Chapter 29
29
Scorpio
How did I get here? Just a couple of hours ago, I was having the time of my life, riding the fast train of fun with Karma and Grim. Now I’m threatening to kill them?
As I walk back into the dark bar, I feel like I just got thrown from that speeding train. The orgy in the back is still going, but my mind is too full of memories I never like to face to care. They’re vivid like it all just happened.
I’ve gone fifteen years without telling anyone anything about my past. Even Joker doesn’t know all the things I just told them. And why did I tell them? Fuck, if I know. I could’ve just punched Grim in the face a couple of times and been done with his whole trying to fuck me game that way. Been done with them as efficiently as we’re done now.
I’m not making good choices lately. It started with going to LA to spend some more time with Karma. I should’ve made a clean cut with her when I still had the chance. Because now it never can be a clean cut. It’ll be messy and brutal and I just wish my hands would stop shaking and my stomach would stop cramping and the stupid memories would just wither and die already.
I also wish I hadn’t left my bottle with them.
In a minute I’ll get a new one from behind the bar. I just need to start breathing right first. I sit down at a sticky table and start willing the vivid memory pictures in my head fade back to shadows that I can live with.
None of that happens before the door opens, the sunlight from outside illuminating me whole, because I didn’t make it all the way to the back of the bar where it’s always nice and dark.
“Just leave me the fuck alone,” I tell Karma and Grim as they walk up to my table.
“No,” Grim says. Figures he’d say that, seeing as he’s completely unable to take that answer for himself. It’s always like that with people like him. They can dish it out, but they can’t take it.
I just wish I didn’t need him as much as I’m starting to. That laser look of his… when it’s on you nothing else exists. And it’s been focused on me a lot. I’ve never had that before with anyone. It doesn’t hurt that lust for me just pours out of him. And that I’ve been encouraging it because I’m still as dumb as I ever was, and I liked it and wanted more. I like him touching me, I like his cock and I like watching him come. I feel safe and complete in ways I never had when we’re all together. Not once in my life. I feel safe enough to drop my guard. But every time I do that, some shit like this happens. I never fucking learn.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? No?” I say and start to get up.
But Karma prevents it by sliding into my lap and wrapping me in the tightest hug I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t think anyone could chase away the shakes and the nausea the memories always bring, but her closeness and her softness, the sweet, peachy smell of her hair, and the way her arms around me never fail to create a cocoon of goodness, come close. At least my hands aren’t shaking anymore.
“Thank you for telling us your story,” she says. “I understand what you went through.”
“You don’t,” I say, because that cocoon of goodness is just a lie that I need to stop telling myself. “I shouldn’t have told you. Now it’s all ruined.”
I should get her off my lap and leave, but that’s not physically possible for me right now.
She cups my cheek with one hand, holding me tight with the other, and looks so deep into my eyes I get lost in hers. “I know because I’ve been there. Terrible things I don’t want to remember were done to my body too. But not my soul. Just as your soul is still pure and whole.”
I want to sneer at that, I do. But I can’t. It feels too good to hear it.
“Your secret is safe with us,” she adds. “Let us make it all better. Don’t push us away.”
Grim scrapes a chair across the floor and sits beside us, much too close. Or not close enough. I can’t tell.
“That’s what I meant when I said no before,” he says, actually smiling at me. “I’m just not very good with words.”
“Yeah, I noticed that about you,” I say.
He smiles wider and that smile is revealing yet a new level of how much belonging I’ve managed to forge with them. And when he wraps his arm around us, the circle is complete. We’re all in the cocoon now. We’re back on the train and it’s not speeding anymore.
“I just threatened to kill you,” I say.
I don’t want to remind them of that, but the sooner I admit to myself that all this goodness is just a lie, the easier the landing will be. It’ll still be bloody and brutal. But maybe not deadly.
Grim chuckles. “Yeah, you’re not the first. We can handle it.”
