Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
G enesis…
I guess prison or death wasn’t honestly the thing I needed to worry about most when it came to keeping us apart.
Work seemed to be doing just fine in the following days.
I had to work an extra day, mandatory overtime, but Chainsaw was kept up on a line job that was far enough upstate that he’d had to get a hotel.
That part sucked. Even though it’d only been a couple of nights, I’d gotten used to draping myself over his body. The scars on his shoulder that’d first brought us together years ago had become a comforting thing beneath my fingertips, a touchstone to how everything could be so much different.
I got into my car at the end of my last shift before two, what should have been three, glorious days off, and drove myself home. I parked and went up the back steps, where Charlie boy met me, twining himself around my legs and whining for his dinner.
“Come on, kitto, let’s get you some wet food,” I murmured and went into the house.
It was too quiet, and I wondered if and when he might make it here, considering I hadn’t heard from him since hours and hours ago when he’d said he’d finally finished up and was on his way to me.
I was midway through getting Charlie his food out of the tin when my phone started vibrating with Chainsaw flashing across the screen.
I snatched up the phone, abandoning Charlie’s dinner for just as long as it took me to answer it, which incensed my cat to the point that when I answered the phone, it sounded a lot like, “Hell – Have you lost your little fuzzy mind!?”
Chainsaw’s laughter boomed in my ear over the line even as Charlie was jumping right back down off the counter to lick at the mess of his wet food now splattered against my cabinets and lying in a soggy lump against part of my kitchen rug.
“Sorry,” I said. “Charlie just dumped his dinner all over the kitchen floor.”
“It’s all good, baby.”
“You, okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, baby, yeah! I’m all good. I stopped by the bayou house to get some things, and the gang’s all here. They got a big seafood boil going on and a bonfire. Wanted to see if you were up for comin’ out here tonight?”
I thought about it and said after a long pause, “How far is it, again?”
He gave me the address, and I put it into my GPS while Charlie worked on his dinner mess at my feet. About an hour, not too bad… I made the decision.
“Am I good to stay there with you tonight? I don’t think I’ll have it in me to get all the way out there and back.”
“You got it, baby. Whatever you want.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let me clean up after Charlie and throw some things together and I’ll be out.”
“Sounds good. Drive safe for me,” he said.
“Bet,” I told him back. “See you soon.”
He hesitated, a pregnant pause, and finally said, “Bye for now.” It felt like he’d wanted to say more. I felt that. I really did.
The call ended, and I looked at the cold, impersonal, generic screen that simply flashed his name and number until the screen went dark. I wanted a picture of him. Stupid couple’s shit, you know?
Was all of this moving incredibly fast? Yes, but despite the speed of it all and how it may or may not look to any outsiders, it was completely comfortable, except for the notion of outside judgment occurring.
I quickly handled Charlie’s mess and went into the bedroom, throwing some random shit into my tote – clean underwear and the basics – before I took the time to change out of my scrubs and into something more appropriate for a biker bonfire party.
I made sure Charlie was secure for the night and got into my car for the long drive, checking my GPS and making sure everything was right.
I listened to music and sang along to some of it.
When I turned down the rural highway at the edge of the swamp, I spotted the orange glow from the road.
The glint of my headlights off the chrome of the line of bikes let me know that this was, for sure, the place I’d been with Chainsaw only days, if not a week before.
I pulled up, and he was already halfway across the yard coming toward me, before I came to a complete stop, let alone put it in park.
He opened my door for me just as soon as I’d turned off the car and the door locks unlatched.
He reached down a hand and pulled me into his arms just as soon as I could swing my legs out to stand up, and that kiss? That kiss felt just like coming home.
“Here,” he murmured. “Give me that.” He took my tote bag from me and led me over to the fire.
“Hi!”
“Hey there!” some of the girls and guys called practically in unison.
“Beer?” Cypress asked me, pulling one out of the cooler and holding it up.
