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[br0ck-eddie-deactivated20250630]

I think about him every day 😪

[baneslashes]

So do I.

[thedragonflywarrior]

The Body Shapes of the World’s Best Athletes Compared Side By Side

[thedragonflywarrior]

Health and fitness comes in all shapes and sizes. Every single one of these athletes is a certified bad-ass.

[yamino]

I’ve posted this before but it’s worth reblogging!

[schweizercomics]

Just a reminder - if you’re drawing a team superhero book and more than one of your characters has the same build YOU’RE DOING IT ALL WRONG

[tally-art-deactivated20201005]

Always reblog

[abowtieandtwohearts]

This is excellent.

[herradhighpriestess]

I’m still not sure how this makes me feel

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Thirteen:  Arterial Waterfalls Leading to Fluttering Hearts

Time seemed to move in slow-motion as Andrew’s phone spun in the air as it was released from Tig’s hand.

As the gunmetal grey phone traveled in a perfect spiral and thumped harmlessly against Andrew’s shoulder, Tig moved forward with it.

Andrew had anticipated a guerilla style attack from Tig but had underestimated Tig’s ferocity and insatiable fury, eager to devour the disease that was encroaching Helena’s life and fill her eyes with fear.

Andrew slashed at Helena’s hands when she started to struggle. Helena shrieked when the steel blade bit deeply across her palm, opening multiple veins and nicking the strong radial artery. Warm blood flowed down her forearm as she landed heavily on the floor the same time the phone did.

The tiny cochlea bone in Tig’s ears spasmed at the sound of Helena’s cries and the sight of the blood running down her hand and soaking her shirt sleeve.

Andrew brought his arm back up in an arc, the scalpel firmly grasped in his skillful hand. A hand that could methodically extract a tumor from a newborn infant while the new mother was still numb from the spinal epidural.

Andrew Wakefield was a third-generation neurosurgeon who could put back together broken skulls, preserve the integrity of the brain. Reassemble the cranium and make someone a human again.

Dr. Wakefield saved the lives of countless mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers on a daily basis. Family units stayed whole because of him, there were no empty places at the holiday table because of him.

Andrew Wakefield was also a rapist, deviant, soulless degenerate who held no real substance. If he had been bisected, he would’ve been hollow, devoid of a beating heart, just the profound understanding of anatomy, science, and surgical skill.

Tig felt the air part as the blade came within millimeters of kissing his cheek.

On the floor, Helena sobbed as the lacerated skin of her palm blossomed open and poured blood down her slim wrist.

As Helena half-crawled away from the two men and looked for anything to staunch the copious flow of blood, Tig threw his right fist forward in a jab that barely glanced Andrew’s strong jaw.

“Where do you fit in here?” Andrew spit as he slashed the scalpel towards Tig, the stainless-steel handle gripped in an unscarred hand, smooth cuticles and evenly filed fingernails.

Tig dropped low and swung his hand that was obscuring the knife and opened a deep chasm in Andrew’s strong thigh, dangerously close to his femoral artery.

Andrew howled as Tig followed up the flesh parting slice with a quick stab to Andrew’s toned mid-section. The flimsy blade was still capable of penetrating if there was enough of a vigorous thrust behind the knife handler.

Tig was angry as he shot out his hand, watching the blade disappear from sight as it slipped through Andrew’s muscular abdomen and buried itself deep in his liver. The tip of the blade sank into the organ’s main lobe, filling him with the closeness and possessiveness of a lover.

Andrew wildly swung the hand holding the scalpel until he sank to his knees, the blade handle in his belly bobbing as he crashed heavily to the floor. His fingers spasmed and dropped the wickedly sharp scalpel to the floor.

Andrew’s bleached, even teeth became stained as his mouth filled with blood. Soon, bile and other thicker bits spilled from his mouth. He wasn’t able to speak as he choked on his own body fluids and fumbled at the blade sticking out of his gut.

Tig rose to his full height as Andrew continued to sneer at him despite knowing he was actively dying.

Tig’s lips pulled up into a cheeky grin as he put all his momentum into yanking the knife from Andrew’s belly and quickly plunging it into his left eye.

Tig twisted the knife, the optic nerve shredding under the blade’s rough touch.

Tig felt his vision grow fuzzy around the edges as vengeful storm clouds filled his brilliant irises. He wanted to blind Andrew so he could never again look at Helena.

Tig wanted to slice through his ear lobes, carve the cartilage away so Dr. Wakefield could never hear Helena exhale.

Tig longed to dig his aquiline nose from the center of Andrew’s exfoliated and blemish free face so he could never smell the warm vanilla lotion Helena slathered liberally on her skin.

Andrew’s lips flapped like flaccid butterfly wings as his body and mind got on the same page of dying as Tig ripped the knife from his orbital socket, sliding the blade in and out of Andrew’s gasping mouth, fucking his mouth with the blade with the intent of cutting out his tongue.

Helena’s sharp cry paused Tig’s movement and in the small space that he turned his attention towards her, Andrew lapsed into unconsciousness as his tidal breath began to cause his lungs to deflate inside his chest cavity as his heart beat its last.

“Baby,” Tig shouted hoarsely and collapsed in front of Helena, his left knee popping in protest.

As Tig hovered his hands over Helena, trying to see how badly she was bleeding, on the outskirts of town at Oswald’s lumber yard, Opie struggled to sit upright. He could hear his skin split as he sat up and tried to focus his vision through the eye that was barely open, the other a mess of wrecked tissue, he had no idea if his eye were even still firmly in its socket.

Opie patted his hand against Clay’s unconscious shoulder, shaking him as much as he could muster as the growing state of shock allowed for greater movement, his body so traumatized it buried the pain long enough for him to dial Jax.

Opie coughed and spat a glob of blood-tinged phlegm to the leaf-littered ground to the right of his thigh.

The call connected after a short lag to Jax’s phone as him and Chuckie packaged the Irish like neatly rolled Cuban cigars with silver duct tape and black tarps.

“Ope, Opie?!” Jax answered anxiously and strained his ears as he gathered enough of what Opie was talking about before the line went dead.

“Get a hold of Tig, tell him to get the fuck over here and clean this up,” Jax shouted as he tossed the half-used roll of tape towards Chuckie who managed to catch it in his odd, articulating digits.

Chuckie nodded as he stared down at the cylindrical bodies wrapped up, shiny foreign phalluses on the shop’s floor.

As Chuckie put another piece of tape on Connor’s encased corpse, he dialed Tig, the call again going directly to voicemail. As Chuckie immediately redialed, across Charming in Helena’s bedroom, she couldn’t take her eyes off Andrew’s exsanguinated corpse, a rectal temperature would’ve still indicated a viability for life.

“Don’t look at him anymore,” Tig rasped gravelly as he carried Helena to the living room and settled her on the sofa. He dragged the haphazardly folded afghan from the armrest and arranged it around her, as he fumbled at her blood-soaked hand.

Helena hissed as she held her hand closer to her chest, “there’s a first-aid kit in the hallway closet.”

“How bad is it?” Tig asked as he brought back the brick-red plastic tub and popped open the lid.

Helena winced and held her breath as she squinted at her palm. “It’s deep,” she said as she rotated her hand, trying to discern the edges of the laceration in between the different states of drying blood that saturated her sleeve all the way to the point of her elbow. “I’ll need stitches,” she added as she rooted in the plastic kit for a roll of white absorbent gauze.

Tig watched Helena wind the gauze around her hand, pulling it as snug as she could tolerate. He hated the feeling of helplessness that began to encroach his brain’s processing center. A repugnant well of disgust rose up inside as he despised himself for not being able to keep Helena from harm.

Tig looked up and found Helena’s eyes already on him, he was certain she could hear him mentally berating himself.

Helena pulled a clean square gauze pad from the first-aid kit and dabbed at the blood that had splattered over his body, speckles even decorated his fringe of dark eyelashes.

Tig held himself rigid as Helena patted the empty space on the sofa. He was moving in a biocentric manner before he was even aware as he quickly settled next to her. “You’re okay?” he murmured as he wrapped her up, being mindful of her bandaged wrist.

“I will be,” Helena mumbled as she sagged against his side.

“What would it take for you to love me?” Tig whispered as he trailed his fingertips down the outside of her arm.

“I already love you,” Helena murmured.

Tig wasn’t sure if he had completely heard her as he leaned back and lifted her chin, raising her eyes to meet his. “Say that again baby,” he begged on a shuddery exhale.

Helena turned toward him, hissing lowly as a jolt of pain shot through her arm as she shifted on the sofa cushion and straddled Tig’s lap, her thighs falling to either side of his hips.

“I already love you,” Helena murmured as she traced the pad of her index fingertip around his lips. “I think I have for a while,” she admitted.

Tig reached up and caught her hand, “since when?”

As Helena tried to pinpoint the exact moment, across Charming at the Club House, Piney was caught in the middle of a coughing fit. Strings of saliva and the remnants of his chicken noodle soup lunch spilled from between his quivering lips into a pink kidney-shaped basin.

Piney sat back and wiped his mouth on a folded paper towel and caught his reflection in the dresser mirror across the room. He felt a stab in his gut at his shriveled body in the hospital bed, swaddled like a fucking infant, having his diaper changed whenever he shit himself.

He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the ointment the nurses spread along his ass crack to avoid diaper rash. He cringed recalling the feel of gloved fingertips close to his rear opening, he reached down and began tugging at the tubing that ran from his bladder to his urinary catheter bag.

Piney leaned back and closed his eyes as he let the bag slip down to being suspended just inches from the floor, the gravity allowing the bladder to drain with ease and preventing a backflow to marinate bacteria in his diseased kidneys.

The bag was currently filling with bloody urine, 120 ccs of concentrated, just add water fruit punch. Piney struggled to sit back upright, sweat popping up on his forehead with the concerted effort. He fumbled in the bedside drawer and withdrew his Colt M1911 boasting an oversized hammer spur.

Piney fell back onto the air mattress which hummed loudly as it constantly dispersed his weight to prevent further skin breakdown and bed sores.

He lifted the remote and turned up the volume on the rerun western series from the 1950’s.

Piney pressed the .45 ACP against his forehead and pulled the trigger. The eight-inch barrel belched a .240 grain jacketed hollow point which ripped a hot path through Piney’s temporal lobe. The uncovered nose of the bullet expanded as it parted Piney’s flesh and skull, the soft lead tip of the bullet ate his life.

As everyone in the Club House ran towards Piney’s room at the sharp sound of the single gunshot that rang out, across Charming in Helena’s spacious living room, Tig hissed with anticipatory pleasure as Helena shifted on his lap.

He gripped her hips and pulled her as close as he could. Tig groaned with frustration with their clothes in the way. “Stand up,” he demanded and was already rising with Helena in his arms as he spoke.

Helena couldn’t find her breath as she was soon on her feet, gasping with surprise when Tig dropped to his knees and began tugging her pants down her lithe thighs until they pooled at her feet and she could step out of them, closely followed by her panties.

Tig fell heavily back on the sofa and pulled Helena by the hips, anxious for the return of her naked flesh to his lap. Helena felt twinges of electric pain shoot from her palm to the point where her elbow ended as she slid back onto Tig’s lap, her thighs easily sliding to return alongside his hips as he tugged his zipper down and fumbled his rapidly hardening cock free.

“I’ll never let anyone hurt you again,” Tig murmured as he let one hand stroke his rigid length and the other to rest on her lower back and urge her closer. He teased the glossy head of his cock along her soft shell-pink folds, anxious to find her tight, wet center.

Tig glanced down at his bloody hand that was gripping his painfully hard cock, thinking of the dead doctor cooling in the other room.

Tig growled heatedly and shifted his grip, craving a better angle to plunge inside her. He tried to move her as gingerly as possible, but his surging lust put his cock’s desire first.

“I will keep killing anyone that hurts you,” Tig promised as he thrust his hips forward and buried his hard length as far as he could until their intimate flesh kissed. The change in position made his cock’s steady pounding rhythm poke and tease the cluster of rarely stimulated nerves inside her.

Tig met Helena’s eyes as he felt her intimate walls tighten and spasm around his thrusting cock. His rhythm grew erratic, and he chuckled. “This isn’t going to last long,” he managed to say before his words became strangled and he bucked his hips twice before an explosive orgasm made him feel like his knees were full of jelly.

As Tig collapsed against Helena, she gave a low grunt as his weight forced a rush of air from her lungs. As he caught his breath and the very direction he was even facing, back at the Club House, Piney’s nurse Alana draped a white sheet over Piney’s destroyed skull, now left looking like a fleshy, juicy watermelon after an encounter with a sledgehammer.

As Alana contacted Charming’s coroner’s office, on the outskirts of town, Jax eventually arrived at Oswald’s lumber yard and found Clay and Opie unconscious in front of the burning building.

Tara was not too far behind having received a call from Jax saying to grab emergency supplies and where to meet him. Tara had shoved a mix of bandages, medications, and portable life-support equipment in the trunk of her Cutlass and pushed the engine to the remote location.

As Tara got to work triaging Opie and Clay’s needs, Jax tore around the raging inferno that the lumber yard had become and looked for the others, not knowing they were already gone. Jax was an unknowing spectator at their cremation.

As Tara searched for Clay’s carotid pulse under her practiced fingertips, across Charming on the plush sofa, Helena and Tig remained locked in a sweaty, breathless embrace, their naked limbs entangled as their hearts continued to gallop like drugged racehorses still riding an injected high.

