Freddie
I wish I could say I wasn't your typical teenage girl.
There were girls like that in my school, unique for their own reasons. The compulsive overachievers, the ones who were in every single club in school to increase their chances of getting into the best colleges. Then there were the girls who, even at seventeen or eighteen, had decided to dedicate their lives to causes, who always had flyers or pamphlets they were handing out, spent their weekends at marches or rallies. Hell, there were even just the punk or goth girls with their dark makeup and 'fuck society' mindsets that set them apart.
I was not one of those girls.
In hindsight, I wished I had fallen into one of those crowds. Even if I very much doubted I would look good with thick black eye makeup or spiky, colored hair, and I didn't think I had strong enough arms to carry picket signs all the time.
But being a typical girl certainly didn't work out so well for me.
I didn't know at the time, though, that being average would lead me where it did.
All I knew was Thad and Colson had worked almost nonstop after they graduated the year before, got themselves a clunker of a car, then moved out of our aunt's house.
Left behind was a bit of a silly way to feel, I guess, since of course they needed to grow up and start their lives. But it was how I felt. My aunt's focus, usually cast in three directions, was suddenly squarely on me. All the chores that used to be split three ways were now my responsibility.
And I had no one. No brothers to sit with in those precious hours between when school let out and when our aunt came home to sit and commiserate, to make plans for the future.
I was, for the first time in my life, lonely.
Loneliness and a teenaged girl usually meant one thing.
Boys.
I wasn't allowed to date. It hadn't been a double standard in the household. Thad and Colson weren't allowed to date either. We'd heard the lecture a thousand times over the years.
There will be plenty of time to date after college and after you get your careers started.
We'd once even - maybe cruelly, I would think in hindsight - wondered if she had ever had sex. We'd never seen her spend the night out or have a man over.
It wasn't even that her advice was bad, to try to teach us to prioritize education and a secure future over dating.
The problem was, it was simply unrealistic. I mean, even our schools told us that abstinence-only approaches to dating and sex generally didn't work. Hormones were strong, primal drives. People as a whole wanted connections. Especially those with the opposite sex.
Maybe if my aunt had been more lax about it, had allowed me to date around, maybe I would have gotten a taste of it and decided it wasn't what I wanted, not really. I just wanted companionship, someone to talk to, share my time with, share my stories with.
What I got instead of some casual dates with a few different guys was Tanner.
"Tanner," Virgin cut in, brows raised, looking amused.
"Yeah," I admitted, wishing I was able to smile about it.
"Alright," he said, letting it slide even though there was a smile in his voice.
Tanner was everything I hadn't been at the time. Popular, outgoing, a little edgy. And older. Only by two years, but older was older, and when he used to come to pick me up after class, all the girls would tell me how envious they were.
Everywhere we went, he seemed to know everyone, seemed important. And as a girl who had felt altogether invisible and wholly unimportant, I thrived on being attached to that attention, on the attention it got me just for being at his side.
And Tanner was everything a lonely, needy girl could ask for. He made time for me. He called me pretty. He told me I was smart and interesting and that he couldn't wait until I finished school so I could move out with him.
To this day, I still wasn't sure how honest any of that was. If he, at the time, meant those words or not.
"Why was he so popular?" Virgin asked, dragging me back to the present.
"Hm?"
"He wasn't in school. Why was he so popular? Most people grow past that shit once they leave high school."
That was true.
But at the time, I hadn't given the idea much thought.
I never thought to ask. I was just charmed by it, by him, by our potential as a couple. Because, despite my aunt's best efforts to try to turn me into some girl hellbent on being a career woman, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, if I was going to college. So hearing from Tanner that he would take care of me, help me get on my feet, let me take time to figure out my future gave me a sense of security.
The woman I would become, the woman sitting across from a really attractive man, telling him about her young naivety, was immeasurably embarrassed that I had ever believed such grandiose, unrealistic promises from my first boyfriend, someone only slightly older than I was.
"He didn't even really have a career of his own," I admitted, shaking my head at myself.
"What did he do then?"
"Sold mixtapes."
"He was a rapper?" Virgin asked, eyes dancing. "Grand ideas of being the next Eminem, huh?"
I snorted at that. "Eminem," I scoffed. "Please, he made Paul Wall seem like a lyrical genius."
"Paul Wall, huh?" Virgin asked, big smile on his face. "Baby girl, we gotta update your musical references."
"If what the guy across the hall from Thad plays is what today's music has to offer, I will happily stay stuck a decade in the past."
"Fair enough," Virgin agreed. "Go on. Didn't mean to interrupt you."
I was shocked at how popular his CDs sold when I had heard his songs, had needed to hold my true opinions to myself about them. But sold them he did. Enough that I started to help him here and there, gleefully accepting the small salary he threw my way for it. With that and my babysitting money, I was sure I would be able to afford my own car in no time. Move on like Colson and Thaddeus did.
