Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
H angman…
I was laying back, my legs trapped up underneath me as Lorelai was lying draped artfully over my chest. My cock had gone soft inside her, but was still there, and I loved that for us – which is why I put off moving my feet out from under my ass until they were both completely numb and tingly.
Eventually, the tops of my thighs protested too loudly and too much from me to ignore with their extended stretch, and trying to be careful not to jostle her too terribly much, I worked first my right, then my left, out from underneath me.
She startled at the sudden movement at first, but all it took to get her to settle was me murmuring, “It’s all good, baby. I need to move my legs, though, they aren’t meant to withstand this position for too long.
“Mm,” was all she could give me. This tired little sleepy moan that was a closer kissing cousin to a whimper than anything else.
I lay back, taking her with me, and holding her close and just rested on the floor with her.
I don’t think I could ever remember such a passionate exchange with another human as the one I’d just had with my little sweetpea just then, and I could only begin to fathom how much I’d been missing.
That had been more than just two bodies fucking. I swear to God, I felt my soul slip inside hers or vice versa; the commingling of our spirits something out of this world and now everything was just sort of snapped into focus for me.
“You okay, baby?” I murmured, turning my head to kiss what I hoped was her temple, but also, we were at a bit of an odd angle for just about anything else at the moment.
Her hand came up into my field of vision, giving a thumbs up, and I squeezed her a little tighter, chuckling. She snuggled closer and I loved the feel of the naked press of her body against mine, but I also worried – a little insecurity creeping in on my part… wondering if I’d been good to her. I wanted to make sure that I hadn’t scared her or made her think back to that night in any way but I also didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to bring it up and inadvertently put her ass back there. Not when she was almost as peaceful as a curled sleeping kitten on my chest.
“Mm,” she finally managed after several minutes of just lying atop me, languid.
“How you doing, Sweetpea?” I finally settled on asking. She turned her head and looked at me, smiling, her silvery eyes bright and all aglow with the good feels, her hair sex mussed and lips swollen and red from my kisses.
God she was beautiful.
“I feel really good,” she whispered propping her chin on her hand that was flat against my chest, which I could appreciate.
“Yeah?” I asked, sweeping some of her long hair behind her ear and out of her eyes.
“Yeah,” she said back softly, an appreciative smile curving her lips.
“Shall we move this to the bed?” I asked softly.
“Absolutely,” she murmured.
It still took her a second or two to drag herself up off me and onto her feet. I groaned as I made the transition from floor to standing, joints popping and body crackling from the hard use I tended to put it through.
Her eyes swept over me, admiringly, and I felt my pride swell in my chest, a very real and palpable sensation, like it swelled to the point that my beating heart had to move aside for it.
I took her into my arms and guided her down the hall.
“The shower is running,” she said and I said, “Oh, shit!”
“No,” she said stopping me from ducking into the bathroom and leaving her in the hall. “Let’s, then let’s go to bed,” she said.
I pulled her into me and asked the question because now I was dying to know, “You’re sure you’re alright with what just happened?” I hedged my bets carefully, wording things as blandly as possible, still scared I might trigger her or something.
Her smile was as gentle as the moon’s, her eyes emitting the same soft light when she said, “I’m more than alright with it. Thank you.”
“For what?” I asked.
“Being gentle with me,” she murmured. “For…” she hesitated and I cocked my head. She sounded almost scared and uncertain when she said, “For loving me?”
It sounded like a question, but there was no question about it.
I pulled her tight against my chest and held her close, tucking her head beneath my chin which was nice that she was so tall and I could do this without having to hunch over like a motherfucker.
“You’re welcome, Sweetpea, and you don’t have to ask. I love you. How could anyone help themselves around you? You’re perfect.”
She giggled a little and slapped fingertips against my arm and I laughed softly too, kissing the top of her head. It wasn’t a line of bullshit, though. I loved her quiet yet indomitable spirit. I loved her strength and how she handled herself. I loved her soft voice and her even softer hands, and I loved that she trusted me when she honestly had no reason to.
I loved her. To the point I would protect her with my life from here on out, and to the point that I was dead set on getting her the revenge she so richly deserved. The justice that only myself, my brothers, and the street could provide her.