Tig didn’t want to leave the sofa but noted the color that had continued to drain from Helena’s face and how much she was struggling to keep the pain from staining her facial features.

“Let’s get you to the hospital baby,” Tig breathed as he forced himself to move away from her and shoved his cock back behind his zipper before he helped Helena get back into her clothes.

As Helena slipped on a pair of sandals by the front door, Tig dug his phone out of his jacket and turned it on while he followed Helena to her SUV in the driveway.

Tig clicked the key fob until the car beeped twice.

Helena looked back at Tig before she pulled open the passenger door to find him rooted to the spot, his frown deepened with the growing tenor of each text message.

“What is it?” Helena called, her voice weaker with the blood loss and shock wrapping itself around her central nervous system.

Tig blinked slowly as he raised his head to look at Helena.

“What? What’s wrong?” Helena asked at Tig’s absolutely unreadable expression.

Tig had only scanned the tip of the iceberg of his missed messages, seeing the death toll rise with each unread message when Helena stumbled and caught herself on the hood of the sensible SUV.

Tig didn’t have time to articulate coherently as he rushed to Helena’s side before she dropped to one knee, clinging to the car’s side mirror for some sort of balance.

“Baby let’s get you in the car now,” Tig murmured as he gathered up Helena’s limp form and settled her on the passenger seat. He ignored the knowledge that he let his lust feed and his cock fill her body instead of immediately driving her to the hospital.

“It’s going to be okay,” Tig muttered as he started the quiet engine, continuing to glance at each new message which raised the Def Con level to the stratospheric ceiling.

Helena could feel the weight of the messages channeled through Tig, a veritable silent loudspeaker in the small confines of the compact SUV.

“Your family is in danger,” Helena moaned breathily, adding as she sagged against the seat. “Just drop me at the hospital door and go to them.”

Tig powered down his phone and slipped it in her glove compartment before he reached for her hand. “You’re my family, my, uh, my, “ Tig stammered as he lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her ring finger. “My everything,” he breathed, his exhale hot against her bare skin.

Helena smiled as her eyes closed from the fatigue exacerbated by the blood loss. Tig drove at a speed reserved for Navy pilots as he double-parked in front of St. Thomas’s and carried Helena like a bride over the emergency room’s threshold.

Hours passed as Helena was admitted and added to the surgical docket for a wound exploration. As Helena went through the admitting process of getting into a flimsy gown, having a blood pressure cuff wrapped around her upper arm and asked every question under the sun, on the outskirts of Charming, Jax held Opie’s burned hand as Tara performed chest compressions on Clay. Tara began to sweat as she went through cycle after cycle of breathing followed up by compressions.

Jax knew Clay was dead as Tara began her last set of breathing and compressing on Clay who was no longer living.

Tara had started a large bore IV on Opie and was saturating his traumatized body with hydrating fluids and had administered an opiate that was keeping Opie from feeling the pine needles buried deep in his wet, melted flesh.

As Tara arranged to have a critical care ambulance sent to bring Opie to the hospital. Tara gave a generic name for him to be admitted under and held Jax’s and Opie’s free hands, a triangle of grief, hope and healing as they waited for the ambulance.

Opie would take a long time to recover and end up boasting double-digit skin graft surgeries.

As Helena had surgery performed and admitted a few days for observation to ensure there was no infection, Tig never left her hospital room during visiting hours.

In the time Tig wasn’t allowed in her room, he spent the rest of his time getting caught up on all that had happened while he let himself be led by his cock, closely followed by his heart.

Tig understood the anger towards him, especially from Jax.

Tig mourned his lost brothers, destroyed in the fire and by the side effects of end stage cancer.

When he couldn’t stay next to Helena’s bedside at St. Thomas’s, Tig contacted Oswald and a crew of guys to make the repairs on Helena’s home, a home he wanted to be able to use the colloquial “our home.”

As Helena’s hospital stay passed, Gemma mourned her husband, the lost brothers and Piney’s abrupt ending of his life. Gemma buried her grief in the grandkids. Tara did the same and took on an evening class to obtain continuing education credits one night a week.

Jax buried himself in the Club, dug in on the nuts and bolts when he wasn’t glued to Opie’s side, staying next to him through every step of rehabilitation and recovery.

The day of Helena’s discharge didn’t arrive fast enough for Tig’s liking and he was waiting outside more than an hour before he was allowed to pick her up.

Tig looked up as Helena was wheeled down the ramp by a tech in hot pink scrub pants. The tech pushed Helena closer and met Tig by the passenger side of the compact SUV.

Helena smiled at the large bouquet of white lilies Tig had waiting for her on the seat.

The tech wished them a good day and rolled away the wheelchair as Tig was able to take in a moment of alone time with her. Every visit Tig had made to the hospital was always invariably interrupted by a nurse, tech, or housekeeping.

Tig lifted a hand to cup Helena’s jaw and traced the pad of his thumb across her lower lip.

“Hey baby,” he murmured.

Helena closed her eyes and leaned heavily against Tig, turning her head to the side so she could press her ear over his pounding heart.

“Can we please go home?” Helena whispered and purred contentedly when Tig’s arms closed around her, swallowing her into his strong embrace.

“Of course baby, let’s get you home,” Tig murmured.

“Our home,” Helena said as she looked up to find Tig’s eyes already on her. “Our home, our life, our future together.”

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Twelve: Fucking Interrupted 

As Helena and Tig finished showering and dried off with delicious slowness, in downtown Charming, Dr. Andrew Wakefield whistled as he stared down at his phone and the newest text thread between himself, Dr. Gatez and several other doctors that posted pictures of their roofied conquests in any number of positions, varying amounts of clothing and either a cock, tongue or finger in any one of the unconscious women’s orifices.

Dr. Wakefield zoomed in on the photo of a bottle-blonde that Dr. Mikey Gatez had picked up at a local sports bar and brought to his office at the hospital after she got excited when she learned he was a surgeon.

Andrew began tapping out a reply and hit the green send arrow. The phone beeped as his message was posted under his nickname.

“Wake-Up Call: You’re going to have to post a better picture than that to win G-Man, I’m still in the lead.”

On the other coastline Dr. Mikey Gatez scoffed when he read Andrew’s reply. He collapsed the text screen and navigated to his password protected photos and videos labeled “Specimens.”

Andrew tapped on the video that popped up a few minutes later.

“G-Man: I win.”

Andrew and the other doctors in the single charter gentlemen’s group all watched the video start of the previously still-framed blonde woman sitting on Mikey’s mahogany desk.

All the men collectively chuckled as the young woman swayed back and forth with her eyes half-closed, under the gentle touch of Mikey’s personal relaxant aid for women who held any reserved caution.

Mikey’s voice was somewhat muffled as he talked to the woman.

“Come on baby, there’s no one here and I locked the door, give me a show.”

The young woman blushed before she took another sip of the drugged cranberry and vodka, as the level in the glass lowered, so did her inhibitions and ability to reason.

“That’s right baby,” Mikey said as the woman spread her legs and exposed her bright pink panties. The paper-thin triangle of fabric barely covered her pussy.

Andrew and the other doctor’s cocks all approved of the video clip. As Dr. Mikey Gatez posted another video, back in Charming, in her spacious, warmly decorated kitchen, Gemma wiped her hands dry before answering the phone.

“Gemma, those Irish fellas just pulled up. Clay was supposed to meet them out at one of Oswald’s places,” Chuckie spit out urgently.

“Chuckie, there’s a gun in the bottom file cabinet, I’m calling Jax,” Gemma said quickly, her marinating chicken forgotten as the line went dead.

Gemma frantically dialed Jax who was having lunch with Tara in the cafeteria at St. Thomas’s.

Jax picked up on the third ring and was up and out of his seat before Gemma finished telling him about Chuckie and the Irish.

Jax chastely kissed Tara goodbye who could only watch him rush out, dialing as he ran to his Dyna Super Glide Sport. The four stroke, V-twin engine sprang to life as his calls to Clay, Opie and then Tig all ended up being unanswered.

As Jax urged his powder coated black bike to Teller-Morrow, the sound of blood rushing in his ears competed with the engine and its 1449 displacement, on the other side of Charming, Helena pulled open the bathroom door, the fragrant steam spilling from the doorway.

Tig wanted to yank the door closed and barricade it, keep her close and memorize every part of her through touch, smell, and taste. He restrained himself from slamming the door shut and followed her back to the master bedroom. He leaned against the dresser and watched her root around the middle and top drawer for some well-worn jeans and a long-sleeved slate grey top.

Helena glanced over at Tig and the towel he had wrapped around his waist. “Do you want to run your clothes through the wash?”

Tig dropped a hand to toy with the damp cotton towel, “sure, I’ll pick up some stuff on Monday.”

Helena cleared her throat at his words, her mind still reeling from the sudden upheaval of her life. She looked down at the dresser and couldn’t help a chuckle from escaping between her full lips.

Tig didn’t have to wait for her to explain. “I hardly have enough space in this dresser as it is,” Helena said as she forced the top drawer closed that was hemorrhaging cotton and polyester blends.

Tig closed the small distance between them and pulled her into his arms, squeezing her flush against the front of his body. “I don’t have that many clothes doll, I’ll bring a couple boxes.”

“I’ve got a few shelves in the closet that I can consolidate, I don’t want you leaving your clothes in a box,” Helena said in a muffled murmur, speaking with her lips partially pressed above his hardening blush pink nipple.

As Tig eventually released his hold on Helena and stood there silently insisting she drop her towel and count to one thousand before she got dressed, Jax pulled his bike to a stop in the alley adjacent to Teller-Morrow.

He moved deftly through the patch of weeds and gravel towards a rundown wooden fence that provided just enough cover that he could peek through a rotted-out section of redwood. Jax squinted and saw Gaalen pacing while Chuckie sat behind the desk and Connor on the sofa.

Jax again dialed Clay, Opie, Tig, Juice, Happy, Chibs and Bobby. Swearing under his breath as every call went to voicemail.

Jax dialed Clay again as he kept an eye on the Teller-Morrow office. On the other end of the dialed number, Clay’s phone rang from his pocket where he remained flat on his back, spread-eagled.

Clay grunted as the shrill ringtone pierced through his hazy state and he groaned and grunted as he cracked open his eyelids, his lashes and brows burned away from the heat of the blast.

Clay’s howl of pain called Opie from his unconscious state who joined Clay in shouting as his nerves came alive, his raw skin leaking a clear fluid to match the tears that rolled down his scorched cheeks.

The blisters on the top of Clay’s hand popped as he pushed past the pain and tugged his phone free from his pocket. He managed to answer the phone just before it was diverted to voicemail.

“Jax,” Clay garbled, his lips swollen to the point that the skin was stretched taut like the luscious skin of a freshly picked plum.

“Clay? Clay!” Jax whispered urgently and strained his ears at Clay’s broken and tear-choked voice.

“Son, they’re……they’re dead…..Oswal…,” Clay was barely able to say coherently before the pain overwhelmed him and he had to turn his head to the side and vomit from the intensity.

As Opie tried to reach for Clay’s fallen phone and failed, on the other side of Charming, Tig followed Helena out to the kitchen after he helped her make the bed.

Tig tied the belt of her daisy yellow bathrobe into a loose bow as he watched her add his clothes to the washer and toss in a dual-action detergent pod.

Helena couldn’t help but smile as it was her turn to watch Tig fill two new coffee cups, leaving room for the vanilla creamer, her robe just covering the curve of his bottom.

Tig turned and caught her staring. Helena pressed her lips together and tried to keep the rush of color from filling her face.

“Thank you,” she murmured as she accepted the mug from him, thankful to have the creamer to prolong her distraction.

Tig watched Helena stir her coffee until it was severely lightened. As she took a few sweet sips, Tig’s eyes wandered the tiled countertop to the property tax bill paper-clipped to the wall calendar.

Tig raised his eyes at the amount, noting it was due in ten days. “How much is the mortgage for a place like this?”

Helena set her cup down. “I don’t have a mortgage payment,” she vaguely answered.

“How’d you manage that?” Tig asked, unable to keep the surprise from his tone.

“I received a settlement before I left Florida, it paid for the house, property and car.”

Tig nodded, “I’ll pay the water and electric bill,” he offered.

Helena shook her head before taking a sip of the near-scalding sweetness. “There’s no need, it’s not that much out per month.”

“I’d like to contribute something,” Tig pushed.

Helena slid her hand over to rest over his. “You really don’t need to,” she insisted before adding quickly at the stubborn fire in his sparkling blue irises. “You can take over the grocery shopping,” she compromised as she squeezed his hand.

Tig lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. “Thank you,” he breathed, his hot exhale teased the center of her hand.

As Tig and Helena finished their coffee in collective and comfortable silence, back outside Teller-Morrow, another call from Jax to Tig went directly to voicemail.

Jax shoved his phone inside his jacket pocket and checked the eight-round magazine of his Springfield Custom Professional 1911-A1, pleased to find it full.

He advanced around the rear of the building with the .45 caliber extended in his steady hands, his heartbeat a staccato drumbeat as he approached the sagging door.

Jax opened the door with exquisite slowness and slipped inside the darkened shop and soundlessly crossed to the inner office door as he tried to decide which order to shoot between Gaalen and Connor, both men had large caliber firearms in hand.

As Jax leveled the five-inch titanium barrel, on the other side of Charming, Tig refilled Helena’s coffee cup. His eyes fell to the nearly dry thread he had tied around her left ring finger.

Helena looked down to where his gaze was directed as his words landed around her.

