Chapter 28
28
Grim
Time passes differently in places like Fire & Heart Inn. At first it seems to slow, then it grinds to a halt and you’re suddenly stuck in this world that the real world doesn’t touch in any meaningful way. That’s because anything goes in places like this. Because freedom in its rawest form lives here. And it’s often a dirty, horrible thing. But sometimes she’s magnificent too.
Or maybe I’m just feeling that way because of Scorpio and this newfound youth he’s somehow managed to drag from me. I haven’t looked forward to the rest of my life for years. And now, since coming here, I woke up one morning and I did. And he has a lot to do with it. Karma too, the way she’s transformed back into the young woman in love with her freedom that I first fell in love with. That’s the best I can explain it. But I do also know that the picture isn’t complete. I want more. I want all of him. And when I want something, I don’t stop until I have it.
I’ve been making that known to him too and it’s not been going well.
The day is just starting, the light coming through the open window a soft yellow, the kind that makes things appear picture- perfect and somehow unreal, even as it shows you everything you ever wanted.
We only just fell asleep, I’m in the middle of the large bed, Karma to my right, Scorpio on my left. I like the feel of their naked bodies pressed against me. It’s good enough to lull me back to sleep if I wanted that.
But a nightmare that is actually a memory woke me and I know it’s waiting for me to close my eyes again. It shows me Reaper dead before I could spend more than half my life with him and the pain gripping my chest when I wake up is worse than what I felt holding his lifeless body under that bridge. I’ve had this nightmare for decades and I’ve told no one about it. Usually, it comes every night in one form or another. Except for the past few nights that I’ve fallen asleep with them both in my arms. But it came back tonight.
So maybe if I take it all the way, wipe away the lines keeping us separate, it’ll never come again. Blame my sleep deprived mind for thinking it. Or maybe it’s the way Scorpio’s skin is always so wonderfully warm. The kind of warm that I’m thinking could keep me warm too, even in the dead of winter. Or maybe it’s just the fact that I’m sporting some great morning wood and I don’t want it to go to waste.
He’s sleeping on his stomach beside me, the sheet draped low over his ass, showing the grooves where the muscles of the back give way to the rolling mounds. Not something I can just look at without touching. So I roll to my side and run my hand down his back, tracing the hard muscles from his shoulders down to the sheet. Even in sleep, he doesn’t relax fully. I’ve noticed that. I want to change it.
Predictably, my soft touch doesn’t wake him, so I spend some time admiring his biceps and triceps, delts, and all those other muscles I never bothered learning the names of. Anything from the waist up, I can touch. It’s what’s under the sheet that he keeps from me. Unless it’s his cock which he has no problem feeding to me. As long as he’s in control. But he’s a giving sort of man. And I’ve been patient. Especially for a guy who has no patience for anything.
He stirs as I wrap my hand around his arm, needing a stronger grip on his firmness. But I let my touch get soft again as I slide my hand down his back, not stopping at the edge of the sheet this time. He doesn’t let me touch his ass, and maybe that’s why I need to so much. Or maybe it’s just because it’s such a prime example of what a guy’s ass should be. Round and firm in all the right places, perfectly proportionate to the rest of his flowing, hard muscles, yet softer somehow, more inviting. The flesh gives way to my hand, the skin here warmer somehow than the rest of it. Definitely good enough to fight for.
Didn’t think I’d have to though. But his elbow in my ribs says different.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he hisses, glaring at me like he wasn’t just sleeping soundly.
I can’t speak because I’m still catching my breath. He got me good.
“We had this fucking conversation a hundred times already,” he says and rolls off the bed. “It’s still no.”
He starts dressing in a hurry, his movements jerky like he’s not fully in control of them. Karma is now sitting up beside me, blinking as she looks from me to him, confusion slowly turning to sadness in her eyes.
“What the hell fucked you up so bad?” I ask, rubbing my side. “I was just touching.”
I probably should’ve just gone for a straight up apology. At least that’s what his glare right before he slams the door on his way out said. And it’s what the look in Karma’s eyes is telling me too.