"Babe..." Virgin said, tone full of understanding, knowing where this was going.
But I had to say it, get it out, tell someone who would believe me.
One week after my high school graduation, I was standing outside Tanner's apartment building with a stack of CDs, handing them out to the people who came up to me.
It never occurred to me that it was not normal for people to know to come to me to pick up random mixtapes.
I was down to my last five when the police approached.
And I offered to sell them a CD.
"Fuck," Virgin hissed.
That about covered it.
Because they weren't just CDs.
Sure, the CDs were there. Because Tanner was a narcissist. He wanted people to listen to his Godawful raps, believed someday he would be rich and famous. But nestled behind the CDs bought at Staples and burned off his home computer, there were little baggies.
I had been selling heroin for weeks without knowing it.
And while Tanner had been all of fifteen feet away from me when the cops slammed me against the hood of their car and wrapped handcuffs around my wrists, he never tried to take the blame, never even seemed to feel regret over the fact that I took the fall for his crime.
That was what I remembered most, his face as I stared at him, silently pleading for him to save me.
There was nothing there.
He was utterly blank.
Like it was nothing.
Like I was nothing.
If I thought I had felt lonely before, it was nothing compared to how I felt when I was placed in the back of a squad car, too shocked to cry, too scared to find words to say.
The drive to the station was the longest of my life. The short interrogation showed me that no one was going to believe that I was an innocent in the situation, that I didn't know there were drugs in the CD cases. And since Tanner's face wasn't on the CDs, his prints weren't on the CDs, his real name wasn't on the CDs, there was nothing pointing to him, nothing I could use to accuse him.
They put me back in the car, drove me to county.
I got through intake, got my mug shot taken, got my phone call after they threw me into a holding cell with other women.
And with no one else to call who could help, I called my aunt.
Don't ever call me again, she'd told me after the words were out of my mouth. You brought shame on this family again. I should have known you'd turn out just like your mother.
It was painfully obvious that this was it.
I was going to go away.
You had forty-eight hours to post bond.
No one was coming for me.
I sat on the cold, hard concrete bench, staring at the wall, waiting for the inevitable.
Then it happened.
The worst day of my life.
I was led to a back room.
The 'dress in' room it said on the front of it.
I was made to strip.
And I learned there was nothing more humiliating in life than getting naked in front of a stranger who was slipping on gloves, and having to endure a search, feel the most basic right you had - the one over your own body - taken away as you felt hands on you, as you were made to bend over to be inspected for drugs or weapons or whatever else people shoved up their body cavities.
And I didn't cry.
I wanted to, but I didn't.
I didn't know much about jail, had led a relatively sheltered life since my aunt took us in, but I had a feeling that the standard phrases were true.
Like they can smell weakness.
And nothing said weakness like showing up to your first day of jail with swollen eyelids and tear-stained cheeks.
So I buried the tears.
I did what I had to do.
I got tough.
My palms were sweaty as I was led out of intake.
I was handed a pillow with a blanket rolled on top, a pillowcase, a change of clothes - one - slip-on shoes, a small bag of travel size shampoo, toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a bar of soap, then a roll of toilet paper.
By the time I actually was led down the hall toward the housing tier, I was actually too exhausted to feel fear.
The unit itself was two floors of long lines of green painted doors, gray walls, gray floors, gray tables in the lower level common area. Everything cold in a figurative and literal way.
I was led to the second floor and all the way to the corner, ignoring some of the questions yelled out at me.
Where are you from?
Who are you with?
What are you in for?
Even if I had chosen to respond, no one would have liked my answers.
The nice side of Navesink Bank.
No one. Absolutely no one.
And possession. Distribution.
My first cellmate was a woman about ten years my senior, in county for the fourth time in five years, awaiting her trial for a drug offense. Luckily enough for me, she didn't want to make connections, had her eyes set on her freedom that she was sure was just a couple months away, that she would get out on time served.
You're going away, baby doll, she had told me, not one to sugar coat things. They like making examples these days. Getting tough on the ones selling drugs. It's not so bad though. Prison will be easier.
I couldn't fathom such a thing.
A cage was a cage was a cage.
But it was something I heard day in and out while waiting for my court date, while trying not to get discouraged about my incompetent public defender since I knew I had no one else, that my aunt would never pay for a decent attorney, that my brothers couldn't afford one, not even if they got together.
"How long were you in jail?"
"Three months. Then I had my trial. Which went exactly as my cellmate told me it would."
It was a first offense for an honor roll student who had just turned eighteen.
But they threw the book at me.
Ten years.
They wanted ten years of my life for a mistake of misplaced trust.
It was a whirlwind that day.
The sentence was handed down. The next thing I knew, I was on my way out of Jersey and into Pennsylvania to the minimum security women's prison.
