Breath on the Wind (22 page)

Spent, Chiz collapsed onto her, breathing heavily against her ear.  With a groan, Andy unhooked her legs, planting her boot heels on the comforter.  The aches that had taken a back seat to her libido began to make themselves known again.  She shifted, trying to ease the protests in her body, at which Chiz rolled off her to lie on his back at her side, his arm thrown over his head, his eyes closed, as he recovered his ability to breathe.

“Shower?”  Andy gasped.  She could almost feel the steaming water against her skin already, and knew it would feel almost as orgasmic as Chiz’s cock in her body.

She rolled, until she was sitting on the edge of the bed, and tried to pull her boots off, but that caused the stitches in her arms to tug painfully in her skin.  “Shit.”

She felt the mattress move, and then Chiz came around the bed, and knelt in front of her.  He pulled her boots off, and tossed them into a corner of the room.  “Let’s go get wet, doll.”

~o0o~

When Andy woke the next morning, for a moment, she was convinced that it had all been a nightmare, and that she was feeling the effects of too much wine.  Her body and head felt like she’d seriously overindulged on alcohol.

Chiz had proved to be a fairly useless alarm clock, but she guessed since she was actually awake, and not in a concussion-induced coma, that she couldn’t hold it against him.  After that first life-affirming fuck, they’d showered together, which was virtually impossible in her tiny shower stall, and had required virtual acrobatics to keep her stitches dry.  Chiz washing her in such close quarters, with the slick slide of the soap over their skin, had led to another ecstatic bout of sex on her bed, after which they’d both passed out into sleep.

Andy did a brief inventory of what still hurt and what didn’t.  They’d had to remove the bandages on her arms before they’d showered, and the ugly stitches in the deeper gashes pulled uncomfortably as she turned them over, evaluating them.  She was going to have a decent set of scars to remember the event by.

Chiz was still snoring as Andy slipped from the bed and found her robe.  She padded into the kitchen on bare feet, and made painkillers her first order of business, with coffee following a very close second.  Now that she wasn’t distracted by exhaustion or physical sensation, her head was a riot again.  She felt disconnected from her grief, because she was so relieved to be alive herself, but now anger was becoming more predominant.

She had no doubt about what had happened, or who was behind it.  Someone had found a way to blown up her club, however they’d done it, and those people were responsible for the deaths of employees that she’d counted as friends, and of clients who had placed their implicit trust in her.  More than that, once the bodies of their customers that had been killed in the explosion were identified, their names would be inextricably linked to the club, and their reasons for being there. 

The people who had taken Andy’s club hadn’t only taken her livelihood, and her friends lives, they’d taken the lives of innocents, and the lives of their families, too.  For all the people who had hidden their deepest desires, fearing they were unacceptable in their social circles, who had entrusted those secrets to Andy, their families would now feel the taint that their loved ones had been trying to spare them.

Andy thought about that, about that callous infliction of will and belief onto others, the indifferent destruction of family bonds, of faith in fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters.  Her pulse beat so hard she could feel it, as though all her skin was throbbing with the tempo.  The oxygen in the air became like molasses, stubbornly refusing to be drawn into her lungs.  She gripped the counter until her knuckles turned white, and tried to think of something, anything, other than smashing every pot and glass she owned in an act of impotent frustration.

“Mornin’ doll.”  Chiz’s sleepy rasp distracted her from the brink of the abyss of rage that she’d been about to fall into.  “You alright?”  His voice cleared as he caught onto the vibrations of her fury.

Chiz took her wrist, being careful of the wounds in her arms.  He had to tug, hard, then harder, but at his insistence Andy released the counter from her death grip, and turned into his embrace.  She laid her ear against his bare chest, and let the steady thump of Chiz’s heart be her metronome towards calm.  It took her a while to realize that he was whispering soothing nonsense at her.

She hadn’t realized that he was tense until she relaxed, at which she felt the tension leave the muscles of his arms.  Her own hands were resting on his denim-clad hips, he was wearing only his jeans, but as a measure of peace came back to her, she slid her fingers along the rough material of the waistband, until they met at the small of his back, which made the muscles there twitch in very interesting ways.

“You alright, doll?”  He asked again.

Andy snuggled into his chest a little before she answered.  “I don’t know.  Physically, I feel like I’ve got the hangover from hell.  Mentally, I feel like I’m on some sort of insane rollercoaster that I can’t get off.”

“S’not surprisin’.  I’m no fancy psychologist, but how about we start with coffee and go from there?”

“That’s a good start to a plan.”  Andy had to almost turn in Chiz’s arms to get back to the coffee machine, because he didn’t immediately release her fully, but she liked that.  She was a little surprised when she looked at the counter, and saw two mugs waiting there.  She hadn’t comprehended that she’d automatically intended to make him a drink, too, and didn’t remember getting the second mug out of the cupboard.

Liquid breakfast made, Andy handed Chiz his cup.  They went to sit on the couch rather than stand in the kitchen to drink it.  Something about it all, the way they had to sit side by side on the sofa, unless they twisted to face each other, highlighted to Andy again that her house was not designed for people to live in.  Andy had drunk more than half her cup before Chiz spoke.

“I don’t want to get you wound up, doll, but I got some questions ‘bout yesterday.”

That didn’t really surprise Andy.  “Go ahead.  I’ll tell you whatever I can.”

“I was talkin’ to Shane at the hospital.  He’s of the opinion that the Church down the block from your place had somethin’ to do with the explosion.  He’s pretty much convinced that it was a bomb, and that they planted it.  And I gotta say, after what you said last night about your place bein’ fully booked, I’m inclined to agree.”

