Chapter 19
Ravage put the finishing touches on the living room table he was doing for one of his neighbors.
The older woman had walked by a few weeks ago while he was loading a stool he’d made for Sora’s vanity and asked where he’d gotten it from.
When he told her he had made it, she commissioned him to make a table for her.
She hadn’t had too many specifications, just color. The rest she left up to him to decide. Ravage had kept it simple and not gone over the top. He needed to leave it there to set over the next twenty-four hours, and then it would be ready for her.
Going back inside, Ravage went to his bedroom and into the bathroom. He used the back of his hand to turn on the faucet. He’d gotten some paint on his hands and arms. Once he’d washed his hands, Ravage turned on the shower and allowed it to heat. Stripping off his clothes as he did so.
Once in the shower, he washed the rest of the paint off his body and his hair as well. It never failed that when he painted, especially with spray paint, he got it in his hair.
When he was finished with his shower, Ravage dried off and moisturized before pulling on a pair of boxers. He had just pulled out a pair of jeans and a white V-neck shirt when there was a knock on the door.
Ravage tossed the clothes onto the bed and went down the hall. There were only a couple of people who showed up at his house unannounced. Looking through the peephole, he saw it was Karter, which caused him to raise a brow before opening the door.
“Hey, babe,” Karter greeted, and Ravage stepped aside to let her in.
“Hey, Kaere.” He leaned down and kissed her as she came up onto her tiptoes. “Why didn’t you just use the spare key?” he asked when they pulled apart.
“Because you’re home,” she responded. “And I don’t want to just barge in on you.”
“Use the key next time, baby,” Ravage told her, closing the door.
“Did you just get out of the shower?” Karter inquired, reaching up and touching his damp hair, and Ravage nodded.
“I was about to get dressed,” he said. “Do you want to go get some lunch?” he asked as he started down the hall.
“Lunch sounds good. Can I choose where we go?”
Ravage chuckled. “Don’t I always let you?”
The two entered his bedroom, and he got dressed as Karter watched him. He could feel her eyes on him the entire time.
“I can have you for lunch instead, if you keep looking at me like that, Kaere,” he told her as he pulled his shirt over his head.
“Maybe dessert. I want actual food,” Karter responded.
Once Ravage was dressed, he took Karter’s hand, and the two of them headed down the hall and out the front door. Karter was parked behind him, and she handed him her keys so he could drive.
He opened her door before going back around the car and opening the driver’s side door.
He pushed the seat back and lowered it before getting in.
Ravage knew that his girlfriend sat close to the steering wheel, and with their height difference, he always needed to push the seat back before getting in.
Once they’d pulled out of his driveway, Karter told him where she wanted to go, and the ride there was filled with music and his girlfriend singing and dancing in her seat.
When they pulled into the parking lot, he found a spot before getting out and going around the car, taking Karter’s hand as she got out. They went into the restaurant and were seated by the hostess.
Once they’d placed their drink orders with their server, Ravage leaned back in his seat and ran his eyes over Karter, who was looking at her menu.
It had been a couple of weeks since he’d upset her, and every time he thought about it, he still felt bad.
More so because it took him far too long, in his opinion, to realize what was wrong.
Not that he hadn’t known something was wrong when she left that night, he just hadn’t known what exactly.
“You’re staring,” Karter spoke.
“You’re beautiful. So, it isn’t my fault,” Ravage countered, causing her to smile at him. He reached across the table, taking her hand as she placed her menu down. “I was thinking we could go somewhere in a couple of weeks for a few days.”
Karter played with his fingers. “You just closed Purgatory for a week a couple of months ago.”
Ravage shrugged. “We can leave out Saturday night and come back Thursday morning. The crew should be able to handle it for one day without us.”
“Okay, where are we going?”
“I thought we could choose a place on your bucket list.”
She smiled at him momentarily before it faltered, and Ravage raised a brow at her. “That would be great, but I need to save for a trip like that.”
“Where do you want to go, baby?” Ravage questioned. “That’s all I need from you.”
“Creed, I can’t let—”
“Where, Kaere?” he cut her off.
Karter bit her bottom lip as she thought about it. “Can I think about where I want to go?”
“Of course, baby.”
They spent the rest of lunch talking about the piece Ravage had just finished, and some pillows Karter and Sora were making later that day for the patio bench at Demetri and Sora’s house.
After lunch, they returned to his house and watched a movie before Karter left to go help Sora. When she was gone, Ravage looked into a few places he knew Karter wanted to go and would like. Wanting to have a jumpstart in the event that they were where she chose.
Karter sat with her mom at her sewing table, helping her stuff the open ends with polyfill. She’d been there for almost two hours, and they’d finished two pillows already. Karter shifted in her seat before reaching for more fill.
“Is there a particular reason you keep sighing as if you’re conflicted about something?” her mom questioned.
Karter looked up at her. She hadn’t known that she was sighing, but it didn’t surprise her. She’d been thinking about the conversation that she and Creed had during lunch, and was skeptical about him paying for her part of the trip he wanted them to take.
“You want to talk about it?”
“Creed and I had lunch today,” Karter started, and her mom nodded. “He wants to take a trip together.”
“Okay,” her mother replied, just to let her know she was listening.
