59
I’d spent the night with Lenore three times now. Slipping into her house, into her bed, holding her, pressing my body into hers. No words, only two or three soft kisses down her neck, and then sleep. A thick, full sleep with my arms full of her.
How had I done it all these years without her? Shut down, shut off. Would I ever feel satiated? I didn’t think so.
At dawn, I’d leave and ride back to Nebraska and get back to work. Back to planning.
Tonight, Lenore was awake. Waiting. A small orange lamp glowed at the side of her bed, a glass of amber liquor in her hand. I took it from her and drank. Brandy. Its sweet heat spilled through me.
“I suppose it’s not a coincidence that Tricky’s been out of town all this week?” Her pointed question hung in the semi-darkness.
“Does that bother you?” I pulled off my long-sleeved shirt, tossing it to the side.
Her eyes darted over my bare chest. “No.”
I unfastened my leathers, dropping them to the floor, but her eyes remained on mine.
The silence was skittish and fragile between us. A colt finding its legs, wanting to sprint, yet not sure how.
“Did you have dinner?” she asked. “I have barley soup I can warm up for you.”
She’d changed the subject. Good.
“I’m fine,” I replied.
“Okay.” She chewed on her lip, studying me.
“You nervous with me?”
“A little, yeah.” She licked her lips. “I’m not used to—”
Real intimacy? Raw vulnerability?
“Yeah. Me neither.” I rubbed a thumb down her damp lips, and they parted for me.
She squirmed on the bed. It was a slow movement, an uncoiling of pent up anxiety, need, and desire. I bent over her and kissed her slowly, gently peeling away at that anxiety. Baring the need, unfurling the desire. I pulled a moan from her, and then another. Her hands went to my beard, my neck, and she opened her mouth fully, our lips enthralled in a search and discovery of taste and sensation. I gripped her jaw and nipped a trail down her throat and over to that spot below her ear that would always give her the chills. And there—she let out a cry, her flesh quivering—Yeah, there it was.
She grabbed at me, pulling us closer, her chest crashing into mine, her hips grinding slightly. I wiped her blue hair back from that beautiful face. I wanted to see her face. Her cheeks had reddened, liquid eyes heavy. Staring at each other, we caught our breaths. She released me, her one arm falling back over her head, the fingers of her other hand moving to her damp, swollen lips as she watched me, not saying a word. Watched and waited and wondered.
I wanted to give her plenty to wonder at.
I gave her the brandy and she finished it.
“What’s this?” I gestured at four small labeled glass bottles on her night table.
“Perfumed oils from different botanicals. I’ve been creating scents for men and women to sell at the store. I was playing with different scent combinations tonight.”
I opened a bottle. Sandalwood. Another. Cinnamon. Another was orange. The last, bergamot. A larger bottle was coconut. The base. I sat up and threw the thin sheet off her, she was naked like she was every night.
“Lie back.”
She pushed up on the bed. “What are you—”
“Baby.”
She gnawed on the edge of her lower lip again and laid back down. I rubbed some coconut oil between my hands then dripped perfumed oil from the other bottles and rubbed again. I laid my warm hands between her breasts and stroked down her middle, and she let out a gasp. I rubbed in circles, small motions as I wedged my body between her legs, spreading them wide. My hands massaged up to her shoulders, down her arms, applying sure, slippery strokes. The concentrated scents filled the air, inviting the heat and energy to rise from her skin like holy fucking vapors.
She was my altar, and I was praying, making vows, uttering devotions.
Her flesh seemed to flow under my touch, her breath shortening, her muscles going limp. I stroked down to the inside of her thighs and back up again, around her breasts to her throat, around her neck, behind her ears.
“Finger…” Her voice floated.
She was in a trance, under my spell. And I was under hers.
“I want to see you like this in the light. Like that first time in the motel, remember? That was new for us, intense in a different way. I want to see you in the light now, Sunshine. Want to see it all.”
Her lips parted, her eyes swirls of deep blue green. Her body melted under my hands, her desire rising like a cloud of perfume. I was touching her, opening her deeper, engaging her energy with mine.