I don’t want to leave this hug. It’s making me feel all warm inside where there was only dust and ice before. But…
“This won’t do,” I say. “If Joker sees us like this he’ll flip out. We’re not supposed to be friends.”
“Oh, I think we’re more than friends,” Grim says. “But if that’s what you want.”
He releases me and Karma stands up too. Just because I asked. That’s new too.
“How about we go back to the room now?” Karma asks.
“No,” I say, and they both look incredibly disappointed.
“OK,” Grim says and pulls the bottle of bourbon they brought in with them closer. “Let’s have a drink then. You probably need it.”
I’m not sure I do. Which is a weird thing for me to think, since I never not need it, so I take a swig anyway. It doesn’t do much to calm me, because all that’s already been taken care of.
“What I meant when I said no, was more like, let’s go somewhere else,” I say and smile at them. The glint in Grim’s eyes tells me things are on their way to going back to normal. To before what just happened. Nothing I want more.
“I know just the place,” Karma says excitedly and stands up. “We can take the tent, make a night of it.”
“We’ll see,” I say. “I might be needed here.”
She pulls me to my feet, shaking her head. “Joker can do without you for one night. Besides, I need you more.”
“Let’s go,” Grim says and starts walking out of the bar.
I’ll take that to mean he needs me more too. Because I want to. And because I feel a lot lighter in my body than I had in years and I don’t want that to end either.
They lead me on a ride all along the redwood forest lined roads around here. I like the shade, and the fragrant darkness under those ancient trees. I like how sunlight glimmers through every once in a while in tiny, blindingly bright bubbles of light. But most of all I like just riding.
By the time we finally stop at the top of one of the hills, this morning feels like it happened days, possibly months ago. The memory is old, dealt with and while some of the shakiness remains, it doesn’t seem like such a mountain of a problem. But I now once again know why I don’t talk about the past. And I won’t be making the mistake of doing it again anytime soon.
“What is this place?” I ask looking at badly overgrown wooden gates that have only the faintest outline of the word Camp coupled with something illegible written across them.
“This is one of those little gems no one but the right people know about,” Grim says as he starts rolling his bike through the gates. “Kinda like Eddie’s place.”
“I’d hardly call the clientele at the inn the right people ,” I say and follow him.
“Legend has it this part of the forest is haunted,” Karma says, joining us. “But if it is, it’s gotta be by some good spirits, because I’ve had some of my best days and nights here.”
She’s already slightly out of breath from pushing her bike up the pine needle and root infested ground, but she’s smiling widely, her cheeks apple red and glistening in the sunlight that makes it past the canopy. As soon as we pass through the gates the ancient forest envelops us, as though sucking us into its embrace and closing the way back. She might be right about those good spirits, because this feels like the soft landing I was hoping for. Only better.
“How far do we have to push our bikes?” I ask anyway, can’t help myself. Mostly because I’d prefer to be walking over this soft ground unburdened. As it is, I feel like my burdens are less just for coming here.
Grin scoffs, but it’s not a mean sound. And he’s grinning as he looks back at me over his shoulder. “Seems to me you’d like putting those muscles of yours to the test.”
“What, these?” I say, flexing my bicep a little more. “These are just for showing off. And baiting unsuspecting outlaw fugitives.”
That makes both of them laugh. It’s weird how light and carefree they sound. And how fitting and right. Seeing as I began this day mad as all hell at Grim, and how I told them about all my deepest and darkest secrets that should by rights make anyone feel at least a little nauseous when looking at me. If they’re not too disgusted to look at me in the first place. I know I am, sometimes, in the morning, after some stupid nightmare brings it all up.
Didn’t seem to have that effect on them. But maybe I’m just imagining that. Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses after the adrenaline rush of this morning. I will sometimes do that, since I’m not very good at facing the nasty, bad things in this world. I prefer to just ignore them. Probably why I’m here with them instead of back at the inn, helping Joker get the war started.
“We’ll leave the bikes just up ahead,” Grim says. “Then we continue on foot.”