“I’d like to take you to pick out a ring you want.”

“Today?” Helena asked as she looked up and met his searching eyes.

“Yes.”

“Alright, I just started the washer though,” she added in a teasing tone with him wearing her cheery cotton robe.

“I can wait until they’re dry,” Tig conceded.

Helena smiled as she added more creamer to her cup, feeling his penetrative gaze see through to the very cellular matrix of her bone marrow.

As Helena sipped at her steaming French roast, in downtown Charming, Dr. Andrew Wakefield left his hotel room and clicked the key fob twice until the rental car unlocked.

Andrew headed towards Helena’s, slowing as he passed her house, relieved to find only her car in the driveway. He parked down the street and scanned the windows for movement.

Unbeknownst to Dr. Wakefield, Tig had moved his bike inside Helena’s garage earlier in the day. Andrew pulled an olive-green duffel bag onto the passenger seat and unzipped it, scrutinizing the contents.

He tallied the items aloud.

“Handcuffs, duct tape, zip-ties, ketamine,” Andrew murmured before scanning the rest of the bag and zipping it closed.

Andrew watched the house as the washing machine finished its spin cycle and Helena dumped all the wet clothes into the dryer with a couple rectangular fabric softeners that smelled like fresh rain.

As the clothes moved through the dryer’s regular fabric cycle, Tig and Helena moved to the second bedroom so Helena could show him more of the home repairs he wanted to know about.

As Andrew continued to watch the house, deciding when to sneak closer, on the other side of Charming at Teller-Morrow, Jax squeezed the sensitive trigger in rapid succession. Gaalen and Connor’s skulls disappeared in a spectacular, arterial, blood-jetting display from the 230-grain rounds traveling at 830 feet per second.

Chuckie’s mouth fell open as his face was coated with a fine sheen of blood that sprayed from Gaalen’s spouting carotid artery.

Chuckie looked over as Jax came into view, coming through the door like a protective, golden-haired god.

Chuckie’s eyes went from Jax to Connor and Gaalen’s bodies and then back up to Jax. “I accept that,” he finally said and mopped his face dry with his sleeve.

As Jax and Chuckie locked down the shop and began wrapping Connor and Gaalen’s still-warm, nearly exsanguinated corpses into black plastic tarts, back in Helena’s ranch house, the dryer buzzed obnoxiously as it finished.

As Tig slid into the warm clothes and Helena folded the remaining towels and wash rags, down the street, Andrew slipped from the benign rental car and made his way towards Helena’s.

He was falsely operating under the idea that she was alone.

As Helena took the stack of tri-folded bath towels to the hallway linen closet; Andrew slipped through the flimsy side gate and first checked the window in the second bedroom to see if it were open or if it could be easily forced.

As Tig pulled on his socks in the chilly laundry room, on the opposite side of the house, Andrew crawled in through the bedroom window like a toxic, highly educated, bipedal virus.

Helena managed a sharp cry as Andrew emerged from the second bedroom’s doorway and wrapped her up, the scalpel in his left hand was soon pressed against the soft skin of her throat.

“Shhhh,” Andrew hissed against the side of Helena’s ear, the tip of the surgical-steel resting against her sudden, erratically pounding carotid pulse.

Tig nearly fell as he sprinted through the kitchen and out of homicidal habit, plucked the flimsy serrated knife Helena had been using earlier to slice tomatoes with her cream cheese laden bagels. Tig skidded to a stop when he found Helena trapped in Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s dangerous embrace, the wickedly sharp blade threatening to break her skin and call forth a torrent of blood.

Andrew Wakefield managed to keep the surprise off his face and quickly put a ballsy façade in place when Tig appeared at the end of the hallway.

“Oh, did I interrupt you and your biker friend’s fucking?” Andrew asked on a sneer and adjusted his grip on Helena as he slid a hand down to cup over her clothed intimacy at the apex of her thighs.

“I was going to fuck her too but got interrupted, did she tell you that?” Andrew spit as he increased the pressure of the blade against Helena’s neck as he forced her to walk backwards with him.

Tig advanced a few steps before Andrew expertly flicked the blade against the bare skin of Helena’s throat and caused a small split to open under the shiny blade. “Ah, ah, ah,” Andrew tisked as Tig froze, his pupils rapidly dilating as he watched a thin line of blood roll down her pale throat.

“Is this where you fucked her?” Andrew asked as he roughly pulled Helena back through the open doorway of her room.

Tig advanced to the doorway of Helena’s bedroom when she was yanked from his line of sight. Tig couldn’t help but find bitter amusement in Andrew’s ego clouding his ability to recognize Tig as an apex predator as well as see the cheap knife he had hidden by his palm and forearm.

Andrew smirked as Tig hovered in the doorway, energy threatened to spill from his fingertips as his mind scrambled at what to do with the man who held the dangerous blade to Helena’s throat.

“So, who are you biker boy?” Andrew asked on an ugly snarl as he looked around the room, his eyes seeking evidence of how the man in the doorway fit into Helena’s home and life.

Tig remained silent, his eyes glued to Helena’s wide, unblinking warm irises pulsing with dynamic fear. Helena gave a piercing shriek when Andrew pressed the blade up taut against the soft skin under her chin, forcing her to rise up on to her tip toes to avoid her throat opening.

Tig clenched his hands into fists as Andrew kept the scalpel kissing her skin as he spoke. “I asked you a fucking question. Who. The. Fuck. Are. You. Biker. Boy?” Andrew annunciated.

“Please Andrew, don’t do this,” Helena gasped.

“What’s that baby?” Andrew murmured, relaxing the press of the stainless-steel against her throat.

“Please, Andrew,” Helena repeated and tried to stop from shaking as he splayed his hand across her belly, his fingers reptilian appendages massaging her supple flesh through her cotton shirt.

“You really want me to leave baby?”

Helena sniffed hard as she began to sob, tears spilling down her cheeks.

“Shhh baby, I don’t want to see you cry,” Andrew began and nuzzled his face against the side of her neck as he added. “Tell you what, you just let me finish what we started, and I’ll go back to Florida.”

Helena’s tears flowed faster as Andrew started fumbling with the top button of her well-worn jeans. “Fuck me in front of your biker boy and I’ll leave,” Andrew hissed.

Tig felt the bottom drop out of his gut as a spasm shook his heart enclosed in its opaque pericardial sac as he registered Andrew’s words.

Helena froze as Andrew’s whisper was accompanied by a hot, wet exhale from where he pressed his lips against her ear.

“Put the scalpel away,” Helena said quickly, “please ……. Andrew.”

Helena could feel Andrew’s lips curl into a smile as he chuckled lowly. “That’s my girl,” he murmured as he didn’t completely lift the stainless-steel but gave her more room to move.

Helena was grateful when he moved his hand off her belly to pull his phone from his rear pants pocket.

She flinched when Andrew tossed the phone to land in front of Tig’s feet, the obscenely expensive case bounced once in front of his black sock encased toes.

“Pick it up biker boy,” Andrew ordered and watched Tig squat to retrieve the phone.

“You’re going to film me fucking this little whore,” Andrew added in a frightfully gleeful tone.

“You promise you’ll leave?” Helena asked.

Andrew chuckled hotly, his thoughts a depraved cloud that leaked its perverse detritus all over her. “I promise,” he murmured lavisciously as he licked a wet path up the side of her neck.

Tig felt acidic bile race up his throat as Helena closed her eyes. “Hurry up then and get the fuck out,” she whispered.

“Helena,” Tig shouted hoarsely but paused when Andrew replaced the blade against her throat, he could see her rapidly pounding pulse under her skin.

“That’s better,” Andrew murmured as he lowered the hand holding the scalpel and resumed tugging at her jeans.

Tig held out his closest hand, “put it down, you don’t need to be doing this.”

Inside his outwardly calm façade, Tig’s central nervous system wound itself tight like a clock spring until his veritable genetic strand felt like it would fly apart. All his vibrant irises saw was the sharp blade too close to Helena’s throat.

“I’ll give you all the money back,” Helena shouted, knowing even while she was speaking that Andrew didn’t care about the settlement, his price was physically greater.

Andrew chuckled as he lowered the blade but kept her as a human shield between himself and Tig.

“I don’t care about the money,” Andrew growled as he adjusted his grip and swiftly drew the scalpel across her midsection. The sharp flick of his wrist parted the cotton fabric and opened a shallow line on the smooth skin of her belly.

Tig’s blue orbs vibrated in their sockets and bled to near-black with the toxic deluge of emotions the sight of her blood produced in his very core.

Tig clenched his teeth until his jaw popped as he threw Andrew’s phone towards the good doctor in his best imitation of the former New England quarterback GOAT.

Unbeknownst to Andrew, but in that exact moment in time and space, an hourglass was overturned, and the individual grains of sand began to rapidly run out on what little remained of his life.

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Eleven:  Weekend Hours of Operation

As Tig’s feet came back to earth, he was faced with the powerful weight of worry at rejection from the words he had just spoken. His fingertips could still feel the fine, stray cotton thread he’d affixed around her ring finger.

Tig found himself uncomfortably shrouded with the naked fear that Helena would suddenly change her mind, repel him from her house as though he was an interloping vampire.

Helena stared up as Tig as she felt his cock began to soften and slide out of her wet center. A stark ache began in the wake of his withdrawn rigidity, she was unable to keep the wince off her face.

Tig immediately shifted until he could lie alongside her, lifting a hand to cup her jaw as he whispered lowly, his thumb urgently tracing the outline of her lips. “Are you okay?” he asked on a strangled rasp before pulling the linen up and around them.

A blush touched Helena’s face and she cleared her throat as she tried to form coherent words. As Helena’s extended silence made Tig’s nervous system began to spew oscillating electricity from the base of his skull to the tips of his toes, across Charming, at the Club House, Piney napped fitfully. He had declined his pre-lunch pain pill, hating how fuzzy the medication made him as it wrapped itself around his pain and lodged deep in his brain’s receptors.

Piney cracked open his eyes and looked around the room, the blinds were pulled shut and the shadows played tricks with his mind. His cancer-stricken body spasmed and he shouted hoarsely for Cassie, his weekend hospice nurse, hating that he had to throw in the towel and beg for the opiate relief.

As Piney’s body succumbed to the pharmaceutical’s stranglehold, on the other side of his closed door, Clay and Bobby were deep in discussion about the meeting with Gaalen and Connor.

Clay stared up at the clock above the bar with the cracked frame. “Tig should be here,” Clay grumbled aloud.

Bobby didn’t offer much in the way of a reply as Clay stalked outside to make sure everyone was going to be ready before he angrily punched Tig’s number into his phone’s keypad and nearly spiked it to the asphalt like a fucking Superbowl MVP when it went directly to voicemail.

Clay didn’t bother saying anything after the single beep sounded before he shoved the phone deep into his jeans pocket.

On the other side of Charming, Tig’s phone remained silent from where he had switched it off and left it buried in his jacket pocket.

Subatomic particles reacted with each other in the space before Helena would eventually speak. She reached up and gently placed her fingertips on his strong jawline. She traced along his cheekbones and down the slope of his nose.

She moved her thumb across his lower lip and gave an involuntary yelp when Tig grabbed her wrist with the swift strike of a rattlesnake. Helena held her breath as Tig pressed his lips to the center of her palm. “Talk to me baby,” he demanded on a ragged growl.

“I can trust you?” Helena asked on a shaky exhale.

“With everything,” Tig quickly murmured, his desperate want and need began to spread throughout his system and spread like Piney’s metastasizing cancer.

Helena hissed as a dull throb began below her belly button. She shifted and suddenly became aware of how full her bladder had become and the growing dampness between her thighs as his sticky semen and other fluids leaked from her core.

Helena struggled to sit upright in the confines of his tightening embrace. “I need to clean up,” she mumbled as she pressed her hands against Tig’s chest.

“I’ll manage while you’re gone,” Tig finally murmured and forced himself to let her move away from him. He watched Helena pull a blanket around her naked skin and disappear around the corner, the bathroom door closing shortly after she left his sight.

Tig’s still burning lust and dangerous proclivities forced him from the bed, drawn to the bathroom door as though Helena was the very ecliptic.

On the other side of the door, Helena stepped under the near-scalding spray of water and squeezed a glob of pink opaque shampoo into her palm and worked her hair into a soapy lather. She scrubbed at her hairline as Tig grunted lowly when he found she had locked the door.

Helena jumped when Tig knocked loudly on the door and shoved her face in the direct spray of water as soap bubbles stung her eyes.

“Yes?” she called, uncertainty staining her voice despite the rushing water.

“Can I come in?”

Helena was quiet so long that Tig thought she might not have heard him. He started to repeat himself when she cracked open the door.

Tig’s eyes found the curve of her bare shoulder and beads of water collecting and rolling down the collarbone he could see.

“Lemme come in baby,” Tig murmured and raised a hand to the door. “Do this right,” he warned himself before he gave it an easy push.

Helena stepped back so Tig could step inside the bathroom, perfumed steam escaped past him before he closed the door behind him.

At a casual glance, Tig and Helena looked like they were attending a toga party. She had a bright green bath towel wrapped around her wet nudity and he had one of the bed sheets wrapped haphazardly around his waist.

Tig pressed his lips together, uncharacteristically at a loss for words, his eyes frantically searching hers to see if she’d changed her mind.

Helena could feel the cloud of unasked questions emanating from him, the veritable fault lines shuddered with his unspoken words.

