Fourteen
Amelia
The rest of the evening went off without much incident. Johnnie made some more phone calls; some of them he took in front of me and some he excused himself into the hall for. We fetched my bag from my car. I took a shower. I got into bed. Johnnie stayed up on his laptop doing who-knew-what. We didn't speak much. He either didn't notice the sudden decline in my mood or he was letting me have my space. Either way, I was thankful for it. He came to bed sometime late, the sunrise a whisper across the sky. My body, unaccustomed to someone getting into a bed while I was in it, jolted awake violently, my heart slamming hard in my chest before I could even register where I was, that I was safe.
"It's me, angel. Go back to sleep," Johnnie murmured into the crook of my neck as his body slid around mine.
I knew I should have told him to move away; I knew that I needed to keep him at a distance both metaphorically and literally, but it felt nice to just be held. It felt comfortable and easy and safe. So I let out the breath I was holding and I did what I was told; I went back to sleep.
I woke up in the morning, Johnnie's body still behind me, his heavy arm draped over me. I looked down at it for a long moment as the last traces of sleep slipped away, trying to memorize every tattoo stabbed into his skin. I did this for a long time before I realized what I was doing and gently lifted his arm and slid out from under it, going to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. I was creeping around the side of the bed, ducking down to grab fresh clothes out of my bag when I was tagged from behind, a strong arm wrapping around my belly and pulling me backward until I was sitting on his lap as he sat off the edge of the bed.
His face went into my neck, planting a kiss there that sent off a flutter of butterflies in my belly. It was too early; I hadn't had a chance to slip my guards back around me yet. "You get up early," he said and it sounded like an accusation.
"You go to bed late," I countered as his hand slid slightly upward and the bottoms of his fingers were resting just under my breasts.
"Working," he said simply as his hand moved up to brush my hair out of the way.
"On stuff about Luis? Did you find anything out?" I asked, grasping at anything that would pull my focus away from how his warm breath on my neck was making me go melty inside again.
"Don't want to talk about that now."
"I don't think..." I started, but didn't finish because suddenly, his hand was covering my breast and squeezing.
"That's a good idea. Don't think. Just feel," he said, his thumb and forefinger rolling my nipple until it was a straining, almost painful peak. My head fell back on his shoulder as his other hand drifted up to engage my other breast in the same exquisite torture. My back arched into his touch, my breasts feeling oddly heavy as a rush of wet pooled between my thighs. His head tilted down and his tongue ran the length of my neck as one of his hands moved a trail down my belly and pressed between my thighs, stroking me over the material of my pajama pants. My thighs parted in invitation and his fingers moved up to slip down under the waistband of my pants and panties until his fingers stroked over me- light, teasing, like he had all the time in the world, like it wasn't driving me half-crazy.
His finger moved downward and pressed inside, making a low groan escape my parted lips. His thrusts were every bit as needy as his exploration of my clit. He pulled outward, then pressed two fingers in, making me flinch.
"Shh, relax angel," he murmured and I exhaled a breath, leaning back against him. His fingers got more insistent, thrusting, then twirling, crooking upward to find my G-spot. But he never gave me enough to push me over that edge, just enough to leave me teetering there, caught at the cusp of oblivion. I felt myself tightening around him and he slowly pulled away.
"No..." I whimpered helplessly, slapping my hands down on his thighs.
"Stand up, baby," he said softly, pushing my hips forward until I reluctantly followed orders, turning to face him as his hands moved up to snag my shirt and started pulling the material up. My hands moved up to grab his wrists, stilling the motion. His head tilted to the side, his eyes intense. "I want to see you, honey." Maybe it was the softness in his voice or the honesty in his gaze, but my hands released his wrists and moved up over my head so he could slide my shirt free, leaving me standing there naked from the waist up, the urge strong to wrap my hands around my breasts. But then his fingers were sliding across them gently, adoringly, and the thought slipped away as his hands went to the waistband of my pants, snagged it and my panties, and pulled down. I stepped out of the feet and Johnnie sat back slightly, shaking his head at me as I fretted about what I was supposed to do with my hands.
"Johnnie, I..." I didn't know what to say, but I needed him to stop looking at me like that, like he could do it all day, like there was nothing he would rather do.
