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Chapter11
Wren
A cold showercouldn’t dull the thrum in my blood after pumpkin carving and everything that came afterward. Even my dreams were filled with Bex - her fingers and lips and tongue - and I woke up on the edge. The tension buzzed over my skin all day, destroying my attention and my nerves. I tore my skin open on more than one thorn as I made arrangements the next afternoon, feeling like a novice when I nicked myself the third time. I was glad Bex was holed up in the back room pursuing a few leads so she didn’t pick up on my constant distraction.
Why do I keep pricking myself on thorns? Oh, no reason. I just can’t stop thinking about how you touched me and took care of me last night, and it’s making me have weird, sexy vampire dreams about you.
I tried focusing again on the arrangement in front of me. It was for a customer’s birthday, but I’d been encouraged to lean into the season, considering their birthday fell a couple weeks before Halloween. I couldn’t believe how close the holiday was already, the month flying by. After my original fight with Bex and then the break-in at my store, I had worried the month would drag and I’d spend every moment upset or fearful.
Instead, my schedule had been packed, fall gardening with Ames, apple picking, and pumpkin carving, and it didn’t escape my notice that she likely planned these things so close together to keep my mind occupied. So rather than stalling, the month had gotten away from me. I hadn’t even gone to a haunted house yet and made a quick note on my phone to buy tickets for the upcoming weekend before turning back to the arrangement in front of me.
The crimson snapdragons added height to the bouquet, their bushy flowers towering a few feet tall. I offset the deep red with gray poppies, the crushed silk of the petals looking like they’d been dip-dyed. I added in some greenery, giving the bouquet a haunting, vampiric effect. I smiled, pleased with myself, and snapped a few photos for my social media before carrying the bouquet back into the fridge to keep it fresh until pickup later that day.
Bex snuck up behind me while I was in the walk-in fridge, shifting a couple bouquets around to make room for the one I’d just finished. She shook her head as I moved a large vase onto another shelf, asking, “How is it you can barely lift a pumpkin but can manhandle giant arrangements all day with ease?”
“My muscles only work with floral-based weights,” I shrugged, subtly attempting to hide my hands behind my back, hoping the small pinpricks of blood faded before she got a closer look. I was less concerned about her anger and more concerned about her touch, knowing I would likely combust if she attempted to take care of me at this moment.
Unsurprisingly, Bex acted the same as usual, not treating last night as if it never happened but rather as if it meant nothing. As if she constantly licked women’s blood and bandaged them with a single-minded intensity that left them breathless. Maybe she did.
The problem was that I had never been a casual person. Not with my job (moving across the country and starting a business takes commitment), not with my friends (Alex and Dev becoming my family within days of me meeting them), not with my relationships (having only been in two relationships, both of them serious, though not long-lasting). Not with whatever was going on between Bex and me.
It didn’t help that we spent all our free time together, giving me no opportunity for release in the past couple weeks she’d been living with me. She either worked in the back room or sat with me in the front of the store most days and drove us home in the afternoon, where we spent more time in the same vicinity until it was time for bed. The walls were thin enough that I hadn’t considered pulling out a vibrator since Bex showed up, but the tension between us had built up enough that I was desperate.
Which was how I found myself lying to Dev later that afternoon. He’d kept his promise, taking me as often as he could to the shooting range and running me through the process. I knew how to load and unload the magazine, engage and disengage the safety, and aim. Pulling the trigger took some warming up on my part, which Dev couldn’t stop giving me shit about.
“You don’t have time to get yourself ready to shoot, Wren. You have to treat each shot like an emergency, because if your ass is shooting a gun instead of one of us, shit really is going down.”
We had the same conversation each time we did target practice, and I couldn’t argue with him. He was right. In reality, I wouldn’t have time to get in the right mindset. But despite his grumbling, Dev never pushed too hard, and I knew it was because he wanted to pretend target practice was just for fun, the way it started back when I was trying to prove a point to Bex. But since my shop was broken into, there had been a new layer of tension to our lessons. Dev wore his concern for me between his eyebrows, and I hated that he suddenly had to worry about me.
What I hated even more was that if Bex knew I couldn’t pull the trigger, I’d only be proving her right. That thought was the only thing that had me pulling the trigger a few times at the end of each training session, my shots getting closer to the bullseye with each practice. Dev had been part of some black-ops, highly-trained military group, real SEAL Team Six-level shit. That, added to the fact that I knew he spent his precious free time - when most of his days were spent working on the mysterious Cillian job - to bring me to the shooting range, made me feel even guiltier as I tried to slip out of our lesson early in an attempt to sneak home before Bex resumed security duty at my apartment.
“I have cramps,” I moaned to Dev halfway through our target practice. I had already shot a few bullets, hoping it would make him lenient enough to let my whining slide. Instead, he frowned at me, that deeply-buried military training emerging just enough to chastise me.
“Do you think an enemy would care if you had cramps, Wren?”
“No, but -”
“Besides, you just completed an impromptu dance routine, fully seated, to your favorite song on the way here. So somehow I doubt your cramps are that debilitating.”
“You wouldn’t know,” I huffed, crossing my arms, “You don’t have a uterus.”
“You don’t have cramps.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement, and I considered trying to really sell it but knew time was wasting. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Alex could somehow track our menstrual cycles based on our buying habits. I frowned, wondering if he had already done that for the three of us. It would be a lot easier than the game of Russian roulette I played each month with my white pants, and I made a mental note to mention the idea to him later.
I sighed heavily, making it clear that his attention to detail frustrated me, but decided to go with a semi-truth.
“I haven’t had a moment alone - truly alone,” I clarified quickly when I watched his mouth open, likely to disagree with me, “since Bex started her bodyguard duty. I just want fifteen minutes of uninterrupted alone time. You can stand outside my apartment door! I’m going stir crazy here, Dev,” I pleaded, widening my eyes as I turned my bottom lip down in a pout.
He almost bought it. I watched as his eyes softened in sympathy. I must’ve celebrated too early, the triumph showing in my eyes, because his eyes quickly narrowed in suspicion.
“Wren.” Dev raised an eyebrow, his stern look making it clear he wouldn’t settle for anything but the truth.
“I just want to masturbate in peace!” I blurted, the words unexpected enough that Dev took a step back in surprise. I watched as he tilted his head back and laughed, saving me from having to explain by wrapping an arm around my shoulders and leading me back to the car.
Dev drove me home, keeping his mouth shut despite the smirk tilting his lips at the corners. I wasn’t overly embarrassed to have admitted why I really wanted to get home early. I had never been shy to speak my thoughts, sexual or otherwise. What embarrassed me, what worried me, was that Dev would make the connection between Bex’s care for me the night before and my sudden rise in libido.
Dev did a quick check of the apartment, though we both knew it was mostly unnecessary with the sheer amount of security equipment Bex had installed. A mouse couldn’t move in the apartment while we were gone without her knowing about it. After confirming Bex wasn’t due home for another half hour, Dev shot me a cheeky “good luck” and hightailed it out the door, promising he’d be in his car in case anything went awry during my alone time.
I locked the front door behind him, moving straight to my bedroom so as not to waste any time. I shut my bedroom door, hopping onto the bed and reaching for my favorite vibrator, a little rose that sucked my clit better than any ex-girlfriends had. I would’ve worried about cameras, but both Alex and Ames had promised me that Bex kept the cameras outside of my personal space. I wasn’t a mark like Ames had been in the past, I was family. Which meant I got to keep a semblance of privacy.