I would protect her from all comers. Be it the rich assholes who’d stripped her of her sense of safety, worth, or whatever else she’d felt she’d lost in their violation of her body – or the citizen’s justice system, who would more than likely just victimize her all over again only to let the assholes off with a slap on the wrist – because let’s face it. That’s how these things went. Money talked, and there were more of them than there were of Lorelai and the more of them the more money they had which could afford the best and most expensive lawyers while all she would get is some worn out prosecutor willing to plea deal shit down to nothing in order to keep a loss off their record before putting in any actual sweat into her case.
I showered with my sweet girl, washed her from head to toe, kissed her, lavished her with attention, and felt like a king for it. She returned the favor, washing me, her hands slick with soap jerking me off again, and watching those pearl jets of cum splash against her fair skin only to be rinsed away by the cascade of water over her beautiful body did something else to drive me wild.
My body may have been spent, but God damn, was she a feast for the eyes as well as every other sense she would let me partake in when it came to her.
We took turns drying each other’s hair with the hair dryer, and I went to my knees in front of her so she wouldn’t have to reach. This put me at the perfect height to lavish her heavy round breasts with attention from my tongue and teeth. It turned into a fun game of seeing how well I could distract her from her task and I mentally scored points every time she paused, eyes slipping shut, hands stilling on my head, her fingers still caught in the long strands of my hair as she closed her eyes and stood still, lapping up the attention and letting go to enjoy my touch.
Eventually, we were both dry enough to go to bed, and God was that a thrill, settling down beneath the cooling crisp sheets of my bed, Lorelai snug against me, half draped over my body like some ornate decoration fit only for a king.
We drowsed, we played lightly with each other’s bodies, and eventually we slept and it was the best damn sleep of my fucking life.
It was full and deepest night when I woke, uncertain as to what exactly had woken me. That was until Lorelai shifted beside me. I looked down and asked, “You alright?”
She yipped, startled, and then let out a laugh.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “What’s wrong? Bad dream?”
“No,” she said snuggling close into my embrace. “I just woke up and can’t sleep, now.”
“I gotcha,” I said and gave her a little squeeze kissing the top of her hair. “You hungry? Thirsty?”
She shook her head at the first question, but paused at the second and I said, “Let’s get you something to drink.”
We got up, and dressed – sort of. I handed her the long nightgown that’d been bought for her and she found the ballet slipper flats to go along with them. I pulled on a pair of shorts and nothing else.
We went out to the kitchen and she asked, “Do you have tea?”
I smiled and nodded, and took down a box of assorted tea bags and snickered when she made this face like I’d just told her I’d fucked her grandma.
“Right, this is what I’ve got for tonight – but we can for sure go to whatever tea snob shop you can find around here and get you some proper tea any day now.”
She smiled at that lifting out bags and reading the labels and said, “You do know the way right to a girl’s heart,” she said lightly but dryly.
I considered that. I’d never been accused of being a romantic before… but with her, I kind of liked it.
I put the kettle on the stove top to boil, once I’d dug it out of the back of the cabinet it was stored in. I didn’t have much occasion to use it, until now. It was some fancy copper thing that matched the warm, copper toned, backsplash behind the stove. The kettle could use a fucking polish – but I didn’t know shit about those kinds of things.
“Okay,” Lorelai said softly when she caught sight of the kettle. “Your tea capital just went up. That’s gorgeous.”
I laughed and she smiled sliding a bag of the tea from the box across the counter at me.
I took it and a coffee mug down from the cabinet, and turned around to another face from her that made me burst out laughing out loud.
“That’s for coffee, not for tea,” she said with a small smile and I shook my head.
“Bet. I’m out of my league on this one Sweetpea – might want to go out with the girls to find what you’re looking for on that front.”
Her smile grew and she nodded, “That sounds like a good idea,” she said. “I went along with what Julie wanted to do when I was here and never did get to do what I wanted to do, which was visit a couple of tea rooms here.”
“Bet ‘cha Lainey might dig it. Not sure about Mini-Syn, but she might too.”
“Mini-Syn?” she asked.
I felt my smile flicker and grow in intensity.
