Chapter 20 Nightmares
Nightmares
Deacon
I lay in my bed with one arm folded behind my head, the other wrapped around the woman curled against my side with her head on my chest.
I’d never felt such peace.
My family was a mess.
I had no idea what I was going to do for a living.
And I could get ousted from my home at any moment.
Yet I was the happiest I’d ever been.
She stretched and arched her back, pressing her breasts into my ribs and her ass into my hand, and my cock sprang to attention.
“I guess we should have had the safe sex talk,” she murmured.
Surprised, I asked, “You think I’d ever put you in any kind of danger?”
It never occurred to me she’d doubt that, but it should have.
I hesitated, knowing it was a sore spot, but wanted to reassure her. “I haven’t been with anyone since my divorce, and I’ve been tested.’
“What about pregnancy?” she challenged.
I hadn’t thought about it, but now that she mentioned it, I imagined her swollen with my child. Riding my cock with that beautiful belly, her tits heavy and full.
I grinned. “I’m ready if you are.”
“Are you?” Her eyebrows rose. “You’re ready right now? The way things are?”
My face softened. “I wouldn’t be even a little bit upset.”
She stiffened against me.
“Hey,” I called softly. “There’s no rush, sweetheart. And it’s not a dealbreaker.” I huffed out a laugh and rolled her underneath me.
Looking down into those soft, sleep-hazy, satiated blue eyes, her black hair spread out over my pillow like a river of silk, I knew one thing for certain. “There are no dealbreakers.”
Her eyebrows quirked, her eyes flitting away from mine.
With my knee, I spread her thighs and tested her readiness before driving myself home. “Not one, Jenny. Not even one.”
The next two weeks were nothing short of blissful other than the fact St. Michael’s was in shutdown until its residents got past the cold virus that plagued them.
Apparently, it happened almost every spring, though it didn’t stop Jenny from fretting.
Blissful was not a word normally in my vocabulary, but being with Jenny, laughing and talking and cooking and taking her to my bed, pushing her a little further each time, coaxing her to fully give herself over to me, was pure joy.
This bliss in Jenny’s company did not surprise me; I’d experienced it before.
But there was also hope, the kind that comes with the appearance of that first, brave bud after a long, cold winter.
And I hadn’t felt anything close to hope in well over a decade.
I’d met with the cadets’ leaders in Peppergrove, surprised over the vibrancy of the program, and perhaps seeing a place for me in it. I cast out feelers to various contacts in the area. I still wasn’t sure what I planned to do to make a living, but I had ideas.
Dreams.
And as such, I booked an appointment at the bank to take those first steps forward.
Living in tiny Moose Lake, I’d crossed paths with Baxter Martin so many times he was no longer a trigger.
I mean, the guy was cocky and almost un-fucking-bearably happy, but he was okay. Most importantly, both he and Maggie were soft and respectful towards Jenny.
Miller was a different story.
In him I saw who I might have been if my life with Jenny hadn’t fallen apart, if I hadn’t joined the Air Force, if I hadn’t seen and done and lost the things I had in the past decade.
I felt drawn to him more than the others, and his wife Maxine was both a hoot and a staunch supporter of Jenny’s.
The kind that would scare even the likes of me.
Tonight, the whole gang had convened at The Loose Moose.
And all hell was about to break loose.
It was a long-standing tradition at The Loose Moose that anybody who tossed a bra up onto the antlers, and got it on the first shot, got a free pitcher of beer for their table.
Miller boasted, “I’ve done it three times.”
Maxine griped, “And I lost two of my nicest bras.”
“That’s because you got pissed when I threw up the one I found in the trash.” He grinned. “Said you were embarrassed.”
Maxine turned away to commiserate with Jenny, and Miller pushed his chair back.
I tipped my beer up to hide my laughter as he fished a racy, red bra out of his pocket and stomped over to the tape on the floor that delineated the throwing line.
Eric and John stood up to watch, cheering as Miller’s toss resulted in Maxine’s bra dangling by the straps as if he’d climbed up and hung it up with clothes pegs.
It was juvenile, but their uncomplicated enjoyment was not.
“Miller! For shit’s sake, that one’s my favourite!” Maxine shook her head, clearly exasperated.
“It’s my favourite, too.” He grinned, wagging his eyebrows as he sprawled back down on his seat.
Maxine threw an arm out toward the moose. “Well, now you’ve gone and shown it to everybody else!”
She had a point.
Most of the bras that ended up on the moose kind of piled on in a jumble. Maxine’s was on display.
Jenny stiffened beside me, casting a glance in my direction.
Knowing how self-conscious she felt about her lack of lingerie, I made sure not to pay any attention to the lacy bit of froth hanging off the moose.