It was not what I had been promised from the women in county jail.
Did we have the right to get jobs, to load up on commissary, to have better visits, more access to things like the small library, better outdoor spaces for exercise, and some classes? Yes.
But we also didn't even get the relative privacy of a cell with a single roommate.
Nope.
We lived in one large room full of low beds where you got to store your things underneath and in a footlocker.
Forty women.
In one big room.
That was why I could never sleep. That was why their crying or nightmares or talking kept me awake night after night. It was hard enough to adjust to sharing a room with one woman, but to share it with thirty-nine others was a whole different beast.
During the day, the noise was loud enough to drive you half mad most of the time. People talking, yelling, laughing, singing.
I was the only new woman in our unit, so everyone else already had their cliques, their alliances, their friends. And while I wouldn't say they were opposed to the idea of new women trying to join in, I guess I just never put in the effort.
I never felt like I fit in.
I wasn't a criminal.
I hadn't done the crime everyone thought I did.
And while everyone liked to boast their innocence when guards were around, when we were all essentially left to our own devices, they would admit the truth to their friends.
They all knew they belonged there, that they had to do their time, even if they maybe didn't agree with the length of their sentence, or the laws themselves.
I didn't.
I didn't belong in the first place, and found it hard to try to act as if I did.
So I did what a few of the older women around did.
I behaved. I read when books were available. I took any classes that would get me out of our common area for a while. I took my time outside to walk the yard, get some exercise. When I had been there long enough to do so, I got a job in the kitchens.
I was behind bars when Thaddeus finally got the courage to come out. Though I had known for years, it was the first time he had openly admitted it. It was big. And I should have been there for him when he did it. When my aunt disowned him for it, when he had to face that rejection all by himself. And I knew how that felt. I knew how lonely that felt.
I wasn't there when he got his physical therapy certification. Or his fitness certification when he decided that helping people rehab from injuries wasn't what he wanted to do with his life, that he wanted the fun and freedom of helping people get in shape, in making his own hours.
He was, at first, all I had. He was the one filling my commissary. He was the one writing letters and calling, visiting when he had the time and money to travel.
He had believed me.
When the courts hadn't, when my aunt hadn't, when - it seemed - Colson hadn't.
And he had been the one trying to keep me grounded, trying to remind me that I would still be young when I got out, that there was no reason to feel like I lost my whole life because of this. He wanted me to think of the future, of what we would do when I got out, what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
I suspected it had been Thad that finally got through to Colson as well. I had never asked. But one day, there had been a letter. A week later, a call. And as I found out, I hadn't hardened up enough that I didn't need my big brother, didn't crave that calm, steadfast energy he had always had, something that had only grown in time as he got older, matured, got his life worked out.
Their calls and visits had been bittersweet for me.
Sweet because they were all I had, all I had ever had really.
But bitter because their lives moved on without me while mine stayed stagnant. Thad got so busy that his visits became less frequent. Colson found out the stick turned blue, and his life needed to be about something much more important than me.
I convinced myself it was for the best.
Because the longer I was there, the more time I had to think about Tanner, about how his life got to just go on while mine got ripped away from me.
I had been a good girl.
I didn't cut class.
I didn't drink.
I didn't do drugs.
I had only had sex two and a half times.
"Wait wait wait," Virgin cut me off, lips twitching. "How do you have sex two and a half times?" he asked. I sent him a lifted brow look that made him shake his head. "Got it," he agreed, clearly amused by Tanner's lack of prowess. "Go on. You were thinking about that shithead."
I did a lot of thinking about that shithead.
And the pain that had once been there, the aching, crippling betrayal, was suddenly gone.
All I had left was rage.
Oddly, the rage helped. It kept a fire burning in my belly, helped me get through the endless days and the longer nights.
"You didn't make any bonds inside? In all that time?" There was a silent question there How the fuck did you cope without connections?
It wasn't like I didn't talk to anyone. I did, obviously. You couldn't spend a decade in prison without speaking to anyone. Well, one woman could. None of us could tell if she was deaf, or maybe out of her mind, or simply had no interest in interacting with any of us. She'd been there before I got there, was still there when I left. But I wasn't like her. There were times when I craved normalcy, when I did reach out.
I let one of the girls who worked as an esthetician on the outside put homemade face masks on me out of commissary items - honey and Pepto or aloe and cold cream. I helped some of the girls make a 'spread' - a special food dish made out of items entirely purchased from the commissary - to celebrate birthdays or holidays.
Then there were the women in the kitchen.
We became our own little community twice a day - brunch and dinner always being served - three-hundred-sixty-five days a year. When we were there, we felt like we had a little more freedom. Sure, we had a schedule. And the knives had to be unlocked and then accounted for before we were allowed to leave after a meal, but we could move around without anyone scrutinizing us, do things we had been able to do in our old life.