Andy stared that the black brew in her mug, and let the heat fill her hands and travel up her chilled arms.  “I don’t disagree, but I just don’t get it.  I mean, they’d done stuff, they usually stood outside and shouted about God’s wrath to scare people away.  They’d vandalized my car, I’m sure it was them, but there was no proof.  Same with my house.  Emma…”  Andy had to take a deep breath at the memory of her friend, “thought that maybe she’d been followed back to her car by someone, but I don’t see how they go from that to slaughtering people.  Because that’s what it was, just mindless, ignorant slaughter.”

“Exactly, doll.  Folks that think like them ain’t thinkin’ straight.  They think they’ve got God on their side, and anythin’ they do in his name is a sure pass through those pearly gates.”  Chiz paused.  “Shane didn’t tell me about your car.”

Andy waved that aside.  “It wasn’t bad, didn’t even damage the paintwork.  Actually, I think that was one reason that the so lovely Detective Hill gave for not investigating it at all.  No witnesses, and the evidence would wash right off.”

“There any witnesses to what happened to your house?”

“I haven’t asked.  I doubt Detective Hill has either, but they’d blown the lights out front so it was dark.  It’s unlikely the neighbors would’ve seen anything to get their curtains twitching.”

“What has that detective got against you?  Because he sure don’t seem motivated to stop this shit.”

Andy sighed and shrugged.  Just thinking about Detective Hill, and his smug attitude, made her tired all over again.  “I don’t think he’s with the Church, if that’s what you’re getting at, but he’s not far from their thinking.  The majority of people around here think anything remotely kinky is akin to being in league with the devil.  Running a dungeon, and offering punishment for money, well that pretty much makes me the bride of Satan himself.”

“It’s certainly an interestin’ career choice.”  Chiz chuckled.  “You ever think about goin’ back to bein’ an accountant?”

Andy didn’t even have to think before she answered.  “Not for one minute.”

“This may not be a great time to ask, but you think you’ll set up again?”

The sheer practicality of his question brought her up short.  “No, it’s not a great time to ask.  I hadn’t even begun to think that far ahead.”  Andy took a beat to consider the reality of the implications of Chiz’s question.  “I guess the answer lies in what the police find.  If they state it to be a criminal act, my insurance will pay out.  If they claim it’s negligence on my part in some way, I’ll get zip from the insurance, and the families of… the people who died… might well try to sue me.”

“Do you wanna stay in Alabama?”

Andy’s head felt about ready to explode.  It was whirling with thoughts of people malicious enough to cause death, thinking they were in the absolute right, and the vacant space that stretched out in front of her now that her livelihood had been destroyed.  “Chiz, what kind of question is that?  What are you asking me?”

Chiz put his mug down, and scooted closer to her.  He took her mug, and set it on the floor next to his own, before taking her hands in his, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles.  “I’m askin’ if there’s any particular reason for you to stay here.  If there isn’t, I‘m askin’ if you wanna come back to Louisiana with me.  You wanna set up again?  Whatever the cops say, we can find a way to do that.”

The vacant expanse wasn’t quite so vacant after all, but it had just gotten a whole lot of complicated.  Andy decided to start with the simple answer to the simple question.  “No, there’s no particular reason for me to stay here.”

“Then come back with me.”

“And what?  Live with you?  Would that be us, together?  We’ve only known each other for a week really, then you took off.”

Andy almost regretted the lack of filter on her words when she saw the hurt crease Chiz’s expression, but she was still so thrown by everything that had happened that she couldn’t regret speaking plainly.  She needed to know exactly where she stood in her life.

Chiz’s grip on her hands tightened just a little.  “Yeah, I’m sayin’ come back and live with me.  I’m askin’ if you wanna be with me.  Because in all my life I have never felt about anyone like I feel about you.  I’m not known for thinkin’ the long game, so I guess it makes sense that we’re flyin’ outta the blocks.  But, doll, unless you got a reason to wait, I don’t see one.  You need somewhere safe to live, somewhere you can do what you do without worryin’ about a crew of Bible-thumpers, and I’m sayin’ there’s a place you can do that, a place you can have that.”  He looked down at their joined hands and took a deep breath before he looked up and caught her eyes again.  “If you don’t wanna move in with me, if you want your own space, I understand that.  Hell, we’d have to find a fuckin’ house first, ‘cause I live at the clubhouse, but I want us to be together.”

Looking into Chiz’s deep blue eyes, the only thing Andy could think about was how she felt when she was around him.  It wasn’t just that she felt safe, protected.  She remembered the night when he’d let her dominate him, when she’d known that he’d gone against all of his natural inclinations.  He was definitely a dominant personality, but he wasn’t something to be scared of.  He could be as intense as hell, but he didn’t overwhelm her. 

He was offering her a way for her to rebuild a business that she’d loved.  Her reputation for discretion had been literally blown to bits in Alabama.  Chiz obviously didn’t have any qualms about it at all, or that she was her own mistress.  He wasn’t asking her to be his barefoot little woman in the kitchen.  He accepted the person she was, and had shown no desire to change her.  And that was something, that was really something.  She’d be a fool to ignore what had happened the night before he’d left, but that was the only time she’d sensed that danger when she was around him.  So breath play wouldn’t be on the menu again, ever; she could live with that.

Andy took a deep breath, and let her life take a turn into a territory she’d never anticipated.  “Okay.”