“You and your lack of patience,” she says. “Can’t you just wait for him?”
I sit on the edge of the bed, run my fingers through my hair and really think about the question.
“I can’t be with a guy if I can’t be with him.” I get up and start dressing.
“Maybe you should let him cool off,” she says.
“Cooling off isn’t gonna fix this. I’m gonna have a talk with him.”
I just wish I knew what the hell I’m gonna say. That’s her question too, as I’m leaving the room, but I ignore it for precisely that reason.
The misty morning sunlight isn’t so nice and soft outside. It pierces my eyes like a nuclear explosion as it reflects off the metal of all the bikes parked out front. The bar is soothingly dark though, but Scorpio’s not there. Probably because a group of guys and girls are having a loud orgy over by the pool tables. I don’t want this stark reminder of what the three of us could be doing upstairs instead of me having to chase after him, because he’s acting like a hysterical woman. But that’s harsh. If I really meant it, I wouldn’t be out here chasing him.
I don’t see his bike right away when I come back outside, which makes me sad as I think that maybe he rode off and I’ll have to wait to deliver this apology. Or whatever the fuck I’m doing. I haven’t figured it out yet. But then I spot his bike parked at the edge of the building and a few moments later, I find him in our spot by the back wall, sitting on the dirt with an open bottle of bourbon next to him.
He leaps to his feet as he sees me, every one of those muscles of his that I want to still be touching tight and poised for a fight.
“What do you want?” he asks.
I raise my hands up in surrender and keep on walking towards him. “I wanna know.”
“Know what?” he asks, relaxing slightly.
“Why you won’t let me fuck you,” I say and it sounds cheap coming out like that. What I actually want to know is why he won’t surrender himself to me fully like I know we both want. Why he won’t let me make love to him. But I said what I said.
He scoffs and shakes his head. “You think it’s this special thing… like you’ll be conquering me and taking my virginity…”
I sit down next to his bottle, while he remains standing, still all tight and wanting to fight. It’s not what I want.
“That’s not what I was thinking at all.”
He scoffs again. “Don’t lie.”
He’s got me figured out, there’s no two ways about it. But what is surprising is how much I don’t mind it at all that he has.
“You’re way too late for that, by the way,” he says and sits down too, but too far from me to touch. Not that I’d dare to do that yet, anyway.
“So if you’re not afraid of taking my cock, what’s the problem?” I ask, inwardly cringing because none of what I’m saying is coming out like I want it to. “I won’t hurt you.”
He just looks at me, and I can’t tell if it’s in outrage or pain or nightmares or something else entirely. The way the color of his eyes is shifting, like clouds racing across the summer sky, I’m thinking it’s all of that.
“You’re not gonna let this go are you?” he finally asks. “You’re not just gonna be satisfied with a no.”
Karma is coming towards us now and I’m sure she heard his question. Good, I guess. Because she needs to hear this answer too. If there’s a future.
“Probably not,” I say, surprised at my middle of the road sentiment. But the thing is, I want him. Even if that means taking what I can get. “But it won’t be as good as it could be.”
Karma glances at me, but then locks eyes with him, eager to see how this plays out, I suppose. She knows me well enough to know I’m saying exactly what I mean.
“Fine, you wanna know everything?” he says. The ways his eyes are flashing reminds me of the eyes of a cornered man, ready to fight to the end. Or more like the eyes of a lunatic. “Then maybe you’ll fucking drop this. But you also won’t want me the same way.”
Karma slides to the ground next to him and takes his hands in hers. “That won’t happen. Ever.”
The feeling in her voice can’t be lost on him, it’s like a rushing river of need and want and love and all those good things. But he shakes his head anyway and frees his hands from her grip.
“Maybe it’s for the best that you know,” he mutters. “Then you’ll stop coming at me with all your demands for a future.”
I have no idea what to say and Karma’s face is just a frozen picture of confusion and pain. He seems oblivious to it all, his eyes no longer alive with anything, like he’s gone behind some wall in his mind. We’re about to find out what’s on the other side of it and I’m no longer so sure that’s a good idea.