“My endless gratitude,” I said, taking it from him, only to have Collier take it from me and use a bottle opener on his keys to pop the top for me and hand it back.
“Find a seat, baby. I’m going to go put this up in the house.” Chainsaw kissed my temple, and I went over to the two empty seats next to one another left open by the fire.
“Long day?” Hex asked.
“Very,” I said.
“I can’t even imagine what that’s like, being a doctor, much less in an emergency room ,” Alina said from LaCroix’s lap, taking a swig from the neck of her bottle.
“Fulfilling on a good day, devastating on a bad one,” I said honestly.
A woman I hadn’t met yet, sitting next to Collier, laughed and said, “Sounds like bein’ that one’s mother.” She gestured to a teen boy. “’An that one’s sister.” She gestured to Cypress.
I chuckled and introduced myself. “Genesis Bordelon.”
She smiled at me and said, “Jessie-Lou Gaudet.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” I said.
“Velina,” a woman said, coming back from the house and dropping into the seat between me and Saint.
“Genesis, most people just call me Gen.”
“Sweet, welcome to the madhouse,” she said, and there were light chuckles that swept around the fire.
It was a balm to the soul, just chilling after a long day by the swamp.
Chainsaw sprayed me down with Avon’s Skin So Soft , swearing by its mosquito-repelling properties, and, like ReJeanne had with her Alka-Seltzer for a bladder infection, by God, he too was right.
I didn’t think I had a single one land on me, and it smelled a hell of a lot better than any of the brand-name actual mosquito repellants on the market.
The food was up not long after I arrived, and it was fucking amazing , the only way South Louisiana home-cooked Cajun seafood boil can be.
I’d say crawfish boil, which the boil was made of predominantly, sure, but there was also shrimp, crab, of course, corn, potatoes, and spicy homemade sausage.
I came across a chunk of flesh that I didn’t recognize immediately and asked what it was.
Cypress said around a mouthful, “Fresh gator, caught this mornin’. ”
I’d eaten gator before, so it was no thing for me, and it was pretty damn good. Especially washed down with the cold, hoppy beer we were drinking.
Chainsaw held my hand, fingers laced and hanging between our camp chairs when we weren’t eating, and it was pleasant, like our hands were meant for each other. Still, as the evening wore on, the deeper the night became, all I wished for, despite the good company, was a rest in my lover’s arms.
He led me to the house, arm around me, letting me lean on him.
The front steps of the porch creaked beneath our feet, and the screen door screeched on its hinges.
It was an old place, just on the edge of the bayou, and I wondered briefly as I followed him through the house to his bedroom, what it might be like to live outside the city.
I loved my little one-bedroom, but it was expensive, and I wasn’t sure about the long-term sustainability of two of us living in it.
It wasn’t anything to concern myself with now , but I was constantly thinking of my future.
A big part of what I wanted for my future was stability.
A home no one could take away from me, no matter what, was a big part of that.
He shut the bedroom door behind me, and I found my tote sitting on the made bed. It was a bachelor’s pad in here – the walls bare, the carpet clean – or as clean as it could get for being so old. It was threadbare, and that pea soup green that was popular in the seventies.
“Got a lot of big thoughts going on up there, huh, baby?” he asked me, coming up behind me and putting his hands on my waist. I leaned back into him and closed my eyes, putting my hand up to caress the side of his muscular neck.
“Not so very many,” I said. “I’m just tired .”
“Yeah, I bet,” he said, and he was already gathering the hem of my tee in his hands. Without him even having to ask, I raised my hands above my head to let him take the shirt.
I turned around and shoved gently at his cut, taking it off him with the reverence that I knew it deserved and asking softly, “Where do you usually hang this when you’re here?”
He took it from my hands gently and twisted, dropping it onto a hook set that was one of those you hung over the door.
My tee he discarded on a chair next to the cluttered dresser that seemed to be more of a laundry catcher than something anyone actually sat in.