He’s slightly out of breath too, and so am I by the time we reach the spot he was talking about. It’s a slight overhang that will keep our bikes dry if it rains. And after we cover them with fallen redwood branches, no one will find them.
“Just a precaution, so that no one knows we’re here,” Karma explains as they start picking up a bunch of gear they unloaded from their saddle bags and the small trunk on the back of Grim’s bike. We had stopped at a store to get some food and a few six packs too, and I figured we’d just make a picnic of that.
“You weren’t kidding about the tent,” I say and that makes both of them grin too.
After a short hike through a very dense part of the forest, we reach a clearing that’s surrounded by tall trees growing very close together on all sides, except the one that ends on a cliff. It offers a panoramic view of the rest of this forest and what will be the perfect view of the sunset. The orange ball is already making its way down to the horizon, leaving behind a tail of blood red clouds.
“It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Karma says, watching me watch the sun. “It’s one of my favorite places in the world.”
“It could very well turn out to become mine as well,” I say.
Then it’s time to set up camp. They move like they’ve done it a thousand times before, and since I’m hindering more than helping, I settle for just fetching and handing them what they need.
I help build a fire pit though, since I’ve made a couple of those in my life, but nothing like the perfect one they end up instructing me to make.
“You guys do this often, don’t you?” I ask once we’re sitting by the crackling fire, roasting some sausages on sticks for dinner. The sun is setting, the sky over it blood red and it’s a very good end to a day that started very bad.
“Yeah, when we get tired of staying at places like Eddie’s,” Karma says.
“We don’t have that many options,” Grim adds. “Seeing as we gotta keep moving all the time.”
“Like sharks,” I say. “They have to keep swimming too, or they die.”
“Something like that,” Grim says, his eyes glowing a warm orange from the firelight. Seems like he took it as a compliment. It’s how I meant it.
If I ignore the perfectly modern tent they erected, I feel like we’d gone back a hundred and fifty years, back to the Wild West. Just three outlaws, alone in the wilderness. I can almost hear the horses neighing and wolves howling.
“Back in the day, spending the night out in the wild like this would totally freak me out,” I say.
Karma grins and Grim wraps his strong arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. “You don’t gotta be afraid. We’ll keep you safe.”
“Yeah, no need to be afraid if you’re with us,” Karma says, still grinning as she sits closer and leans against me, resting her head on Grim’s arm.
I’m finding that it’s probably true. Especially after Grim keeps his arm around me and I lean against him.
“Not what I meant, but thanks, I guess,” I say. “I just meant I was a total city kid. In the city, nothing much freaked me out. But out in nature, I’d imagine a bear or a wolf, or some psycho, was behind every creak. Now it’s the other way around. I could spend the rest of my life like this.”
Grim squeezes my bicep reassuringly. “Well, just so you know, I’d fight a bear for you.”
I’d do all right fighting a bear on my own, but I don’t say that because I don’t want to ruin the moment. And it’s definitely a moment we’re sharing here. We’ve been sharing it for a while now, probably since we left LA. I’ve just been so busy fighting it for reasons I won’t bring into this pleasant, pretty much perfect evening in this pretty much perfect place.
I’ve been fighting it from the very start. From the moment Karma offered herself to me and I realized it was the one thing missing from my life. From the moment Grim barged into the middle of it and I realized I welcomed the intrusion very much. More than I figured I might. I’m definitely bi, but I’m always holding back with men. I’m holding back with women too. It’s why I’m still alone.
Night has fallen, stars are glimmering in the sky and the forest is just a black creaking mass all around us. But the firelight is showing me more than their faces. It’s also showing me why I’ve been alone. And why I don’t want to be anymore.
I thought I kept my secrets buried so deep they could never hurt me again, but they’ve been eating away at me. And after I shared them this morning, they’ve just been leaking away. I don’t remember the last time I felt this light and free and accepted. So maybe it’s time to take it all the way, clear all of it away. Start fresh from this point onwards. Not from what happened all those years ago. Not after what’s coming in the next weeks. But from right here.
