Everleigh…

I didn’t know what had possessed us, but there was no going back now. Problem was, I didn’t want to go back. Ever. I wanted to see where this would lead but I was afraid. Not for me, but for him. I mean, weren’t there rules against sleeping with a witness during an active investigation? Granted, I was a willing participant, and I do mean ‒absolutely‒ willing. It was a lovely summer evening, the dulcet sound of insect song and rushing water the perfect backdrop for what I was doing. The citronella candles burning around us cast his skin in golden light, and my fingertips lovingly traced his tattoos as he looked up at me.

I was straddling his hips, nude, letting the outdoor air wash over my skin as I reached between us and raised his cock up off his stomach so I could slip him inside me.

I couldn’t remember ever being so aroused before. I mean, I was positively dripping wet with my eagerness to make love to him and he was so gentle, so perfect, and so kind about it. He was easy on me, his hands splayed across my hips, smoothing over my skin like he’d never felt anything so soft.

My nipples pebbled in the slightly cooler air out here and I threw my head back and gasped, working my body up and down his shaft, gripping him with my pussy as I rolled my hips. I felt like I was part of the divine like this. Like we were performing for the ancient gods and goddesses, the moon our witness to this rite, this offering of our joined bodies.

I felt as free as I’d ever been, and worshiped by this man beneath me, all-powerful, a goddess in my own right. It was beautiful, a powerful feeling like no other. Spectacular and winsome, I wanted to feel like this forever and the promise of it was reflected in his eyes, but I’d had promises before, and promises were meant to be broken.

“Like that,” he whispered. “Just like that, babe.”

“Yeah?” I whispered back, gently.

“Oh, yeah. I want to remember you like this forever. Every time I think of you, I want to see you just like this, wild, beautiful, and free. Body bathed in golden light, fire in your heart showing just behind those cat-green eyes of yours.”

His words stole my breath, his body took mine to heights it’d never been, and I wanted it. I wanted to stay just like this forever and ever, and so tonight, I let myself believe.

“God, Everleigh, you’ve got me under your spell,” he growled when I bent over him, and he buried his hand in my hair and dragged my mouth to his. He kissed me with such a fiery passion it sparked flame through my soul, spreading through my veins, and I swore I rose like a phoenix from the ashes and I soared.

“Oh, God, yes!” I gasped, and I came, my pussy gently pulsing around his cock. Not as intense as before, but lasting; it felt like I flew for hours without ever having left the ground.

I drifted lazily in the afterglow, hazy, warm, safe and held fast in his arms and I vaguely remember my voice asking him, “What happens tomorrow?”

He chuckled, the vibration of it thrumming through my body and he said back, “Tomorrow you’ll still be you and I’ll still be me, and I’ll still be here with you, and I’ll still feel the same. You’ll be safe, and we’ll make this place better, together. Sound good?”

I nodded against his shoulder, my body limp where it was draped over his, my eyes too heavy to keep open. I mumbled, “Sounds good,” and it was the last thing I remember until the sun came up the next morning, casting fire through my eyelids.

I moaned and shifted and realized I was in bed, alone, but then something blocked the sun and cool glass was pressed into the palm of my right hand.

“Morning, babe. Here, drink this. I’m afraid you might be a touch dehydrated.”

I cracked one eyelid and immediately fell in love with the sexy smirk on his lips, half-hidden by his beard, which I loved but was in desperate need of a trim. I pushed myself up with my other hand and hissed at the twinge in both it, and between my legs.

Good sex will do that to you, Everleigh. I smiled and drank down half of the quart Mason jar full of water he’d given me.

“That’s my girl,” he murmured. “How you feel?”

“Well-fucked,” I smiled warmly and he laughed.

“Glad I could be of service.” He cocked his head to the side and traced his middle finger across my forehead and behind my ear, taking the hair that’d been in half my face with the gesture so that he could see me. He heaved a satisfied sigh and whispered, “There’s my beautiful girl.”