“Yeah, a play on her and Synister’s name. She spells her name M-A-D-I-S-Y-N and Syn has always spelled his S-Y-N to start – she really did turn into a Mini-Syn, though and gives that poor bastard a run for his money sometimes.”
She nodded and said, “She’s definitely, ah – spirited, ” she said kindly, blushing faintly.
“If that’s your way of saying intense?” I nodded. “She certainly got to be that way. Those two complement each other. She brings Syn down, and he amps her up, and between them they sort of balance each other out.”
She nodded once and dropped her eyes to her hands which she held flat against the stone countertop.
“You good?” I asked softly, recognizing her mind wandering into dark places.
“Mm?” she made a questioning sound, her eyes distant and not really looking at anything as her thoughts seemed to consume her and she nodded a little vacantly.
“Hey,” I said softly, and covered her hand with mine. She jumped and her silvery eyes flew up to meet mine.
“What ‘cha thinking about so hard?” I asked.
She sighed and rocked back on her seat, withdrawing her hand from beneath mine and dropping them into her lap.
“A lot of things,” she confessed finally, looking away from me, toward the dining area, and out the windows beyond.
“Talk to me, baby,” I said quietly.
“The cops keep pressing me for information,” she said finally. “I’m scared to tell them anything.”
I cocked my head and considered her and she sighed. It was a very weary and unhappy sound.
“Why?” I asked softly.
She sniffed, and looked up to me and said, “I’m afraid they’ll find something or say that —” she choked on a sob that bubbled up from the deep well of sadness she held within her.
“That it was your fault?” I asked quietly, with a sudden flash of inspiration.
She nodded mutely, miserably.
I sighed and went around to hug her tight and she buried her face in my chest.
“Wasn’t your fault, baby. Doesn’t matter what you look like, what you were wearing, how much you did or didn’t drink… that’s all stupid shit. Window dressing and white noise.”
She quivered against me and looked up at me and I smoothed some of her long auburn hair back from her elegant face.
“I’m afraid they would tell…”
“Tell what?” I asked and she looked so distraught. “Talk to me beautiful. I can’t fix what I don’t know.”
She thought that the fact that she’d had an orgasm when they’d been raping her meant that it was all null and void. That it wasn’t rape if she’d gotten off and I could tell it really fucked with her that she had… but the body didn’t always get the fucking memo on what was consensual and what wasn’t.
She’d really broke down then, and I wanted to find and kill the motherfuckers all the more for her suffering.
It was an ugly business. Getting betrayed by her friend, betrayed by these men, then fucking betrayed by her own body all in the span of a few hours – the trauma, the worry, the heartbreak, just fucking all of it.
“I want it so they can’t ever do this to anyone else,” she said, her voice shaking… “I just don’t know if I can go through it. All of it. The lies that will be told and the excuses they’ll make.”
She looked up at me, her tear-stained face a beautiful thing, her eyes wide with fear and something else I couldn’t name. I was about to say something when the kettle finally started to whistle on the stove.
I pulled back from her, went around the kitchen island, and pulled it off the flame of the gas burner.
I was quiet as I poured the scalding water into the cup, watching the tea bag suffuse the water with color.
I set the kettle on an unused burner and sighed.
“There’s another way,” I told her, and I turned back in her direction, pressing my hands flat to the counter and leaning on them, silently willing her to understand what I was offering.
“If what you’re suggesting is that you find them and kill them for what they’ve done to me…” she trailed off, was quiet for a long moment, and then she raised her eyes to mine and said, “I want that… but not if it is going to cost you anything. I don’t want you to hurt yourself on my account… go back to a place,” her eyes dropped to my dog tags, “that you maybe never wanted to go back to. I don’t want that… but if it won’t hurt you?—”
I gathered her hands off the kitchen island into mine and held them. She dragged her eyes back to mine and I smiled.
“Baby, I never dreamed you would ask, but legitimately now that you have – it’d be my pleasure to deal with these fucksticks so that you never have to; ever again.”
Her face looked surprised, her lips parting slightly with the emotion. She sat, softly stunned, and swallowed hard.
“You’d do that for me?” she asked quietly.
