Chapter 10 Isla
ISLA
Imove beneath the covers of the bed, hyper aware that I’m sexually aroused. It’s a delicious feeling that’s ruined by guilt and shame. For the last thirty minutes, I’ve grappled with half-asleep visions of Garrett and Jackal working shirtless on my car.
They’re good looking. Jackal is more lean muscle. I bet his body fat percentage is, like, six or something. Then there’s the broader, stockier, more solid strength of Garrett.
They’ve got dirty hands as they tinker about beneath the hood of my car and…
Goddamnit. Jackal is smiling at me.
I run my fingers down my body, beneath the waistband of my pajamas, and slip them between my legs. It’s almost a betrayal of my good intentions that I’m so wet.
“Fantasies are natural,” I remind myself, thinking about the podcast I listened to last night before I went to bed. It was created by a survivor of child sexual assault who started the podcast as a way to share survivors’ stories.
While I don’t see the circumstances of how I got here as similar, the emotions are still the same. I’ve been left with a complicated relationship with my body. And haven’t wanted sex in the months since I left the club.
In the beginning, Karlie laughed and told me I’d be crawling the walls not having sex after it being offered on tap in the clubhouse. At the time, I laughed it off, told her it was too much of a good thing, and that I was going to be abstinent for a while.
Now, I realize it is so much more than that. It’s about taking time to figure out what I want my future interactions with sex to look like, feel like, or be with.
“Maybe you just start with yourself,” I mutter. “It’s okay to do this.”
I’m not sure why I feel the need to say those things out loud. But speaking them into existence feels important.
I close my eyes again, and Jackal and Garrett are both right there.
Jackal is wearing one of those mechanic’s overalls in a blue color. The top half is unzipped and off his shoulders, the arms tied around his waist. There are smears of oil on his chest and cheek and sweat beads on his pec.
Garrett, on the other hand, is wearing denim jeans that sit low on his waist and hug the curves of an ass that suggests he loves squats. He’s bent over the front of the car, head beneath the hood, and sweat glistens on his shoulders and the trail down his spine.
His coat lies on the bed next to me. I’d put it there to remind myself to return it to him after he put it over my shoulders the night he fitted the cameras.
There was a hint of tenderness in his actions, but also in his eyes as he did it.
It softened his features, made him look a little less angry.
I feel a twinge of embarrassment when I give into temptation and pull it closer so I can smell his musk and cologne.
It makes this feel a little less…lonely.
Slowly, I circle my clit. I know how to get myself off quick.
That’s never been a problem. Some of the bikers are less than collaborative when it comes to sex.
They’re racing from start to finish in the shortest possible time that gives them maximum payoff.
Some of the younger bikers were a bit more generous.
Smoke and Grudge enjoyed the challenge of making a woman come as part of the whole sex thing.
Butcher couldn’t give a fuck. The number of blow jobs I’ve given on my knees in various clubhouse corridors, not even making it to the privacy of their room, is too large to count.
Sometimes, they wouldn’t even touch me or kiss me.
The only parts of us that would connect was my mouth and their cock.
Taking possession of my own orgasm was a lesson I learned fast. Knowing what got me there in the moment was a way to feel satisfied. Even if that meant taking two minutes in the bathroom after the biker had fallen asleep or slipping my hand between my legs while I sucked them off.
But now, the idea of masturbating makes me…itch.
The podcast suggested trying to rebuild a healthy relationship with your body, but I sometimes feel like mine let me down. Which is foolish, I know, because…well…while I want to be able to separate head, heart, body, soul, etc. into pieces and blame any part of me, they’re all…me.
I sigh and focus on the image of Garrett and Jackal fixing my car. It’s okay to pretend they aren’t bikers, to place them in an alternate universe where they’re normal people and available to me.
They’re just bodies.
I dip my finger into myself. The first penetration I’ve felt in over four months.
It’s familiar and yet foreign.
I groan and remove my fingers. “I’m overthinking it.”
But I don’t want to leave my experiment unfulfilled. I grab my phone and search to see if there’s an app, not porn per se, but some dirty-talking guy. I find one that offers a few free samples on their website that has over two million views.
I lie back on the bed and place my phone next to me and try to relax. For a moment, I wonder if I should attach headphones for privacy, but then, I remember I live alone and I can do what I want.
That spurs me to continue.
A low, velvety voice spills into the room. “Good girl,” he murmurs. “I want you to get comfortable for me. Lie back.” A pause. “There you go.”
I raise my eyebrows at the way his unexpected charm ripples through me.
“I want you to slide your fingers between those pretty legs of yours.”
“If you say so,” I mutter.
I slide my hands back beneath the waistband of my pajamas and touch myself again, just easing my finger over my opening.
“That’s it,” the man purrs. “I want you touching yourself because you want to. Not for me, although, damn, it’s hot watching you touch yourself there.”
It’s a surprise how believable it is. After all the porn I’ve seen in the clubhouse, there’s something a little more honest about this, a little less objectifying.
My thighs open a little wider, and I press the heel of my palm against the heat and pressure building.
“Slow,” the voice instructs, as if he truly can see my actions. “Start slow. Slide your fingers over your clit. Just tease it. Feel how hard it is. Feel how sensitive and swollen it’s getting. But don’t rush. You don’t get to come just yet.”