"Perfect, Amelia," he said, pushing off the bed to stand up, his body just inches from mine, his fingers trailing up my bare sides before pulling me against him, our bare skin touching from hips to shoulders, sending a shiver through my body. His fingers trailed down my spine, drifted over the flesh of my bottom, then moved to rest at my hips as his lips came down to mine, soft, pressing there for only a second before pulling away. "We can stop now. I know this is quick," he said, again being the good guy. And, somehow, that was why I knew I didn't want to stop- because he seemed like he would be happy either way; because there was no expectations; because I knew there was not another man on Earth who would be half as considerate as he was being right that moment.
And there was no denying it; I wanted him. I wanted him from the moment I laid eyes on him. I wanted him every time he called me 'angel' or 'baby' or 'darlin''. I wanted him every time his smile slanted in my direction. I wanted him. So what if it was temporary? Everything is temporary given enough time. What good would it do to deny myself this? He was already in; I already had the Johnnie -shaped cutout inside my chest somewhere. It was going to hurt no matter what when he left. So why not give this to myself?
"I don't want to stop," I said, my voice barely loud enough to even be considered a whisper, but his body jerked in surprise and I knew he heard me. "I..." I swallowed hard against the awkwardness of admitting the truth and forced the words out, "I want you."
His chest inflated as his eyes closed for a second. The air left him slowly and a hand moved up to cup my jaw. "We stop anytime you say the word. Okay?"
I felt myself nod before my arms finally went up and around his shoulders, holding him close. His hardness pressed against me, his swishy shorts material doing nothing to contain him. His arms wrapped me up and squeezed me as his body turned me and lowered me onto the mattress, his following me down, covering me, one of his knees pressing between my thighs, both his arms balancing his weight as his lips pressed down to mine, deep and long and wet. His mouth trailed down my jaw, then toward my neck, my head moving to the side to beg for more.
I'd felt him between my thighs just the night before; I felt his tongue lavishing over me and, at the time, I never thought anything could feel more intimate, but the way he was gently worshiping over every exposed inch of my skin, slowly, like he was committing it to memory, this was intimacy. His head shifted downward and took one of my nipples into his mouth, sucking lightly before running his tongue over it, his tongue ring making an occasional pass, sending off an electric shot of desire at every stroke. My hand moved out, trailing across the back of his neck, the other gliding down his back. His head tilted and moved over my chest to tease my other nipple as he moved to balance his weight on one arm. His free hand trailed back down my body, slipping a finger easily back inside me and driving me back upward, faster. He slipped another finger inside, doing the thrusting, twirling thing again and I realized as his mouth left my breast and started moving down my stomach, that he was stretching me. He was preparing me. His head reached the triangle above my sex and soon all thoughts disappeared as his lips closed around my clit.
My feet planted on the mattress, my hips rising up with each thrust of his fingers, trying to drive myself closer. But then he was lifting his head up, moving over my body again, his lips teasing mine for a minute as his fingers kept up their slow torment. "You sure?" he asked, his voice a gruff whisper as he pushed up to look down at me.
Looking up into his eyes, I had never been more sure of anything before. "Yes," I said, moving a hand up to cup his jaw like he did to me and he turned his head and kissed my palm gently before pulling his fingers from me and moving off the bed. He opened a drawer in his bedside table, pulling out a silver condom wrapper and slipping his shorts down his hips. I got my first glimpse of his hard length as he stroked it once, bent slightly forward as he slid the condom down himself then turned back toward me, kneeling at the edge of the bed for a second before slowly moving over me again.
"Nervous?" he asked as he settled between my spread legs and I felt his erection lay against my sex. There was that, in the coiled sensation in my stomach, in the erratic pulse in my throat, wrists, temples. But, more than that, there was want, there was curiosity. I felt my head nod a little and he leaned down and kissed the tip of my nose. "I'm gonna take good care of you, baby," he murmured and his hips rocked, making his hardness stroke over my cleft, hitting my clit in a delicious new sensation. I felt another rush of wetness as my hands slapped down on his shoulders, curling in slightly as his hand slid between us, grabbing himself and positioning at the entrance to my body, holding there, just a firm pressure before the pressure became slightly more, a pinching, a burning sensation that had my body jerking upward. "I know," he murmured, leaning down and kissing my lips gently. "Breathe, honey," he instructed as the pinching, burning sensation intensified and I felt him sliding inside me. I exhaled a breath that shook as my fingers stopped gripping his back and moved to press against his shoulders, not sure if I wanted to push him away or hold on.
