and don’t need us. Come on.” I led her by the hand toward the back door.
“Have fun, you two!” Hossler called out, raising her bottle of beer in salute in our direction.
Laughter broke out around the fire, and bottles and glasses were raised. Serenity shrank into my side, her nose and cheeks flaming to match the glow of the fire as I ushered her through the back door.
I stopped outside the bathroom when she went to head into our bedroom, and I liked the thought of that so much – our bedroom. Still, as much as I liked the thought, I shook my head and drew her into the bathroom with me, shutting the door firmly behind us and throwing the lock.
“Suppose somebody has to use it!” she exclaimed and I grinned.
“We’re a bunch of party animals. The guys’ll just go against the other side of the house.”
“Oh my God!” She stuffed her hand against her mouth to stifle her laugh and it was the cutest thing.
I smiled, and went over and started up the shower. She gave me a long slow blink, like she was surprised I was serious, and that I wasn’t backing down. I gave her one of my slow, sexy smiles and arched an eyebrow.
“Get naked,” I ordered, and she just stood there like a rabbit in the headlights so I started first, propping one of my work boots against the closed lid of the john and working the laces out of their secure knot.
She watched me, mesmerized, as I stripped my dirty sweat-stained work tee over my head and tossed it in the open hamper, her gaze thirsty as she drank in the sight of me and I gotta say, when she looked at me like that, I felt ten feet tall.
She watched me undress, shirt, boots, socks, and when I went for my belt, I cocked my head and said, “Serenity…” a reminder that she should get undressed, too.
Her name galvanized her into action, her fingertips flying to the dark wooden buttons on the front of her dress, plucking them through the button holes, the material parting, giving me glimpses of her black lace bra and panty set and short circuiting my brain for a hot minute.
“Stoker?” she asked, amused, and I shuddered like a dog coming out of a pond and got back to work freeing my erection. I dropped my cargo shorts and boxers in one smooth clean movement as she slipped her bra off her body, her breasts free, nipples tightening in the cooler air of the bathroom, the steam from the shower reaching out to caress her.
I’ve never been so jealous of water vapor in my life.
I couldn’t wait to have her in my arms but I seriously needed to rinse off first. I was sweaty and grimy, and while I was down for defiling her hot little body it certainly wasn’t intended that way.
My cock throbbed as she gave a little shimmy of her hips, her panties skimming over her thighs and dropping to the bathroom rug and I held out my hand to her after I stepped into the tub. She stepped behind the glass doors with me and I groaned with pleasure as the hot water beat a little soreness out of my back and she stepped into me, pressing her body against mine, turning her face up for my kiss.
I pulled her against me and she melted into me. Tongues twining, the pleasure from our joined mouths… there really wasn’t any describing it. There honestly wasn’t any woman who came before who gave me the same feeling. Serenity filled every one of my senses and it was completely indescribable the amount of love, lust, and other things I felt for her.
Her hands smoothed over my water-slick skin and she tore her mouth from mine, breathing heavily, snatching the bath poof I kept in here from its on-demand hook stuck to the back shower wall.
She lathered it up while I stood and watched her in a sort of half-dreamy state from her kiss, shuddering when she ran it over my chest.
That was the other thing. I had never had a woman treat me as well as Serenity treated me. I closed my eyes and let her take care of me for a few minutes, relaxing under her gentle touch as she lightly scrubbed the grime of sweat and hard labor from my skin.
I sucked in a sharp breath and held it when her fingers wrapped lightly around my cock and she began to stroke me. Root to tip and back down, adding a bit of a twist at the wrist, her soap-slick fingers expertly played me, and I didn’t have any complaints.
I was so turned on that I warned her, “Not gonna last long, baby but I’m gonna make it up to you.”
“You don’t have to make anything up to me,” she said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear her over the working showerhead. “I just want you to feel good.”
I grunted and drew in a deep breath, the air passing through my nose and deep into my lungs as if filling an endless well. I gasped, my breath cut off as the pleasure surged, my balls giving a deep and satisfying – I don’t know. The sensation was like an ache, but different somehow, as if an ache could be less pain and more pleasure.
I reached out a hand and braced it against the shower wall, the other gripping her shoulder, my thumb smoothing against her skin as, with every stroke, she brought me closer and closer to going off like a shot.
Fuck, when I came, it was so damn hard I saw white stars flitting a
t the edges of my vision and her lovely face swam in a fog created by a haze of pure euphoria as my come spilled hot and heavy over the back of her hand and ran down her wrist.
“I fucking love you so hard,” I growled, reaching for her, murmuring, “Your turn,” just before I let my mouth devour her lips as if it was the last kiss I would ever get.
32
Serenity…
He backed me into the corner and I laughed, delighted. His mouth dropped kisses against my skin, warming me through in the cooler atmosphere of his house – our house. ‘I needed to turn down the air conditioning’ was the last rational thought I had before he pressed me back into the corner and lifted my legs over his shoulders.
I swear, his mouth against my pussy was his favorite place to be during sex and I was so not even complaining. I did, however, feel a little guilty that all I’d managed to give him by way of foreplay this time was – in my estimate anyway – a sad hand job.
He lavished his tongue over me and I gasped, throwing my head back and bracing it against the wall, secure that he held me fast and I wouldn’t fall. I trusted him to hold me up, to not drop me, and he had never and probably would never disappoint on that front – no matter what iteration or form it took. My fingers wound through the long, wet strands of his hair, pulling his mouth tighter against my body as he darted his tongue in and out of me, teasing me, pleasing me, in every way that stoked the fires of my desire without outright pouring gasoline on it.
Problem was, at least I thought so, I wanted the accelerant. I whimpered as he kept me just on that edge without letting me take that shining fall, the pleasure building and building until I seriously began to panic in wonder if I could take anymore.
“Stoker!” I gasped, and he grunted as his only answer, but I knew that grunt. He might as well have said aloud, ‘Wait for it…’ and I didn’t know if I could.
“Stoker!” Again I gasped my lover’s name, a half-warning that I was so very close and a half-plea for him to please, please let me have it, to please finish me! To catch me as I fell among the stars that he’d catapulted me expertly into.
