Part 2
AUTUMN
Did the cold wind bite you, did you face up to the fright?
When the leaves spin from October
and whip around your tail?
Did you shake from the blast, did you shiver through the gale?
Jethro Tull ~Weathercock
30th September
Somerset
AS the mother lay dead in the street, the boy cried over her body they’d left abandoned in the dirt. The hours dragged as slowly as the sun moved overhead. It became harder and harder for me to tune him out. The wailing just zeroed in through my ears, and straight to my motherfucking heart. That boy was me. I’d been right where he was. I couldn’t stand hearing him for another bloody second. So I swooped in to grab him. A decision I cannot take back, because what I did was his death sentence. He never had a chance. None. They used him like bait to lure me in. No take-backs for what I did…
I crashed awake gasping for breath. Like a film in super slow motion, then fast-forwarded, defying logic, but making acceptable sense to where I’d just been in my dream. One moment I was buried under with the oppressive weight of darkness and despair closing in on me, and then in a split-second, shoved to the surface to face the blinding light of freedom.
I fucking hated it.
The dreams fucked with my head.
I was fucked up because of them.
I was also sleeping in the same bed as my pregnant wife. This is the part I dreaded more than anything. The moment when I had to lie there suspended, too panicked to look over at her and see if she was peacefully asleep…or unpeacefully awake. Had she caught me this time? Or had I slipped through the net again?
I dared to look. Turning my eyes toward her without moving my head very much, afraid to cause any movement—which was absurd because people moved around in their sleep all the time—in hopes that she didn’t see, didn’t hear…didn’t know.
Asleep on her side facing away from me.
Blessed Jesus, thank you!
My girl slept less soundly now that she was pregnant, and I dearly wished I couldn’t say the same. Trying to rationalize the reasons for my nightmares, attempting to figure out why they’d been triggered so suddenly after being buried for years, wasn’t impossible to work out.
Brynne was the reason. Finding her, falling in love with her, had initiated every possessive instinct inside of me. She had switched me on, and that was it. I’d been driven to have her, yes, but it was Brynne loving me back, putting me in a position of being worried over for the first time, it was her offering comfort to me that made her so different.
Before Brynne, I could just bury the bad and horrible, detaching myself from what had happened to me, and not allowing myself to feel. I was disconnected, aloof, emotionless. Not now.
Now when I had a flashback, the sequences of events were even more deranged than usual. In my head, the past and present melded together in a confused clusterfuck that rattled around in my subconscious, but wasn’t anywhere close to direct reality. Shit that had happened, mixed up with what could have happened, but hadn’t. And then there was the cocksucking future… That bastard would be the death of me, I was certain.
There’s a shit-ton of crap to worry about in the future.
Falling in love with a person changes everything. You learn this, after the fact of course, because you quickly realize you didn’t really ever have anything to worry about before you had someone to lose. Once you do have them?
Newsflash, motherfucker. You can lose them. And in more ways than one, too. You have a lot of fuckin’ things to worry about. Like whether or not you’ll be able to breathe through another day if some deranged lunatic takes the only person on earth you can’t live without.
Brynne was that person for me. I needed her in order to live now.
And thankfully she was sleeping right now, undisturbed by my subconscious ravings and safe in the bed with me.
I breathed in deeply and told myself I could do this. I was getting better at separating the past from the fear of the unknown down the road in the future.
So I focused on her comforting scent and slid over to spoon up against her body, getting my face right next to her hair on the pillow, where I could breathe in the intoxicating smell of floral and citrus that belonged uniquely to her.
I rested my hand over her belly which had grown more since our honeymoon, but still didn’t look very big to me—just a curved mound where she used to be very flat. Eighteen weeks along and we now had a sweet potato according to the TheBump.com, which was bookmarked in “favourites” on all my devices. I liked knowing what to expect.
Brynne didn’t want to know the sex of our baby. And we didn’t know yet anyway because it was still too early to tell, but she amazed me with her ability to wait for something that most people would beg to find out, if the information was available. She said she wanted to be surprised. I had to respect that. Plus, if I did know, I would undoubtedly fuck up and ruin the surprise anyway, and then I’d be in massive trouble. Better if both of us were in the dark about whether we had a Thomas or a Laurel coming.