The heat rose inside me, my hands gliding, moving, stroking over the inked delicate birds, suns and moons, many in different stages of eclipse, stars and waves. Goddesses dancing, fairies flying. Compasses. A lot of compasses all over her. Each one with numbers underneath.
I stroked around her full breasts, and they swayed with the movement of my hands. The tattooed blue N was in flames and visible in the purple and pink and red vines and flowers by one tit. The small silver balls of her nipple piercings gleamed in the muted light, and my mouth dried. I remembered when she’d first gotten them, and they’d been mine, all mine. I wanted those tits in my hands, in my mouth. I wanted her body under me, moving with mine. To fight me. Tease me. To beg me for more, demand more. I wanted inside her, taking from her every last drop of resistance and filling her with me.
But that could wait. My cock could wait. This, right now, was everything.
My thumbs rubbed up at the edges of her thighs then skimmed down on either side of her slit, and she let out a cry. I stroked over the top of her pussy, massaging in firm circles, applying pressure over the hood of her clit. She moaned, her mouth parting, her hips flexing up towards my sure strokes.
“Holy sh...” Her head swung to the side, her breathing uneven.
I kneaded her most intimate curves, massaging over her core, her flesh swelling under my touch. That’s what I wanted for her, pleasure, heat. Her eyes found mine. Knowing, not knowing. I wanted to break down all the boundaries between us again. I searched for her. A serenade calling out to her. A tango challenging her, summoning her back. Every stroke brought her further, brought us closer.
I palmed her pussy and she lifted her hips, grinding into my hand.
“Yeah, baby, oh yeah,” I said, my voice thick, sweat beading on my forehead. I swirled my thumb and index finger around her clit, never touching it directly, then down her opening, tugging at the sides of her slick lips.
Her gaze remained fixed on mine. Was she still anxious? Still disbelieving that this was happening? That it was me in her bed, making her come?
I’m gonna make you come, all right.
My other hand swept over a tit and settled on her upper chest. I needed to feel her heart pounding for me, connecting to mine. Her fingernails dug into my arm, her head shoving back into the pillow. Pinning her hands down into the mattress, I buried my face between her legs. Her back arched off the bed.
I had plunged into the ocean.
A thousand suns broke over the perfumed water, and I was blinded by the glare. I surged to the bottom, I flew to the surface. I breathed deep and took it all in, all of it, all of it was her.
Her breathy moans and cries got louder and more frequent. They were beautiful, they were fragile, and I wanted more and more of them. Her body shuddered in my grip, her sharp taste filling my mouth, intoxicating me, feeding my hunger.
She stiffened, closing her legs, writhing away. “No!”
I slid up her body, lifting up on my arms, hovering over her. “What’s wrong? What is it?”
She turned her face into the pillow, tears staining her cheek.
I pushed her hair back, my nose brushing the side of her jaw. “Serena, talk to me.”
“Stop. I—I can’t do this.”
My erection pressed against her middle, a hand sliding through the slickness between her legs, and she relaxed. “Too real for you?”
Her eyes were a storm-pitched sea, turbulent, murky, the bottom no longer visible. I’d hit a nerve.
“Sunshine,” I whispered. “Being with you again, so close, like this, is amazing. You feel it, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Her lips trembled. “Yes.”
My index finger slowly made its way inside her pussy, pulsing there.
Her chin raised, her breath catching, making a strangling noise in her throat. She was mine. Always mine.
“Justin...”
“You’re burning a hole right through me, baby,” I breathed.
Her eyelids jammed shut. “Please stop.” She hissed the word out long and slow. She was fighting it. She was uncomfortable.
I released her, removing my hand and gently brushed her lips with mine. “We’ll take it slow. Spend time together with our clothes on. We need to—”
“No.” With a heave, she sprang from the bed, grabbing her robe from the floor, charging from the room.
Dammit.
I followed her. “Why not? Don’t run away from me. You’re not doing that again.”
She tried to catch her breath, pushing her wild hair behind her ears, her eyes darting over my cock, my legs, up my chest. She swallowed hard, a hand in the air. “I—just—”
“You’re not in control and you don’t like it, do you? You call all the shots with Tricky?” That stung the second it left my mouth. A low blow, but I couldn’t fucking help it. I’d seen her with Tricky once in town, laughing, relaxed, a good time. No worries. But with me, now, she felt threatened, preferring to stay locked away in her Tower of Denial. “You tie him up and have your way with him, is that it? That your kink?”
