Marlin's Faith: The Virtues Book II (25 page)

We got moving, falling into formation and headed for the highway; only when the boys went to get on heading east, back to the heart of the city, I broke off and went west. Faith gave a surprised shout, her head whipping in the direction where the rest of the boys had gone but I caned it, twisting down hard on the throttle, the bike jumping beneath us and startling my girl right into what I wanted her to do. She held on tighter, held on for dear life, as I blasted up the onramp and into the flow of traffic, making for home at breakneck speed. I wanted this fuckin’ state in her goddamn rearview for good.

A couple three hours into the ride the sky looked threatening, so I pulled off on the side of the freeway and under an overpass. Just as I suspected it would, it started to rain; a thundershower one of those short cloud bursts more common Florida. They only lasted about twenty minutes or so, so I decided to let it pass before we continued on. There was no sense in us being soaked and really no point in digging out rain gear, unless it lasted longer than I thought it was going to. I rolled us to a stop and I shut off the bike. She got down, the roar of the rainfall outside our shelter, coupled with the traffic still passing by made it deafening.

“Waiting out the storm!” I shouted, and she simply stared at me. Her eyes wide and her hands trembling lightly where they rested at her sides. I stepped into her space and took off her helmet and mine, setting them on the bike’s seat before cupping her face in my hands. I smoothed my thumbs along her jaw, luxuriating in the feel of her hair across my fingers as she stared mutely up into my face.

I didn’t speak. There was something here, something magic about this moment and I didn’t want to ruin it by talking. She stared up into my eyes with that perfect trust from the courtroom but the hurt was still there in the way they shone in the dim light under here. I dipped my face down to hers and kissed her, a light brush of lips, a query, asking if it was okay that I do so when really, I felt like it should be a desperate plea for her not to be pissed at me for taking away any choice she had in the matter of her stayin’ near her sister.

Her breath brushed my face, slight and relieved. She kissed me back, her lips moving carefully, tentatively, over my own. I pulled her into me and she molded so perfectly against my body. Her kiss tasted like forgiveness even though I’d yet to voice an apology. It was difficult to explain… While I was sorrier than she could know for not giving her the choice, for swooping in like the barbarian I could sometimes be, and just whisking her away… I
wasn’t
sorry for doing it. It’d needed to happen. She couldn’t stay; she’d have unraveled completely inside a day. Hell, she was still trembling, still likely to come apart in my arms right here, right now, on the side of the road.

She clung to me, as much to take shelter from the storm and traffic whizzing by as anything else and I let her. I would be her shield for a lot more than that. The kiss deepened, becoming a wild, passionate thing, that left me with a raging hard on in my jeans and leather that I couldn’t do anything for. We broke apart, naturally; her aquamarine eyes hooded and her body language much more relaxed than it’d been before. As if I’d somehow calmed her with my touch. It was a good feeling. Like I’d reached the pinnacle of what it was to be a fucking man.

The weather abated and we rode until just after dark, I didn’t want to subject her to any more today which meant we stopped somewhere near Panama City in Florida, being that I cut into the panhandle to get us back into our home state sooner rather than later. We were about halfway to Bobby’s but I wanted to get her a shower, a change of clothes and a little rest before we took on more people. She looked like her rope was about ready to snap.

We hit a cheap motel, one of the big name ones that had locations all across the country. I tended to like them better when I was travelling solo, because they were cleaner and had higher standards. This time it was because I had higher standards too. I didn’t want to bring Faith into some fleabag place. She’d probably seen enough of them for twenty life times. I regretted having to bring her to a motel at all, but the need for rest and a shower outweighed the desire to press all the way on down to Bobby’s.

I doubted she had it in her to make the ride as much as I doubted she’d had any kind of restful sleep when she’d been locked up the night before. She stumbled with fatigue when she got off the bike and I’d had to reach out an arm to steady her. I got off myself, and we checked in, the chick behind the counter eying us suspiciously. She took both my driver’s license and Faith’s ID, which it was a good thing her sister Hope had had her passport; it’d made replacing Faith’s ID weeks back much easier.

