“Don’t worry, I get that you’re old and I have more stamina than you,” she tried to taunt me but she was laughin’ like a loon before she could even finish gettin’ the words out.
I bit her nipple sharply and leaned down menacingly into her face. “Watch what you say, little girl or I’ll keep you up all night provin’ just how much gas I got left in the tank.”
“Easy, stud,” she said through her laughter. “You’ve got bad guys to catch and maim and I’ve got Sammy, studying and The Lotus tomorrow. We need our rest. Honestly, not that I’m complaining, but you should have gone home to bed, Z. You look beat.”
I scowled at her as she pulled back the covers for me to get into bed. The second I did she was plastered to my side, her left arm and leg thrown over me and her head on my chest. Her fingers played in my short chest hair and up over the ridge of my bullet scar.
“Could probably sleep without you,” I admitted. “Just don’t want to.”
She sighed happily into my shoulder. “You gonna sneak out before my parents wake up in the morning?”
“Nah, thought I’d join the Lafayettes for fuckin’ porridge at breakfast.”
She laughed. “Porridge? Ew.”
I shrugged. “Figured that’s what borin’ folks ate for breakfast.”
“Dad does like porridge in the winter…” She laughed softly as she traced the dips and valleys over my torso. “What does a big badass biker man eat for breakfast?”
“Virgins,” I deadpanned.
Her startled laugh was like fuckin’ church bells.
It didn’t make sense but that’s what my time with Lou always reminded me of, a religious experience. I felt cowed and unworthy of her goodness, moved to the point of reverence and devoted to the point of worship. I wanted her to be my religion, the reason the sun rose and fell each day. The reason for my entire fuckin’ existence.
“No seriously, I made you breakfast yesterday at the cabin but all you had was cereal. If I get the chance to cook for you again, I want to know what you like.”
My girl, so fuckin’ sweet. “Meat and potatoes kinda guy, Lou. No surprise there, I hope.”
“Nope. Any vices? Like me and my cherry lollipops?”
I groaned. “Damn don’t remind me of those fuckin’ things ever again ’less you want me to fuck you soon as you do.”
“Perv,” she said, pinchin’ my nipple.
“You bet your ass,” I agreed easily which got me another one of those fuckin’ beautiful giggles. “My vices are longer than my virtues. Like Canadian whiskey, Lucky Strikes cigarettes and pussy.”
“Zeus, I can’t make you any of those things!”
“Sure ya can. Pour me a whiskey, pass me a smoke and spread those sweet thighs for me whenever I get a hankerin’ for somethin’ sweet.”
“Oh my God, you are useless. I’m going to sleep, shut up.”
I grinned into the dark, playin’ with the ends of her blond hair. It was so bright the locks shone even in the night shadows. When her breathin’ was levelin’ out into sleep, I pressed my lips into that hair and told her, “You wake up in my bed after a night of takin’ my cock, it’s me who’ll make breakfast. You want lunch or dinner, I’m good with that ’cause breakfast is the only thing I got in me to make. It was a long eighteen years of microwave dinners for my kids and makin’ fuckin’ salads and shit so they got the right nutrients. Done with that now so I eat what I want and what I want is usually meat with a small side of veg. You wanna take over cookin’ when I get you in my house permanent, like I said, I will not complain. But never breakfast. Want my girl warm, relaxed and ready for another round of cock in the mornings. You get me?”
I felt her smile against my chest before she pressed a kiss to it.
“Got you.”
I lay in the dark for hours after my girl fell asleep curled up into me, strokin’ her hair like rosary beads between my fingers. It settled me, bein’ there with her, touchin’ her. There was shit stormin’ on the horizon and it was comin’ straight for us but for the first time in a long fuckin’ time, I felt at peace.
It was quiet in the chemotherapy room of the hospital. It was the kind of silence that penetrated my nightmares. There was a texture to it, thick and slippery against my skin so that it refused to emit noise even when I felt my body should have made some. It lent a muffled quality to the sound of nurses bringing in new patients and administering their drugs, little Dixie cups full of poison pills and IVs full of a different kind of toxins. Patients often sat with friends or families while they waited for the drugs to obliterate their blood but even their conversations had a hushed property that made my ears tingle.