I run my hand up Grim’s thigh, enjoying the coarseness of the denim and his taut, hard muscles underneath my palm. I stop short of his bulge. Despite that his whole body tenses and his eyes are those all-piercing blue lasers as I look at him. “If you still want to fuck me I’m willing to go for it.”
I probably could’ve found better words, but I wanted to get it out before I changed my mind. His eyes burn brighter in a way that leaves me with no doubt that he is still interested. But that’s not what he says. “You don’t have to if you’re not ready.”
Hell, I might never be ready. As it is, my palms have turned all clammy and my heart rate is going crazy like I’m some teenager asking for a first kiss. I was never that teenager and it’s a little too late to be one now, but here we are.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready,” I say and laugh, mostly to relieve the unbearable tension in my head. “But I wanna try.”
Karma takes my hand in both of hers. “If you’re not ready it’s absolutely fine. I wasn’t ready for over a year after what happened to me.”
“That’s right,” Grim says. “I can wait.”
He clears his throat and it sounds like he’s trying to clear some tension of his own away. Probably something to do with his quickly hardening dick. My hand is still on his thigh, dangerously close to it. They’re not understanding what I’m trying to tell them. Probably because I’m not communicating clearly enough.
“I appreciate that,” I say. “But what I mean is, I want to. I was very young and very hurt when I made the promise to myself that no one’s going inside me ever again. But I’m starting to think that was a mistake.”
I made that promise to myself standing over the bodies of the insane couple that held me captive. The couple I had just butchered and was watching burn. I escaped them. But not really. Because I stayed a prisoner of my own memories all this time. Can’t believe I never saw that until now. But at the same time, I’m glad I finally do.
“You’re not just anyone,” I say. “I’m sure it’ll be fine with you.”
I’m kinda talking to both of them, but it’s Grim I’m looking at. And his laser eyes are telling me he’s all for it. I see the predator in them, the wolf that would fight the bear for me. The gorgeous tattoo on Karma’s arm shows that exact pairing and I finally understand its meaning. Grim’s the wolf. Which would make Reaper the bear, I guess. And I suppose they’ve both had to fight the memory of that bear just to be here with me. Just to let me in. It’s right I return the favor.
Grim takes his arm from around my shoulders and uses his hand on the back of my neck to pull me in for a kiss, making me lose my train of thought. He’s usually a hard, demanding kisser. But there’s an underlying softness to it now, as vast and pleasant as a never ending forest untouched by men, the kind wolves like him like to roam. Karma is kissing my neck, her gentle lips keeping me grounded as Grim takes me on a run through those moonlit clearings.
I start to lose time to those kisses. We’re naked and I don’t remember undressing. I’m on my back on a blanket, the chill of the night pleasant against the warmth of the fire. Their kisses and touches are bringing a different kind of heat—much less invasive, much more prevalent and definitely more than skin deep. I feel it in my blood, pulsing through my muscles, on the surface of my bones. And deeper.
Karma is stroking my cock, her touch like walking on clouds and if she’s not careful, I’ll come too soon. But then Grim’s hand slips lower between my legs and the urge push him away, to punch him and hurt him is hotter than flame. I tense up, all the pleasant heat of their touches and kisses forgotten.
“I won’t hurt you,” Grim whispers in that calming voice of his and doesn’t stop.
I find the strength not to react. Instead, I let it happen, pass over the turbulent waters of my fear-fueled rage and find calmer waters. The pleasures of being worshiped by these two returns in waves, each higher than the last, lapping against me, intensifying as Grim touches me in ways I’d forgotten could feel this good.
“I have some lube and condoms in my bag,” I say hoarsely, because I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. He grins, the light in his eyes growing brighter.
“Don’t worry, I got you covered,” he says and a moment later, as Karma’s mouth covers mine again, I feel something cool between my cheeks.
Right before he pushes a finger inside. I wasn’t ready for the intrusion and yet I was. But the burning pain flees as fast as it rose as he works my hole with all the skill of someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.