Helena closed the small distance between them and raised her hands to rest on his chest, the dark pink flesh of his nipples hardened under her palms. Tig held his breath as she moved her fingertips in slow circles, the smooth pads of her fingertips memorized his every pore, hair follicle and bit of bare skin.

Tig lifted his hands and closed his fingers around her wrists. A small smile teased the corners of his lips as he dropped his eyes to land on her left ring finger, the tied loops of the thread saturated and limp from the shower.

Tig tightened his grip on her slim wrists as any vulnerability he felt melted away. His insecurity sloughed off to puddle on the floor as he quickly dropped his hands to Helena’s hips and tightened his grip on her supple flesh until it was just shy of hurting as he lifted her onto the top of the faux marble vanity.

Tig’s cock sprang back to life, blood filling his length, the skin stretched tight from the base of his balls to the rounded, plump head, still sticky from being buried inside of her.

Helena stumbled over a slew of incoherent words as Tig murmured soothing sounds and assertively gripped her hips and forced her to turn towards the mirror and her fogged up reflection.

“Shhh,” Tig growled as he smoothed his large hand across the mirror until he could meet Helena’s eyes in the glass reflection.

Helena held his gaze and winced wordlessly as he ripped her towel free and dropped a hand to the vulnerable soft, pink flesh at the apex of her thighs.

Tig smoothed his hand from her aching center to rest on her lower back and nudged her closer to the sink edge as he urged her legs further apart. Helena watched him lick his index finger until it was wet and gasped as he simultaneously bit the rounded top of her shoulder as he teased his wet fingertip at her rear tightness.

Tig held Helena’s eyes in the mirror as he tore the sheet free from around his waist before he spit on his palm and began stroking himself to painful rigidity.

Tig’s eyes bled to solid blue, pulsating with liquid darkness as he teased the sensitive head of his cock at her tight, tense rear entrance.

“Oh,” Helena managed lowly as Tig began to force himself inside her, moving slowly. He groaned as she gasped as her body was forced to accommodate his thickness, feeling herself stretched to impossible limits as he growled when he could sink himself no further.

Tig never gave Helena a chance to say anything understandable as he slammed into her with a frenzied pace, his triune brain grew nearly invisible in its transparency as he was transported back to the basal need of want, possession and ownership.

Tig continued to plunge his cock as far as he could into Helena’s tightness, forcing her to only be able to speak in gasps and grunts.

“Let’s get out of here,” Tig issued on a strangled gasp as his balls pulled up tight to his body and hot, sticky cum filled her rear tightness.

“Go……go where?” Helena finally managed as her elbows buckled and she rested the side of her face on the cool counter as Tig pulled his softening cock out of her.

“To the courthouse,” Tig whispered as he leaned over her, his warm, broad chest compressed against her back, their hearts raced a beating war as she processed his words.

“The courthouse? Now?” Helena managed with a tired chuckle until she felt the scratchy hairs of Tig’s facial hair tickle her back as he wordlessly nodded yes.

Helena closed her eyes and counted the sound of Tig’s inhalations and hot exhalations against the bare skin in the center of her back.

Tig’s mind scrambled as he began to press his lips to each protruding spinal vertebrate. “Please,” he groaned.

Helena blew out a shaky breath, feeling her fingers shake as she shifted enough that the counter edge wasn’t biting into the skin of her belly. Tig traced his hands down Helena’s sides and urged her to turn towards him in the tight circle of his arms.

Helena raised her hands to rest on his chest, his heart racing like a Derby winner under her warm palm. “You really mean now?”

Tig nodded, his bright blue eyes dancing. “I don’t want you to change your mind,” he admitted.

“Is the courthouse even open on the weekend?” Helena asked lamely.

Tig chuckled and slid a hand up the length of her spine until he could cup the back of her skull in his large palm. His ragged cuticles snagged on the strands of her hair as he dropped his mouth to hers, his lips moving urgently as he poked his tongue against hers.

“I know a place that’s open,” Tig murmured when he lifted his lips as he thought about Charlie Horse and his many hats besides being the Wahewa Tribal Chief.

As Helena processed Tig’s words, across Charming, Clay clenched his hands into loose fists, being mindful of their fresh cortisone injection sites before starting his Super Glide, the 96 cubic inch twin cam gulped the high-octane fuel as it came to life.

He peeled out of the shop, the bike roared through the thunder headed exhaust as Clay led Bobby, Juice, Opie, Chibs and Happy to meet the Irish at one of Oswald’s lumber yards.

Clay winced as a jolt of pain shot through his left hand, moving his thoughts back to being furious at Tig’s absence and a phone that continued to go straight to voicemail. The meeting with Gaalen was important, a lot of money was being exchanged.

Clay urged the engine to move faster as he tried to shut out Bobby’s uneasiness with becoming even more entangled with the Irish.

Clay was only thinking of Gemma, money, and a retirement plan, seemingly accelerated by the at times crippling swelling and pain in the joints of his fingers.

The drive to Oswald’s lumber yard was smooth and they had nearly an hour of waiting before Gaalen and Connor were supposed to arrive. In the space while they waited for Gaalen and Connor, the guys milled out into the lumber yard.

Clay dialed Tig again while Juice and Happy walked left towards the manager’s office. Chibs and Bobby headed to the right side of the building to make sure no one was lingering on the weekend or working off the clock.

Opie watched Clay shake his head and shove his phone deep in his pocket.

“Still no answer?”

Clay grumbled as he shook his head. “Nothing.”

Opie shrugged out of his jacket with the growing heat.

“Do you know where he is?”

“Yeah, with one of Piney’s nurses.”

Opie had been distracted lately and frowned. “Which one?”

“The brunette.”

“This is different than his usual MO,” Opie remarked.

Clay nodded, “Tig’s changed brother.”

Opie stared at Clay as he fumbled in his rear pocket for his lighter. Clay had kept tone, opinion, and judgement from his tone. Opie was about to ask Clay what he was going to do when Happy and Juice hollered from the building’s employee entrance.

Juice hoisted a bottle of Irish whiskey into the air. “They must’ve had a party last night, there’s still a fucking stack of kegs in here too.”

Clay and Opie glanced over and chuckled as Happy and Juice toasted to each other’s health, clinking the expensive dark green bottes together.

No one noticed the glittery streamers and party favors, all emblazoned with tiny shamrocks.

The lumber yard was suddenly transformed as the C4 in the beer kegs ignited and exploded in spectacular fashion. The air inside the building was soon close to two-thousand degrees as the solidity of the explosive material was converted into a gaseous form.

The bulk of the explosives instant flash effect nearly vaporized Happy and Juice with how close they were to ground zero. The initial bombastic shock wave spread, destroying first the soft tissue of Bobby and Chibs before turning their organs into pulp as their lives were extinguished.

As the shock wave continued to ripple outwards, it knocked Opie and Clay clean off their feet, their skin burned and blistered from the heat and shoved them both into an unconscious state.

As Clay and Opie’s breath became ragged and the lumber yard continued to be a raging inferno, back at Teller-Morrow, Gaalen and Connor pulled the sleek, shiny sedan to a stop in a parking spot close to the office, their planned destination the entire time.

As the bodies at the lumber yard burned, Clay and Opie stayed unconscious, sprawled out flatly, back in Helena’s bathroom, the steam in the air held the aroma of peach and jasmine. Tig felt the veritable power of the cosmos ignite every receptor in his brain as it silently screamed for more of the dopamine and endorphin rush of touching, stroking and fucking Helena. He was certain he could survive solely on the sounds of the breathless moans and gasps he forced from her.

Helena felt his warm, sticky seed leaking from her tight center as she shifted and reached for the discarded towel he had tossed to the side.

Tig yanked the towel from her hands, thinking she was trying to cover her naked skin. “Don’t hide,” he demanded on a growl as he settled his hands on her hips, squeezing her supple flesh until bruises threatened to form under each pad of his fingertip and thumb.

“No, not hiding,” Helena murmured and dropped her hands to close around Tig’s wrists. She started at the crown of his head and dragged her eyes down the length of his body, first taking in his mussed hair.

Helena felt her breath catch in her throat as she couldn’t help but let her gaze linger on his cock hanging heavily between his legs, slick from burying itself in her wet center. She blushed and brought her eyes back to meet his when she caught side of the faint reddish stickiness surrounding the base of his cock.

“Come finish taking a shower with me,” Helena whispered as she tugged him towards the water still raining down to splash the subway tiled floor. Tig allowed Helena to guide him into the shower and adjusted the temperature, the large capacity water heater nearly out of hot water.

As Helena and Tig smoothed their soapy, slick hands over each other’s naked bodies under the cooling spray of water. They remained oblivious of the lives that had ended in an instant and the lives that hung in the balance as Gaalen slipped from his luxury sedan and walked with a purpose towards the Teller-Morrow office where Chuckie was organizing the latest stack of requisitions for drums of motor oil, transmission fluid and carburetor cleaner.

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Ten:  A State of Genetic Sequencing Collapse and Rebirth

The weight of Tig’s gaze quickly turned overwhelming before Helena slipped her arms around his waist. She pressed the side of her face against his chest, hearing his strong heartbeat under her ear.

Tig heard everything she had omitted when she’d been talking, how carefully measured her words were. He had seen Helena’s eyes fill with all she had left out before she let him swallow her whole with his embrace. His nervous system sent electrical waves from the base of his skull to tingle out to the end of his toes and fingertips as he tightened his arms around her, pulling her as close as possible until no light could find a space to shine through their bodies.

Helena closed her eyes and let Tig crush her until her lungs were nearly down to their remaining tidal breath as she tried to stop the hemorrhaging flood of memories. She didn’t want to tell Tig that the respected Dr. Wakefield had issued his threats while he ran his hands all over her clothed body and squeezed her like she was a goddamn squishy stress ball.

Helena let out a shuddering exhale as Tig gave her time to find her words and stop the memories that were jetting out of her brain’s central thought processing center like a severed artery.

As Helena corralled her emotions and locked the vault on the ripped off scab, on the other side of Charming, Gemma dumped a bottle of store-bought Italian dressing into a zippered gallon storage bag which was half-filled with boneless chicken thighs for the Sunday barbecue.

Gemma sealed the bag and settled it into a deep ceramic bowl before sliding it onto the bottom shelf of her extra-wide refrigerator. The fleshy meat would suck up the marinade overnight and be delicious hot from the grill.

Gemma muttered to herself as she looked through the pantry and cupboards to make sure she had everything else she needed for dinner. In her head, she ticked off each item on the menu from the potato salad and chicken to the chocolate ganache cake she was going to pick up the following morning from Charming Cakes.

As Gemma pawed through the fridge’s crisper drawer, hours away, Gaalen O’Shay and his merry Real IRA cohorts were en route to Charming for a little chat with the MC lads.

As the luxury sedan devoured the miles, bringing them closer, Connor Malone stared down at a small photo in his wallet long enough to gain Gaalen’s attention before he closed his wallet and slipped it into his inner coat pocket.

As the Irish continued towards Charming, standing on Helena’s sagging back porch, Tig reluctantly took a small step back from Helena to capture her eyes.

Tig’s sparkling cerulean blue irises searched her brown orbs that swirled with caramel fire as she tried to pull back the seemingly endless runaway train of emotions and freed memories.

Helena sniffed hard and smoothed her shirt down as she tried to create a little more space between them. She blinked as Tig spoke first.

“Where did you come from?” Tig asked on a ragged exhale as he raised a hand and cupped her jaw, moving the pad of his thumb across her lower lip as he dropped his face, speaking again as his mouth hovered centimeters over hers. “Where did you come from baby?” Tig asked again without giving her a chance to answer before he crushed his lips to hers, stealing her breath and ability to reason.

“Nowhere special,” Helena whispered when Tig lifted his lips, watching her suppress a shiver as the brisk wind dropped the temperature.

“Did you get enough air?” Tig asked rhetorically before he captured one of her hands and tugged her back towards the house. Helena gladly let him lead her into the warmer kitchen.

“Coffee?” she asked.

Tig nodded and let go of her hand so she could measure out the fine grounds and fill the glass carafe. He leaned back against the counter, watching her, wishing he had some cheat sheet for navigating domesticity.

Helena turned as Tig’s forehead was pulled into a deep frown, anxiously drumming his fingers on the cool tiles.

“You alright?” Helena asked as she pulled two mugs from the cabinet above the coffeemaker.

“Yeah,” Tig mumbled with a shrug before adding in a stronger tone. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing now.”

“Doing?” Helena asked as she pulled a couple spoons from the slotted utensil holder and tore a few paper towels from the creaky wooden holder.

“Yeah, ya know, most mornings aren’t this quiet,” Tig offered.

Helena chuckled, “I’ll bet this is quite a different way of starting your weekend,” and added as she turned her attention to the slowly filling carafe, anxious to pour the liquid life in to her green gingham printed mugs. “Are you still so sure you’d want a change from blackout drinking, anonymous women and waking up in a face full of puke?” Helena asked as she continued to laugh.

Helena’s amusement died a quick death when Tig was suddenly away from the counter and had her wrapped up in his arms. “Yeah, I’m sure,” Tig rasped as he pressed his face to the side of her neck, his words delivered on a hot exhale against her flushed skin.

“Are you still sure you want me hanging around?” Tig countered on a growl as he slipped a hand under her shirt, moving his warm palm in slow circles on the smooth plane of her belly.

Helena moaned an agreeable sound as Tig slid his hand lower, his fingertips teasing the lace edging along the top of her panties.