Cooking for a prison was a challenge too.
There was, roughly, a sixteen-cent stipend per inmate per meal which meant we generally got the cheapest of everything to cook with. Rice. Boxed potato flakes. Beans. The crappiest, grisliest, fattiest cuts of meat. Canned or frozen vegetables. Limited spices. No salt. We had to be heart-healthy, after all, according to state guidelines.
So we had to somehow figure out how to make something even halfway edible out of those ingredients. We had lucked out with a kitchen manager who was open to suggestions, not stick to the 'toss everything in the pot and serve everyone a gruel-like substance' rule most prisons were known for.
Chili was a favorite - meat or veg and beans, depending on the day. Soups - vegetable, minestrone, potato. Black bean and lentil loaf.
I had always enjoyed cooking, but there in prison was when I had truly fallen in love with it, with its potential, with the fun that was trying to make bland foods tasty. I had entertained the idea for a while that when I got out, I might try to get into some sort of culinary school, find a cooking job somewhere.
But then as the years stretched on, as more time passed me by, things like plans and hopes and dreams slipped away.
Who would give me a loan for school?
And even if I had figured that out, who would want to hire me?
Tanner had fucked me.
Not just out of the ten years the law demanded of me.
But my life.
All of it.
Because I would have a record. I would be unemployable. I would be viewed as less than other people who wanted the same job. And if given the choice between two equally educated persons, one with a criminal record, and one without, well, who would you pick?
Exactly.
So there was no use trying to, as Thad had suggested, map out the rest of my life.
That was when the plan started to form.
That was when I decided I had to make Tanner pay for what he did to me.
And the determination I found in that decision was what had helped me get through the rest of my sentence.
"You know where he is now?" Virgin asked after the waiter had taken our plates, making me realize I had barely tasted what I had eaten. First, I had been too engrossed in Virgin's story, then too overcome with memories of my own to try to figure out what the cooks used in their sauce, if the ratio of garlic and parsley to butter in their garlic bread was perfect, or even think to try out Virgin's dish.
My first time at a fancy restaurant and I had zoned out while eating.
"Tanner? No," I admitted, reaching for my wine. Virgin had politely tasted his glass, but hadn't touched it since, apparently not a wine drinker.
If I were being honest, I hadn't even been looking very hard. The woman I had been behind bars would have chewed me out for wasting my time building bonds, getting my hair and nails done, screwing around with new dishes at home to maybe suggest to Abby someday. The woman who had been caged like an animal would have been pissed that I was even thinking of 'someday,' when all I should have been doing was searching for Tanner, making him pay.
It was interesting what a little space from that hellhole managed to do.
Restore things I had forgotten.
Love. Hope. Plans. Possibilities.
I wasn't sure there was enough of that old woman left in me to do anything even if I did happen across Tanner.
I didn't even know if I could find the strength to approach him, have my say, make it clear what he did to me since he clearly hadn't spared me a thought in all the time I took a fall for him.
Let alone do what the dark, ugly parts of me had dreamed of as I sat up in bed at night.
Thoughts that involved guns and bullets and shots fired and cuffs on my wrists and the rest of my life behind bars. This time for something I had actually done.
"You think he is still in town?" Virgin asked, tone almost a little cautious? But why would that be? Because he was worried I might find my lady-balls and do it after all?
"I haven't seen him here, but it is a big town. There are so many people. He could still be here. Or, for all I know, he is locked up."
Which was another thing I had never considered while I wasted all those years in hate and loathing.
What if his ways had already caught up with him? What if he was serving time for his crimes? Behind bars where I couldn't even get to him if I tried.
"What's he look like?" Virgin wanted to know, something that made my brows go down, wondering why he would want to know. To look out for him for me, maybe? Did I even want him to do that? Open up that possibility for me?
"Ah. This was a long time ago. He could look a lot different now. But he was tall, but not as tall as you. Maybe five-ten? On the thin side. He had this really badly done spiderweb tattoo on the left side of his neck. Brown eyes. Kinda on the small side. Dark hair."
"And white," Virgin specified.
"I thought that was implied when I told you his name," I said with a smile. I couldn't claim to know everything about every culture, but names like Tanner did tend to belong to the lighter complexioned folks. "My school didn't have much diversity back in the day. In fact, I think my brothers and I and the adopted girl from India were the only people in that whole place who had any color."
"Imagine growing up in MCs," Virgin commiserated with a smirk. "You can't really find a less diverse group of people. The Henchmen have been the only club I have been in where I wasn't the only person of color, aside from my dad. Got Roderick here," he explained.
Roderick. I rolled through my mental Rolodex of names I had thrown at me while at the party, vaguely remembering a tall, well-built, stupidly good-looking Hispanic guy.
"The Henchmen are an interesting group, though. Cam who doesn't speak. The guy who practically lives up in that glass room..."
"Roan."