Still, I don’t know if I could stay still for this if it weren’t for Karma’s soft, gentle lips on mine and her soft, gentle palm stroking my cock. She’s all that is good.
Grim adds another finger, loosening me up, making me moan like I’m in heat, in between the moments when I don’t think I’m actually as ready as I’d like to be.
But he knows what he’s doing and maybe being ready’s not the point here. Maybe just feeling good is enough.
I feel his gaze caressing my face so I open my eyes and look into his. He takes his fingers out, leaving an empty feeling that I don’t know what to make of.
“So we’re doing this?” he asks, as though he read my mind.
Karma trails a few kisses across my jaw and down my neck but then she stops, waiting for my answer too.
Grim’s cock is glowing orange in the firelight, bigger than I remember it even though a lot of it is hidden in shadow. He sees me looking at it and grins menacingly. I grasp it in my palm, find it heavier and wider than I thought it was.
“I think I might need a safe word,” I say before he can ask me if I’m ready again. Because I might say no. And I don’t want that either.
“You don’t,” he says.
Hearing that brings a rush of memories that makes me want to punch my way out of this situation again, just to make up for all those times I couldn’t.
“You don’t need it, because I’ll stop if you tell me to,” he adds. “I promise.”
And just like that, those memories hide their ugly heads, get swept away in the magic that is this night, in this quiet pleasant place.
“OK,” I say. “That works.”
He grins wider and lies down beside me, turning me on my side. Gently, but in a way that has me helpless. Though his words kinda did that all on their own.
He wraps his arm around my chest and kisses me again, opening that endless vista of soft, untouched grass in those forest clearings. His cock entering me is like a surge of lightning across that perfect picture. My body fights it with everything it’s got. Except my fists. I keep those firmly squeezed around his massive arms.
He stays still, letting me get used to the intrusion, and just like real lightning, the pain passes like it never was. Only to return as he gives me more of his cock.
I’m breathing hard, stuck in that place between pleasure and pain, my whole body pulsing around his cock. Karma is stroking my dick again, but it’s nothing more than soft licks of wind compared to a gusting storm.
He pulls out almost all the way, giving me a moment of rest I’m not sure I actually want. And on his next thrust he hits a spot that sends bolts of pleasure all through my body, makes me see the world around us in living color even though it’s pitch black, and I suddenly know I made the right decision.
There’s no pain anymore, it can’t exist when all this pleasure demands to be felt each time he enters me. Going deeper and deeper, hitting that spot over and over, from all angles.
Before long, I don’t even know if I’m still breathing, I just know I never want this to stop. My whole body is alive in ways I’ve never been, every nerve ending sparking, all my being concentrated on his cock, pulsing in rhythm with his thrusts.
I might not want it to end, but my body has other ideas. I come harder than I remember ever coming, my whole body shaking from the strain, the world just a blur of color that shouldn’t be there, but is.
He comes too, his cock buried so deep inside me his hairs are tickling the small of my back. I feel him somewhere in my chest, higher even and I’m sorry now that he wore a condom. Because I’m sure feeling his come deep inside me would make this even better.
“See, no need for safe words,” he whispers breathlessly in my ear while his cock grows soft inside me.
“I figured it might be like riding a bike,” I say and lean back against him. “But you held back.”
He’s running his hand down my side. “There’s always next time.”
“Yeah,” I hear myself say, even though as good as this was, I’ll feel it tomorrow. But that’s not something I’m gonna worry about now.
Karma is lying beside me, stroking my cheek. I hug her close, wanting to share some of the pleasure still crackling in every fiber of my muscles with her. She deserves more, but it’s all I can do for her for now. I might need a moment to recover from this high. And I’m not sure I want to.
I can’t believe I waited this long. But maybe that was necessary. Maybe it needed to happen right here, right now, with these two. No. There’s no maybe about it.
And that’s a very good thought to fall asleep to, wrapped in their arms, certain all will be just as good and right when I wake up.