Either one would be perfect.
I started drifting off again, very loose and soothingly peaceful with her softness against me, when she grew restless. Her breathing picked up and her body tensed. She touched her belly and found my hand already there.
“Ethan?”
The sound of her voice was agitated, almost frightened, in an oddly muffled pitch that told me she was sound asleep and dreaming.
“Shh… Right here beside you, baby.” I gently rubbed the swell in slow circles over her nightgown, and nuzzled at the back of her neck through her hair until she quieted from whatever dream had disturbed her.
I closed my eyes, finally ready for my own sleep, when she spoke out again, this time, as clear as a bell…
“Always here for you, Ethan.”
My eyes snapped open.
Her revelation floored me, not because of what she’d said, but the fact that even in sleep, even in her dreams where the consciousness is blurred, my girl was right there loving me—showing her care and concern for me all the time.
We were that deeply connected.
No matter what fate held in store for me, I could never let her go.
THIS house was really big. Too goddamn big for our needs, I decided. This was confirmed by the size of the modern garage I was parking the car in at that moment. It still retained its original façade, appearing on the outside as the carriage house it had originally been built as, over two hundred years before. As in big fucking coaches and carriages pulled by teams of horses and driven by a coachman. It was more than a little strange for me because I had always lived in the city. Born and bred. But still, we loved this house already, and in my gut I’d known it was right for us to make a home here. We couldn’t live here full time yet, but three- or four-day weekends were working out for now. And we couldn’t abandon London altogether because the business was there, and Brynne’s studies, which she was determined to return to once the baby was born.
The estate agent had shared some history of Stonewell Court with us. The foundation had been laid down in 1761, then several years to build it, before being occupied by a London gentleman who wanted a country cottage to wile away the lazy summer days at the seaside when the heat of the city got too oppressive. And the stink of the city probably.
London of centuries past was not as pleasant as it was now in the modern age, so it made sense as to how all the big country mansions were built in the first place. Funny to think that we were doing the same thing the owners of centuries ago had done. Living in London and visiting the country for a break. We were having fun playing house and that’s all that concerned me.
Still made me laugh to think that they’d referred to this monstrosity of stones as a “cottage.” I shook my head as I headed around to the back of the house to find her. I’d given Robbie strict instructions to keep her occupied while I was on a stealth errand to pick up her birthday present. Yeah, my girl was twenty-five years old today and had a celebration coming her way this afternoon.
I came out through the arch that led to the gardens and looked for her, and there she was. Playing in the flowers. She wouldn’t call it playing, but she looked like she was having a good time, garden gloves and trowel in hand, planting an ancient looking urn with some lacy green vines.
The gardens had appealed to Brynne from the first day we set foot on the property. I thought it was interesting even though she claimed to not know much about plants. She’d been talking about wanting to learn ever since she’d seen my mother’s garden at my dad’s London house. The place where I’d asked her to marry me.
Robbie James, the gardener we’d inherited when we bought Stonewell, was helping her with the different beds and plantings, getting everything refreshed from some years of neglect when the house had been empty. I was happy to see she had chosen a lot of purple flowers, which were her favorites. I knew that, of course. I’d sent her purple flowers the very first time…and she had given me a second chance. I glanced up at the clouds and gave a silent thank you to angels who believed in second chances.
So Brynne was really taking to this part of her new life, and that made me glad. If she wanted to play in the dirt then she should. But, she was strictly an observer on the labour aspect though. I made sure Robbie understood no lifting anything heavier than a garden hose for her. If she tried to do too much I’d better hear about it, so I could put a stop to it.
I waved to him from across the turf, letting him know I’d returned and that his Brynne duties were finished. I gave him the thumbs up and he saluted back. Birthday gift was sorted and everything ready to go. I grinned at what she would say when she saw what I’d done.
I snuck up behind her and covered her eyes with my hands. “Guess who.”
“You’re very late, you know. We’ll have absolutely no time for our lover’s tryst now. My husband will be back any minute and he’ll go crazy if he finds you here.”
Damn, she’s quick with the mouth. “I work fast. I’ll be in and out before he knows a thing.”