"He looks like a lion." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, my lips pressed together, eyes going big, realizing how incredibly silly that sounded. A lion? Who said a person looked like a lion?
"Never thought about it, but he kinda does," Virgin admitted. "All that hair, the beard, that wild look in his eyes. Wanna hear a secret about Roan?"
"Yes," I decided immediately, leaning over the table a little.
"He used to be a spy."
"Like... an actual spy? Secret stealing and all that?"
"Yep."
"How do you go from a spy to a biker? I mean, that sounded judgy, but that seems like an odd career move."
"I think a lot of people who work secret government type jobs end up doing things afterward that aren't exactly legal. But in his case, he got burned. Someone claimed he was working for the other guys," he explained when I obviously had no idea what getting 'burned' meant. "The government freezes your assets, pretends they never met you. So, essentially, you start over with no money, a giant gap in your resume, and all these skills that really are only good for less than legal purposes."
"That's kind of cool. I mean, not for Roan. That must have sucked. But interesting. Does everyone in the club have crazy backstories?"
"Pretty much," Virgin admitted, suddenly sliding around the table, reaching out to grab my wrist, pulling me with him until our sides were pressed close, something that made my chest start to feel tight. "But I kinda don't want to talk about my brothers on our date," he told me, his hand sliding down my arm, resting over my hand. Not exactly holding it, not in the traditional definition of the word, but covering it, staying there.
"Oh, okay. Ah... what do you want to talk about then?" I asked, keeping my eyes forward, knowing if I looked at him, I wouldn't do so great with the whole stringing thoughts together thing.
"How about what you want to do once we leave here?" he suggested, his finger starting to trace over the back of my hand. It was a chaste, nothing little contact, but it was sending off shocks through my poor system.
"What do you mean?" I asked, knowing damn well what he meant.
"Lots of options that are clearly up to you. We could end things here. Drive you home. That's that. We could go for a drink. For dessert."
The idea of ending things here brought about an instant and unanimous objection from every single inch of my body.
"Dessert sounds good," I admitted. "But maybe I can make it," I suggested.
It was as close to an admission of wanting him to stay the night that I could make myself say.
Luckily, Virgin wasn't exactly dense.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his lips tease up at one side.
"Whatcha gonna make me?" he asked, reaching with his free hand for his wallet, deftly pulling out a card, throwing it onto the book the waiter had discreetly dropped off without a word.
"What do you like?"
"Watching a beautiful woman make me something sweet," he said casually. "Or so I would imagine," he added, reminding me how new he was to all of this too in a way.
And, somehow, the knowledge of that was enough to make me feel a lot more comfortable with the situation.
"So... it looks like brownies," I decided when we got home and realized that I really needed to hit the grocery store.
Brownies weren't exactly a wow-factor dessert, but if you did them right, they were kind of hard to beat in terms of deliciousness. I couldn't count the number of times Thad, Colson, and I would sit and eat a whole batch. Right out of the pan. Like a bunch of animals without even a hint of self-control.
"Sounds good," Virgin declared immediately, dropping his big body down on the couch, his gaze focused on me.
"Are you really going to sit there and watch me?"
"I'm really going to sit here and watch you," he declared shamelessly.
And so then he did.
Never had I been more acutely aware of every single one of my movements as I was while I moved around the kitchen, grabbing ingredients, bowls, a tray.
Flustered, I reached for the iPod Thad kept in a dock on the counter, picking his Smooth Like Molasses playlist at random, not realizing until it was too late that the playlist was straight up sex music. Of the classy sort, but sex music all the same. And I couldn't change it because that would seem like it bothered me. Yet leaving it on might be seen as forward, right?
Never before had I so thoroughly overthought a playlist as I did while I broke eggs into flour, cocoa and baking powder, sugar, salt, and butter.
"Relax," Virgin's voice demanded.
But not from where it should have come from.
Not from the couch, a safe distance away.
Oh, no.
His voice was directly behind me.
Even as I realized this, I could feel his body move in close.
Big hands came down on my shoulders that were, admittedly, tense.
"You mix," he suggested, thumbs pressing into the knots in my shoulders. "I'll work on the relaxing part," he suggested, his hands working magic across my shoulders, neck, upper back.
Then, as I poured the batter into the pan, the center of my back, lower, over my hips where I didn't think it was possible to hold tension, but hold it there I did, the muscles loose, lax by the time his hands slid forward.
I sucked in a shaky breath, not realizing I was leaning backward until I felt my shoulders press into his solid chest.
His hands paused at my hipbones, seeming to give me a moment, to pull away, to push him away.
Virgin didn't strike me as a passive man, a take things slow kind of man.
But it struck me that he was being careful, going at my pace. Because he knew it had been a decade. Because, as he found out over dinner, I had barely gotten a chance to engage in the physical sides of a relationship with a man even before I went away.