I bite my lower lip, circling lightly, letting him direct me.
“Love it when you start to breathe hard,” he says. His voice drops lower, like it has a natural growling quality to it. The register is utterly filthy. “Makes me imagine how wet you are. How soft you’d feel if I had my hand between those thighs instead. Makes me hard.”
My hips jerk as my arousal grows.
“Spread those legs wider,” he murmurs. “Yeah…just like that. Oh, yeah. You’re so wet. Let me talk you through this. Let me make you come apart with nothing but my voice.”
I pretend he’s sitting next to me on the bed, watching my fingers as they work. There’s a safety in doing this by myself, with no one else’s hands on my body. But I can imagine the intensity in his eyes, even as they morph into Jackal’s.
“I want you to imagine my mouth there. My tongue on your clit. My fingers inside you. Slow, at first, then deeper. Do it. Dip your fingers deep in that wetness for me.”
My body is like the touchpaper of a firework that’s been lit.
“Mmm. Yeah. Just like that. Roll those hips if you need to, baby.”
I start to rock against my own hand as feelings and sensations take over rational thought. I feel how wet I am. How tightly I hug my own fingers.
“Good girl. Fuck, you’re doing so well.”
My breath breaks into gasps. An orgasm is in reach.
“Let yourself go,” he whispers. “Come for me. Right now. I want to hear it. Want to see it. Give it to me.”
My orgasm hits in an overwhelming wave, and my whole body clenches around it. “God, yes,” I gasp, my breath catching on a moan.
“That’s it, sweetheart. You did so damn good.”
I lie still, my chest rising and falling, my fingers still inside me, the aftershocks shivering through me.
“Good girl. Now, go enjoy the rest of your day like the badass you are, sweetheart.”
I pat around on the cover for my phone and press stop with my free hand. And, goddamn, I’m buying that app.
My phone tells me it’s a little after eight. I don’t have to be at work until noon. And as my imaginary lover instructed, I do feel a little more like a badass.
I guess it’s okay to love myself in the way I wish someone would love me.
With a smile on my face, I get cleaned up and eat some granola and berries while studying the living room. Maybe if I could get the kitchen, my bedroom, the living room, and one bathroom done, it would feel more like my own home.
Yesterday evening, I listed some of Nanna’s furniture for sale on a local buy-and-sell site. And I applied for a bank loan for the roof.
“And today, you got yourself off to the hottest voice known to man.”
I’m calling it progress.
Given I’m feeling Herculean, I decide to do a trip to the dump with some of the things that are garbage. I begin to drag them to my car. A wooden chair with a broken leg. The coffee pot that hasn’t been used for so long, there’s rust and mold on it. A lamp that threw sparks when I plugged it in.
The trips become mind-numbing. Out the door, down the porch steps, line up alongside the car, back up the steps.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
After about thirteen journeys back and forth, I realize this is going to take two car trips.
Once I start loading the hatchback of my small car, I realize it might need four or five.
I thought there might be room for the cracked mirror on top of the cushions from the sofa that bloomed dust when I touched them, but no amount of bracing my foot against the bumper to gain leverage is working.
And I’m grunting and sweaty like I’m back in bed with my audio-boyfriend.
“That’s not gonna fit,” Garrett says. He’s standing at the edge of my driveway, arms crossed, black hoodie pulled tight across his chest.
I guess he didn’t get my prior assertions that I’m not his problem to fix, because he seems both irritated by and fixated on my concerns.
“How long have you been standing there?” I ask, trying not to look at him directly, given less than an hour ago I was getting off to the scent of him while visions of his and Jackal’s naked torsos danced through my mind.
“Out here? About five minutes. Watching you from back there?” He points over to his house. “About fifteen, wondering what the fuck you were doing.”
I look at the car. “I’m testing the laws of physics or spatial awareness or something, and I’m utterly failing.” I point to all the debris on the driveway. “I thought this would all fit in two trips to the dump.”
Garrett has the audacity to snort at that.
I shrug. “So, I got carried away. It’s all garbage. Doesn’t matter if I end up having to leave it out here while I go to work.”
“Looks like you barely left anything in there.”
I roll my eyes, but my chest warms unexpectedly. His grumpiness is weirdly comforting.
Jackal saunters across the road with his hands in his pockets. He’s dressed in heavy black cargo pants with a metal chain dipping from his belt loop to his pocket. He’s wearing a thick, lined, denim jacket.
No leather.
“Thought I’d find you out here,” he says to Garrett.
“She thought she could fit all that in two trips to the dump,” Garrett recaps helpfully.
Jackal rolls his eyes. “I’ll go get the truck.”
“Good idea,” Garrett says.
“Wait. What? Why?” I ask.
Garrett chuckles. “You got anymore ‘W’ words you want to share?”
Jackal grabs the keys from his pocket and spins the key ring on his finger. “Because my truck is bigger than your car, and we got nothing better to do.”
I raise an eyebrow, but my resistance to the two of them is thawing.
They’ve helped me with my fence, my gutters, the cameras, my uncle, and my car.
A small voice tells me it’s too good to be true, but the louder one tells me they just want to be good neighbors.
“You guys are the busy enforcers, always off doing something rough and ready.”
“Yeah, well,” Garrett says. “The rough and ready thing we need to do right now is help you shift some junk.”