“Was going to with or without your blessing,” I said evenly. “You just made it easier.” I shrugged crisply, a quick rise and drop of my shoulders.
“Why?” she asked simply and I swallowed and slid the cup of steeping tea carefully in her direction. She took it between her hands, warming them on the mug and dropped her eyes to stare down into it.
“Several reasons,” I told her honestly. “We don’t need Savannah getting a reputation for this drug floating around – scares the tourists away and it’s bad for business. We don’t want this kind of heat and scrutiny going up by local or national law enforcement, either. That’d likewise be bad for business… the main reason, at least for me – I can’t speak for my brothers – is that I like you, Lorelai. Maybe even more than that… hell, definitely more than that at this point. I already told you; I love you. As far as these streets are concerned, that makes you mine. They hurt my baby girl. That’s enough of a reason for me to do some overdue violence.”
“It wouldn’t bother you at all, would it?” she asked. “Hurting them.”
I shook my head slowly and evenly, holding her gaze with mine.
“You make me soft, Sweetpea. You see a side of me no one has in a very long time, if ever… now I’ve got to ask, now that you’re getting a better picture of the kind of monster I am – are you okay? Because you know I’d never hurt you , right?”
She stared at me, speechless, her eyes wide and those lush lips of hers parted slightly and she whispered, “I love you, too. You make me feel safe like no one ever has… and I think… I think part of that is because deep down I knew it. I always have known that you’re capable of great violence… and I still trust you, and that you wouldn’t hurt me. You’ve had plenty of opportunity, have you not?”
“I have,” I agreed, gravely.
“And yet you haven’t… hurt me, that is, you’ve ever kept me safe.”
I nodded, and we stared at each other for several moments in a silence I could neither declare comfortable nor uncomfortable.
“I want to watch you hurt them,” she finally confessed. “I want to see them as afraid as they made me… I want to watch the light go out and I want to know for a fact that they can’t and won’t hurt anyone else the way that they hurt me. I want to watch you take from them everything they took from me and more.”
Her voice shook and dripped with a venom, a poison, that let me know that she was deadly serious.
“That can be arranged,” I said softly, shifting my stance carefully. I didn’t want her to see how much she’d just turned me the fuck on with her thirst for blood and vengeance. I was afraid that would be a thing to make her falter in her stance, which was pretty fucking loud and clear.
I turned away from her and pulled a beer out of the fridge, twisting off the top. I turned back and held it out in a toast. She raised her tea and clicked it with the glass bottle.
“To watching some motherfuckers burn for their sins before they even get to Hell,” I said dryly.
She looked slightly pained, but also grave.
“To a long life before I join them,” she murmured.
I drank and she sipped at the hot liquid.
“Don’t you worry about that, baby. Even asking for something like this isn’t liable enough to send you there.”
She snorted indelicately at that.
“I’m pretty sure premeditated murder is enough to send even the most pious of souls straight to Hell. Do not pass ‘go’ do not collect two hundred dollars, but directly to Hell.”
“Come sit on the porch with me, honey,” I said and she nodded, standing up from her seat. I came around the island and put my hand to her back, lightly guiding her to the doors through the dining area and out onto the porch. There were a couple of seats back here, a small table between them. She took the one closest to the door and I went around to the other one taking a seat. She sat and we looked out over the ornate porch railing, over the darkened cemetery.
“Confession time,” I told her softly.
She looked over to me, curiously.
“I’m a firm believer that if there’s a Hell, we’re in it.”
Her curiosity deepened in her eyes as she stared at me over the rim of her mug as she sipped at her tea thoughtfully.
“Why do you say that?” she asked softly.
I sighed and leaned back, rocking in my seat. It was an old pair of porch rockers up here, still in good shape, maybe needing a fresh coat of paint, but otherwise serviceable.
“Some of the things I’ve seen, some of the shit I’ve done…” I trailed off. “Some of the shit I’ve seen other people do to other people…” the shit they did to someone as pure as you, I thought to myself but didn’t want to say it out loud.
She plucked the thought right out of my head when she said softly, “What they did to me…”
I gave her a look like she’d hit the nail on the head but didn’t respond, opting to take a swig of my beer, instead.