His hand released himself and I felt his finger move up to circle my clit again. He pressed forward slightly, bringing another wave of pain that he quickly distracted me from with a swipe of his finger. He paused halfway in, leaning down and taking my lips. "You okay?" he murmured against them, rocking his hips in a way that they never quite pulled away or thrust forward, just created a friction inside that dulled the ache.
My eyes opened slowly to see his face, a slight tension around his eyes, a heat in the green depths. And I realized I was. It hurt. It was a foreign, uncomfortable sensation that was half-pain and half-unfamiliarity, but it wasn't like I had been expecting. It wasn't the blinding, shattering pain my college roommate described experiencing when she was sixteen, losing her virginity in the backseat of a car to a boy who didn't know or didn't care about her discomfort. This was the twinge of newness, of my body stretching to accommodate someone who was taking the time to allow it to do so.
Unsure how to explain, I let my lips curve up slightly and his did the same. "You feel good, darlin'," he murmured, the rocking becoming more of a movement than before and I felt him press slightly forward every few strokes, but the friction was doing something, was creating a kind of straining need that eased and overpowered the pain. My knees closed around his hips; my hands moved toward his back, digging in again. Another thrust forward and I felt his hips press against mine and he gave me another smile. Mine matched his when I realized he was fully inside me, the feeling something I couldn't quite describe, like a foreign fullness that my body had ached for all along without me realizing it, like my body had been waiting for it. My legs wrapped around his hips, driving him a little deeper on a throaty gasp.
"Johnnie," I whimpered, knowing he knew what I needed, knowing he was waiting for permission to give it to me.
His lips claimed mine and he gave it to me. It was slow at first, mindful of the soreness, increasing only when my hips ground into him, begging for more. He released my lips, watching my face as his hand slipped between us again, moving over my overly sensitive clit and I felt my sex clench around him. "Come for me, Amy," he demanded, his body tense with the need for his own release. I wasn't sure I could, but then his finger swiped again and the tightening threatened painful as his hips rocked again and I... crashed. My entire body spasmed at impact, my sex convulsing on a wave of pleasure that felt intensified by the fullness there.
"John... nie..." I choked out my fingers raking into the skin of his back.
He made a sort of growling noise, thrusting through, his finger just as unrelenting until my body collapsed back onto the mattress and he buried deep, his face pressing into my neck, and groaned out my name as he came. His weight came down on me for a long minute as his strength slowly seeped back through his system. His lips kissed my neck as he slowly lifted up, his finger moving across my cheek. My heavy eyes fluttered open to find him looking down at me with a gaze that held a weight I didn't understand. "Baby..." he said, his voice filled with something that was akin to wonder.
That was when I felt it break- the little piece of a guard I had left. It simply shattered. I felt a tear slip out of my eye, moving down my temple toward my hairline. Johnnie's hand moved upward and brushed it away. "Sad tear or happy tear?" he asked, maybe struggling to understand my emotions as much as I was.
"I don't know," I answered honestly and his face softened as he slowly moved out of me, giving me an apologetic look when I tensed. He moved away for the barest of minutes, disposing of the condom before he moved into the bed beside me, rolling onto his back and pulling me until I was resting across his chest, my head tucked under his chin. One of his hands went heavy across my hips, the other moved up to stroke softly through my hair.
"Know what I do know, angel?" he asked softly and went on when I shook my head. "I know that that was the most meaningful sex I've ever had."
Meaningful.
That word held a lot of weight.
It was meaningful. It meant something to him.
It meant something to me too, but that was to be expected.
It meant even more to me that it meant something to him.
Maybe it was worth the shock of my shields crumbling to feel how I did right that moment: content, safe, borderline happy, maybe a little... cherished.
"You okay?" he asked, and if I wasn't mistaken, there was a trace of worry there.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat and kissed his chest. "Yes."
"Hurt," he observed.
"Yes," I agreed because, well, it did.
"Still perfect."
"Yes," I agreed again because, well, it was.
"You don't regret it?" he asked and the worry was there again.