“Where do I start… ” he says. “Maybe with my first boyfriend, Walter. I was fourteen. He was in his forties and my first foster dad. Told me he loved me and I believed him. Didn’t actually figure out anything was wrong with that picture until he started having his friends over and sharing me with them. I was stupid back then and it wouldn’t be the last time that stupidity showed. But I got away from him.”
He pauses for a breath, and if I wasn’t seeing red wanting to find this Walter and beat him to a bloody pulp I might actually find something encouraging to say. Karma seems to be dealing with a similar problem.
“Then there was the group home, where I also didn’t manage not to get raped a bunch,” he says and as much as he’s trying to just tell it, his voice cracks anyway. I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like. I don’t want to. I just know I want the people who did those things to burn. “I was already damaged goods after Honey died, and after Walter and all of that, I had no hope of getting placed in a decent foster home.
“So I decided I was better off on the streets,” he says. “At least that way, I’d be getting paid for it, right?”
It’s not really a question but if it was, I’d be screaming, “Hell, no!” in answer.
“It wasn’t,” he says. “At least not until Joker tracked me down and I finally had a small piece of my family back.”
“How did he find you?” Karma asks in a cracked voice.
He shrugs. “He’d been looking and I have a very distinct name, don’t I?”
“Scorpio’s not just your road name?” Karma asks. I’m glad for these normal questions in the midst of the storm of rage I stirred up by touching him this morning. That already seems like days ago.
He shakes his head. “Nope, it’s my real name. According to Honey, my dad had a thing for the Zodiac. My brothers were Ares and Taurus. But we’re getting off topic here…
“Like I already told you, things were OK for a while after Joker joined me on the streets. I’d hustle us up the johns, then we’d rob them before anything could happen. Until Joker got picked up by the cops during the coldest week of that winter.”
He finally takes a breath, and it sounds like a painful one.
He raises his hands and points out the deep scars on his wrists. “Which is how I got these. And enough nightmares to last me for the rest of my life. It’s also the main reason I won’t have anyone fuck me ever again.”
“Some asshole tied you up and used you?” I ask, my chest once again threatening to boil over with rage. “Is he dead? If not, I’ll kill him.”
He looks at me, and for a tiny moment the wall behind which he’s hiding drops and reveals all the raw, shapeless pain within. But it’s back up just as fast.
“I already took care of that. With Joker’s help,” he says. “And it wasn’t just a guy. It was a married couple, a man and a woman, and they looked so normal when they picked me up. They didn’t even want sex. They just wanted me to have somewhere warm to sleep and a hot meal. They said. And I believed them. Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine they’d tie me up to a bed in a derelict house and rape me with just about anything they could think of. But like I said, I was stupid.”
“You weren’t stupid,” Karma says, tears rolling down her face as she hugs him tight. She never cries. He doesn’t hug her back.
“I almost tore my hands right off getting away from them,” he says. “But I got away. And then Joker and me went back and burned their bodies in that nasty house of theirs. Sadly, the house itself wouldn’t burn with them. Damn those cold Chicago winters, right?”
“I hate that this happened to you,” Karma sobs into his chest still holding him tight.
But he looks at me, his eyes sharp again, but no less distant. “And that is why I won’t let anyone get near my ass.”
I have no reply to that. Only a nod.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that too,” I say. “I won’t try to change your mind again.”
He scoffs and extricates himself from Karma’s arms. “Of course not. I don’t shine so bright to you anymore now that you know everything.”
He stands up even though Karma tries to stop him. “I guess it’s over now. And if you repeat any of this to anyone, I’ll kill you both. And whoever you tell.”
It’s a threat I feel all the way in my bones. And I don’t know how to reply without making it worse. It seems to be the same for Karma. All we can do is watch dumbly as he walks away.
“What do we do now?” Karma asks once he disappears from view. Her eyes are still full of tears.
“I wish I knew,” I say and it’s the absolute truth.
It’s also true that nothing’s changed as regards how much I want him since early this morning. But I have no idea how to get us all back to that much happier time.