I felt myself blush and his smile grew.

I shook my head and said, “I don’t feel beautiful.”

“Mm, why do you say that?” he asked.

I heaved a heavy sigh and said, “I just feel… broken.”

“Well, I feel special that you’ve decided you’re comfortable enough to speak with me.”

I smiled and asked, “How much do you know about selective mutism?”

“Nothing, other than there’s nothing physically wrong with your voice. You can talk, you just choose not to.”

I shook my head and bit my lips together for a second before I started to cry. It was so frustrating and humiliating talking about it. I cleared my throat, which was trying to close on me, my anxiety starting to bubble to the surface. I forced the words out and tried not to choke on them.

“Th-that’s not exactly it. It’s not that I choose not to, it’s literally that I can’t. It’s a severe form of anxiety, of f-f-fear and it’s like it chokes me. It strangles me and cuts off my voice, my air, and I c-c-can’t!” I covered my face with my hands and not for the first time thought to myself savagely, Why can’t you just be normal! Except the words took on my father’s voice, my mother’s scornful tone and the mocking cries of the children I’d gone to school with on the playground and finally in the halls.

The only person who hadn’t treated me like a freak had been my grandfather, and he’d died when I was thirteen. My last escape, my only beacon of light in an otherwise dark existence had disappeared.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” he soothed, smearing the errant tear that escaped my lashes across my cheek. “You don’t have to explain anything to me that you can’t or don’t want to, babe.”

“I-I-I want to, though.”

He nodded and smiled at me and it was one of those perfect smiles that meant exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.

“So how come you’re talking to me now, huh?”

I shrugged a little helplessly and said, “I guess that part of my brain that’s defective is comfortable with you. I have to be completely comfortable and at ease for the words to come.”

He nodded slowly and I could tell he was thinking.

“Didn’t anybody try to get you any help for this as a kid?”

I shook my head.

“Where are you from, anyway?”

“Indiana.”

He nodded some more, his eyes unfocused and distant as he puzzled through something, and I waited with bated breath for what he would say. He finally came back to himself and smiled at me and said, “I’m not sure what to do to make things easier for you.”

I smiled and shook my head and said, “I get along just fine.”

His smile grew into a grin and he said, “You got that right. You’re one hell of a woman, Everleigh. A force to be reckoned with. Voiceless, sure, but still the loudest personality in the room. I knew it the moment I saw you.”

I wrinkled my nose and said, “You don’t have to compliment me every five minutes. I don’t need it.”

He chuckled and smacked a kiss against my lips and said, “Oh, I think you do.” He got up with a gusty sigh and said, “Feel like a day off from this place?”

I frowned and drank more of my water, lowering the jar and asking, “What did you have in mind?”

“A hike. There’s a swimming hole, complete with a little waterfall, around a mile or so up the river.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t brave enough to go that far.”

“Good, you shouldn’t go that far, not without me, anyway. You ever want to, I’m happy to go with you.”

I smiled and said, “You’re so accommodating.”

“I’d follow you into hell if you asked me.”

“Why?”

He shrugged and said, “I think it started off as guilt, but now? It’s something else. Something better, but I don’t really have the words for it.”

I shifted slightly uncomfortable with the turn in conversation. He saw it and smiled again, switching topic back to hiking.

“You got better shoes, and maybe, not skirts for this?”

I nodded. “The boots I came here in, and I have a pair of shorts and some blouses.”

“That’ll do. Hungry?”

I was starving. He laughed at the look on my face and said, “I’ll fix breakfast.”

“Thank you,” I murmured and he went inside the cabin.

I finished my water and got out the clothes I would need for this trek. I did go in and take a quick shower, mostly to rinse off the sex of the night before. The best sex was always messy and left you sticky the next morning, and the sex we’d had was definitely fun and, as such, had ended up being exceptionally messy.

I dressed quietly and went out to warm toast with butter and honey and a plate full of eggs and bacon. I smiled appreciatively as I wound my hair up on top of my head in a tight bun and used a hair elastic to secure it.