“This just isn’t at all what I imagined when I moved here,” Helena admitted on a chuckle.

Tig echoed her amusement as a low grumble moved through his chest as he slipped his hand down the front of her panties, he pressed his palm against her wet center as Helena struggled to find her breath.

Tig began moving his hand in slow circles against her bare intimacy, the shell-pink lips of her slit pressed against the palm of his hand. Tig groaned as a shudder passed through his body, becoming intoxicated off the sound of her growing breathlessness.

Helena arched back against him as each revolution of his palm against her intimate folds, teased moisture from her intimacy and simultaneously cattle-prodded her heart until it was racing, practically leap-frogging itself as it threatened to beat out of her chest.

“What did you imagine?” Tig managed to ask coherently as his cock grew hard behind his zipper. His length quickly engorged as he fought his basal need to rip her pants free so his eyes could drink in her naked skin. Tig bit the inside of his cheek until he could taste the metallic nuances of his blood as it mixed with his saliva.

As Helena tried to find enough breath to give life to his answer, Tig’s mind transported him back to watching her through the wall at the Club House as she worked to make Piney’s exit from the land of the living as painless and comfortable as possible. He wanted to hear her say she would throw her caution to the wind and fall towards him, believe that he would catch her.

“I thought I’d be able to move here and disappear, that my biggest hassle would be finding employee parking at the hospital and go way over budget on the house repairs,” Helena managed.

“And now?” Tig asked on a choked rasp as he dropped his other hand to the front of his pants and fumbled his rapidly hardening cock free. Helena’s breath grew as ragged as Tig’s as he began stroking his thick length to further rigidity, fighting the infernal, naked need to sheath himself in her slick center.

“Now it all looks different,” Helena murmured and leaned heavily against Tig, letting the heady warm woodsy smell of his skin fill her nose.

Tig pressed his lips to the skin of her feverishly hot neck, speaking as he lifted his mouth. “I’ll drive you to the hospital and pick you up,” he murmured before he caught her ear lobe between his teeth. “The home repairs won’t cost you a thing,” he added, thinking of Oswald and his construction contacts.

“Just like that?” Helena asked and closed her eyes as Tig increased the circular rhythm of his palm over her blush-pink intimate folds, his fingers sliding along her slick inner lips.

Helena barely registered Tig wordlessly nod against the curve of her neck as she couldn’t help but buck her hips against his hand. Tig’s fingers grew dripping wet under his steady touch, urging her to surrender more than her body.

“You can trust me,” Tig groaned and swallowed hard as he teased the rough pad of his index finger around her hypersensitive, swollen clit until his touch made a bolt of lightning shoot from the apex of her thighs and tease the entire length of her nerve endings.

Helena’s initial answer was just a gasp as Tig assertively thrust his hardness against her bottom, his cock eager to burst through the denim layer between them and plunge deep inside her feminine core.

Helena turned around in the small circle of space that Tig allowed, forcing him to shift his hand that covered her wet center, spikes of sensitivity made her twitch whenever his fingers brushed her clit.

“I can?” she asked on a shaky breath.

Tig nodded and teased a finger at her tight opening, letting the tip of his middle finger shallowly dip inside her, the ragged cuticle tickling her supple pink flesh.

“With everything baby,” Tig said on a groan as he slid his finger further inside her tight center, feeling a trill from head to toe as her inner wetness tightened around his finger.

The next few moments in time would forever be seared in Tig’s mind, something he would recall often until the day he died.

Helena’s whole body involuntarily tensed when the tip of Tig’s scarred finger brushed the thin membrane inside her that no one had ever burst through, never fully possessed her. At the realization of her physical innocence, Tig’s brain returned to a state before the triune layer that separated humans from the rest of the pack.

His DNA strand and very blood brain barrier remembered what it was like to live in a savage and primitive world, no words involved in communication, just raping, eating, fucking, shitting, killing and repeat until the next stage of evolution.

Tig paused his fingertip against the paper-thin resistance inside her, shuddering as he spoke. “Is that what you were trying to say baby?”

Helena held his eyes as a rosy blush filled her face and nodded since she doubted the strength of her words.

Tig’s continued circles around her overly sensitive clit shoved her into an orgasmic abyss. He caught Helena up in his embrace as she quaked and pressed her face against his chest, over his heart to suppress her moans.

Tig squeezed her tight to his chest, wanting to sheath himself inside her, to force her breathless with each thrust of his painfully hard cock. He instantly became Def Con One obsessed with wanting to be the one she’d let fill her, make her gasp with his touch.

Helena barely heard Tig’s lowly spoken words as she tried to catch her bearings as the orgasmic riptide threatened to completely drown her.

“Don’t reject me,” Tig begged on a ragged growl as his control began to quickly wane and he shifted his grip to her hips until he could deftly lift her to the counter, the square tiles cool through her pants.

Helena felt a torrential flood of conflicting emotions twist her insides into a triple knot as Tig pushed her thighs apart and insinuated himself as close as he could, wanting to tear her pants open so he could fuck her through the torn seams.

Helena heard everything Tig was hiding in his lowly murmured words, his unspoken needs, wants, and fears stained each syllable.

Helena reached up and closed her arms around Tig’s neck as she found she couldn’t focus on anything except the potent, near palpable, overwhelming tension he embodied from restraining himself. Tig’s need was like staring up into the face of a god while huddled at the base of Olympus.

“I need this,” Tig gasped raggedly against the side of her neck, his exhale hot against her skin as he began to frantically tug at her jeans.

Tig leaned back and locked eyes with her, watching the minute changes in her face as he spoke. “What do you need?” he asked on a choked grunt as his painfully hard cock jabbed the inside of her upper thigh.

“I don’t want to keep living in fear,” Helena admitted, dropping her eyes from his sparkling penetrative gaze.

Tig lifted one hand to cup her jaw, tracing the pad of his thumb across her lower lip before he directed her chin until they locked eyes.

“I’ll kill anything that scares you baby,” Tig growled as he slipped his hands under the curve of her bottom and tugged her impossibly close. An involuntary and completely girly squeal slipped from Helena’s lips as Tig shifted his grip and began carrying her towards her bedroom.

Helena couldn’t find coherent words as Tig settled them both on the tangled linen and used the bulk of his body weight to push her more assertively against the surface of the bed.

Tig would never give words to how helpless he felt as he sat back, to give her some room to breathe but more to give himself a better view.

He would never have been able to voice his lack of control as he smoothed his hands up her inner thighs and pushed them far apart until his eyes could memorize each of the soft pink folds of her soaked slit.

Helena moaned from deep in her belly as Tig gripped his painfully hard cock and smoothed the plump sensitive head up and down through her supple wetness.

Tig groaned as he looked down the length of their bodies as he teased the tip of his cock at the opening of her tight center, glistening pre-cum dripped onto the shell pink lips of her pussy.

In that moment Tig wanted more than just the physical. “I need this,” Tig managed on a choked groan and met Helena’s wide, unblinking eyes, the warm latte irises throbbed with energy.

Helena’s small nod undid Tig’s genetic sequencing chain as he began to fill her with excruciating slowness.

The paper-thin membrane inside her tight wetness was viscerally broken as Tig’s thick cock filled her.

“I’m sorry,” Tig grunted as he pushed himself more forcefully inside her. He reveled in Helena’s low moans and gasps as he increased his rhythm, apologizing every other time he buried himself to the hilt in her hot, wet center. “I need you,” Tig groaned against her neck as his thick rigidity forced her body to open further for him, stretching around his plunging cock that was practically vibrating with the aggressive blood flow inside his body.

Helena closed her eyes as Tig shoved his rigidity inside her as deep as he could until he was stopped by their intimate flesh kissing. “I knew you’d feel like home,” Tig felt slip from his lips before he drowned himself in every sense of fully possessing her.

Tig’s words swirled around inside Helena’s brain and made her breath catch in her throat as he stabbed the head of his cock against the spongy nerve cluster inside her until she felt a ball of electrical nuclear fission start deep inside her.

Tig’s climax was all but imminent when he misinterpreted Helena’s shifting for retreating.

“No, don’t go anywhere,” he demanded as he roughly pulled her back towards him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Helena murmured as she raised her hands to grip the outside of his arms, his increased pace creating a dull ache in her center.

“Say that again,” Tig ordered in a tone that was closer to open, naked begging as he smoothed one of his hands from the supple skin of her inner thigh to let the rough pad of his thumb trace circles around her still overly sensitive clit.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Helena repeated as his touch made her near breathless.

Tig wanted more than her words, bitter bile raced up his throat that he swallowed back as his rhythm turned erratic, plunging into her wet center as his eyes fell on a loose thread that had unraveled from the edge of a decorative throw pillow.

Helena forgot her name for the small amount of time it took Tig to wrap the fine cotton strand around the ring finger of her left hand.

Helena’s heart threatened to beat out of her chest as she stared up at Tig. Her eyes tracked him as he pressed his lips to the looping bow he had tied around her finger.

“Wear this,” Tig murmured as a fine sheen of sweat cropped up on his forehead, his balls pulled up tight to his body as he felt himself about to spill himself inside her. “Wear it until you find something you like,” he added as he collapsed on top of her and buried his face in the curve of her neck.

Helena could barely speak coherently. “Yes,” she managed on a strangled moan as Tig smiled with teeth that seemed sharper.

“You’re mine,” Tig growled in a voice that was more animal at that point as he shoved his cock inside her quivering pussy, wordlessly claiming ownership over her pleasure as he groaned with each wet plunge.

“All mine, all mine, all mine,” Tig murmured as he pressed his lips to her flushed skin as his engorged cock spasmed like an electric eel on land and spit his sticky seed to pool deep inside her.

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Nine:  The $64,000 Question

As Dr. Wakefield began rummaging through the ugly yellow folders in the rows of tall, grey steel cabinets, each containing four drawers of files, across town in Helena’s kitchen, Tig kept his grip tight enough that his touch brushed into near painful as his eyes bored into her, “please,” he finally growled, his tone reeking of outright, face down begging.

Helena pressed her dry lips together and tried to control her breathing, distracted by his ironclad hold, making it difficult to form words. “Can you pretend you didn’t hear the message or see the flowers?” she managed to stammer.

Tig shook his head before she lapsed into silence. He lifted a hand to pinch her chin with his fingertips as he dropped his face until their lips were a breath apart. “Talk to me,” he demanded on a whisper.

In the space before Helena spoke, her mind whirred with the intensity of the turbine engine of a jumbo jet. “What do I say? Will he end up hurting me?” Helena thought before she stopped being able to think when Tig pressed his lips to hers. His kiss turned urgent, and she felt herself left breathless when he lifted his lips, foreign patience shrouded him as he gave her time to think.

Helena blinked and found herself unable to look away from Tig’s probing, penetrative stare. The press of his body made Helena fight competing lust-fueled thoughts as she cleared her throat. “How do I fit in?” she finally asked.

Tig frowned, unsure of what she was asking, and Helena continued before he could speak.

“How do I fit into your world?” Helena asked as her mind once again conjured the seemingly inerasable image of the skinny, glossy-lipped, spike-heeled, gonorrhea ridden, parasitic whore trying to play with Tig’s stick.

Tig dropped a strong hand to encircle Helena’s wrist, the tips of his middle finger and thumb overlapping. He lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to the center of her palm. Tig squeezed her smaller hand, free from scars, lines and nails gaudily encrusted with rhinestones before he spoke.

“I should be askin’ you the same thing baby,” Tig murmured on a heady rasp, his exhale a hot tease against her skin.

Helena drowned in the electrical sensation that was ignited the nanosecond he pressed his lips to her palm, the wiry strands of his facial hair, near-singeing where it brushed against her skin.

Helena blinked hard as she tried to collect her flurrying thoughts, she was suddenly a snow globe that had been violently shaken and left to find herself again amongst the falling chunks of artificial snow. “How does he fit in?” Helena asked herself. “How do I tell him that he scares the nightmares away, that since the moment I met him, he filled a space inside me that was empty?” Helena asked herself as her face turned a brilliant, fuchsia hue as she let her mind wander down a sexual rabbit hole.

“Because you’re different,” Helena finally managed and added in a quick stammer as Tig’s hands slid down to rest on her hips. “You’re not like the rest of them.”

Tig squeezed her taut hips, massaging the supple flesh through her jeans. “Who do ya think I am doll?” he asked on a heady tease.

“I think you’re dangerous,” Helena whispered on an exhale as Tig tugged her closer and slid one hand up the length of her spine, his fingertips brushing each of the protruding vertebrate until he could tangle his fingers in the silken fall of her hair.

Tig couldn’t even pretend to deny the veracity of her words as he tugged on her hair until her neck pulled taut and Helena met his unblinking eyes. “Not towards you in any way baby, nothing bad will ever happen to you again,” Tig rasped and crushed his lips to hers, stealing her breath with the intensity of his want.

Helena was forced to surrender in Tig’s embrace, his hands everywhere at once while holding her immobile.

Tig’s strength was equal parts frightening and protective, his physical intimidation was not lost on himself as he settled closer to her.

“I’m not the kind of man you think I am,” Tig whispered as he pressed his lips against her ear and smoothed one hand down her side and cupped a hand under the curve of her bottom.

“What do you think I have wrong?” Helena asked on a low murmur.

“That I’m some kind of monster, inhuman,” Tig growled in a low tone.

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” Helena said softly and lifted a hand to cup his jaw. Tig captured her wrist, keeping her palm pressed hard to his face. Helena shivered as she felt the stubble against her warm palm and could feel his words vibrate against her skin as he spoke.