Realizing how unexpectedly sweet that was, my heart skittered around in my chest, chasing away the nerves that had situated there sometime early in the morning in anticipation of this reality.
Seeming to feel me relax into him, his hands moved again, flattening over the tops of my thighs, sliding down. The thin skirt material was a pathetic border. I could even feel the heat of his hand searing through as his hands kept sliding downward. At my knee, his hands started scrunching up the material, making it glide deliciously over freshly shaven skin until it was all in his palms.
His thumb held the material up as his hand flattened again, this time on the bare skin above my knee, the sensation soothing and exciting somehow at the same time.
Virgin's palms were rough from years of working with his hands, oddly smooth in other spots - scars from his enforcing days.
My head turned, resting just inward of his clavicle, as his hands slid up higher, teasing near the smooth skin of my inner thigh.
"Wait." I hadn't even known I was going to say anything until the word was out of my mouth. It didn't even sound like me, quiet, airy.
His hands froze but didn't move away.
Waiting.
Like I asked.
"Yeah?" he asked, his head shifting, his lips pressing a sweet kiss to my temple.
"What's your name? Your real name," I clarified.
Virgin paused, seemingly hesitant. I wanted to say never mind, that it wasn't a big deal. But, in the moment, it felt like a big deal. I felt like it was impossible to go this step with a man whose name I didn't know.
But before I could feel worry that we might be at an impasse, he spoke, voice low and rumbling, a sexy sound that shivered across my skin.
"Ty," he told me, sounding like he was telling me a secret. "Tycen, but... Ty."
"Ty," I rolled the name around, finding I liked it more than his road name, that I liked the honesty of it, the privateness of being privy to it.
A low, rumbling, almost... growling sound moved through Ty's chest at me saying his name.
"We un-paused now?" he asked, voice rough, a little impatient, needy.
Even as I thought that, I could feel his hardness pressing against me, as desperate as the throbbing, aching need between my thighs.
"Yes."
The word wasn't even fully out of my mouth before his hand shot upward, pressing hard over the panties between my thighs. My one arm flailed, looking for something to hold onto. Finding nothing, it moved upward, winding around the back of his neck.
"Soaked for me already," he rumbled, his one finger sliding upward, pressing into my clit, sending a shock of unexpected pleasure through my system.
Suddenly impatient, his hand slid up slightly, snagging my panties, dragging them downward hard enough that I heard a tear before they were free of my ass, and slid harmlessly down my thighs, legs. I stepped out of them on instinct just a second before I felt Ty's hand on my bare skin, tracing up my cleft, pressing into my clit without the barrier, something that seemed to steal all the strength out of my leg muscles.
Ty's other arm went across my belly, anchoring me to him as he worked my clit in achingly, torturously slow circles, driving my body up toward something it had only experienced from my own hands that, it seemed, were not as adequate because they never brought the havoc on my body like Ty's did.
My chest, already tight, got tighter. My breasts felt heavy. My nipples hardened enough that the brush of my bra sent off sizzles of need. The pressure on my lower stomach was impossible to ignore, demanding more, everything.
My hips rocked, trying to get there faster, trying to make him give me immediate relief from the clawing need growing stronger with each passing second.
"Ty, please," I begged, my nails digging crescents into the side of his neck, ones that would likely bruise, leave marks, something that seemed to excite me all the more. Marking him. Letting everyone know I had been there, that we had shared something.
At the sound of my pleading, Ty's hands moved suddenly, sinking into my hips, turning me, lifting me up off my feet, planting me up on the counter as he lowered down, burying his face between my thighs before my mind could even wrap itself around what his intentions were.
His hands planted on my thighs, holding them wide for him as his tongue slid up my cleft, finding my clit, circling it again but faster, harder, more demanding, driving me up harder, faster.
One arm rose above me, grabbing the cupboard, sure I was about to fall off the counter. The other slapped down on the back of Ty's neck, holding him to me though he showed no signs of planning to pull away.
I could feel my muscles tightening, my breath catching, my body pushed to the edge before his lips closed around my clit, sucking hard, pushing me that one last bit, sending me flying, falling, crashing through the orgasm.
Teeth nipped my inner thigh.
That was what seemed to bring me back into my body, looking down with half opened eyes to watch as Ty kissed down my thigh slowly before getting back onto his feet, moving his whole body into the space between my spread legs, both hands going up, framing the sides of my head as his lips pressed down on mine.
Not hard and demanding.
Soft, sweet, coaxing, seeming to sense my need to slowly ease back after an orgasm that had felt like it had torn me apart for a long moment.
My arms rose, wrapped around his back, held him to me as my lips demanded more.
I wasn't sure how long we stayed like that, only that my lips tingled when he finally pulled away, his hands sliding down my back, over my thighs, grabbing me under the thighs, wrapping my legs around his lower back.