“Fuck you!”
“No, fuck you,” I replied, reigning it in, my voice low. Her eyes widened. She wasn’t sure which way I was headed with this now. I was being honest, that was all that was left. “You once gave me something to believe in, but then you took it away. You threw me in a dark hole and abandoned us, letting us rot.”
“I didn’t.”
“That’s what it felt like. Especially when I was in jail. I needed you. I needed us, so goddamn bad. Everything hurt less, and everything made more sense when we had each other. For you too, I know it. Yeah, it was real difficult a lot of the time, but it was still good. It was real. I want us back. You need us back.”
“Need?” Her eyes blazed, her jaw stiffened. “You have no idea.”
“Tell me all about it.”
“I want you to go.”
“Do you want me, Serena? Do you?” My question, my voice came from the deepest and hollowest part of me. The part that used to be full of her, us.
“I said go.”
She was hiding something. I could smell it, feel it in the slicing shiver up my spine. She stood there resolute. She was the guard dog at the gates, and I was pulling at the padlock, looking through the bars trying to figure out what lay beyond in the dark.
I grabbed a knife from the block on her kitchen counter.
She pivoted. “What the hell are you doing?”
I slashed a cut across the skin on my arm, holding it out to her. Red blood beaded up from the cut. “See?” I held out my arm to her, the knife still tight in my grip. “I bleed. Do you?”
“Finger—”
“We used to bleed for each other. Willingly, unwillingly.” I grabbed her arm, and she jerked back in my hold. “I’ve been bleeding all these years, Lenore. Leaving a trail of blood everywhere I go. What about you? You left a trail?”
“I haven’t stopped bleeding since Med took me. Haven’t stopped!” she said through gritted teeth.
My heart squeezed in my chest at the familiar sound of that particular suffering. It was the most honest thing she’d said all night.
I wanted more.
I dragged the blade against her skin, and she took in a hiss of air, our eyes jumping to the blood rising on her arm. I held her hand in mine, crushing her fingers in my hold as I brought her arm to my mouth and sucked on the blood there, pressing my tongue against the superficial cut in her flesh like only a lover would.
She let out a husky gasp, a moan. She liked it. I pulled her in tighter against me, my grip firm, our lips a breath apart.
“Justin.”
I took her in a deep, hungry kiss, the copper taste of her blood on our tongues. Yes. Our first kiss after all these years should be filled with blood.
Her robe shifted open, and the compass on her chest peeked up at me, sending an ice cold slice right through the heat we’d just generated.
“You still have my compass?” I kissed her again, nipping at her lips with my teeth. “Or did you lose it? Did you throw it away?”
Her shoulders fell, she took in a determined long breath, her lips pursing. Was she trying hard not to let any more emotion loose? “It broke.”
“You were mad at me and you broke it?” I tossed the knife back on the kitchen counter.
“No.” She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were suddenly cold, fighting shivers. “Motormouth broke it when he went through my stuff in Chicago. He broke it, and I realized right then that nothing could be held sacred anymore. Not you and me together, not my own life or yours, not our feelings, not our dreams. Nothing.”
The colorless tone in her voice drained the vengeful lust-filled fervor in my blood.
“So, when I saw you in LA,” she continued. “I let you walk out the door because no matter how much I wanted us back, how much I wanted to reverse time and change my choices, even if I could’ve, there was no point.”
“No point? Being close to you, having that again, having you, then being sideswiped by your news of getting married. I found you, came to you so full of hope. Worst day.”
“Worst day,” she whispered hoarsely.
“I left you and tried not to look back,” I said. “Tried real hard.”
Her eyes gleamed. “You left, and then I followed your trail of blood all these years.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I wiped the sweat and water from my eyes with a blood-smeared hand. “You got on with your life. You got married, had a kid!”
She only drew her robe tighter around her body.
“What does that mean?” I yelled.
She raised her hands. Surrender. Limit reached. “Go.”
