Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
L orelai…
The relief I felt as we rolled up the street, slowing to sweep into the driveway of the building with the Iron Wraith’s logo painted on the front was something so palpable it very nearly felt like a physical loosening in my chest.
I was hot, sweaty, and unbelievably tired from the long ride; although the wind whipping around us felt so good, like if I closed my eyes and fell asleep, it would support me gently like a lover, holding me close.
Of course, my logical and very real terror at watching the pavement whip below us at its frantic pace, and knowing what that same pavement would do to my skin were I to fall off… Or something equally as stupid and tragic were to occur, and how much that would hurt? Well, it kept me wide awake until the last of the ride and the final destination sort of surprised me; even though that was stupid, and it really shouldn’t.
He pressed a button on his key fob and the man-sized rolling door trundled open in front of us.
“Hang on, Sweetpea,” he said and I tightened my grip around him once more as he put us into motion to roll through it, and into a spacious garage where other bikes, cars, and even trucks were parked. He wheeled us around and tapped my leg twice, which I correctly guessed was some sort of signal to get off.
“Watch the pipes!” he called sharply as I made to get down and I did, very carefully, as I was sure they would burn right through the denim of my jeans.
I stepped back a couple quick paces and he backed the big motorcycle against the wall, cutting the engine and toggling some kind of switch by his foot before heeling down the rest for it to lean on.
He went for his chin strap on his open-faced helmet and I followed suit, scrabbling at my own with my fingers trying to figure out how it went to get it off.
I watched as Hangman turned his upside down into a bowl, sitting it in his lap and stripping off the fingerless gloves he wore, tossing them down into the helmet. He raked a hand through his flattened hair, that was damp with sweat at his temples and the back of his neck and I both ached and longed for a shower… and I know it was probably all sorts of wrong for one reason or another, but I longed to take it with him. Like that first time, when he’d cleaned me up after my nightmare… only with him in a lot less clothes, pressed up against me; our tongues mingling.
Jesus, Lorelai… he’s probably not interested in all of that! I thought fiercely to myself, but it hadn’t tasted like it. Not when he’d kissed me in the hospital’s parking garage.
Every time I closed my eyes and thought of the way he’d kissed me; my lips would faintly tingle at the memory of the touch of his. It was an oddly comforting thing, and now here we were, back again, and who knew what would come of things now… all I knew, was that it felt like a thousand-pound boulder had been lifted off my shoulders and I already felt like I could breathe better.
He looked over to where I stood, still trying to figure out the chin strap I couldn’t see, and he got up and came to me.
“Here, stop that,” he said, gently batting my fingers away. He reached up and simply squeezed it and the clip came apart and I felt like an idiot.
Getting that damn thing off my head felt so good . In fact, the first thing I did when he lifted it off of me was take in a deep and cleansing breath, like the astronauts did in the movies once they got their stupid round fishbowl helmets off of them.
“Easy, baby,” he murmured as I went to try and lift the strap of my bag off. His fingers went to it and he loosened it for me first. “There you go,” he said.
I lifted it over my head and he took it with his free hand that was unoccupied by the bulbous helmet.
“You’re good,” he said with a chuckle and I tried to give him a brave smile, like that whole thing hadn’t affected me, but I’m afraid what I managed was very watered down and unconvincing. He laughed at me and asked, “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
I shook my head, “Terrifying,” I said haltingly, “but like, I don’t know… rollercoaster scary but real scary too because of the higher stakes.”
He chuckled and set the helmet up on a high shelf along the back wall, taking a few strides away from me to do it. He immediately came back to me and wrapped that arm around my shoulders, pulling me in tight against him. I wound my arms around his waist and tucked my ear against his heart, closing my eyes as he kissed the top of my hair.
I clung to him in the unfamiliar garage and he held me tight, running a hand up and down the leather covering my back.
“You’re trembling,” he murmured into my hair.
“I’m tired,” I said quickly.
“Probably be a little sore tomorrow,” he said. “Come on and let’s get you home and into a hot shower, huh?”
“Take it with me?” I asked, stiffening that the question so easily slipped out of my mouth and into the out loud…
“I’d like that,” he said softly, “but only if you feel like you’re ready to both get naked and have me naked right along with you.”