“Oh, my God.” She spun around and put her hands on my chest, laughing and shaking her head at me. “You did not just make that joke to me.”
“What joke?” I deadpanned. “If we want to get in a quick shag before your jealous husband comes back we need to hurry up.”
She laughed and stepped back from me, making a great show of taking off her garden gloves, enjoying the hell out of this game we were playing. Her hair was up again, just the way I liked it to be, so I could have the pleasure of taking it down when I got her in bed.
The coy and mischievous smile on her face was a sure sign telling me she was up to something though. I held on for her to make her move, both of us doing the stand-off, waiting, plotting, and grinning like fools.
She dropped the gloves at my feet.
My cock woke up.
Her eyes lowered seductively…and then she spun on her heels and took off running for the house.
Yes! I gave her about a two-second lead before I went after her.
Catching her was going to be fucking heaven.
BRYNNE rode me with expertise, rotating her hips in a circle that made the walls of her cunt grip me so tightly I knew it wouldn’t take much longer before I was gone.
“Oh, Ethan…you’re so hard,” she said breathlessly, “you feel so good.”
“You make me hard, so I can fuck you like this.” I gripped her hips and angled her back slightly. I liked to see us fucking, our bodies colliding, connecting. It got me off.
But I needed to get Brynne off first, before anything.
“Hold your tits in your hands for me.”
And like the perfect lover she was, she cradled one in each palm, like an offering up to me, as if they were a prized piece of fruit. Perfect fuckin’ analogy there. Brynne’s breasts had always been succulent works of art, but they were changing from her pregnancy. In a very good way. They were even more succulent now.
As she pinched the dark pink nipples that were budded up tight and high in the center of those voluptuous beauties, she cried out. I could see the clear signs of her pleasure melding with that fine edge of pain, and made my move to bring her the rest of the way. I brought my fingers to her clit and worked the slippery nub as she continued to take the spearing of my swelling cock.
Nuclear explosion imminent, I waited for the first convulsion from inside her to suction and pull at my shaft. That’s all it would take right now. Her going off would bring me to follow her within seconds. I knew what she did to me and it was always fucking magnificent.
“Ooooohhh…I’m coming…” she crooned on a breathy groan.
So beautiful in all her bare, naked glory, she found her pleasure, those wide brown eyes of hers sparking amber fire down at me.
“Oh, yes, oh, yes!” I followed my girl down the path of explosive pleasure the instant her eyes connected with mine, her internal shudders and reflexive gripping drawing every last bit of spunk out of the tip of my cock. I kept on fucking, working it in deep. I know it was crass of me, but I wanted my cum in her. Like that way I could stay inside her even when I wasn’t.
She collapsed onto my chest, both of us heaving, the heavy breathing that feels so good after you come. I rubbed her back and closed my eyes. We were a mess of sweat, and spunk, and her arousal. A lovely, sexed-up, dirty, fucking mess.
“That was the best birthday present a girl could get,” she muttered, “but you’d better go before my husband finds you here.”
I laughed and nuzzled her jaw. “Glad you liked it. And your husband should keep a better eye on you.”
“What he should do is keep a better eye on making sure I’m satisfied,” she sniffed. “Being pregnant makes me nearly insatiable.”
“I can take care of you, baby. Forget him. He’s a fuckin’ idiot.”
“Yeah, and you have a much bigger cock than him, too.”
“Damn, woman, you are a feisty handful.” I tickled her until she shrieked and begged me to stop.
We laughed and settled down again, just enjoying the moment of closeness together. This was pure happiness for me. I didn’t need a lot, but I did know that now that I’d experienced Brynne’s love, I would be lost without it. Love. A thing I’d never sought out, had caught me up, completely ensnared me…so that now I was dependent upon it for my emotional survival.
I breathed in her heavenly scent, aimlessly stroking up and down her back, when I felt a prickling on my chest right by where she’d laid her cheek. I brushed at the spot with my fingers and met a pool of warm wetness. What the hell? I pulled my hand back to find my fingers dripping in blood.
My heart just fucking dropped to the floor. “Oh, God, Brynne, you’re bleeding!”