I wrapped my arms around his waist over his soft, faded-black TOOL band tee with the sleeves cut off, and he touched me like I liked, his hands on my face, stroking my cheeks with his thumbs, and looking at me in that way that he tended to look at me.
Like I was one of the seven wonders of the world standing just in front of him…
which was crazy, but made me feel so beautiful, and cherished. I loved how he looked at me that way.
“I love the way you look at me,” he murmured, and I laughed softly just as he lowered his head to touch his lips to mine.
I whispered against his mouth, “Get out of my head.” Then we were kissing, and even though it’d only been something like two days, God, how I’d missed him.
I pressed myself against him and lifted the hem of his tee as much to return the effort he’d already placed into undressing me as to get more contact.
I wasn’t cold by any means, not with the warm and sultry night outside, but I loved his warmth, his heat against my body, and I’d been craving it like nothing else the last couple of days without him.
He hummed, a pleased sound against my mouth, at my hands against his skin, and I couldn’t keep the expression of joy off my lips with how they curled up in a smile against his.
Once again, our clothes fell a piece at a time, like leaves falling from the trees, or petals from a flower past its prime, until we were both nude, hands wandering, lips exploring, and Chainsaw was walking me back toward his bed.
It was old, the bed, and squeaked and creaked as it took our weight, but I didn’t care if he didn’t.
We kissed, and touched, and played along each other’s bodies, looking for the things that made one another tick.
He had the upper hand due to his sheer size over mine, and before I knew it, I was on my back and he was between my knees, kissing his way down my chest, my stomach, and settling between my thighs.
He looked up the length of my body, as though silently asking for permission.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back and acquiesced, trusting, silently giving myself over to whatever his whim might be, though you can guess I had a good idea.
His tongue was magic .
He made this slow, lazy lapping at my sex and started off soft, gentle, almost teasing me, and I couldn’t get enough.
I threw an arm over my eyes and rolled my hips, and his arm crossed them and pressed me to the bed, intensifying his attentions in that most intimate place that set the world on fire .
Oh God, the things this man could make me feel. It was a raging inferno as compared to the sparks from any other… I loved his hands on my body, his mouth on my pussy, his fingers inside of me, curling just so against that spot .
He drove me nuts and brought me to peaks and pinnacles I didn’t think were possible, and with those heights came the feral cries and sounds pouring from my throat.
Sounds I don’t think I had ever made before.
Sounds that brought an echoing cheer of “Woohoo!” from one of his brothers outside the bedroom door in the hallway, as he went into the bathroom out there and left both me and Chainsaw in a fit of giggles in his bed.
At least what giggles we could make between our panting breaths.
I was languid and relatively still beneath him as he climbed my body with soft, butterfly kisses of his lips, his beard dragging against my skin so lightly it tickled and made me lose it, giggling and twisting to get away, which he wouldn’t let me.
His laughter was a deep roll of thunder, subtle and from a distance as he held me in place and continued his sweet and innocent tickle torture until our mouths were clashing.
He pressed me into the bed, his thick cock pressing at my opening and sinking into my wet heat, slipping into me as if I were made for him, and turning my laughter into a gasp and a throaty moan.
I loved the way he loved me like this, patiently, with a sense of duty and care; slowly, and with an intensity that made me sigh, relax beneath him, and feel so safe . Like nothing out there could or would get to me.
It felt so good in these moments, and it was as if it went beyond just our bodies touching, but rather something deep within our souls.
The words slipped out from beneath my lips on a shuddering sigh as I came with that amazing wash of sensation through me. “God, I think I love you…” Just as soon as they escaped, I froze beneath him, tightening up with horror at the confession I’d just made aloud.
Chainsaw chuckled and kissed the side of my neck, nuzzling behind my ear as he whispered into it, “Relax, baby… I know I’ve loved you for years.”
Oh. Oh, my… what does that mean? I thought.