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While I did it, I memorized every single freckle, the way her flesh rose with goosebumps when something felt pleasurable, the way she swayed when her eyes closed, and she attempted to block out the feelings that lingered around the edges of my worship.
I didn’t get near enough time to spend on learning her shapes and curves. It was over before it began, in the blink of an eye, despite the fact that we’d been in the shower long enough to run out all the hot water. Time was both my friend and enemy. The one thing it wouldn’t do for me was rewind, so I could fix my mistakes before I made them.
My eyes never left her as she dried herself off with the far-too utilitarian towel she had to use. I made a note to get some of those soft, plush, bath towels that seemed almost as big as a small blanket. She deserved the best. The too-thin, well-worn towel she used wasn’t good enough to brush against her skin. Neither was I. Damn if I didn’t want to make myself good enough for her though.
“Come to the bedroom,” Nova ordered. I obeyed, leaving our towels hung over the shower curtain rod.
Nova stood there, staring at my bed like it personally offended her, and I suppose it did. More to the point that I’d offended her by all the women I’d had there. Fuck me. I couldn’t magically replace the bed, so I stood there and waited to see what she would do next. Her eyes darted to the chair in the corner, and I could see the question there, of whether the chair was tainted too.
She must have realized that it probably was. Her knees buckled and she dropped to the floor in the middle of the room, and I stood there watching as her shoulders shook with the emotion she couldn’t lock away, no matter how desperately she wished she could.
I wanted to go to her, call her name, tell her it would all be okay, promise her the world and wrap her up in my arms. It killed me to let her cry while she was on her knees on my dirty fucking carpet. I wanted to take her back into the shower and wash the filth of my room off her beautiful skin again.
I couldn’t do any of those things because I told her that I wouldn’t speak or touch her unless she asked me to. It was the hardest fucking thing I’ve done in my entire life. I never wanted to go through it again. She nearly broke me as I watched her break.
I did that.
I caused her to fall apart, and my touch, my words, none of it would bring her comfort and that killed me. It fucking gutted me.
Her sniffles indicated the end of her breakdown. I still couldn’t see her face because she hid it behind the curtain of her wet, tangled tresses. I could only catch glimpses of her tear-stained cheeks and swollen eyes. The blotchy red marks on her cheeks peeked between the wet strands of hair a few times before she got back up to her feet. Slowly, so fucking slowly that my heart stayed lodged somewhere in my throat, she turned to face me.
“I thought I could do this,” she admitted quietly before her eyes darted around the room again. “I don’t think I can. I don’t think I can be here where you’ve been with all of them. I look at your bed, where you took my virginity, and I hate it. I don’t want to remember the way you were with me or be stuck imagining the different ways you were with them in here. It all feels so wrong.”
I put everything I was feeling into my eyes as they pleaded with her to please, let me come to her, speak to her, or just take her away from here.She shook her head, as if to deny me. Then she offered me a simple, tiny little smile.
“We should get dressed. You need to take me somewhere else.”
I nodded and reached into my dresser to pull a shirt out that I handed to her. I worried that she wouldn’t take it, wouldn’t want to wear something of mine. She took it and pulled it close to her face, sniffing the damn thing. I closed my eyes and tried desperately to imprint that sight on my brain. It was one I never wanted to forget because that one simple gesture from her spoke volumes about how much she had missed me, even if she didn’t realize it.
I grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt for myself as she pulled her jeans back on her body. My shirt swallowed her up in the best way. It made me want to pull her into my arms once more, but I couldn’t do that. We were still under her orders. She’d tell me when she wanted my touch, and until then, I wasn’t to give it.
Once we were dressed, I followed her out of my room, through the clubhouse, and marveled at the fact that everything stopped as we passed through the common areas. Everyone stared, but no one spoke. It was as if Nova had all of us under her spell. Truthfully, she probably did. I didn’t make eye contact with anyone as we walked through. My eyes stayed trained on the woman in front of me - the only person who mattered.
When we got to the parking lot, her shoulders slumped before she marched over to her car that was parked closer to the garage.
I didn’t follow her and instead moved to the end of the line of motorcycles where I’d parked my Fatboy earlier. The paint job on it rolled from an ice blue in the front of the tank and darkened the further back it went. At some point, the color shifted seamlessly to a green hue and lightened again, to an icy mint green, by the time it reached the tip of my fender.
I had Kip add a pillion seat to it when my woman was missing. I couldn’t put her on the back of a bike I’d denied her riding before, so I pulled this one out of my garage, painted it to match our eyes, and added the seat with the back on it. She would be comfortable like that and wouldn’t have to worry about falling off if she couldn’t stomach touching me to hang on.
I hopped on, started her up, and backed her out of the spot. All the while, Nova stood there by the driver’s side door of her car with a grim look on her face. I think she thought I was leaving her, that maybe her confessional in the shower, or her breakdown in my room afterward, had been too much for me to handle. It had, but not in the way she thought.
I walked my bike back and then slowly made my way to her. Without saying a word, I patted the back to indicate where I needed her to sit. It was an offer I had to make without words. She understood, and immediately came over to throw her leg up and over to straddle the seat behind me. There was plenty of room that she wouldn’t have to touch me if she didn’t want to. Nova surprised me by sliding as far forward as my body allowed. She plastered herself to my back and wrapped her arms around my waist. I silently thanked God for small favors and had to stop myself from patting her hands that rested on my abdomen.
No touching.
I drove us around the lot and back over to the gate where our most recent prospect had opened up for us. I’m not sure when they all came outside, but my brothers had all hopped on their bikes, too. Maybe they knew intuitively that she needed to feel like a part of the club as much as she needed to know that I was hers. They needed to be hers, too.
She needed to know that these men, and the one woman, who I called my brothers would have her back. Even if that meant their allegiance to her became priority above the one they had to me, I would make it clear that they were to honor that. If I fucked up, they should tell her. She needed to be able to trust someone. If it couldn’t be me right away, then I wanted her to have them.
We rode out with Nova and me leading the way. Normally, that would have been unheard of since our President should have been out in the front. They were making an exception - for her.
The respect I had for my brothers grew that day and I understood a little about what our VP was always trying to tell us.‘There’s no power greater than the love of a good woman until you feel the satisfaction it brings you to know that you loved her back even better. You’ll understand one day.’
It was what he always told the brothers who asked how he made it work with his woman for so long, especially when he didn’t just refuse the club whores, but put them in their place anytime they took it upon themselves to try to encroach on his personal space. They never got past the imaginary buffer he set up for them.
They were lessons I never thought I needed to learn because I never imagined myself taking a woman in a serious way. Now, I understood and wished to fuck I had heeded his example in time to keep my woman from feeling the shit I’d put her through.
I was a fucking idiot.