Hearing it, hearing a man like Johnnie say it, someone as laid back and carefree as him sound worried, it made me want to ease it. I pushed up on his chest, my hair falling like a curtain until his hands moved out to stroke it behind my ears. "I'll never regret that," I said in a voice that was mine, but wasn't. It was sweeter, more vulnerable.
The tension slipped from his face and he gave me a very Johnnie grin. "She can cook," he said, talking to the ceiling. "She can bake. She can look at all this," he said, gesturing toward his body, "and say, 'eh, don't see what the big deal is'. She can be hard and prickly and soft and sweet and she can love me like that... fuck..." he finished his little speech, shaking his head.
Something deep inside me violently tensed at the word love, like it was fighting against it, like it was trying to deny the very existence of the word.
He didn't mean it like that. He would never mean it like that.
"Uh oh," Johnnie said, his hand going up to press into the lines between my brows. "She's thinking again."
I huffed out an airy laugh that wasn't really a laugh. "I do that sometimes."
"Well knock it off," he said teasingly, lifting his brows at me.
This time, the laugh was a laugh and I lowered myself down on his chest, my ear right above the steady thumping of his heart.
The silence stretched for a long time, his hands sifting through my hair tirelessly, my body relaxing into the sensation. "Tell me about your parents," he said softly a while later, the question making me jerk in his arm, but he held me against him. "Angel, I'm already in. Stop trying so hard to keep me away."
I felt my breath hiss out, the urge to tell him stronger than anything I had felt in a long time. And he was right; he was in, in every way imaginable. What more damage could it cause by sharing? "My mom wasn't always a drunk," I started easily, the moment she picked up a bottle with the intention to drown something in it being the springboard for most of my life story. "Up until I was six, she was just a normal mom. She cooked and baked. She helped me with school work. She waited on my dad hand and foot. Then one day, she picked up a bottle. And she didn't put it down except when it was empty. It was gin. That was her drink of choice. Gin straight out of the bottle. I always remember thinking her breath kind of smelled like Christmas... you know... because of the juniper berries," I explained and his hands just kept their stroking. "Anyway. She drank and drank and drank. She forgot to cook and clean and bake and help with homework. And she did nothing but fall at my father's feet and cry." I swallowed hard at the memory that was coming, the bad one, the one that made me never want to feel that way again.
"Then one night, I walked out to find her like that, her hands wrapped around my father's leg, sobbing, as he just kept walking toward the door, dragging her with him. And I saw that he had a bag in his hands. Not his briefcase for work, a big suitcase. And I was little and I don't think I fully comprehended what was happening except I knew that that bag was for when you were going away. He was going away and... and he never told me he was going anywhere. And my mother just kept crying, saying he couldn't do that to her, he couldn't leave her, that if he loved her, he couldn't leave her. He yanked back from her, getting his leg free. His hand hit the doorknob and his head jerked up to see me standing there. He stared at me for a second and then... then he was gone."
His hand stop stroking, but only because both of them moved to wrap me up tight. "What happened after?"
I felt my shoulder shrug. "Nothing. Everything. Life went on. I guess child support checks came in because we never needed to move. The lights never got shut off. Mom always had booze money. She kept searching for answers at the bottom of empty bottles and I kept on... keeping on. I went to school and did my homework. I tried to keep anyone from finding out the truth."
"So you kept anyone from getting to know you at all," he guessed correctly.
"Yeah."
"Baby..."
I shook my head at his sympathy. I couldn't take any more goodness out of him. "Then I was eighteen and angry and confused and on a mission to understand..."
"Understand what?"
"Addiction? What, exactly, had allowed my mother to throw her life away and, in a lot of ways, mine as well. I was so hateful and resentful and I wanted to not feel that way."
"You got there, baby," he said with a squeeze.
"Yeah. But by that time, mom had drank herself into an early grave," I said, the words coming out almost dismissively and I winced at them.
"How old were you?"
"Twenty-one."
"Baby..."
"It's fine," I said, shaking my head, trying to shake it off. "Plenty of people had it worse. Johnnie, you had it worse."
"Amelia, it ain't a contest," he said simply and I realized that was how I always viewed it. Like, yes, my mother was a drunk, but at least she didn't whore herself out for drug money like so-and-so's mom; or, It sucked that my dad walked out and left me with an addict for a mom, but at least he didn't stick around and molest me like so-and-so's dad. I was always trying to belittle my story because someone else had a more horrific one, as if trying to convince myself that my damage wasn't as worthy of acknowledgment.