“I don’t want to go!”
“There’s nothing here but sadness. Now go!” Her hand went to her cut arm.
“Baby, I don’t want to be sad, and I don’t want you to be.” I rubbed my hands down my face, my head spinning.
We stood there in the silence, amidst our wreckage.
“I’m going to clean us up.” She left the room and came back with a box of sterile bandages and a small tube of antibiotic cream. She applied the cream on herself as I tore open a bandage. I wrapped it around her arm, then taped it. She applied the cream on my cut.
“I’m not leaving this time,” I said. “I made that mistake once, twice. I should have fought for you, for us. This time, I’m going to do whatever it takes to hang onto you.”
She taped the bandage on my arm without a word.
I flexed my hands. “My missing fingers and that phantom pain that comes and goes, have been a reminder all these years not only of that hell, but of you and me. Hell and heaven. Beautiful and horrible. We found each other first in the dark and then in the light and in all the shadows in between. No matter how I tried convincing myself that I should forget, the scars never allowed it.”
She put the cap back on the tube of cream. “Go.” Her voice was weary.
Weary like my soul.
I didn’t want to fight with her, I only wanted her to see it like I did. From that moment on her bed, touching her, feeling her respond underneath my hands, my mouth, smelling her, listening to her sounds, tasting her. Through my hand I’d felt my own heartbeat joining hers, and for the first time in so, so long, I felt whole. I knew she felt it too. I knew she did, but she was scared.
My chest knotted. “Beautiful and horrible and beautiful again. That’s us, baby.”
“GO!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, her eyes wild. She launched away from me like an animal just freed from a trap. Slam went a drawer. She pivoted.
I froze.
A gun aimed at me. “Go.”
I could command men to do my bidding with a look, a pitch in my voice, any number of almost unnoticeable gestures. But Lenore in pain? My body felt heavy, weighted down. My limbs locked.
I stood still under the watch of that Ruger. “What are you so afraid of, baby? After everything you’ve been through, you’re operating on fear now? With me?”
“Fear brought me here, baby, safe and sound,” she said, steadying the weapon in both hands. “I saw Tania’s scar. That shouldn’t have happened. Years ago, I stayed away from her and you to protect us all. And now we’re here, together again and this happens. It shouldn’t have happened. It was wrong. So wrong. Why should Tania suffer? Why?”
“No more suffering. That shit’s done.”
“Right.” Her voice was laced with bitterness, irony.
“Lenore—”
“Go!” A plea. Desperate and despairing.
I pulled my hair back from my face. “All right, I’ll go.”
I got my clothes on and left. I started up my bike and glanced back at the open doorway. She still held the gun.
I left but I wasn’t going to leave things like that. No. Something was wrong. Something had cracked wide open inside her, and she was desperate for me not to see and for her not to feel it.
I needed help.
I’d talked with Tania earlier that day, and she’d mentioned that tonight she would be going out with the One-Eyed Jacks for drinks over at Dead Ringer’s Roadhouse.
I headed straight there and interrupted her and Butler getting it on in a back room. I didn’t give a fuck, but he sure did. All the Jacks and their women shot me cold glares, but Tania was impervious to their protective shield. She strode straight through it and left with me, no hesitation.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” She blinked up at me, wiping her mussed hair from her pink face, taking in a gulp of the warm humid night air in the parking lot. “What’s going on?”
“Lenore’s flipping out,” I said. “She needs you. I made things worse. You need to talk to her, calm her down. Get through to her. Something’s wrong. Something she doesn’t want to talk about with me. But I think it’s got everything to do with me.”
“I’ve got my car here.” Tania gestured at a blue GMC Yukon. “But I’ve had a few margaritas too many.”
“Give me your keys.”
She did, and I handed them over to Slade who’d come over to us. “Take her car and get it to Meager. I’ll call you with the address.”
“You got it.” He got into Tania’s Yukon and started her up.
“We’ll take my bike. We’ll get there quicker. I’ll get you coffee.”
“All righty.”
On the road, I got us both caffeine, and we blew towards Meager, back to Lenore.
Less than an hour and a half later, I cut the engine in front of Lenore’s small clapboard house. Tania got off my bike.
