chapter fourteen
Wren
It takes less than seventy-two hours before we have a nudity situation. It’s my fault, I guess. The door to Angelica’s side of the bathroom is open when I go to give her breakfast. She’s asleep on her mostly covered perch when I go in, so I say nothing to her. Her water is still full from last night, but she needs her breakfast. I am quietly dishing out her food when the shower starts. The sun has just started to rise and thin rays shine through the frosted glass bathroom window… directly onto the naked ass of Jay. I didn’t mean to see him. I only turned in reaction to the sound. Seeing him undressed was not my intention.
But there he is, all smooth, pert ass cheeks and a broad, muscular back. His head is hanging tiredly between his shoulders, so I can’t see his face as he reaches a hand into the shower to test the water. His entire arm is covered in tattoos. What I imagine is called a full sleeve flows up from his wrist to his shoulder. I can’t see the intricacies of it, but I can tell I was right to assume the ink I saw on his neck is part of one tattoo. It’s entirely black ink, and it seems to move with the muscles in his arm as he- oh my god . His yawn is loud and startles me back to reality. He steps into the shower, his hand still wrapped around his cock, and pulls the shower door shut.
My body flushes with heat and shame and arousal and embarrassment. He has a beautiful body. I knew it before I saw him naked- all those muscles and all that confidence. But seeing it bare is an entirely different experience. I know it’s wrong to see him like this without his consent. I know I should leave. But I can’t stop watching. I move to the small cabinet of bird supplies that offers a better view into the partially open bathroom door and pretend to rifle through it. I’ve been starving for any information about the man who lives in my house and here I am getting a very different sort of education.
He strokes his cock slowly from base to head with a little twist of his wrist at the tip. I can’t see much through the foggy glass of the shower doors, but I can see enough. He tips his head back to get his hair wet. His hair is short cropped and looks maybe light brown or dark blond. It’s hard to tell under the water. I can’t see his face and that makes me angrier than I thought it would. A low, soft moan echoes from the shower, and I almost gasp in reaction. Does he moan throughout or just when he finishes? He keeps stroking, so he must not have orgasmed. My mouth waters and I swallow. He lets out another quiet sound as his hand, not stroking his cock, reaches down to his balls.
“Fuck,” he huffs out in a sharp breath.
I cross my legs to put pressure on the growing and throbbing need in my core. I didn’t expect to be turned on by a Jay. But the man in the shower isn’t Jay, he’s a real person. Not the highly paid, anonymous bodyguard. This is the man under the mask. I’m not turned on by Jay. I’m turned on by this stranger.
This stranger who gives a whispered grunt as his hand speeds up and rocks his hips as he comes. The moan he lets out at climax is long and raspy, like he’s holding back. He’s only holding back so I don’t hear him. I’m the only other person in the house. The only other person around to hear him moan as he paints the shower with his come.
It’s not until he shampoos his hair that I realize I need to leave. I close the bird supply cabinet with a soft click and practically run back to my room. My body still feels hot and achy, and I grab my clothes I had picked out and rush for my bathroom. Jay had the right idea. A quick orgasm before we leave for the park is entirely necessary. With shaking hands, I strip off my now damp sleep shorts and panties and sink two fingers inside. I don’t even take the time to remove my shirt or start the shower. I use my palm to grind on my clit as I pump my fingers once, twice, three times before I’m coming into my hand. Now, I’m sweating and I want more. Not from my own hand. I want a man to fuck me. For a split second, I miss Maxwell simply because he had a cock for me to ride.
With heaving breaths, I turn on the shower, finish stripping, and step in. I don’t mind the cold water as I wait for it to heat. It cools my heated skin just a little and I shiver and moan under the water. As soon as the water heats to a tolerable temperature, I take the shower head from its latch and bring the head down to spray directly on my clit. I bite back a moan as I adjust the flow’s pressure to be just right. There’s a seat for shaving in the cold tile wall, and I lift my foot onto it to get better access to my pussy. The water on my clit feels amazing, but I feel empty. Two fingers return to my throbbing pussy and I fuck myself senseless. The best orgasms come when I’m rough and unrelenting. I imagine it would be the same with a man if I could find a man willing to be rough with me. I wonder if Jay would be rough. With those enormous hands spreading me open and his deep voice moaning in my ear. With my eyes closed, I can picture what it would be like. He would turn me around so I can’t see his face and he would grip me hard around the waist as he fucked me in snapping thrusts. I move my hand in the rhythm I think he would use. With a hard bite to my lip, I struggle to stifle the moan that breaks through my silence as I come hard. Hard enough to see stars when I open my eyes again. I blink back the starbursts and swear I see movement in the bathroom.