I looked up into his golden-green eyes so filled with a silent strength and compassion but also very guarded.
“I feel safe with you,” I confessed. “If it were anyone else, I don’t think I would even suggest it.”
He smiled down at me and lowered his mouth to mine and I couldn’t help but make a startled sound against his lips.
I smoothed my hands against the leather covering his waist, bringing them around to his front so I could slide them beneath his jacket along his solid frame, over the so-soft material of his tee shirt.
He groaned into my mouth and delved his tongue deeper into it, passing between my teeth and stroking along mine which I darted into his mouth to taste him some more.
I shuddered against him, which had nothing to do with fatigue or the cold – even though it was heavily air-conditioned in here and almost a shock after the heat and humidity of the outside.
We kissed for a time, but then I started to overthink things, and skittishly moved back.
“Sorry,” he breathed, chest heaving. “Too much?” he asked.
I swallowed hard and took stock of how I felt.
“Yes and no,” I answered honestly. “Everything is just a lot right now it feels like.”
He nodded, searching my face, and said, “You want to stop, we stop. Just like that. You hear me?”
I nodded.
“Need you to say it, Sweetpea.”
“I hear you,” I said carefully. “I need to stop, we stop.”
“Good girl,” he murmured and pressed his lips to my forehead and good lord , why did that make me want to melt?
I swooned into him, laying my head on his chest and he wrapped his solid arms around me, holding me close but not tightly, rocking me gently for a moment before easing back and saying, “Let’s go home.”
I nodded and let him guide me out the side door and out into the sultry heat once more.
The sun was hanging low in the sky, but it wasn’t getting darker, not yet.
A breeze swept down the street beneath the shade of the overhanging trees with their swaying Spanish Moss. It carried with it the green scent of the river, and swept out the locked cemetery gates. When we reached them, Hangman hefted my bag up onto his shoulder to make certain it was secure and slid the proper key into the lock to open the man-sized door gate within the larger cemetery car gate. He held it open for me and gestured for me to go through.
I stepped over the lip across the bottom and he followed me through.
You would think watching him close the gate behind us, locking us inside the old cemetery, would be ominous… but no, it was the exact opposite for me. As soon as that gate clanged shut, the lock engaging, I felt a tension in my shoulders that I hadn’t even realized I’d been carrying, ease almost completely away.
There must have been some physical tell, because he turned as though catching some motion from me out of the corner of his eye and looking me over, he asked, “Are you okay?”
I smiled, genuinely, and told the truth, “Never better.”
That earned an answering smile from him, which I realized I didn’t see too often, as he reached out a hand to me. I took it, and we fell into step with one another, making a slow stroll to the steps leading up to his second-floor apartment of the old caretaker’s house.
Inside was a blessed respite from the heat and choking humidity and I almost sighed with relief.
“The cameras are gone,” I said with mild interest and he shook his head.
“Relocated, downstairs. The one is still up outside up here, front, and back; but the rest are down below.”
“Oh, nice,” I said mildly. He led me over to my spot on his big leather couch and urged me, “Sit.”
I sank down onto the couch and shrugged out of my couture leather jacket and he reached out his free hand and took it from me.
“I’ll be right back,” he declared. “Going to put these in the bedroom. Don’t go anywhere.”
I looked up at him with a half-smile and asked him like I had so many times before, “Where would I go?”
That gained me an answering smile that actually lit up his face, his golden ringed green eyes lighting up and his teeth very straight and very white where his lips split into its wide grin and I felt my heart squeeze down just a little in my chest from how gorgeous this man became when he smiled at me like that.
He slipped down the hall and ducked into his room for several moments. When he crossed into the bathroom, it was without his jacket and the colorfully patched vest that went over it, and he’d lost the leather covering his legs and the denim of his jeans.
I bent and began to unlace my own boots that went almost all the way up to my knees. They were stylish, but they were a form of horseback riding boots and much less intended for riding an iron horse – but I’d figured they would be the best out of all the pairs of boots that I owned should I take an unfortunate spill or anything else.