My legs tightened, holding on as he moved a few steps backward, his hands moving back up my thighs to cup my ass, holding me against him as he turned, walking out of the kitchen, making his way down the hall I had emerged from hours earlier.
Only hours.
It felt like a lifetime.
That was, after all, what we had shared with each other since then. Every soaring high and crushing low. Every scar and wound. Every hope, every crushed dream. Every secret and public shame.
I felt I knew Ty better than I had ever known Tanner, better than I knew my own brothers in a way. You protected your family from things, from your unattractive parts, not wanting them to see those parts of you, to think of you differently because of them, wanting their love always to be pure, pretty. And, well, no person was pure and pretty. We all had dirt, all had ugly.
I had Ty's dirt and his ugly.
He had mine.
He suddenly didn't feel like a guy I had just met a week or so before.
A low, surprised laugh escaped him, making me pull back, look down at him.
"This is a fuckuva lot of pink, babe," he informed me, making me cast a look around at the space I had never given too much thought to before. I figured this, being his only guest room, was likely where Jelena spent a lot of her time before I showed up. And Thad had likely painted it bright pink to suit her. And bought her pink sheets. And a pink and purple comforter.
"I barely noticed," I admitted, squinting a bit at the garishness of it all.
"I'm bringing sheets next time," he declared, dropping his ass down on my bed with me still straddling him.
Next time.
That didn't exactly escape me.
It was my last real remaining worry.
The idea of a one-night-stand. In getting attached because he was the first man who had put hands on me in a decade, because he gave my body what it needed. And then having him want nothing to do with me once he got a taste.
"And maybe sunglasses," he added, hands squeezing my ass playfully.
Feeling oddly charmed by the lightness, the familiarity of the moment, I felt oddly emboldened, planting my hands on his chest for balance as I slid off his lap, dropping down onto my knees between his spread legs.
My gaze found his as my hands planted on his thighs, slowly moved upward, finding the button of his pants, then the zip, working them free, watching as his eyes went hooded with need.
Taking a steadying breath, hoping that enthusiasm made up for a lack of experience, my hands reached for the tight boxer briefs beneath, slipping them down, freeing his cock, finding it every bit as intimidating as I figured it might be, but feeling nothing but a thrill inside as my hand closed around him, stroking him to the hilt before leaning forward, tracing my tongue around his head before closing my lips around him, sucking him into my mouth.
A hiss burst from him as I worked him as deep as I could, his hand slamming down on the back of my neck, holding me, but letting me set the pace, letting me find our rhythm.
His hand got tighter and tighter, crushing in, likely leaving bruises that would be hard to explain except for with the truth.
But before I could drive him through an orgasm like he had given me, his hand slipped into my hair, tugging, pulling back until his cock left my mouth with a little pop, making my eyes shoot upward, finding his jaw tense, his breathing ragged.
Close.
He had been so close.
But he wasn't going to let me have the satisfaction of giving a selfless orgasm. At least not this time.
"Stand up," he demanded, voice somehow soft, yet brooking no argument at the same time, making my legs curl under me and move upward without me seeming to give them the demand to do so.
His hands snagged my hem again, slowly dragging it upward, having to lift off the bed slightly to pull it over my shoulders, up my arms, over my head, tossing it to the ground behind me.
I was suddenly very aware of my lack of panties, at only my bra hiding a part of me from view.
His hands went behind my back, sliding upward, grabbing the clasps of my bra.
Insecurity was a sudden, almost forgotten thing. My body had been nothing but a vehicle for so long that the idea of someone else seeing, touching, judging it was foreign, but strong, visceral, an uncomfortable fist closing around my belly.
The clasp tightened, then released, the bra straps slipping down my arms.
"Come here," he demanded, grabbing my wrist, pulling me forward. Sensing my hesitation, or simply wanting me closer, I wasn't sure. But he pulled me back onto his lap, his hand discarding my bra before, unexpectedly, his arms raised to his sides, inviting me to free him to my view.
Greediness overtook me, crushing down my insecurity with curiosity.
My hands slid down his sides, already feeling the muscles beneath, moving down to slip inward, find his bottom button, working my way slowly upward, eating up the view of each sliver of skin as it got exposed until there was a gap all the way up. I planted my hands at his shoulders, pushing the material wide to slide down his arms.
I knew, of course, that he was well-built.
But knowing it and seeing it were two very different things.
His skin pulled tight over muscles you could sink a finger between. He wasn't flawless. Pink and off-white scars marred his chest, his arms. There was one particularly long, deep one that seemed to go straight up his stomach. But somehow, I found the flaws all the more attractive, little testaments to the life he had lived, the experiences that had shaped him into the man he grew to be.
My finger moved to trace down the largest scar.
"Knife," he declared quietly as I watched in fascination as his muscles contracted under my touch.
"Ouch."