“Bad things happen to good people entirely too much for me to believe we aren’t all in some kind of fucked-up version of Hell. There’s no place we go when we die where we burn for all eternity…”
She looked out over the cemetery.
“Then where do we go?” she asked.
I shrugged, “Won’t find out until we get there,” I said. “I don’t believe it’s a place of suffering, or some eternal lake of fire, or whatever.”
“You think we all go to heaven?” she asked.
I started to shake my head, but then stopped.
“If we learned our lessons,” I said, “then maybe. I think we’re just reborn – that we just keep right on doing it over and over again until the lesson takes.”
She looked thoughtful then and nodded slowly.
“I could see that,” she murmured.
“What’d you think happens?” I asked.
“Honestly, I never thought about it before.”
“Before..?” I prompted.
“Any of this, I guess,” she said. “Before waking up on that cold steel table.”
I nodded, “You’re young yet, people your age don’t tend to think about their mortality unless they’re given a reason to.”
She closed her eyes, and let the steam from her mug relax her face.
“You talk as though you’re an old and decrepit man,” she teased.
“Thirty-nine old enough for you?” I asked.
She snored and laughed shaking her head.
“You’re not as ancient as you’re making yourself out to sound,” she said and I smiled.
“Sometimes I feel every bit my age and then some,” I told her.
“Sometimes I feel old and wise beyond my years,” she said softly. “Especially now.”
I nodded slowly, “I think you’ve always been an old soul after a fashion,” I said.
She laughed at that.
“What makes you say that?” she asked.
“The way you handle yourself,” I said laconically.
She stared at me, eyes glittering in the dark.
“Yeah?” she asked softly.
“Yeah,” I said evenly.
I expected her to ask me to expound on my observation, but she didn’t. She just sat, quietly, watching the fireflies light up among the monuments and graves that stretched out under the hanging Spanish Moss.
I took a deep breath and let it out slow, half expecting to wake up and this entire bizarre conversation being only some kind of a dream.
“You’d really kill for me, wouldn’t you?” she asked some time into the silence stretching between us.
“I told you; I’d already planned on it. Just need to find the fuckers.”
“Do you think that was his real name?” she asked and I shook my head.
“No record of anyone by that name in the area.”
She looked a mix of surprised and vaguely disappointed.
“You’ve really looked into all of this?” she asked finally.
I nodded. “Damn right.”
“Why does that both chill me and comfort me?” she asked.
“Because you’re a lot of things, Lorelai. Beautiful, smart, sweet, gentle, kind, but one thing you will never be is stupid.”
She smiled faintly at that and said, “You’ve no need to flatter me so.”
I chuckled at how formal and old-timey she sounded. Mostly at how she didn’t even realize that she did it.
“You’re right, I don’t need to,” I said picking up her hand and bringing it to my lips. “I like to, though. You’re pretty when you blush.”
She giggled and blushed a brilliant pink that was turned to a shadow beneath her skin by the moonlight and the faint warm electrical light coming through the windows behind us.
I smiled to myself while taking another drink from my beer.
Things had gotten heavy; I was glad I could fuck around and lighten them up a little.
Lorelai sighed beside me a bit later as we listened to the cicadas and other myriads of insect and frog song on the night breeze, heavy with the scent of green and growing things with its underpinning of sweet magnolia blossom and night blooming jasmine.
“Ready to try for bed again?” I asked quietly, and had I not been captured by her, and enamored with watching her, I might have missed the nod of her head.
“Okay,” I said, pushing to my feet.
She pushed to hers and tucked herself into my side as I opened the screen door to let her back into the apartment. I gave her a one-armed hug and kissed the top of her head before relinquishing her to let her go inside.
I heaved a sigh and followed her in, sleep dragging at my edges before I’d even tossed my bottle into the recycling in the kitchen.
I set Lorelai’s proffered mug in the bottom of the kitchen sink and took her in my arms again, steering her back in the direction of the bedroom.
I tucked her into my bed, and she tucked herself into my side, laying her head on my shoulder and chest and fitting herself to my body like she was meant to be there.
As fragile as she was, she was resilient and it was a heady combination for sure.