“Smells good.”

The smile he bestowed upon me when I spoke was enough to send a rush of pleasure through my body, an echo from the night before. I smiled and blushed faintly and slipped into my seat at the table.

“Feel okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

“A little sore, but if you aren’t a little bit by the next morning, I feel like you didn’t do it right, you know?”

He laughed and said, “There’s the wild child.”

I wrinkled my nose and asked, “What do you mean?”

He chewed his bite of food and swallowed before saying, “A pretty girl like you doesn’t manage to hook up with the likes of the Knights of Crescentia by accident. You have to have a bit of a wild streak in you to stay with a biker.”

I nodded carefully, realizing he wasn’t judging, just merely making an observation.

“I come from a town a little bigger than this one,” I said. “Which is to say, ‘boring’, or at least, it was to teenage me. I couldn’t wait to get out, and neither could my best friend Mariah. This biker gang, the Steel Wraiths, rolled into town and spent a rowdy night in Mariah’s bar. We weren’t even old enough to drink or serve liquor, but again, small town.”

“How old were you?” he asked me.

“I was just a few days shy of eighteen, Mariah was eighteen.”

“You graduate high school?” he asked and I pursed my lips and shook my head.

“That’s surprising,” he remarked. “You’re smart as hell to know what you do out here. What’s edible and what’s not.”

I smiled. “I learned all of that way before high school,” I said. “My grandfather taught me what to forage for and how to hunt until he got too sick to do it anymore.”

“And the thing with the honey?” he asked. “Was that your grandpa, too?”

I smiled big and nodded. “He used to keep hives but he taught me how to deal with wild hives, too.”

“That’s an impressive skill.”

“Not particularly useful outside this scenario, though.”

“I guess not,” he said ruefully. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get us sidetracked.”

“It’s okay.”

I told him about how Mariah and I blew town with the Steel Wraiths and how we’d ended up connecting with the Knights of Crescentia. He listened carefully, a pensive look on his face and nodded when I ran out of things to say.

“Sounds like life back at the old homestead was real bad for you.”

I nodded. “I’m guessing you’re saying that because life with outlaw bikers was so much better by comparison.” I rolled my eyes some, but there was some merit to the assumption.

He nodded and said, “When those outlaw bikers are like King, yeah.”

I looked away and sighed, saying, “He wasn’t always like he is now.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.” He leaned back in his chair, the creaking sound it made bringing me back around to look at him. “Abusers are always charming at first, telling you what you want to hear, making you feel important… then when they get comfortable, and their true selves start to come out, the gas lighting starts and the manipulation and the bullshit until it gets so heavy – “

“You’re so afraid and so hopeless, you think you can never dig out. You’re afraid of what they might do if you tried and who they might hurt if you leave and they can’t find you… I know,” I said softly.

“You’re a real smart girl, Everleigh.”

“That’s the problem, though… I am a girl.” I sighed.

“Part of it, I’ll agree. Not all of it, though. Part of it falls on your folks. How you were raised.”

“Or wasn’t, in my case,” I said sardonically.

He nodded carefully.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, babe. This is just the first day in the rest of your life.”

I cocked my head slightly and regarded him, really thinking about what he was saying.

“I suppose so,” I said, strangely bolstered, emboldened by the thought.

“Carpe diem,” he said with a shrug.

“Seize the day?”

He nodded.

Don’t mind if I do.

I smiled, and said, “Let me grab my basket and put a few things together.”

“What, like a picnic? Good idea.”

I smiled and put together some sandwiches, wrapping them in aluminum foil since that was all we had. I filled a couple of quart Mason jars with water; we had, like, a million of them around here, and put lids on them, screwing them down tight with their accompanying rings. It was supposed to be hot today, like it had been every other day since our arrival. It was definitely the dog days of summer out there and I almost couldn’t wait for fall to arrive. I loved my boots-and-sweater weather. It was my favorite season, and all too short.