"Mmhm," he agreed, his hand moving up my side, sliding over my ribs carefully - so, it seemed, as not to tickle me, then moving inward, covering my admittedly less than a handful breast, his thumb moving out to stroke over the hardened peak in a way that made all thoughts of things such as insecurity scramble out of my brain.
"This one?" I asked, touching one that slipped across his left pectoral muscle.
"Piece of pavement ripped me up during a fight."
"And... oh," I whimpered as his thumb and forefinger grabbed my nipple, turning it in a delicious circle.
A cocky, sexy smile pulled at his lips as his head ducked, sucking the other peak into his mouth, sucking hard enough to arch my back, trying to get more of the sensation as the need rekindled in my system. He worked one, then the other, before suddenly taking his feet, turning, tossing me down onto the bed, making me bounce with a small laugh before I noticed him kicking out of his shoes, then his pants.
There was nothing to laugh about at seeing Ty standing there before me, naked, straining, looking down at me with hunger in his eyes.
My breath caught for a moment as he lowered down, his face level with my belly, his lips pressing down into the skin, making goosebumps prickle up over me, working slowly upward, between my breasts, over the side of my neck.
His arms slid up to rest at my sides, balancing some of his weight, then pressing the rest of it against me.
This.
This was what my body, mind, soul had been craving. Not just the orgasms, the touch, the scrape of skin, the sweat, the weight of a man pressing down on me.
My legs folded around his lower back. My hands slid over his broad shoulders, down the slope of his back, pulling him more firmly against me, begging for more of him even as his lips found mine, his teeth nipping, his tongue seeking mine.
Mindless with need, my hips thrust upward against him, demanding more, wanting an end to the hollowness deep inside, something only he could fill.
"Hold on, baby girl, hold on. I need to get..." he started to tell me, trying to pull away as I dragged him closer, as I whimpered my protest.
"Nightstand," I told him, my lips pressing into his neck as he turned to find the small pile Thad had left there for just this reason.
If he was amused by their presence, by the idea that I had wanted and prepared for this moment, he didn't let on as he snagged a foil, nipping the edge with his teeth, then making short work of protecting us before his weight pressed into me once again.
His lips came into mine as his hand went between us, stroking his cock up my cleft, rubbing against my clit for a moment before moving downward again, pressing.
Pressing.
My lips ripped from his, my eyes seeking his as the pressure became something a little uncomfortable, just a slight searing, a pinching as he pushed inside me. Just an inch or two, pausing, giving my body a minute to adjust to a foreign invasion, waiting, it seemed, until my need overtook my body's hesitation, until my hips shifted around impatiently.
Another inch or two.
The resistance, the pinching giving way to something else, something deep, aching in a more delicious way, wanting more, wanting everything.
My nails raked down his back as my hips moved upward, taking him fully, demanding motion. Which he happily gave, slow and deliberate at first - just shy of careful, then building, harder, faster.
"That's it," Ty growled, sinking in more roughly, deeply as my walls tightened around him. "Come for me, baby," he demanded.
As if my body had been seeking permission all along, the orgasm slammed suddenly through me, dragging me down wave after wave, crying out his name, clinging with arms and legs as he worked me through it, dragged it out, before settling deep, coming with my name on his lips.
I wasn't sure how long we stayed exactly like that. Long enough for the aftershocks to subside, for our breathing to settle, our heartbeats to return to normal.
"Gotta let me up, babe," Ty told me, pushing against the mattress, pulling against my hold.
With a grumble, my legs and arms fell away.
A shiver coursed through me as the cool air met my heated skin while Ty got to his feet, turned, giving me the glorious view of his ass for a moment as he walked away, found my ridiculous guest kimono, wrapping it around his waist like a towel as he moved out into the hall.
I heard the door close in the bathroom, scrambling up in the bed, sliding under the sheets, feeling suddenly insecure now that the heated part of the evening was over.
I wasn't entirely sure how this would go once he came back. If he would grab for his clothes, quickly dress, get out of here as fast as he could.
The idea made a hollow space open up in my belly.
But as I heard footsteps in the hall again, I schooled my features into something neutral - or so I hoped - before the door opened and he walked back in.
He came to the side of the bed, but didn't reach down, seek his clothes. Instead, he dropped the kimono with the rest of the discarded clothes, grabbed the edge of the sheets, pulled them up, and slipped underneath with me.
His arm moved around my back, curling me onto his chest, staying around me as an anchor as I allowed myself to sink into him.
"So," he said a long moment later. "I'm not sure how long is an appropriate amount of time to let pass before asking this... but... those brownies..."
Of all the ways I had maybe envisioned the events after sex for the first time in a decade, getting up to bake brownies in the nude, then climbing back into bed to eat them with Ty was not even in the realm of possibilities.
But it ended up being the truth.
And it was better than anything I could have chosen myself.
Way better.