Helena almost didn’t hear him add in a strangled whisper against her flushed skin over the thundering beat of her heart. “Please don’t reject me,” Tig growled.

As Tig and Helena’s red blood cells bloated and their pupils pulsed with the increase of their collective and rising blood pressure, across town in the Human Resources office at St. Thomas’s, Dr. Andrew Wakefield pulled open a metal drawer and pawed through the folders until he found Helena’s personnel file.

Andrew began to whistle a lively show tune as he opened Helena’s folder on top of the HR secretary’s desk.

For a second Andrew looked like a reptile, so much so, one would’ve expected a forked tongue to slip out from his thin lips and wet his twisted smile as he read her name aloud from the sunny yellow folder tab.

Onassis, Helena.

Andrew skimmed her contact information, most of which he already knew, before he fished his phone out of his pocket and took pictures of each page in the manila file folder.

Andrew replaced the file and easily slipped out of St. Thomas’s before he casually made his way back to his hotel room.

As the prominent and adored Floridian doctor returned to his hotel room, back in Helena’s kitchen, the air had become charged, and Tig found himself closer and closer to losing the mere semblance of control he possessed.

Helena found her voice as Tig began to tug open the top button of her jeans and deftly lowered her zipper. “No, I, I can’t,” Helena began before she trailed off into silence and desperately tried to avoid his gaze.

“Ya can’t or ya won’t?” Tig hissed, his exhale fell from lungs surrounding his heart that began to gallop in its opaque pericardial sac.

Tig never stopped his touch even as Helena unsuccessfully pushed at his hands and incoherently protested. “I can’t right now,” Helena finally spit, her anxiety had melted into vulnerable defensiveness.

Tig tried to lessen his hold but failed as he took a deep breath in through his nose as he softened his tone but fell flat in an effort to blunt the crassness of his words. “I’ll do anything you tell me, just let me fuck you baby,” he grumbled, his words delivered under the growing roughness of his touch.

Helena couldn’t help but laugh nervously once she caught her breath and dropped her hands to close around Tig’s wrists, simultaneously brilliantly blushing at his ragged admission. She shook her head, “I should probably tell you something,” Helena lamely managed.

“Tell me,” Tig said on a rasp as he buried his face in the curve of her neck, his exhale causing her to break out in goosebumps.

Helena danced her fingertips up his forearms and along the curve of his triceps as she tried to formulate a coherent sentence. “I need some air,” she said in more of a shrill tone than she would’ve liked.

“Could we go outside for a few minutes?” Helena asked on a breathy moan as Tig slid a hand to cup over the clothed junction of her thighs, shuddering with the urgent want to sheath himself in her wet center.

“Just a few,” Tig finally conceded on a frustrated groan.

Helena looked past his shoulder as she raised her hands to his chest, feeling his heart pounding under her palm. Tig let her slide along the edge of the counter away from him as he drummed his fingertips on the outside of his thighs.

“Don’t fuck this up,” Tig told himself as he followed Helena outside.

They each settled into the new turquoise chairs that Helena had picked up at the hardware store, the southwestern round chair pads were still stiff with newness but stood out brightly on the sagging porch.

Helena tapped the arm of the metal chair. “I bought these the day I moved here.”

Tig squeezed the cold arms of the matching chair, “from Harvest’s?” he asked, not sure how to have a casual conversation with her when all he wanted to do was fuck her until he forgot how to spell his name.

Helena nodded, “that place is great, I think I’ve been there more than the grocery store.”

Tig nodded and fumbled for his freshly opened pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket as Helena directed her gaze out at the overgrown yard that needed countless full weekends to clean up and who even knew how many trips back and forth to Harvest’s for mulch, weed killer and topsoil.

Tig was grateful to whoever was on the other end of the incoming call that made his phone buzz in his other pocket.

Helena moved her eyes off a trio of overgrown Meyer lemon trees, their wickedly sharp thorns ready and waiting to rip the flesh from anyone who dared supplant them, to look over at Tig as he frowned down at the caller ID.

“I gotta get this,” Tig murmured, suppressing the anger from his tone that he was being pulled away from her. Helena nodded and watched Tig disappear into the house before he answered the call.

“Yeah,” Tig grumbled tersely as he picked up Clay’s incoming call.

“Where are you?” Clay barked, irritated that Tig had been ignoring a laundry list of calls and messages.

“I’m just working on some things,” Tig benignly answered.

“Well brother, we’re meeting with the Irish in a few hours. Can you break away from your ‘things’ for a while?” Clay added with a chuckle, recalling Gemma telling him what she’d seen in the grocery store aisle with toiletries and over-the-counter products.

Tig walked over to the kitchen counter and stared down at the chipped tiles on the edge and ivory-colored grout lines as he tried to come up with an excuse to not have to leave.

As Tig was trying to come up with an excuse that would hold water to skip out on Club business, Helena’s phone chimed from where she had left it by the stainless-steel toaster.

Tig glanced over his shoulder and could see Helena still sitting on the rear porch, staring out at the yard just as she had been when Clay called.

“Tig? You there?” Clay asked when Tig fell deathly silent as he picked up her phone and glanced at the message preview that popped up on the phone.

“I gotta call you back,” Tig muttered abruptly and hung up on Clay.

Tig clenched his teeth until his jaw popped as he read the first sentence of the incoming text message. Helena’s locked screen kept him from reading any further than the three words displayed on the smudged screen.

“Remember this baby?” Tig read aloud before another message arrived. Tig squinted down at the small square photo that was too tiny to discern much detail.

Helena flinched when Tig stomped back outside and held her phone out towards her, the screen facing her.

“What is this?”

Helena’s face first drained of color as she swallowed hard and was then replaced with a wave of defensiveness as she reached out for her phone. Tig held it just out of her reach, “tell me who sent this.”

Helena blew out a low breath before she moved her eyes from the rectangular screen to settle on his face. “Fine,” she finally said in a heated tone as she began to flush. “Give me the phone first,” she demanded as she held her hand out.

Tig pressed his lips together. Feeling his salivary glands leak and a trill of excitement stimulate his nervous system as Helena’s indignation at his invasive encroachment into secrets she wanted to keep hermitically sealed in a titanium coffin, buried under three million miles of earth.

Tig’s watched her eyes grow wide as her irises practically vibrated in their sockets. In the center of his brain, his pituitary gland ejaculated hormones that further fanned his lust as her pink tongue darted out to moisten her lips.

Helena felt the tiniest lessening of the electrical heaviness in the air when Tig gently placed her phone in her waiting palm. They both felt a tingling jolt as his fingertips brushed against her open hand.

Tig sat back down on the firm chair pad and watched Helena unlock her phone and read the messages. He watched her eyes move back and forth over the words before she began to speak.

Helena spoke without meeting his eyes, never taking her gaze off her phone clutched in her hand. Her voice grew in strength as she gripped her phone so tight that the skin over her knuckles turned white as it was pulled taut.

“Before I started in the neurology ward, I heard all sorts of rumors about several of the physician department heads and a game they played.”

Tig waited as she gathered her words, willing to give her eons to continue, as long as she would speak only to him.

“Dr. Gatez, with a Z, was the one who started everything. He paid off a guy in maintenance to put cameras in the bathrooms, changing rooms and staff lounges. They had competitions for best pictures and videos recorded. They set aside one department head meeting a month to talk about their other conquests,” Helena said before closing her eyes and resumed leaning back in the metal chair.

Tig didn’t have to wait long for her to continue.

“Besides their surveillance fun, they would often use the footage to blackmail people they found in compromising footage or threaten to release still frames. Sometimes they’d try to leverage more with their threats,” Helena said as she looked down at her phone and reread the simple message and tapped on the photo, enlarging it.

Helena was transported back to the events she had moved three-thousand miles away from as she stared at the screen.

Helena turned the phone’s face towards Tig, she cleared her throat as his eyes fell on an image of her emerging from the employee shower. She positioned her fingers to cover most of her nudity.

“After I was sent this and a few that were similar, there was another message that said I could find out how to keep that picture and more from being circulated to the entire staff.”

Helena settled back in the chair and turned the screen back towards herself as she struggled for a moment to find her words.

“One of the doctors told me that all I had to do was perform a few free favors and I’d get the originals.”

Tig felt himself hit with a simultaneous tsunami on each hemisphere of his brain as he battled vastly different thoughts about what Helena described. Tig was both compelled to comfort her while at the same time he felt a coiled charge of excitement in his body as he wanted to rip her phone out of her hand to see the uncensored image of her wet nakedness.

“He tried to take payment when I said no,” Helena started to say before her voice broke and she sniffed hard. “There was a security guard close by,” she added and pinched the bridge of her nose as a headache decided to start brewing behind her eyes.

Tig finally spoke when Helena didn’t seem like she was going to offer more. “What happened after that?”

“I filed a report with the hospital and police department but of all places the cameras weren’t working was the parking garage and the security guard never got a good look at him. It became my word against the esteemed Dr. Wakefield and Gatez,” Helena spit.

Helena blew out a low breath. “The threats quickly escalated, and I tapped into my trust and left everything behind. I didn’t even put them down as a job reference for St. Thomas.”

Tig left his chair and dropped to a knee in front of her. If someone had been watching, without words, it would appear he was proposing. “Let me in,” Tig breathed as he pulled her phone from her tight grip and set it aside. He gathered her hands and smoothed his fingers over her soft, unscarred skin.

Tig pressed his lips to her palms before he buried his face in her lap. “Please let me in,” he begged.

Helena stared down at Tig’s head, his face pressed against the tops of her thighs, his ragged exhales were hot through the denim.

Tig held himself statue still on the outside while inside his chest cavity, his heart leapfrogged itself with its rapid beating.

Helena lifted her hands and slid her fingertips through his hair, the strands tickling her palms.

Tig closed his eyes and smoothed his hands up and down the outside of Helena’s thighs as she rubbed her fingertips in slow circles on his scalp.

As Helena and Tig remained in silence, across town at the Clubhouse, Piney was eating a second sandwich, the new anti-nausea medication had made his appetite return with a vengeance.

Inside his body, the cancerous cells continued to divide. Piney’s discomfort was trapped behind a narcotic wall that was difficult to maintain, the breakthrough pain made his spine practically bow with its intensity.

Piney lowered the volume on the game show rerun as Cassie brought him an extra slice of pie she had brought from St. Thomas’s cafeteria. As the two of them talked about bland topics and then shouted out their answers to the game show trivia, back on Helena’s rear porch, Tig squeezed her hips until she hissed from the pressure as her whispered words fell around his ears.

“Can I trust you, Tig?” Helena asked. He began to nod his head the nanosecond she was done speaking.

“I need something, “ Helena began and trailed off as she lost confidence in her words.

“Talk to me,” Tig demanded as he snapped his head up to find her eyes on him.

“I want,” Helena began before she paused briefly. “I need to know I mean something to you, I’m not disposable.”

Tig rose to his feet and pulled her up and out of the blue wrought-iron chair to join him. “You’re everything,” he growled and crushed his lips to hers.

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Eight:  I Will Frighten All of Your Fears Away

On the other end of the phone, Gemma ended the call after not letting Helena decline the forceful invitation. Clay looked over at Gemma, her lips pulled into a smile as she stared down at her phone long after she ended the call.

“What’re you doing Gem?” he grumbled and stretched deeply.

Gemma smirked at him, “just bringing people together baby,” she murmured before sliding out from the covers to fetch the zippered pouch with Clay’s sterile needles and vials of cortisone.

As Gemma moved around the kitchen and made a shopping list for the barbecue dinner, across town at Helena’s, Tig eventually followed Helena out to the kitchen and settled at the counter as he watched Helena rinse out the coffee carafe and start a fresh pot of French roast.

Tig had pulled back on his jeans and shirt, Helena had added a robe over her pajamas emblazoned with faded yellow stars.

Tig stared at her with such silent intensity that Helena blushed until she looked like a tomato about to burst as she brought over a carton of half and half and a sugar jar. They were both quiet as they each prepared their own mugs of coffee.

Tig followed her hand’s movement as she crumbled up a piece of lined paper from the counter and shoved it deep into the pocket of her cotton robe.

Tig pretended he hadn’t noticed and paid attention to splashing more creamer into his cup.

“Did you sleep alright?” Tig asked, his voice still scratchy after his morning coughing and throat clearing ritual. Always saying he was going to stop smoking and abusing his body when the clotted, thick phlegm glistened up at him from the sink. Sometimes it was shot through with blood like those random eggs with bloody striated bits and lines. The feeling always passed when he had his first cigarette and imbibed in whatever else tripped his trigger.

After Tig drained his cup, he rose from the bar stool and walked over to the bay window that looked out over an unkempt raised bed of sweet peas. He turned and gathered up the takeout boxes of now cold, congealed cheese and grease they hadn’t eaten.

Helena watched him over the chipped rim of her mug as he dumped the cardboard turned flaccid from the pull of hardened fat and shoved them to fit upon the base of discarded petals.

“You don’t have to do that,” Helena finally said when Tig began to sweep up the strewn about petals, creating a colorful pile with the velvet blossoms.

“It’s not a problem,” Tig murmured and continued sweeping the beautiful trash into a dustpan.

“It’s my mess to clean up,” Helena murmured and looked away when Tig rose to his full height and seemed to stare inside of her. “Let me help you,” he stated.