“Here, let me,” his voice was gentle but a little rough with an emotion I couldn’t define. He stepped out of the alcove of the mouth of the hallway and dropped to his knees in front of me, putting my booted foot atop my thigh. He picked at the double knot I’d been trying to loosen.
These boots didn’t have any zippers along the side to ruin the line of them. They only laced up the front, and while it was a pain in the ass, I fully admit I liked them quite a bit.
He expertly got through the tangled knot and whipped the laces free of their eyelets in a swift manner, hooking his thick finger behind the X the laces mad and pulling, the long strands whipping through the metal reinforced loops, the plastic tips of the laces thrashing and popping against the leather to either side of my shin vaguely like a whip cracking.
I watched the quick progression of my unbinding totally engrossed in what he was doing. He finished the first boot, and repeated the process with the other and I watched him for the second one. His face was almost serene, as though the laces smoothing over his calloused fingertip was almost a meditative thing. He looked as thoroughly engrossed as I had been just a moment before, but also… relaxed and I realized relaxed wasn’t something I was used to seeing when it came to Hangman.
He always held a sort of tension about him, in the set of his shoulders, riding along his back, and in how his jaw clenched, even now as I reached out to tuck a long strand of escaped hair from the little man-bun he had going on at the nape of his neck.
His jaw clenched as my hand came into view and while he didn’t flinch away, his demeanor changed just enough to let me know if he had registered my movement as threatening, I likely would have been on the floor held prone… and while that should have made my mouth go dry with fear, I wasn’t afraid.
No, the sensation that zinged through me at the thought of Hangman putting me on my back and gripping my throat or wrist sent a thrill like no other through me and I really, really, wondered what that said about me.
He caught the look in my eyes and smiled faintly, slipping off my other boot. I was transfixed by what I saw in his as he reached around me and cupped my ass with his big hands, sliding me to the edge of the seat I was in. He walked forward on his knees, and we met somewhere in the middle, his body fitting against mine, his straining cock through the prison of his jeans pressing against my pussy through the prison of mine and lord, he felt like he was going to be thick.
I didn’t have much time to think about it before his mouth was on mine, devouring it, his hands pressing me forward, cupping the globes of my ass, and pulling me tight and tighter against him.
My arms wound around his neck, resting on his shoulders as I unconsciously moved my hips, rubbing myself up and down against him, causing him to groan into my mouth. A desperate and hungry sound that thrilled me down to my toes.
“Fuck, Sweetpea,” he muttered, breathy, and the sound of his world weary and traveled voice struck an answering chord in me of just fuck this shit. Fuck it all… I wanted desperately to feel good and to make him feel good, and to just shut out the noise in my head surrounding sex and what’d happened to me, altogether.
I slipped my blouse over my head and let it fall to the couch cushion behind me, and looked him in the eye, brazenly. He gave me one, silent, questioning glance, and whatever he saw in my eyes seemed to give him permission.
He wrapped his arms tightly around me and slipped me off the edge of his couch to straddle his lap, right there on his living room floor.
His hands found my ass again, his mouth found mine, and he manually rubbed us together, working me up and down the length of his cock through the rest of our clothes, moaning into my mouth as he did it, but I wasn’t resisting, quite the opposite, actually.
I’d captured his face between my hands, forcing his head back as I worked his mouth with mine just as enthusiastically.
“Fuck, baby girl,” he whispered tearing his mouth from mine. “Off.” He helped me stand on my shaking legs and I went for the button and zipper to my jeans before he could. While he peeled the denim down my legs, releasing the fragrance of my sopping wet cunt to lightly perfume the air around us, I worked the clasp of my bra behind me, slipping the offending garment off my shoulders and letting it fall to the floor on my opposite side of me where he discarded my clothes.
He rubbed over my delicate lace panties, between my thighs, at the core of my being, and found me wet and wanting.
He stared up at me as I stared down at him, feet braced apart, my hands on his shoulders to steady myself from swooning too hard as he played with my pussy over my panties, before finally giving me what I wanted and slipping his hand down inside them, to stroke me with nothing between us. I whimpered and parted my legs further while he played with me, kissing the front of my thigh, his other hand hooking his rough fingers in the waistband of my panties and sweeping them down my legs.
He just as swiftly pulled his own shirt over his head and went for his well-worn leather belt and the waistband of his own jeans.