“I told him I needed to save up for us to go since he wants to go in a couple of weeks. But...”
“But what?”
“He told me to just tell him where I wanted to go and he’d pay for it.”
“And you’re uncomfortable with that?”
“A little, yes,” Karter responded. “I don’t want him thinking I’m with him for that.”
Her mom reached over and pinched Karter’s hand, causing the younger woman to snatch it away and rub the sting.
“Ouch, Mom! What was that for?”
“I wanted to stop whatever irrational thought train you were on before it got too far out of the station,” she told her. “First, Ravage will never think that. He wouldn’t have offered if he had an issue with it. Second, you should know him much better than that.”
“I know. There’s just this part of me that...I don’t know. That wants to be independent.”
Karter watched as her mother rolled her eyes. “Your father likes to pay for things for me. That doesn’t mean I’m not independent.”
“You and Daddy are also married.”
“Marriage is a title for a type of committed relationship. Are you and Ravage not in one?”
“Yes, we are.”
Her mother said nothing in response, simply raised a brow, and Karter got the message loud and clear.
She went back to stuffing the pillow, trying to pinpoint the source of the feeling, but couldn’t quite name it. She simply knew that she wanted to give as much in her relationship as she received. Contribute just as much as Creed did.
It took speaking with her mother, and the older woman not actually saying much, to ease Karter’s feelings. She would call Creed when she left and talk to him. They could choose a place together.
When they finished making the pillows, they took them outside and placed them on the patio seat. Her mom then asked her if she wanted to stay for dinner, and Karter was never one to turn down food. Even less so when it was food she didn’t have to cook.
Before her mother started dinner, they sat in the living room together for a couple of hours watching a cooking show. It was often what she’d catch her mother watching at any time. Her mom enjoyed cooking and baking, so she was always looking for new recipes to try.
When her mother started cooking, Karter asked if she wanted her help, but her mom insisted she didn’t need any. So, Karter grabbed the remote and flipped through the channels. She settled on a random movie.
It was forty-five minutes later when her mom came and told her that the food was ready, and Karter hopped off the couch and followed her down the hallway into the kitchen.
She’d been getting a whiff of the aroma the entire time her mother was cooking, and it had Karter’s stomach growling in anticipation.
She knew her father had a dinner meeting with one of his clients, and he wouldn’t be joining them. So, Karter decided she would eat enough for both of them and take some home as well, since her mother always made food as if she were cooking for an army.
Once they were finished eating, Karter cleaned the kitchen for her mother while she sat at the bar, and the two of them discussed her parents’ upcoming anniversary.
It was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, which was also their twenty-sixth anniversary.
Her parents had kept the same date and got married on the day they started dating.
Karter volunteered as she always did to help her mom find a gift for her father. She’d tried to help her father once, but he told her she would just tell her mother, since he didn’t believe she could keep a secret. So, instead, Creed tended to help him.
She stayed for about an hour longer before leaving and heading home. It was almost nine o’clock when she got there, and she decided to shower before calling Creed.
When she was finished with her shower, she moisturized and dressed in one of the T-shirts he’d left over there. Karter sat cross-legged on her bed, deciding to video call him.
“Hey, Kaere,” he greeted, running a towel over his hair.
“Hey, baby.”
“Did you and Sora finish your pillows?”
Karter nodded. “We did.” She leaned back against the headboard. “So, I was thinking we could choose a place to go together.”
“I’ll have fun wherever we go because I’ll be with you. I don’t mind us going somewhere on your bucket list,” he told her as he propped his phone up and went over to his dresser.
Karter saw he was only in a towel. She figured he’d gotten out of the shower before she called him since he’d been drying his hair, but she hadn’t known that he was still in his towel.
She bit her lip, watching intently as he pulled a pair of boxers from his dresser and dropped his towel. Karter couldn’t help but bite her bottom lip. They hadn’t had sex in over a week, partially because Karter had been on her cycle.
It was only when he turned back to the camera that she realized she was supposed to be responding to what he’d said.
“You okay, Kaere?” Creed questioned in a teasing tone, and for good measure, he gave his semi-hard dick a long, slow stroke.
Karter noticed that regardless of what they were doing, he was always in that state, and she liked to think that she caused it. That looking at her, being with her, did that to him.
“Yes, Ravage. I’m fine.”
Her boyfriend chuckled deep in his throat as he threw the boxers aside. Instead, pulling out a pair of sweatpants and putting them on.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, baby,” he told her, going back over to his phone and picking it up. “Put your phone on the bedside table and play with my pussy until I get there,” he commanded.
Karter propped her phone up as he instructed, rearranging the pillows so she was front and center in the frame. She hadn’t bothered putting on any panties when she’d gotten out of the shower. Spreading her legs slightly, she slowly rubbed her clit, giving him just enough of a view to tease him.
When he got into his truck, Karter grabbed her phone. “You need to focus on the road, Ravage,” she told him with a teasing smile.
“Kaere,” Creed spoke.
“You can have a front-row view when you get here,” she told him, licking her bottom lip before hanging up the phone.
Karter clenched her thighs together in anticipation of her boyfriend arriving. It had been too long since he’d slid deep inside her, and she couldn’t wait.