I didn’t care what Jenny wore. I just hated the reason I suspected she stuck to plain white.
She wasn’t her mother. She’d never be her mother no matter what she wore.
And she wasn’t what some people in Moose Lake persisted in believing.
Miller frowned as Eric and John made a point to send an appraising look up at the moose’s antlers.
“It’s very pretty,” Eric commented cheekily.
“Sexy, even,” John agreed.
Miller growled.
Maxine laughed.
Vera tossed a white lacy bra with little red bows on the table in front of John. “If you like it so much, you can toss mine up there, too.”
Grinning, John looked down at the table. His jaw dropped, then he snapped it up and shoved it in his pocket.
“Vera, no!” he cried, turning to palm both her breasts over her sweater, his big paws looking obscenely large on her small frame.
She laughed and batted his hands away.
“How’d you even get it off?” he yelled.
She shrugged. “Through my sleeve.”
“Fuck, Vera!” Standing up, John tossed his pretty wife over his shoulder and bounded down the hall to the bathrooms while everybody laughed.
Vera pushed up off his back and waved, her blond curls bouncing, a wide grin on her face.
Eric cocked a warning brow at Julie.
She stared back at him primly. “I’m a teacher. I’m not going to throw my bra on the table.”
He relaxed.
She winked at Maxine and grinned wickedly. “Besides, I’m not wearing one.”
Eric’s eyes bugged out of his head as his eyes dropped to her chest. He swiped a hand over his face, then looked closer. “Bloody hell, Julie.”
Maggie looked down at her chest then looked at Baxter. “You’re not getting mine. My boobs are so big my bra looks like a bowling ball bag.”
Baxter threw back his head and laughed.
Jenny snorted out a rough laugh, her twinkling eyes bounced back and forth between all of them, a bemused smile resting on her face.
A St. Michael’s smile.
The kind that reached her eyes and lit up her face.
“See the trouble you’ve caused?” Maxine turned to Miller and gloated.
“I’ll give you more trouble than you can handle, woman,” he growled.
She grinned back at him. “I’m counting on it.”
The server dropped the pitcher of beer on the table.
Maxine frowned. “That bra cost four times as much as that pitcher of beer you just won.”
“It’s not about the money, baby. A man needs competition in his life.”
Baxter pointed at him. “It’s a matter of prestige.”
“Honour,” Eric agreed.
John returned with a pink-cheeked Vera, a smug smile on his face.
She rolled her eyes at Maggie’s wagging eyebrows.
They were fun, and Jenny needed fun in her life. Though she tended to hold herself back, both Maggie and Maxine gently and continuously pulled her into the fray.
She’d even got new clothes when she went shopping with them.
Wearing new jeans that cupped her ass and a soft, blue, off-the-shoulder sweater ending at her hip, she was the most casually sexy I’d seen her since I’d returned.
She even put on mascara and lip gloss.
She was loosening up.
Maybe beginning to see she had people on her side.
I was happy for her, but my heart slogged heavily in my chest.
The camaraderie between the four men pierced memories better left buried. While I’d had a good night, and I would do it as often as Jenny wanted, I was relieved when we headed home.
Fully prepared to leave her inside her door, I reared back when she asked, “Will you stay?”
I studied her face. “Are you ready to have me in your space?”
She flushed deeply. “It’s not that I didn’t want you here—”
I cupped the nape of her neck. “It’s okay to have boundaries, baby. Even with me.”
Her throat bobbed as she nodded, then her soft eyes flicked up to mine. “So, you’ll stay?”
“Of course, I’ll stay.”
After getting ready for bed, I lay down on her bed and watched her putter around, getting herself ready.
Stopping in front of her dresser, she pulled her drawer open and stopped, head down. “I bought something pretty for you, but I don’t have the guts to wear it,” she admitted.
Her fucking mother and her shithead boyfriends made me want to plow my fist through the wall.
I swallowed my anger, pushing it down deep, burying it under the grief I kept tightly packed away.
I cleared my throat. “You don’t need it, baby. When you’re ready, you wear it for you, and I promise I’ll love it.”
“You won’t think anything bad about me?”
I slipped off the bed, and she slammed the drawer shut.
I ignored the drawer and covered her back with my chest. Sweeping her hair off her neck, I bent my head and kissed the sensitive juncture between her neck and her shoulder.
Lifting my head, I wrapped my arms around her and met her wide eyes in the mirror. “I guarantee you the only thing I’ll be thinking about is whether I want to fuck you in it or out of it.”
Her pupils dilated and her lips parted.
Interesting.
My baby liked dirty talk.