Twenty- One
Ava
I woke up the next morning with my limbs tightly wrapped around Travis. I breathed in his scent, allowing it to wrap around my body. I loved waking up to the feel of him. His musky morning scent sent my body buzzing, ready for more as my nipples puckered against his skin. He shifted, his lips allowing a small groan to slip from between them. I grinned as I snuggled against his skin, thinking about our activities from the night before.
I fell in and out of sleep numerous times before I woke up to his eyes staring back at mine. I smiled at him, stretching my legs as his thighs flexed around one of them. I giggled and placed a kiss on the tip of his nose, watching him lazily smile at me as my vision focused. He was the carved statue of a god, with his chiseled muscles and his perfect little grin.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning to you, too,” I said.
“How’d you sleep?”
“Great,” I said. “I hope you slept well?”
“I seem to do that a lot when you’re around.”
“Glad I could be of service,” I said.
“I know you have to head back today…”
“I do,” I said. “There’s just… still a lot that has to happen. Things with my father are nowhere near settled and I’m worried about the amount of time I’m spending away from home. I don’t want his anger needlessly backlashing on my brothers. That isn’t fair to them.”
“But it shouldn’t be backlashing onto you, either,” he said. “You aren’t the focus of his anger. His own self-righteousness is.”
“But he doesn’t know that yet. And until then, I have to be. I want to be an adult. To make my own decisions and be seen as an equal. That means I can’t run from stuff like this. I know what’s happening, I know how my father will react, and I have to protect my brothers from it. They have supported me and my needs for years. What would it look like if I wasn’t there to provide this for them?”
“I’m worried about you. That’s all,” he said.
“I’ll be okay. The next time I can get out to see you, I’ll come over. I promise.”
“Will you at least let me make you breakfast?”
“Oh, I wasn’t going anywhere before food. I need sustenance after last night.”
The grin that peeled across his face was positively devious.
“One big breakfast coming up,” he said.
We rolled ourselves from bed and I made my way to the bathroom to clean up. I took a shower, allowing the hot water to flood the room and permeate my skin. I washed our crusted adventures from my thighs, feeling a twinge of disappointment. I enjoyed being marked by him. I enjoyed evidence of his body on mine. I washed my hair with a bit of his shampoo and conditioned it well, then I dried myself off as the smells of breakfast wafted around my head.
My stomach growled at the scents. Bacon and ham, eggs with cheese and buttered toast. I inhaled the aromas of jams and peanut butter, coffee brewed and orange juice fluttered above it all. I quickly pulled my clothes on and strode for the kitchen, gawking at the sight of the massive breakfast Travis had cooked for us.
For me.
“Hope you’re hungry,” he said.
His back was bare to me, flexing with his movements at the stove as I licked my lips
“Oh yes,” I said. “Very hungry.”
“Then sit. I’ve got some vegetables I’m frying up to add to the eggs, then I’ll grab the pot of coffee.”
“Want me to do anything?” I asked.
“Yes. I want you to sit and enjoy yourself.”
The two of us sat down at the table and ate. I tried to make conversation with him, but every time I took a bite of food I moaned. It cut off every sentence I tried to make as the grin on Travis’ face grew, and soon I gave up conversation altogether in favor of eating.
“I take it everything’s good?” he asked.
“Hell yeah, it is,” I said.
“What’s your favorite?”
“Those vegetables in the eggs, for sure.”
“Next time, I’ll make us some homemade pancakes. I can do chocolate chips in them, or blueberries, or swirl it with cinnamon and top it with cinnamon roll icing.”
“Keep talking like that and I won’t go,” I said.
“Keep threatening that and I’ll keep talking,” he said.
My eyes panned up toward him as I took a bite of my toast. His beautiful gaze was locked onto mine, reflecting the sunrise streaming through the cabin windows. His chest was strong and luscious. Glistening in the light of the morning sun as his forearms perched on the table. If I concentrated hard enough, I could still smell him. I could smell his skin and feel his lips against my neck. Goosebumps rose up on my arms as I remembered the swell of his chest against mine. The way his hips locked perfectly between my legs. The way his lips wrapped around my nipples and the way his beard tickled the insides of my thighs.
I shook myself from my trance and took another bite of my eggs.
“I need this recipe,” I said.
“Just some vegetables sauteed with some garlic, pepper, and salt,” he said.
“That easy, huh?” I asked.
“There might be another ingredient, but if I told you I’d have to kill you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you. It’s fabulous either way, so go you.”
“Go me,” he said with a chuckle.
We finished our breakfast and I helped him clear the table. We washed dishes side by side, him scrubbing and me drying. I wiped down the table as he put the dishes away as the looming deadline of my leaving crept up on us. Soon, there would be nothing else for either of us to do and I would have to leave his cabin.
“You drive safe, okay? And you can come back anytime you want,” Travis said.
“I know. I’ll be back soon. I just… have things I have to straighten out there. I can’t just abandon my family. An adult doesn’t do that.”