Tig capitalized on her distraction and reached out with the speed of the god of lightning and snatched the crumbled lined piece of paper from her robe’s pocket.

“Hey?!” Helena managed, startled at his reptilian speed. “Give that back!,” she demanded as he held the paper away from her.

“What is this?”

“Nothing important, just my weekend to-do list,” Helena admitted and leaned back against the counter as she crossed her arms, hotly embarrassed.

“Laundry………Groceries……….Finish unpacking,” Tig began to read before she interrupted him. “I know what it says, I was just going to try and get a lot done over the weekend and I like making lists,” Helena added in a rush.

“Then let’s go get cherry tomatoes, cabbage, spaghetti sauce and whole peppercorns,” Tig read from the list, not taking his eyes off of her for a nanosecond longer than absolutely necessary.

“You want to go to the grocery store?” Helena asked lamely.

“It’s on the list,” Tig stated flatly.

Helena could not offer a rebuttal that could carry water and eventually nodded. Tig followed her back to her bedroom and watched her gather up a stack of fresh clothes and close herself into the bathroom.

Tig pressed his ear to the locked door and listened as she brushed her teeth and held his breath so he could hear the zipper of her jeans close. He made sure he was occupied putting on his boots when she emerged from the bathroom, his hands tightening on his boots as his eyes traveled the denim that was a second skin on her slim thighs, Tig felt his usual problem-solving solutions spring to his frontal cortex and head of his cock. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw popped as he reminded himself for a double-digit amount of times since rising, that Helena was not like the women who orbited at the Club House.

Helena pulled on a plain grey zippered sweater over a t-shirt with a faded band’s logo, only a few letters coherent at this point.

“Do you want to drive?” Helena asked as she held out her keys. “If you’d like,” Tig said taking the keys from her.

Helena shrugged, “I should, I’m still learning where everything is but I’m kind of tired.”

Tig clicked the key fob until the doors unlocked and watched Helena slide into the passenger seat. He followed suit behind the wheel and started the small SUV.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Tig asked as he let the engine idle.

“Yes, what is it?” Helena asked as she turned off the radio.

“What happens when Piney dies?”

Helena wasn’t sure what he meant; she didn’t think he wanted her to describe the process of decomposition. “”You mean burial plans?” she tried for.

Tig dropped a hand to squeeze the top of her thigh, “no, where will you go?”

Helena pressed her lips together, “I’m not planning on leaving Charming.”

Tig slid his hand down the front of her thigh and brushed his fingertips in a circle over her denim-clad knee before he put the SUV in reverse. “That’s good to hear,” he murmured and headed towards the grocery store.

Tig found a fairly close parking spot and watched Helena pull a plastic bag full of other plastic bags from the trunk before selecting a cart with the least squeaky of wheels.

Tig followed Helena through the brightly lit aisles of the store, the bright yellow tags all shouting sales and bargain prices in a bold, red font.

Helena could feel the weight of Tig’s eyes from where he followed her. She could feel his piercing cerulean blue eyes watch her fingers close around the corner of a marshmallow flecked box of cereal and select several fuzzy yellow peaches.

Tig wasn’t paying attention to any of the aisles or what Helena was even putting in the cart until she stopped short, and he nearly ran over her.

“I thought you might like to pick out what you want, since, since you’re, staying,” Helena stumbled over as she gestured to the wall of shampoos, body washes and other personal care products.

Tig let a hand drop to her waist and hooked his index finger in one of her belt loops before he tugged her closer. “Thank you,” he murmured before pressing his lips to Helena’s.

Unbeknownst to both of them, Gemma was shopping in the same store for the barbecue. She had happened to turn the aisle the moment Tig and Helena’s lips met.

Gemma kept her smile and tone neutral as she waited to speak until Tig broke his attention away from Helena long enough to find a deodorant.

“It must be the morning to shop,” Gemma called as she pushed her full cart towards them.

Helena brushed an errant lock of hair behind her ear and smiled as she met Gemma’s eyes. “Thank you again for the invite,” Helena said as she walked towards Gemma. Tig watched the two women embrace.

“It looks like you found a friend to bring with you,” Gemma murmured against Helena’s ear before they stepped apart. Helena covered a smile and half-nodded, “yes, something like that,” she offered.

Tig added a few plastic bottles to the shopping cart before walking over to stand next to Helena, fighting himself to not drop an arm around her shoulders.

“Can I bring anything tomorrow Gemma?” Helena asked.

Gemma shook her head, “no, I’ve got it all covered.”

Helena said goodbye and turned and began to push the cart down the aisle in the opposite direction. Tig paused and watched Helena walk away, halted further when Gemma gripped his forearm and added with a wink, “see you for dinner tomorrow Tigger.”

Tig and Helena finished filling the cart and breezed through the self-checkout, using every bag Helena had brought into the store with them.

They loaded the car and drove back to her place in a comfortable silence, Tig was too distracted by Helena to notice the red Chrysler follow them from the grocery store parking lot and turn left onto a side street before Helena’s house came into view.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield tightened his hands on the wheel until his knuckles turned white as he watched Helena and the unnamed enforcer type in leather, unload a glut of groceries and exchange just as many smiles and shared glances.

Andrew took a few pictures with his telephoto lens and contacted a college fraternity brother that now worked for the NSA and could find out anything that didn’t want to be found.

Andrew loaded the pictures of Tig, his motorcycle and license plate to his brother and hit send. He eventually drove away, that pastry place was addicting and now he was reduced to simply waiting.

After the groceries were unloaded, Helena ran out of things to keep her hands occupied. “Do you want something to eat? I’m going to make something to snack on,” Helena asked as she looked at the clock on the microwave.

Tig nodded, “whatever’s easiest.”

“Bagel and cream cheese?” she asked as she dropped one in the toaster for herself.

Tig nodded and refilled his cup from the tepid carafe and reheated it for a couple minutes in the microwave as the warm scent of cinnamon filled the air from the toasting bagels.

Helena spread a thick layer of cream cheese on each bagel half and put two on a plate for him as she joined him at the counter.

Tig watched Helena take a bite of the well-toasted bagel and pluck a fallen raisin from the pale blue plate before he spoke.

“What’s next on your list?” he asked taking a bite, his hunger awakened with the varying textures and flavors and made him realize how hungry he had let himself become.

Helena wadded up a paper napkin and wiped her mouth clean before pulling the list from her purse, it was still wrinkled but legible. “I let the laundry get away from me and need to run the bed linen through too, the unpacking is going to be on the list for a while,” Helena murmured and folded the list into a rectangle before looking up and meeting his eyes.

She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t find any words and adjusted her gaze until she was looking at the wall past his shoulder.

“What is it?” Tig asked when she dropped her eyes to her half-eaten bagel and scattering of plump raisins.

Tig pushed his plate aside and rose from the barstool when Helena wordlessly shook her head.

“What do you need baby?” Tig asked as he walked around the counter and brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

Helena laughed nervously, “why do you really want to be here?” she asked as she blew out a sharp breath, very aware of the moment he settled his hands on the counter on either side of her.

Tig settled his hand over hers and moved the rough pad of his index finger in small circles on the top of her hand, dancing his touch down the length of the bare fingers of her left hand.

Tig’s mind whirred loudly with all the answers that wanted to spill from his lips. He didn’t know how to tell her that when he looked at her, she practically blocked out the sun and he found himself in a foreign land of insecurities with the capital city of vulnerability.

“Why’re you letting me stay here with you?” Tig finally asked and dropped his hands to her waist, splaying his fingers to smooth down the sides of her hips and knead her supple flesh through her jeans.

He didn’t give Helena a moment to answer before he tightened his grip and lifted her to the edge of the counter. “Why?” Tig pressed as Helena’s breathing grew erratic and she didn’t trust the strength of her voice.

“Because you make me feel safe,” Helena whispered before her voice threatened to break. “Last night was one of the first times I’ve slept the whole night or not had a nightmare since I left Florida,” she admitted.

Tig lifted a hand and cupped her jaw, tracing his thumb over her lower lip before sliding his hand through the fall of her hair to cradle the back of her skull.

“What happened in Florida?” Tig asked when he lifted his lips, his words delivered on a ragged exhale.

Helena raised her hands and pressed her palms flat against his chest. “I don’t really want to talk about it right now,” she whispered as she shook her head.

As Tig tightened his grip on Helena’s hips, kneading the firm flesh through her thin jeans, across town at St. Thomas’s, Dr. Wakefield convinced a security guard with low self-esteem to unlock the Human Resources office with his bedroom eyes and rapier wit.

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Seven:  Leave me Broken, Bleeding and Barely Breathing, but Please Don’t Leave Me

Tig slid up the length of her body until he could tuck Helena against the front of his body. He suppressed a hiss as the cotton pajamas were the thinnest barrier between her bare skin kissing his.

As he struggled to find his words, Helena’s searching gaze became too much for him, her near-palpable anxiety was a potent and hypnotic scent that teased his epididymis, outside, parked down the street, a red Chrysler was idling.

The morning air was chilly, and the driver had the radio on low while the heater filled the car with warmth, circulating the stale air. The driver shivered, not used to such brisk mornings after his long trip from the sunshine state.

Doctor Andrew Simon Wakefield the Third looked down at his titanium watch, thinking with the time difference that he’d just be starting his morning rounds. He looked up through the windshield at Helena’s newly purchased home and patch of property. Andrew narrowed his eyes at the matte black H-D Dyna Street Bob motorcycle parked in the driveway next to Helena’s sensible, compact-sized SUV.

Doctor Wakefield drove the nondescript and lack of attention getting Chrysler past Helena’s house and noted the license plate of Tig’s motorcycle before driving off for a hot coffee and carb-loaded breakfast pastry.

As Chief neurologist Andrew Wakefield drove to the coffee shop he had found when he first arrived on the opposite coastline, back in Helena’s cozy bedroom, nestled among the tangled linen, Tig lifted a hand and brushed his index finger around the perimeter of her full lips.

Tig dropped his eyes from hers as he tried to shellac his turbulent, violent, and painful childhood, he glossed over his teenage and youthful years of depravity, multiple felonies and living as though the very next moment was the last time his heart would beat.

Helena shifted in the circle of his arms and tugged one of the pillows to a better position under her head as Tig’s sparkling eyes moved back up to meet her eyes and he detailed being a staff sergeant in the USMC that was shortened when he went AWOL for a weekend in the South Pacific and was found passed out in a bar, after having shared IV drugs, spit and cum with an unknown number of strippers and was awoken in a puddle of someone else’s blood and his own stale piss.

Tig spent two days in the infirmary sleeping off his hangover. Saline and electrolytes were pushed through him to sober him up enough to be court-martialed and dishonorably discharged. The DOJ determined he was too much of a fuck-up and a waste of their time and shipped him out of the country and dropped him back stateside in cozy Charming where he soon found Teller-Morrow and didn’t look back except in dreams where he tried to remember the dark-haired dancer and whether he sucked her dick, or she sucked his.

Helena watched Tig’s face as he didn’t put words to a lot of the sexual reminiscing, he didn’t need to voice what he was thinking.

Tig trailed off as Helena’s expression became unreadable as she thought back to the impossibly skinny, stiletto-wearing, bottle-blonde hanging all over him before she spoke.

“Why do you want to be here, with me?” Helena murmured and trailed off as she raised her hand to drag her fingertips down a long-healed ridge of scar tissue, earned from the ragged edge machete from a drunken fight with a Mayan.

Tig opened his mouth to speak but nothing coherent emerged.

“What can I offer you?” Helena asked lowly and pressed her palm against his chest, feeling his heart pound strongly within its opaque pericardial sac.

“Because I’ve never seen someone like you before,” Tig whispered after a lengthy pause. Tig clenched his jaw, fighting to say more, wanting to admit what he held only inside him. “How do I explain that I didn’t crave death anymore the second I saw you?” he asked himself, his mind whirling as he struggled to speak, so unfamiliar with insecurity, he was hobbling himself with his inability to be vulnerable.

Tig dropped his face closer to hers, their lips millimeters from touching, both wide-eyed and unblinking. Helena could see his liquid ocean-blue irises vibrating as his brain’s frontal lobe and memory center were simultaneously gang-banged with a broken beer bottle as he was drowned in memories of his time in the USMC being defined by fucking, blowing, or forcing consent from the daughters of admirals, sergeants, lieutenants, and captains from every branch of the military as well as some from the enemy of the political moment’s side.

“You don’t need to do that anymore,” Helena whispered and closed the miniscule space between them and found his lips. Tig responded to her touch with frantic urgency, his hands were quick to feel invited to every part of her still clothed body.

“We both have bullshit we don’t need to expose right now,” Helena murmured as she broke their kiss and reached for his wrists as Tig pushed her cotton top up until her smooth, bare belly was visible. Helena held her breath as he traced his finger in slow circles around her belly button.

Tig’s emotions began to toboggan out of control, downhill with no stopping in sight as he shifted and moved around on the bed. Helena allowed him to grip her firmly as he brushed against the rough edge of manhandling her until her breath seized in her chest as he settled between her thighs, tugged on her hips to insinuate himself closer to her clothed center.

Helena’s heart twinged as his voice devolved until it was an unintelligible primitive mammalian growl as Tig slid his hand to smooth under her bottom and tug her closer.

Tig couldn’t articulate how much he wanted to know what her breathing would sound like if there was no barrier between them and he could plunge his cock into her wet center, stopped only as their intimate flesh kissed.