He wasn’t wearing any underwear, and his cock was thicker and longer than I even could have imagined. I shivered with anticipation as he struggled to get his folded legs out from beneath him and his jeans down and off of them accordingly. He’d lost his boots and socks somewhere in the bedroom or bathroom and I just hadn’t noticed, but that was neither here nor there as I watched his cock stand straight at attention, reaching to just an inch or two below his belly button, the precum glistening at its tip.
I felt my pussy let out a desperate and throbbing ache at the beautiful sight, and all I wanted was to feel him stretch me, press against my walls, and fill me to the point I wouldn’t know if I could take him all the way.
“C’mere,” he said, resuming his original kneeling posture and reaching for me. He slid his hands up the outer portion of my thigh, from knees to hips, his arms twining around my waist and pulling me down on top of him as we were before.
Feeling his cock rigid against me, nothing between us, was almost orgasmic all on its own as he encouraged me with his hands on my ass to rub myself up and down his length. Not penetrating. Not yet.
I threw back my head and gasped at the building sensation inside of me every time my clit rubbed against his hard length and he took it for an invitation, one hand leaving my ass to come around and grip my boob, lifting it so that he could take my nipple into his mouth.
“Ah!” the cry was as sharp as the sensation of his teeth gripping the tender flesh in his mouth, pulling and suckling at it. My hands left his shoulders and buried themselves in the back of his hair, pulling his mouth tighter against my chest, even as I writhed my hips seductively, looking for a deeper touch that what I’d been given so far.
I slid myself up and down his length and my pussy was more than wet, more than ready, because on the third or fourth try, he was suddenly just there , at my entrance, gliding in and oh, I slowed down. I savored the sensation of Hangman’s body fitting into mine, the slow stretch, the aching fullness, the way my body protested for just the barest breath of a moment before acquiescing to his silent turgid strength. My body relented, became a welcoming place for him and he held me tight, his arms around me, as I slid him all the way in, sinking over the top of him, taking him damn near to the root inside me.
Oh, how he filled me. Oh, how he pressed against my walls and found my end, that sweet almost sharp twinge at my cervix having to relent and push in letting the head of his cock have its space.
We stilled, each of us panting into each other’s mouths, a frantic staccato of our chests heaving, our breaths coming at a rapid pace, as we both adjusted to being inextricably linked in this way.
“Move for me, baby. Take your pleasure. I want to watch you writhe, I want to hear you moan,” he whispered against my ear.
One hand wrapped around my back, hand on my ass, the other wrapped the opposite direction, his big hand cradling my skull and buried in the back of my long auburn hair causing me to groan in pleasure as I nodded a bit and started to move myself, forward and back, giving a little twist to my hips in the middle there, riding him in what can only be described as a figure-eight pattern that oh, lord. Oh, yes, that was doing it. That was hitting the spot.
He groaned and held me tighter, kissing my throat, my flushed chest, my shoulders, just showering me in these feather light kisses, his lips contacting my heated skin and turning up the fire inside of me, almost making them feel cool in some trick of body mechanics and their thermodynamics.
I picked up my pace, breathless with the hard work, desperate to coax that glowing spark of a feeling deep in my belly, in my womb, to life. I wanted that glowy and pleasurable sensation to spark harder, to catch fire, and to sweep through my blood and along my nerves like a wildfire until we were both consumed by the fires of our passion for one another completely.
Then like a phoenix, I wanted to rise from the ashes of us.
Stronger, somehow.
He grunted, said my name, a warning or a plea I couldn’t tell, but when that glow burst into brightest sunlight, flitting through my veins, I could tell as wave after wave of shining pleasure battered me from the inside out, that he could feel it too, and that it had been a warning, a warning that he was so very close, and I was glad, in a way, that he couldn’t – because I couldn’t hold back anymore, either.
I let the fire rage through me, consume me, and arched over his arms, back away from him, regrettably, but taking him inside me just that little bit further in trade, my pussy throbbing and squeezing around his pulsing cock inside me, as our fluids mingled and we both gave ourselves over to the infinite vastness of space that was created by the explosive desire between us.
I could float endlessly within that space with him, if he would let me.