“WHAT? I am?” I sat up and met Ethan’s terrified grimace with the blood on his hand suspended between us as it dripped down his skin. I lifted my hand to my nose, understanding quickly what was happening. “It’s okay, Ethan. I’m okay,” I soothed, seeing clearly how my nosebleed was freaking him out.
“That’s a lot of fucking blood,” he barked. “I’m ringing Fred,” he said, reaching for his phone on the side table.
I tilted my head back and pinched the bridge of my nose. “It’s just a minor nosebleed, Ethan. Don’t call Freddy for this, please.” I got off him and stepped down from the bed. And it wasn’t easy when I was trying to keep from dripping all over the bedding.
I zipped into the bathroom and found a washcloth to use. It would be ruined now, but I didn’t have a choice. I held it under my nose with one hand and turned on the cold water at the sink with the other.
Ethan was right behind me, still panicking with eyes as wide as saucers. “Here, let me do it.” He pulled the washcloth away and checked me. “It’s still going,” he stated, his face pale.
I pressed the cloth back down on my nose. “Baby, this is nothing to get so worked up about. It’s just a nosebleed. This isn’t the first one I’ve had.”
“It isn’t?” he shouted. “When? What other times?” An angry frown had overtaken his beautiful face. Gone was my sweet teasing man from a few moments ago.
“Easy, buster, you need to lighten up—they are nothing serious. I had one yesterday while you were at work.”
“Why didn’t you say something?! Fuck, Brynne.” He dragged a hand through his hair raggedly, gripping the back in a tight handful.
“Okay.” I held a hand up, starting to get pissed at his overreacting. “I want you to take a deep breath, and go look at the website and check for ‘eighteen weeks pregnant.’”
Glaring, he shook his head at me, but he did step back and reach for his phone. The smears of blood on his hand looking gruesome, as he pulled up the site and studied the information. His eyes moved quickly as he read the “Pregnancy Symptoms” section. He lost some of the tension in his body and sat down on the side of the bed. After a moment more of silence, he read it out loud to me, his voice flat, “Increased pressure on the veins in your nose may be causing nosebleeds.” He was clearly upset.
“Are you sure it’s nothing to worry about?” When Ethan looked up at me, the expression on his face made my heart twist. He was sad, and scared, and frustrated, and concerned, all at the same time. Poor guy was going to need tranquilizers when I went into labor. “I’m okay, really I am.” I turned to the mirror and removed the washcloth. Bleeding stopped. My lip and chin were a bloody mess, but my nose was dry now.
Ethan jumped up and came to me. “Let me do it.” I knew better than to argue with him. I stood still for him as gently cleaned away the blood, wetting the cloth and carefully washing it off bit by bit until it was all gone.
I closed my eyes and let him work, feeling very loved and cherished despite the “trauma” my poor Ethan had just endured.
“How in the goddamn hell will I survive the birth of this baby, Brynne?”
I held his face in my hands and made him focus. “You will. You can do it. One minute at a time, just like me.” I didn’t know what else to tell him. I was scared, too.
He drew me into his arms and just held me against him, kissing the top of my head and smoothing down my hair. We’d shower and get ourselves cleaned up for my birthday dinner with his family in a little while, but right now we both needed this.
He just held me.
“SO we’ve had cake. Which was really delicious—thank you, Hannah.” Ethan gave his sister a bow of his head in appreciation. “We’ve had presents…except for one.” He snickered at everyone, looking far too smug for my liking. What in the hell was he up to? I sensed it might be something big, and that made me anxious. I didn’t need extravagant gifts from him. Didn’t really want them either. I knew myself. I was a simple girl.
“I want to see Auntie Brynne’s present,” Zara piped up. My five-year-old niece had absolutely no trouble expressing her opinions about life in general. It was safe to say that extravagant gifts didn’t bother Zara one iota. Ethan doted on her, and I adored her. In fact, she came over to see us quite a bit. One of her older brothers would walk her over if the weather was nice and she would run around our house and play with her Barbies. Zara was a hoot.
“Okay, let’s go see it,” Ethan said smugly. “Now, Zara, I need your help with it. Your job is to make sure Brynne doesn’t open her eyes until I say she can.” Zara stared up at him, her little neck bent flat on her spine.
“Okay,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “You can’t look, Auntie Brynne.”