“Let me grab a couple towels,” he said and disappeared around the corner towards the bathroom. I slipped an empty jelly jar into the basket to collect the honey for Nora in, and when he handed me the towels, I tucked one around the jars to stabilize them, and the other I draped over the top of the basket.

“All set then?” he asked, and I nodded and took his offered hand. He linked his fingers gently between mine and brought the back of my hand carefully to his lips. He looked solemn as he gently laid his lips against the mark in the back of the hand he held and closed his eyes. A look akin to grief crossed his face and I stepped closer and sighed.

“You had to do it, or we’d both be dead. I get that, now,” I murmured and his eyes, a darker green than my own, more earthy, more real, locked onto mine. He didn’t speak, and I knew the feeling, I could read the fear and anxiety on his face and in his eyes. I mean, what do you say to the person you nailed to a tree a couple of weeks ago, then nailed in bed last night? ‘Complicated’ didn’t even begin to cover it.

I gently took my hand from his and laid it against his bearded cheek. I wished there was some kind of way to say this without words, because words just didn’t seem to do these kinds of emotion justice.

“I forgive you,” I said. “I don’t know how long it will take for you to forgive yourself, though, and that seems to be the bigger problem here.”

He sighed and let out a shaky laugh, his smile quickly dissipating. He searched my face and said, “Honestly? Probably never.”

I nodded and tucked myself against his chest, loosely putting my arms around his waist. He sighed and put his arms around me and held me close for a minute before rubbing my back lightly through my blouse and taking a step back. He held me loosely by my shoulders and said, “I promise, no one will ever hurt you like that again.”

I smiled and said, “I know, you’ve said.”

“I mean it. I need you to know that I mean it. I mean really mean it, Everleigh. Never again. It’d have to be literally over my dead body.”

I put my fingertips against his lips in a soft touch, “Shh, don’t talk like that. I more than kind-of like this, whatever this is we’ve got going on between us. It’s nice. It feels… I don’t know… real. Like, realer than anything I’ve felt before.”

He nodded and I took my fingertips away.

“I was thinking the same thing,” he said and swallowed.

I smiled, uncomfortable with deeply-emotional revelations of any kind. I said, “I’m really looking forward to cooling off. I’m happy to follow your lead, so lead away.”

He chuckled and nodded, hooking a hand behind my head, his thumb caressing lightly just behind my ear and he leaned forward and kissed my forehead. My eyes drifted shut and I shivered lightly as a sense of peace and well-being descended on me. It was gone as soon as he took a step back and I fought not to sigh. Instead, I smiled and motioned toward the back door, “After you.”

“Ladies first,” he murmured, holding it open for me.

“There’s a lady here?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Ah, she found her voice and now you got jokes. Nice.”

I wrinkled my nose and grinned at him, and stepped onto the back porch. The heavy mood of the moment before was lifting and lightening the more we stepped out of the shadows of the cabin and its porch and into the sun. By the time we reached the river’s edge and trekked to the easy-to-cross shallows, we were laughing again, baiting one another with harmless barbs, engaging in witty repartee.

It’d been a long time since I’d felt so relaxed, so completely at ease with another person, let alone a man. The last person I could so easily talk to was Mariah, but I hadn’t seen her in at least two years.

It was refreshing, a welcome change, and one I hoped wouldn’t be fleeting, even though I didn’t hold out much hope that it could be anything other than a brief interlude of happiness for me. Nothing good ever seemed to last and I didn’t want to fool myself into thinking it would, or could. Instead, I tried not to let the anxiety, the constant sense of foreboding I always had anytime I thought of the future, ruin what I had right now.

“Wait!” I cried, and he stopped and turned, once we had crossed the river.

“What is it?”

I smiled and bit my bottom lip, excited to share this part of me with him, he cocked his head, a half-grin taking up residence on his own lips, a smile I found incredibly sexy and endearing and one I noticed him turning on me with more and more frequency.