She handed over her shiny, new, Florida identification and the clerk glanced between it and Faith several times until Faith tucked herself into my side from the scrutiny. Ironically, that seemed to satisfy the clerk and I realized that the scrutiny wasn’t likely what Faith had thought it to be. The well-meaning clerk had seen a fragile looking woman with the big bad biker and had leapt to the conclusion that she wasn’t with me of her free will. It’d happened to a few of the guys and their women before. We were just another casualty of citizen preconceived notions and judgment, until she’d taken shelter in my arms. It both filled me with resignation and elated me at the same time. A weird mix of emotions that I shoved into a footlocker and kicked aside.

I wanted to get my girl a shower, and some restful sleep. I made it a point to be extra polite to the motel’s clerk in an effort to speed things up and prove the bitch wrong in equal measure. She seemed unnerved by my smile, and by the quiet use of ‘Ma’am’ to address her and I was glad for it in a twisted kind of way. Any time you could kill that kind of negative with a positive was a good thing in my book. The world was a shitty enough place without adding more to the dung heap.

I put an arm around Faith’s shoulders when the clerk slid the key card across the counter at us. I took it and tipped my head, picked up my bags at our feet, and made a point to say thank you one more time before I steered Faith back out the glass doors. I steered my girl up the stairs to the right of us and down the long line of tightly shut doors to the one that would be ours. She was trembling lightly, and I had to imagine that motels and hotels in general weren’t the best place for her to be in light of recent events.

I made a strong mental note, that if I ever took her on the road or on a trip somewhere, that a bed and breakfast would be the way to go about lodging. There were plenty of ‘em in Ft. Royal which is what gave me the idea.

I shut the door firmly behind us and shot every lock and bolt available. Faith stood by the bed, staring at it, though her gaze was far away, someplace else. I sighed inwardly, and considered what to do, what to say to bring her back.

“Baby Girl,” I tried gently, and she startled.

She turned those beautiful aquamarine eyes up to mine and I lost whatever else I was going to say. Turns out I didn’t need to
say
anything. Those eyes of hers filled to the brim, silently, and she dove at me. I caught her, and she buried her face in my chest and the wave crested. Faith crashed onto my shore, the sobs shaking her, wracking her still too-thin frame and it turned out, she didn’t need any words. She just needed me to be there. She just needed to be held and to empty it all out, and that? That I could do.

Chapter 32

Faith

“Shhh, it’s okay, Baby Girl, it’s okay.”

He was always so gentle with me, and this was no exception. He held me close, fingers buried in my hair, massaging my neck at the base of my skull. I expelled my anxiety, sadness, fear, and anger in the form of tears and shuddering sobs against him and he simply held me fast and let me do it. He let me cry it all out and sooner rather than later the storm was past.

I looked up at him, into his kind and caring eyes while he slicked the moisture off my face with his thumbs. He searched my eyes and whatever it was they held and finally smiled. He looked as tired and drawn as I felt and I realized the depth of his worry, and how hard it had been for him while I’d been… away.

“I don’t know about you, but I could use a shower and some decent sleep. Can I interest you in both?” he asked gently and I nodded, too drained to speak.

“Okay,” he murmured and unzipped my leather vest for me. His blunt fingers were gentle as he divested each of us of clothing, one piece at a time. Always keeping us even, one piece from me, one piece him, back and forth until he was just in his boxers and I in my bra and panty set.

He led me gently by the hands into the small bathroom and started the shower, smiling gently, but also a little sadly, he asked me, “Do you want to shower alone?”

I shook my head. After yesterday, I wanted to be close to him, he made me feel safe like nothing and no other, and I craved that almost more than I had ever craved the drugs they’d put in me.

“Okay, Baby Girl, okay,” he murmured and drew my forehead to his lips. I collapsed my body into his arms, my hands resting against his chest, my ear over his heart. He was so warm, and the room was cool from the air conditioning unit. He let me go to start the shower and slipped out of his boxers before gently undoing the catch on my bra at the back. He let me hide against him, stepping into the tub before me so that he might steady me as I stepped in. As soon as he jerked the curtain closed he let me resume my hiding by tucking myself close into his body, though he turned me into the hot shower spray to keep me warm.