I grabbed her arm. “Hey. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
She climbed up the small staircase of Lenore’s house and knocked. “Lenore? Lenore, it’s Tania. Open up, honey. Please. Lenore?”
The door opened a crack. Lenore glared at me through the darkness.
“Finger asked me to come see you,” said Tania. “He’s worried about you, and I want to make sure that you’re okay. I need to make sure. Please. Just me. We’ll stay up all night and drink and eat bad shit, like we used to.”
Lenore’s fierce eyes stayed on me.
“Lenore?” Tania moved closer to the front door.
“I don’t eat bad shit anymore,” Lenore replied.
“Okay, well, organic, sugar-free, gluten-free, whatever the hell you want—”
Lenore shook her head. “Stop.”
“Come on honey, it’s me,” said Tania. “This is between us. I won’t—”
“Go away. Both of you. Just leave me alone.”
I got off my bike and stormed across her lawn. “Not leaving you alone!”
Tania shot me a glare, raising a hand. “Hey—”
“I’m not going anywhere until I know you two are talking and she’s calmed down!” I said.
“Well, that’s not going to happen unless you back the fuck off,” Tania replied.
“I ain’t backing off. Not ever.”
“You need to calm down,” Tania said to me.
I got in her face. “Don’t tell me what I need to do.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” Tania raised her voice.
“Stop it!” Lenore’s searing gaze came back to me. “I put the gun away, so you don’t have to worry I’m going to do something stupid. I wouldn’t do that to my son.”
“Gun? What gun?” Tania exploded. “What the hell is going on?”
“You think I would’ve dragged you here if it wasn’t important?” I said.
“Go home. Both of you,” said Lenore.
Tania moved toward her again. “Lenore, please, talk to me—”
“I don’t want to talk! I don’t!” Lenore shut the door, and the firm slide and click of two bolts resounded in the still night, flying bugs swirling in the glow of the porch light over Tania.
A haze of rain began. Tania descended the stairs and came to me. “Well, that went well. She pulled a gun on you?”
“I was mad, she was upset.”
Tania tugged up the hood of her light jacket over her head. “Did we just make it worse?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll check in on her later.” She glanced at her watch. “I should get going.”
“I’ll take you home.”
“No.” She let out an exhale. “I have to go to Butler’s.”
“You got it bad, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“So does he,” I said.
“Well, I have explaining to do. And I have to do it tonight. Me leaving Dead Ringer’s with you the way we did…”
“I hope it works it out for you and him,” I said. “If that’s what you really want. I hope—”
“God, don’t you dare tell me to be happy. The last time you said that to me, things didn’t end up too great.”
“No, I’m not going to tell you that,” I said.
“We should say, ‘Be conscious,’ ‘Be aware.’ ‘Be mindful,’ and definitely, ‘Be good to yourself.”
“I say, you fucking do what you want, but give it your best. Whatever you do, don’t hold back. Lay it out there. All of it.”
“That works for me. That I like.”
Slade pulled up in Tania’s car, a prospect behind him on a bike.
“You good to drive?” I asked.
“I’m fine. Butler’s only a couple streets over.” Tania leaned a hand on my shoulder and lifted up on her toes and kissed my cheek. “You take care of yourself.”
“Yeah.” I got on my bike. “Fuck you.”
She let out a dry laugh that I drowned out with the roar of my throttle.
Slade and his prospect headed back to Dead Ringer’s. I got the hell out of Meager and focused on the road home to Nebraska.
My body conformed to the vibrations and movements of my bike over the smooth highway. The familiar road signs with their arrows, route numbers, exit numbers shone starkly in the bright white lamps.
Numbers.
The numbers over Lenore’s body flashed before my eyes. A series of numbers was inked under each compass.
“Nebraska...the good life” said the sign whipping past me as I crossed the border.
Seventeen minutes later, I passed the signpost for Elk with its small population tallied at the bottom.
My back stiffened, my heels pressed down.
Those weren’t any random numbers on her body. They were the coordinates for my clubhouse here in Nebraska.
Why would Lenore have my club, my home base tattooed on her body all these years?
Her rough voice from earlier answered me, “Trail of blood.”