“No,” he said. “No, they don’t. Just keep yourself safe. Guard yourself. Don’t let yourself slip.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
I stood there on his porch, debating on what to do next. The tension was palpable between us. I could see it rising his cock. It started to press against his pajama pants, tenting them slightly as my nipples puckered. I wanted to press my hands into his bare chest and slam him to the floor. I wanted to connect my lips with his and taste the sweetness of his coffee-tainted breath.
But I knew I had to get home. I knew I still had unfinished business.
“Talk to you later,” I said as I turned to go.
Travis, however, reached out for my arm and twirled me back around. Our lips collided together as he pulled me close, my hands pressing into the beauty of his skin. They snaked around his neck, my back arching my body into him as our tongues wrapped together. I shook in his arms as my knees grew weak, his body holding me up when I could no longer hold my own weight.
The kiss left me breathlessly as he sat me back down onto my feet.
“Drive safe,” Travis said.
The entire ride home, I thought of him. Of that kiss. Of his body. Of the way it was so easy to talk with him. I smiled at the memories we had created as I pulled up into my home, but the presence of my parents on the porch poured dread over my entire body. I saw my brothers standing at the window, gazing out over the spectacle with worry and anger boiling over their faces.
Something had happened.
Something had taken place while I was gone.
I got out of the car while it was still running and approached my parents on the porch. My mother had her eyes pointed to her feet as my father’s eyes penetrated to my soul. I reached out for my mother, wanting to take her hand just so she would look at me.
I’d seen this a few times before, and I knew it wasn’t going to be good. No matter what was about to happen, my mother was wracked with guilt.
The last time I saw her like this was when my father had denied me the right to a proper education in favor of getting me to date and marry the first time.
“Since you already have your bags packed and in your car, then this will be quick,” my father said.
“What will be quick?” I asked.
“I’m not sure what in the world has gotten into you, but I know someone who can sort it out. My sister does wonders for the women in our family. I’ve placed a call to her.”
“You called Aunt Myrtle?” I asked.
“She’s expecting you,” he said. “The family is headed back to Seattle in a few days, but you will be heading to Spokane.”
“I’m not going to Aunt Myrtle’s,” I said.
“Well, you’re most certainly not coming home with us. My sister will be able to figure out what in the world has gotten into my beautiful daughter, and when she corrects it, she will send you home.”
“There’s nothing to be corrected. You’re just pissed that I have my own free will and I’m finally discovering it.”
“That is enough. I am your father and those clothes on your back are mine. I have provided you with everything. A home. A room. Food. An education. Suitable men who could’ve loved you had you given them the chance and the ability to free yourself of the working class. I gave you a life of ease and luxury, and it turned you into a petulant, selfish child.”
“There’s no need for name calling,” my mother said.
“You will do well to stay silent during this,” my father said. “Part of this lies on your shoulders. On how you were so hell bent on shielding her from me when I could’ve corrected this before it ever escalated to this point. You failed your daughter. I suggest you start coping with that.”
“You don’t get to talk to her that way, she has nothing to do with this,” I said.
“All daughters get their dispositions from their mothers,” he said.
“No, they don’t. And you can’t force me to go anywhere,” I said.
“I can, and I will. Aunt Myrtle put Bernard on the road an hour and a half ago. He will be here any second to follow you to their home.”
“Uncle Bernard is going to tail me all the way to Spokane,” I said.
“He will. Once you learn to clean up your act and become the respectful and obedient daughter I know I raised—”
“Mother raised me. You had nothing to do with it.”
“Then you will be permitted to come home and take your rightful place within this family.”
I heard a car rumbling up the driveway and my stomach sank. My brothers stood in the window, their eyes dripping with anger. I turned around and saw my uncle getting out of the car, a stern expression on his face as he walked toward us.
“Are you ready?” my uncle asked me.
“Yep. I was just leaving,” I said.
I stormed off to my car as tears crested my eyes. What the fuck was happening? How the hell had things gotten so screwed up? I slammed myself into my car and waited, watching as my father and my uncle interacted briefly. My mother’s head rose from the porch, her eyes locking with mine as a redness crossed her cheeks.
I couldn’t blame her for what was going on. No matter how much the childish side of me wanted to. I knew I was going to face obstacles if I stood up to my father. I knew I was going to encounter terrible tasks I’d have to accomplish in order to be freed. And while the prospect of spending time with Aunt Myrtle terrified me, I knew I could do this.
This was the escape I had been looking for, even though it was hard to see past the hell I would be in once I got to Spokane. My aunt was a stickler for tradition. So much so that she used old school techniques to get people to fall in line. Corporal punishment was something she stirred into her morning tea, but it was almost hypocritical in a way. Everyone knew that Aunt Myrtle ran her household, even though she was “just a wife and mother.” All of my cousins had fallen in line and led perfect lives because of how she had raised them, but I knew they were all secretly terrified of her.
But getting out from underneath her meant I had already gotten out from underneath my parents. If my father was desperate enough to send me away to a house like hers, then it meant he had run out of options. In an odd way, I had defeated my parents. I had pushed them to their limits and this was their way of washing their hands of my future.
Now, all I had to do was make sure Aunt Myrtle did the same.