“No, let me,” he murmured when I reached for the little packet with the bar of soap in it. He picked it up and tore the plastic with his teeth, sliding the sliver of a bar into his big hands. He soaped them and ran them gently along my throat, across my chest and shoulders, down my arms until my fingertips grazed his palms. My eyes had drifted shut at his pleasurable touch and they opened to a sparkle of joy in his eyes, a mischievous little boy smile on his lips.

“I love that I can do that,” he said.

“What?”

“Make your eyes close; make you lose yourself a little…”

“Make me forget?” I asked, his smile grew into a pleased grin.

“Do I?” he asked.

“You know you do.”

“It’s still nice to hear it, Baby Girl, it’s still nice to hear it.”

He turned me so my front met the spray and massaged the soap into my shoulders and back. I very nearly melted beneath the soothing touches designed to ease my tension and fear. He was purely comforting and yet sensual without being overtly erotic. In short, he was being oh so careful of me and I both loved him for it and became extremely frustrated with myself over being so… broken.

I sighed under his gently prying fingers as he worked out the stiffness, kinks, and knots of the tension I very nearly always carried with me lately and found myself wanting for a deeper, more significant exchange between us. I turned, of my own volition this time, and kissed him fiercely, the rough stubble of his few days’ growth tickling my palms. He pulled me tight against his body, the water sluicing through my hair, slicking it back from our faces.

I sighed out, comfortably, happy, and safe and Marlin did everything right, right up until he stopped me from wrapping my fingers around his length.

“Easy, Faith. I don’t want that right now, not here anyways.”

His cock was hard and hot where it was trapped between our bodies and I looked up at him, confused.

“Your body says otherwise,” I said and he chuckled.

“Yeah, well my dick has a mind of its own, and he likes to forget that
I
call the shots.”

I pursed my lips and breathed in, remembering my promise to communicate and to ask and answer… I took the leap, afraid of the possibility of rejection, “Why not?” I asked. His answer surprised me.

“When I make love to you again, it’s not going to be in some cheap, crappy, motel room, Faith. You get me?” he asked softly. I stared up at him, shocked by the vehemence of his tone. “You deserve better than this, and tonight isn’t about sex. Tonight is about me taking care of my woman after the shitty night you had last night and the even rougher day you had today. Tonight is about getting that place off of you and out of your hair, of holding you close and keeping you safe.”

T
i
he shower was suddenly loud in the resounding silence that ensued, echoing off the tile walls in the small space we were in. I stared up at him, mute with shock, his hands kneading lightly up and down my back. I was glad for the water, disguising my tears. I didn’t want him to think I was sad or unhappy. It was quite the opposite, actually. I couldn’t ever remember a time I felt so happy. What I didn’t expect was the overwhelming sense of
guilt
that came with it.

All I could think was
this man deserves so much better than me,
and it broke my heart that I couldn’t provide him with that. That all I would ever be was this broken, sad, pathetic, hopeless
thing.
That he would eventually grow tired of me and my bullshit baggage.

I pulled myself close to him and he held me, and I took a little solace in the here and now. Shoving all that down and aside as a problem for another day. I knew I would have to face the music eventually, but for now… I could let myself have this for just a little while, couldn’t I?

Marlin took his time with me and I my time with him. We bathed each other, gentle and careful, kissing when the urge overtook us, but he remained steadfast that there would be no sex tonight, and though I found myself aroused, I was grateful for his fierce adherence to simple tender care for tonight. I didn’t think I could bear to have sex in a motel room. His perception was dead on in that case. I’d felt a creeping nausea when we’d first come through the door though it’d melted away beneath his touch and had, I think, gone somewhere down the shower drain.

When he’d turned off the water, it had begun to run cool, and coupled with the air conditioned ambient temperature of the room, I had begun to break out in goose flesh from the chill.