"How come you came out so well adjusted?" I asked out loud, not meaning to.
At that, I got a small chuckle. "Baby, I shoot people for a living. What about that suggests I am well adjusted?"
"That's not what I mean..."
"What do you mean?"
"Johnnie, your dad knocked out your baby teeth. He made your life hell for fifteen years. How do you not greet every morning with anger?"
"Honey, what he did to me, that wasn't about me; that was about him. I ain't taking his damage on as my own."
"But doesn't it bother you that he did that? That he took of his pain or anger or whatever on you when you were too young to defend yourself?"
"Sure. And when I was younger, I took that shit out on the dickheads in town who dared try to tease me about it. I took it out on them; though it wasn't about them. Just like my Pops did to me. And I didn't stop doing that until I got away, until I met Break, until I saw there was more to life than the anger and resentment."
"So you could just... magically let it go?" I scoffed.
"Might have helped that Break employed me to help bust faces for a while. Anger creeps up, you bleed that out so it doesn't poison you."
"You think I let it poison me?" I asked, suddenly too concerned with his opinion of me.
"I think you want it to poison you," he countered, making me stiffen. "I think you want it raging through your veins so that if anyone tries to get under your skin, it gets on them too." He paused, his fingers squeezing me as if to soften the blow of his words. "I think you spend your life walking away first, before people... before men come to the conclusion that you aren't worth staying for. I think you learned that lesson from your father young and I think you believe it; I think you put your faith to rest in it; I think you can't imagine a world where a man could want to be with you."
I closed my eyes tight against his words, against the truth of them, against the knowledge that he, once again, got me.
I was in so, so much trouble.
God, it was going to hurt when he became one of the ones I had to walk away from first.
"Come on baby, that's enough of that for today," he said, knifing upward suddenly, taking me with him and I whimpered against the soreness the jostling caused. Johnnie winced, kissing my forehead in apology as he gently set me on my feet. "You wanna take a shower?" he asked and I nodded. "Alone?" he asked, knowing that was what I wanted, but I nodded anyway. He patted my ass a little with a nod. "Try as much as you want, honey," he said, slipping into his shorts again, "but those shields are in pieces. You ain't getting them back up."
I felt the tears pool behind my eyes and rushed into the bathroom, slamming the door before he could see them. I brought my hands up to press the heels of my palms into my eyes as I let the first waves of emotions rush through me. I turned slightly, looking at myself in the mirror and taking a deep breath. "Pull it together," I demanded my reflection, moving to turn the water in the shower on.
So I showered.
And I pulled it together.
Sort-of.
When I got out of the shower, I wrapped the towel tight around my body and went in search of new clothes. I had just shimmied into the only other pants I brought with me: jean shorty shorts (why I even owned so many shorty shorts when I hated my thighs was beyond me, but I did) and a plain black tee, when I heard male voices. Meaning, not just Johnnie's. I finger-combed my hair and made my way to the doorway, pausing to listen for the barest of seconds, trying to make out if it was a familiar voice or not. Everything was muffled through the door so I reached for it and walked out, trying to look like I hadn't heard any voices ahead of time, like I was just innocently walking out of the bedroom.
But I was barely a foot out of the doorway when I froze.
Because it wasn't just two voices in the living room. No. It was five voices. One of those voices belonged to Johnnie; another voice was Cash's; yet another was Paine's; the fourth was Breaker's; the final voice belonged to a giant hulk of a man I had never seen before with a dark beard and freakishly light honey-colored eyes.
And those eyes were on me.
In fact, all five sets of eyes were on me.
And five sets of lips were quirked up at the same time too.
There were five incredibly attractive men with their whole bad-boy auras in the living room watching me with knowing gazes.
I think my heart froze in my chest.
Holy hot-guy overload.
"Angel," Johnnie's voice reached me and my head jerked in his direction. "Come here," he said, sitting on the arm of the couch and patting his knee. I hesitated, already feeling like everyone knew a bit too much about what transpired with me and Johnnie. They didn't need to see me all perched on his lap too. "We have some stuff to tell you," he said, and there was a collective tension in the air again. And, well, I needed to hear what they had to tell me. If that meant I needed to sit on Johnnie's lap to hear that, well, that was just a perk. I mean... a necessary evil.