I still.
In my haste to get into the shower, I’d left the bathroom door open. I struggle to remember if I shut my bedroom door. Did Jay just walk in on me masturbating after I’d just done the same thing to him? The thought makes me almost laugh. I would feel scandalized, but again, it’s my fault.
I shower quickly and exit to hear my phone alarm going off. I’d forgotten to turn off my last chance, no shower or breakfast alarm before I went to feed Angelica. Before getting dressed and putting my wet hair up into a bun, I switch it off. My door is closed, so the shadow I saw must have been a figment of my post orgasmic imagination. I dress in a pair of pale sage linen capris and an ivory lace top, going for modest and demure. Downstairs, I find Jay in the kitchen. He is dressed in his usual uniform and mask, and I wonder if his hair is still wet under the black spandex. I bet it dries tousled. The crisp scent of his soap fills my nose as I pass by him.
“Good morning. You smell nice,” I say breezily.
“Good morning. And thank you,” he says casually.
The sound of his moans echo in my brain and I almost drop my thermos as I approach the coffee machine.
“I made coffee for us to take.”
“Um, thank you,” I say and fill my stainless travel mug.
“Your alarm to feed Angelica was going off. Did you have time to feed her?” he asks and leans against the counter.
“Oh, uh, I didn’t hear it. But yeah, I fed her,” I say and do my best to make casual eye contact.
“Yeah, the shower was running, so I figured,” he says with a shrug. His blue eyes flick down my body before returning to my face. He lifts his mask just enough to take a sip of his coffee, and I watch his throat bob as he swallows before the black spandex is refitted over his sharp jaw.
“Okay, well the birding group meets at eight so we should get going,” I chirp and grab my bag and the lemon tart I made yesterday.
The short drive to the park is silent except for our yawns. There is a bus from a local senior center and a few cars in the parking lot already. My stomach flutters with nerves as I get out. The plastic wrap covering the lemon tart on a cute floral patterned platter rustles in my hands. It’s silly, but I want these people to welcome me into their group. Half of the reason I moved here is for the opportunity to be near wild birds. These people are the closest to experts in the area and I want them to teach me their birding methods.
I hear Jay’s long inhale as he steadies himself to scare the ever-loving daylights out of a bunch of senior citizens. “Stay behind me and maybe they won’t be so scared,” I tell him with a quick glance. He’s holding a coffee mug and what looks like a leather-bound sketchbook.
“Sure, so if they get startled and pull out a gun, you’ll get shot first and I have time to run away,” Jay quips back.
“You think they have guns?” I ask warily.
“I don’t know, but that lady with the walker looks like she’s ready for anything,” Jay says as we approach the loosely gathered group in the same pavilion as last time. They’re all holding little paper cups of what smells like cheap coffee that was distributed from the metal carafe on a table.
“Hello birders!” I greet them happily.
“Not you again,” grouses the old lady with the walker Jay had pointed out just moments before.
“Marjorie,” a man near her scolds halfheartedly.
“I’m sorry about our last meeting. To make up for it, I brought a lemon tart!” I say brightly and set the dessert down on the picnic table and remove the plastic wrap.
“We’re diabetics. That’ll kill us,” one woman says in an unwelcoming tone. That wasn’t listed in the information section on the Facebook group page.
“And I’m a vegan,” another man says.
A few snorts of laughter are hidden behind coffee cups.
I pick my lemon tart back up from the table. Murder and moral boundary crossing aren’t on my agenda today. Well, no more boundary crossings. I cap myself at once a day. A vision of Jay’s peachy ass floats before my eyes and I blink it away.
“Leave it!” someone shouts.
I slowly set the tart back on the table and look around. Jay touches the small of my back lightly as if to say we should leave. I continue anyway. “I would love to join your birding group. Like I said last time I met you all, I’m new to the area and love birds.”
“We don’t need a tart and a bank robber with ragweed allergies,” Marjorie says. Her eyes are a sharp gray and match her tightly curled hair. A soft pink lipstick is carefully painted on her lips and a blush stains her cheeks. Her makeup and hair are expertly applied, and all the women gathered around her have watered-down and clumsy versions of her look. It’s then I realize I’m looking into the judgy eyes of a geriatric It Girl.
“I took Claritin,” Jay supplies next to me.
“And I can bring muffins next week if you don’t like tarts,” I say, knowing full well this bitch had just called me a tart.
“Blueberry,” a man calls out from somewhere behind Marjorie.
“With streusel topping,” I add in agreement.
“Alright, you can stay,” Marjorie says with a bored flutter of her lashes and a dismissive wave of her veiny hand.