“Deal,” I said. “When you say, ‘let’s go see it,’ where is that exactly?”
Ethan laughed and the others smiled cryptically.
“To the front of the house we go.” He held out his arm and I took it, letting him lead me on one side with little Zara on the other.
Before we passed through the front doors, I made a big show of closing my eyes and allowed them to bring me forward. I didn’t need to worry about stumbling because Ethan had me firmly, directing every step. Of course he would make sure I didn’t fall. It made a lot of sense to me as to his chosen field for his career. My man had been born to protect and serve, and those hard-wired traits were carried over in all that he did.
The crunch of gravel sounded under everyone’s feet as we walked, and I still had no earthly idea what sort of gift he’d gotten for me.
We stopped.
I heard whispers, and then Zara shouted in her adorable child voice, “You can look at your white car now, Auntie Brynne!”
A car? I opened my eyes to a brand, spanking, new, white Range Rover HSE Sport. The full deal, left-handed drive and all. Holy crap.
I spun on Ethan. “You bought me a car?!”
The grin on his face was worth having to learn to drive lefty. “I did, baby. Do you like it?”
“I love my Rover.” I am so very intimidated by this Rover. I threw my arms around him and whispered in his ear because we had an audience. “You are crazy for buying such an extravagant gift for me. You must stop.”
He pulled back and shook his head slowly. “Crazy for you is all…and I’ll never stop.”
I knew he wouldn’t, either. The steadfast look in his eye told me so.
I wanted to shake him and kiss him at the same time. He spent way too much money on gifts for me. He didn’t need to, but he’d always been so overly generous with me from the first. He spoiled me and enjoyed doing it.
I looked at my new car and swallowed. I had an idea as to its price tag and knew it was a shitload of money. Jesus Christ, what if I wreck the thing? Better yet, how would I drive the damn thing?
“What am I going to do with you, Blackstone?”
“You aren’t doing anything with me, but I think you are going to do something with your new car.” He looked worried, like maybe I wasn’t happy with the gift. I couldn’t hurt him though. Out of the question for me to ever do that to Ethan. Plus, he was still a little freaked about my earlier nosebleed problem. I could tell it had triggered something for him. I wasn’t sure exactly what, but sensed it had little to do with my pregnancy, and more to do with his traumatic past. I sighed inwardly and shelved it for now. This was not the time to delve into it.
I stared at him. At Freddy and Hannah, Colin and Jordan, who waited with smiles for me to take possession of my gift. Zara, bless her, broke the tension and jumped up and down. “I want a ride in it. Let’s go, Auntie Brynne.”
I laughed nervously for a minute, and then figured, why the hell not? I was married to Ethan now. England was my home, and we had a house in the country. I couldn’t take a train into town. I would need to go out and get things like normal people did every day. I would be a mom soon, and there would be places to go with my baby. Better to learn now, rather than later.
I gave everyone my best confident smile and went for it.
Channeling Rain Man here, people. “Okay…just real slow on the driveway. I’m an excellent driver.”
“Who’s coming first?” Ethan asked.
Zara and Jordan volunteered and climbed in the back. I went to the driver’s side and opened the door, smelling the new-car leather and finding it hard to believe this beautiful piece of machinery now belonged to me, along with everything else.
Ethan, the house, his family, the baby…just everything was a lot to take in for my pitiful self, especially in my hormonal state.
I buckled myself in, the seatbelt being the least of my problems as I looked at the dashboard. More like a control panel for a stealth bomber. I looked over at Ethan in the passenger seat and held out my hand. “The key?”
He smiled at me. “You push here to start it.” He reached forward and pointed to a round button.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!”
Jordan snickered. Zara giggled. Ethan rolled his lips as if to keep himself from saying something he would later regret. Smart husband. I pushed the damn button.
I only dropped one more f-bomb and two or three “shits” in the course of my first, driving-left, sitting-right lesson, with Ethan as my patient teacher.
The kids in the back thought it was hilarious fun, and loved reminding me I needed to “keep left” on the country road, which was stupid because it was only one lane.
Ethan, wise man that he is, kept his mouth shut.
I gave him a really nice show of my appreciation for my very generous and lovely birthday gift, as soon as we were alone.