“This way; I’ll show you.” I held out my hand to him and he backtracked to me and took it. I didn’t hesitate, stepping off the riverside trail and into the woods beyond.

“Where are we going?” he asked after a few minutes and I laughed lightly.

“We’re almost there, I promise. Do you hear that?”

He stopped, dragging back on my hand and listened, a puzzled look on his face furrowing his brow, which smoothed when his eyebrows went up and he realized what he was listening to.

“Oh, I don’t know, Ev…”

“Relax, you won’t get stung, just come here.” I tugged on his hand and he followed. I just needed him to take something like six more steps to our left to bring the tree and the hive into view.

“Holy shit,” he muttered and I smiled.

“Just stay right here, and don’t move,” I told him. I knelt and flipped the towel covering the basket off the top. I dug out the kitchen knife I’d stashed against the side and the jelly jar, and took off the latter’s ring and lid.

“Hold these for me?” I handed them up and he took them, his eyes a bit wide, looking at the huge hive in the cleft of the dead tree.

“Everleigh, I really don’t think – “

“Relax,” I said and stood up. “It’s fine, really.” I turned and went and did my thing. My grandfather had always said the more fear you exuded, the more you fussed, the likelier you were to get stung, and so I approached the hive slowly and deliberately, the way I’d been taught.

Of course, my grandfather had mostly worked with hives he kept in boxes, but when bees moved into houses and attics, he went and rescued the hives, until he couldn’t do it anymore. I’d tried to keep up with his hives when he’d died, but I couldn’t.

I swallowed, my eyes misting. I felt closest to him when I put the knowledge and lessons he’d given me to good use, like now.

I carefully cut a bit of comb, thick with honey, from the edge of the hive and put it into the jar. I cut another bit of comb and squeezed the honey from it, the bees buzzing around me. I listened to them for agitation, careful not to upset them terribly. I managed to get away without being stung, this time. I’d been less lucky last time, but I had still been lucky in that neither time I’d visited the hive had the bees swarmed on me.

I turned back to Narcos triumphantly, and carefully and slowly stepped down off the gnarled root I used to stand on to get to the part of the hive I harvested from. He watched me, silent, apprehension on his face as I walked slowly back to him.

“Wow,” was all he said as I handed the jar to him.

“Cap that for me, please? I need to rinse my hands back at the river, I’m afraid I’m a bit sticky.” I winked at him and he laughed lightly and secured the lid on the jar.

“That was a trip,” he said. “Where’d you learn how to do that?”

“My grandfather was a beekeeper.”

“Huh.”

He tucked the jar back in the basket and draped the towel over it, taking up the basket without being asked.

I held out my hand, my fingertips coated in thick, golden honey.

“Want a taste?”

He gave me a devilish look and took my middle and ring fingertips into his mouth, sucking them gently.

I’d been teasing, sure, but he was much better at it, the look in his eyes powerful and raw, leaving an ache at the apex of my thighs that had nothing to do with any residual soreness from our lovemaking the night before.

“Mm, never had it fresh from the hive before,” he murmured.

“Glad I could be a first for something,” I whispered, breathless.

The look he gave me was seriously intense when he said softly, “You’re a first for a lot of things when it comes to me, Ev.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He stepped into me and lowered his mouth to mine, the kiss sweet and thick with the honey he’d just sucked from my fingers.

I made a small noise into his mouth, my knees weak, my heart thundering in my chest. I swooned, and he caught me around the waist with one strong arm as I held my sticky hands and kitchen knife out from us.

This man was amazing, and I much preferred him to Whiskey, wishing I could have met the real him much longer ago and without all the fuss and danger that was the Knights of Crescentia. I kissed him back with every bit of passion and arousal that I felt when I was with him and wished that this could be a forever kind of love, that a happily-ever-after with him could be a thing… but I knew better.

If you lost a shoe at midnight, you were drunk, not a fairy tale princess. Fairy tales didn’t exist, not for girls like me. For now, though? For now, I would just let myself pretend.