“Thank you,” I say with a bright grin. “Where do we begin?”
Birdwatching is as independent as a group activity could be. Everyone is silent as they meander through the park’s paved paths and quietly point out birds they see. Some stay near the pavilion and some venture through the entire park, everyone with little binoculars around their necks and bird books in hand. Jay and I walk the entire park and stick near one man named Frank who kindly whispers names of the birds we see. I scribble notes in my bird journal as we go to make entries for later. We see birds and deer and squirrels with more frequency than I thought possible outside of a Disney movie.
When we get back to the pavilion, the group is packing up to leave. My tart plate is empty when we get back, and I smile. Diabetics, my ass.
“Damn, I wanted a piece,” Jay says as he plops down on the picnic table seat.
“I have another at home,” I inform him with a proud smile.
“That’s a good girl,” he praises casually as he leans back against the table and takes a plastic bag of trail mix out of his pocket.
Ignoring the returned fluttering, albeit more southern than before, I sit next to him and hold out my hand like a cup. “Give me some. I didn’t eat breakfast.”
“I’m your bodyguard, not your snack bitch,” he mutters as he pours some into my hand, anyway.
“I’ll ask Dad to give you a raise so you can be both,” I say and take out my bird journal.
I make entries for each of the birds we saw this morning. Robin, sparrow, house finch, blue jay, house wren, and a goldfinch all get pages. As I work, using my phone to look up facts and writing them in my journal, I notice how quiet Jay is. I enjoy the sound of the birds in the trees and the very distant sound of traffic.
After a few minutes, I think he’s asleep on the job. But, I look up to see him drawing in the notebook he’d been carrying earlier. I can’t see what’s on the page, but his electric blue eyes are focused on the paper as he works. His large hand is curled around a pencil and graphite stains his fingertips. I watch as he uses his finger to rub the page. Maybe I’ll get him sketching supplies.
“What are you drawing?” I ask, breaking our silence.
He startles only slightly as he looks up at me. He shows me his drawing. It’s a pretty good depiction of the rhododendron bush next to us. The one that houses the robin’s nest. It’s a simple sketch, and he’s been drawing for as long as I’ve been writing in my journal. There’s no way that’s all he has. “What else is there?” I ask.
He snorts a laugh and turns to the previous page. I gasp in horror and outrage. It’s a picture of me. “I was going to get it framed for you,” he says. “Didn’t you just have a birthday?”
The picture shows me hunched over the table, about forty-seven chins, multiple hairy warts, and drool coming out of my mouth. He’s talented, I’ll give him that. Art is supposed to invoke emotion, and this piece made me livid.
“I’m going to kill you,” I grumble and look away from the paper.
“That’s funny because I have all the weapons,” Jay says and pulls the sketchbook back to him.
“I’ll lock myself in the panic room,” I say petulantly.
“Good.” He returns to his drawing.
Probably twenty minutes later, I’m ready to leave. I move to snap my journal shut, but Jay’s hand grips my entire thigh under the table to still me. There’s a bird eating out of his other hand. It’s small with a white and tan body and a black head. In Jay’s hand is his trail mix and the bird is eating out of his palm as if he’s a bird feeder.
We are silent and as still as statues as the little bird continues to eat and look at us. My phone is still in my hand from my most recent Google search, so I open the camera app and discreetly take a picture of Blue Jay feeding a little bird. It’s not one I’d seen earlier this morning, so I need to ask Frank what it is next week.
Part of me is mad he gets this experience, but the other part of me knows this is probably because he doesn’t look like a human all covered up like he is. He probably looks more like a boulder or a tree stump to the bird. I smile as I watch. Jay’s eyes are wide as he watches the bird eat all his shelled sunflower seeds and attempt a few halved peanuts. It pecks at a raisin and one of the M&M’s I hadn’t picked out earlier before giving Jay a little curious look and then flying off.
“That was so cool,” Jay says and dumps the rest of his handful of trail mix into the grass. “Send that picture to me. I want to show my mom.”
“Your mom?” I question as I do as he asked.
“Yes, I have a mom,” he scoffs as he pulls out a hand sanitizer from his never-ending cargo pants pocket.
“You’ve never mentioned her before,” I say as we pack up.
“We haven’t really talked before,” Jay replies. He’s right. It feels strangely like I know him well and don’t know him at all at the same time.
“I guess since we’re allowed to be besties, we should start talking about our families,” I say as we approach the car.
“Wren, we’re allowed to have small talk,” Jay reminds me.
I let out a sigh. “Maybe I don’t know what small talk is.”
“About three giant steps below how you talk to Gemma.”
I giggle and drive us home.