His expression was one of early man as he dropped one hand to dance his fingertips up her inner thigh until they were dangerously near the apex of her femininity, the cotton fabric seeming thinner than ever.

Helena tried to squeeze her thighs together as she reached down to stop his hand’s movement.

“I can’t give you what you want right now,” she gasped breathlessly as Tig easily shook off her hand.

“What do you think I want?” he growled.

Tig’s body answered his own question as he shifted until he could press his growing hardness against her with more assertiveness and nipped the soft skin at the curve of Helena’s neck.

Helena couldn’t help but laugh, her nervous system trilling as hormones spilled from her overstimulated glands.

“Do I really need to guess?” she asked as her laughter trailed off into a chuckle.

Helena felt the bottom of her belly drop when Tig’s lips pulled into a charged smile as he shook his head. “No, I’ll tell ya,” he growled as he smoothed one of his hands down to cup her intimacy through the thin cotton pajama pants. “I want to know what you taste like,” Tig rasped as he deftly dipped his fingers past the elastic waistband of her mauve pants.

Tig took advantage of Helena’s surprise and slid his hand over her bare femininity, he pressed his palm against the shaved skin of her intimacy. Tig pressed his mouth against Helena’s ear and whispered as he began to move his rough fingertips through the delicate shell-pink lips keeping her tight, wet center hidden.

“I’ll do anything,” Tig murmured against her ear, his words delivered on a hot exhale. “I’ll do anything for this,” he added and trailed off into a groan as he moved the tip of his index finger in slow circles around her rapidly sensitizing clit.

Helena found her voice when Tig began tracing his fingers along her wet folds as his touch began to soak her intimate slit. “What is this to you?” she managed as a scorching coil of pleasure began to tighten inside her from his continued touch.

“A new start, a reason to make plans for the future,” Tig answered, unsure of how to articulate that she was his ecliptic, he had no choice but to be drawn towards her.

Helena gasped as he varied his rhythm and slid down the front of her body, never stopping his touch as he yanked her pants down, past her thighs, over her knees and off as she was trapped in the arms of imminent ecstasy.

Helena flushed as Tig’s eyes drank in every bit of her naked skin.

Tig saw her growing embarrassment and dropped his head to press his lips to her right knee cap. Helena giggled involuntarily when he touched his lips further up the inside of her thigh.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Tig murmured on a strangled groan as he continued moving his mouth in a hot line and pushed her thighs further apart.

“Perfect,” Tig growled on a rasp. “I’ll do anything you command if you’ll let me taste you,” he groaned as he licked his way up her inner thigh.

Helena arched up against his face as he pressed his mouth to the smooth skin above her clean-shaven pink intimacy.

“I’ll do anything,” Tig reiterated as he moved his mouth is an urgent path towards her tight, wetness. Helena gasped as he teased his tongue though her feminine folds began to move in slow circles around her clit.

Helena pressed her palm against her mouth to stifle a low moan. Tig caught the movement of her hand and reached out with viper-like speed and caught her slim wrist.

Helena stared down the length of her nearly naked body as Tig lifted his mouth from her tight, pink center. She felt her breath catch as her eyes found his lips wet from finding and teasing her intimacy.

Tig’s attention was overwhelming, she had never felt more seen. The weight of his gaze was like standing in front of Zeus at the base of Mt. Olympus.

"Do you want me to stop?” Tig asked raggedly as he pressed his lips to the crease of her inner thigh, his exhale sending a shiver up her spine.

“Nnnn,” Helena mumbled incoherently before Tig eagerly returned his mouth to the apex at the center of her thighs, wetly fucking the tight opening of her pussy with his tongue.

Tig growled as Helena shivered in his grip as an electrical trill raced from her temple to the tip of her third toe and she moaned deep from her belly as her body betrayed her and his touch pushed her into an orgasmic precipice. Helena’s cry tapered to a resigned sigh as Tig lifted his face from her pulsing pussy, his face dripping from where he had forced her slit to run with slick wetness and pressed his lips to the trembling skin under her belly button as she rode out her blissful aftershock.

As Helena caught her breath and felt her feet came back to earth, across town at the Club House, one of the other nurses in the trio caring for Piney, Cassie Phillips, put a new piece of paper tape over the freshly applied IV to the top of Piney’s liver-spotted hand.

Cassie made a few notes on Cassie’s chart for the third of his care team, Alana Davidson.

Cassie frowned down at the dark contents of Piney’s urinary catheter bag that was clipped to the lowest part of the metal bed railing. She dumped the contents into a beaker with white measurements etched onto the glass and put it all in a well-taped specimen bag to drop off later at the hospital.

As Cassie dumped out Piney’s morning medications from the brightly colored weekend strip into a shallow bowl, back in Helena’s bedroom, her breathing rate had just begun to return to normal when she was immediately shot back into the emotional stratosphere when Tig shifted most of his weight to one elbow and fumbled his painfully hard cock free.

Helena gasped when she felt Tig insistently push his hardness into the supple flesh of her upper thigh.

Helena’s lips parted and no sound emerged as she stared up at Tig, she raised a hand and traced her thumb along his lower lip, her mind focused on the hot press of his naked skin against hers and how close he was to sinking his thick rigidity into her.

Tig held his breath and fought the urge to plunge his pulsing length deep into her intimate center without any grace as Helena smoothed her fingertips down his neck, skimming his shoulders and bare chest. The rest of his body grew tense, competing with the rigidity of his aching cock as she continued to dance her fingers down his ribs and smoothed lower to tease the length of his throbbing hardness.

Helena closed her hand around his hardening cock and felt a fluttering deep in her belly at the sound of Tig’s low feral growl as her hand rhythmically squeezed and stroked his length.

Waves of electrical pleasure coiled tightly in Tig’s body and he tried to keep his breathing from becoming too erratic. “Can I stay here?” Tig managed as he dropped his head to the warm curve of her neck, feeling intoxicated from the overwhelming warmth and heady feminine scent emanating her skin, unashamed that he sounded like he was openly begging.

Helena increased the rhythm of her hand as she stroked his eager length, the plump, glossy head of his cock bobbing under her touch, the increased pace making it a veritable fight for control.

“Yes,” Helena whispered and heard Tig stifle a moan as his cock strained for release in her hand. “You can have the other side of the bed,” she added.

Helena’s words in conjunction with her tightening grip and manipulation of his painfully hard rigidity pushed his body over the edge. Tig wrapped her up tightly as he pressed his face against the flushed flesh of her neck as his body took over.

Tig groaned against her soft skin as his engorged member twitched twice before it spurted hot, sticky seed all over her fingers to pool in her palm. Helena continued to stroke him until his cock softened, his ragged breathing sounded like a broken catalytic converter before it began to smooth out into an even rhythm.

Tig let his forehead rest against hers as his cock continued to soften in her grip. The sunlight filtering in through the room made their skin glow with the fine sheen of sweat that had sprouted upon their exposed flesh.

Helena held his wordless gaze as she felt his sticky cum leaking from her palm and trailing down the inside of her wrist.

Tig gave a primitive groan when Helena’s hand involuntarily clenched around his flaccid length as her phone rang from the side of the bed.

Helena tightened her grasp as the phone gave a second jarring ring until Tig’s piercing eyes drilled into the center of her brain. “You should get that,” he managed to growl in the miniscule space before the third ring announced itself.

Tig lifted his weight just enough for Helena to be able to stretch her arm out for the bedside drawer, barely ajar, her phone ringing the fourth time meaning it was only one ring away from the caller being diverted to voicemail.

Tig felt himself began to salivate as her cotton top shifted as she tugged the phone free of the drawer by the white charger’s cord. He licked his lips as the thin fabric brushed over her breasts and teased her nipples to hard points under the shirt.

Helena squinted at her phone’s screen and fumbled to answer the call when the caller ID displayed Gemma.

Tig was momentarily distracted from her body when he heard her answer the call.

“Gemma, hello, is everything alright?”

Tig strained his ears but couldn’t discern Gemma’s reply, her tone wasn’t rushed or urgent in any way and he found himself instantly back to being focused on the visible fluttering of her carotid pulse on the side of her neck. He lowered his face and pressed his lips to the hollow at the base of her throat as Helena nodded to Gemma’s steady stream of words.

Helena ended the call before the scratchy ends of Tig’s facial hair tickled her flushed skin and she squealed when he lightly nipped her ear lobe. Helena wiped her hand mostly clean on the tangled bed linen as he shifted his weight until he could lay alongside her. “Everything okay with Gemma? Is it Piney?”

Helena covered a yawn and stretched deeply in the circle of his arms, her shoulders popping in protest. “Piney’s about the same, Gemma invited me to dinner tomorrow, said Clay would be barbecuing.”

Tig propped himself up on one elbow and trailed the fingertips of his other hand along the line of her jaw. “Are you going to go?”

“She’s hard to say no to,” Helena said with a chuckle.

Tig nodded in agreement.

“Can I go with you?” Tig asked bluntly as he smoothed his hand from tracing her jaw to sweep through her hair, cradling the back of her skull in his palm.

Helena blinked up at him, her ability to speak stolen from her when he closed his hand into a fist. Helena gasped as her silken hairs were pulled tight as they wound around his scar-riddled, heavy ring-boasting fingers.

Tig stared down at Helena, his eyes drinking in and memorizing her full, parted lips, the gentle gasping he created from pulling back on her hair until her neck stretched taut. He pressed his lips together as he tried to absorb all of her at once, his pituitary gland was overstimulated and ejaculated hormones that only made him more anxious to possess her in every conceivable fashion.

Tig recognized how different Helena was from who he normally surrounded himself with, feeling moments of foreign insecurity as he longed and waited for her acceptance.

Tig loosened his grip on the silken fall of her hair and tugged one of the pillows more evenly under her head before he started tracing the rough tip of his index finger around the perimeter of Helena’s lips. He paused in his revolutions as she reached up a hand and closed her fingers around his thick wrist.

“Gemma did say I could bring someone with me if I wanted,” Helena murmured with a small smile and pressed her lips to the center of Tig’s palm.

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Six:  One Set of Cancer-Ridden Incubators for Sale: As Is

Helena raised her hands and laid them on Tig’s chest, feeling his heartbeat gallop under her palm as she spoke. “What happens now?”

Tig settled his hands over hers, pressing them harder against his chest as he looked over to where the Nemo’s delivery boxes were precariously close to the edge of the still standing dining room table.

“We sit down, eat,” he stated easily. Tig felt relief wash over him, a soothing balm to his overstimulated nervous system when Helena brushed her hair behind her ears and visibly relaxed as she treated him to a genuine smile and agreeable nod.

Tig followed Helena to the kitchen and fetched the plates she directed him to as well as the Kelly-green plastic container of grated parmesan cheese in the fridge’s door. He refilled her wine glass and opened himself a new beer before he was able to focus all of his attention on her.

Tig watched Helena pump a pewter soap dispenser in the shape of a sea horse before she vigorously scrubbed her hands and under her fingernails.

Helena involuntarily flinched when Tig came and stood behind her, settling a hand on the counter on either side of her.

Tig smoothed her hair away from the side of her neck before pressing his lips to the exposed skin.

“Who was on the phone?” he rasped against her neck, his exhale hot against her bare skin, making her shudder.

Helena shook her head, “no one important,” she murmured.

“Tell me why you moved here in such a hurry,” Tig demanded through clenched teeth as he wrapped his arms around her waist and yanked her back against him.

Helena gasped as his hands seemed to be everywhere at once. “I’ll never let anyone scare you again,” he added raggedly.

Tig felt Helena sag with resignation in the circle of his arms before she began to murmur lowly. “He was one of the physicians on staff when I worked on the neurology floor,” she started.

Tig lessened his suffocating embrace somewhat as Helena continued. “His father was a doctor there and a lot was allowed to slide because of that,” she scoffed, thinking if your father donated money for a new hospital wing, you could pretty much do whatever you wanted.

“What happened?” Tig murmured and began moving his palms in slow circles on her belly.

“He tried to hurt me,” Helena whispered and sniffed hard before she added in a rush. “There was a security guard nearby who scared him away but didn’t see enough to be a reliable witness.”

Tig waited as she gathered her words and continued.

“I filed a police report, a report with the hospital but was told to not smear his good reputation and then asked to quit or transfer.”

“And now you’re here,” Tig murmured contentedly.

Helena squeezed her eyes shut as she could still hear the high-powered legal dream team that Andy had hired from the Ivory Tower law firm Lawrence, James, and Hearst.

The obscenely overpaid lawyers had all smirked at her as she signed the lengthy NDA before she got the fat check, the amount of zeroes was what she had agreed her pain and trauma was worth.

That check got her the house with the small patch of property, a car and ensured that she had enough in the bank that she wouldn’t have to kill herself working more than a part-time job.

“Why is he still calling you?” Tig asked when Helena stayed silent, locked in her fresh memories.

Helena laughed dryly, “because he’s a fucking child and hates that I told him no and that he had to write me out a settlement check. He said he’s going to get his money’s worth,” she added in a low hurry.

“Has he done more than call or send you flowers?”

Tig was relieved when Helena shook her head, “he’s threatening to come here, he knows where I live.”

“Turn around,” Tig demanded on a husky whisper.

Helena slowly turned in the small amount of space he allowed to look up at him.

Tig paused to speak until he was sure he had every shred of her attention. “You can stop being afraid,” he said in an easy tone that was in diametric opposition to the early homicidal bukkake thoughts he began to have about the doctor from the sunshine state.

As Helena debated asking him how he could speak with such unshakeable certainty, back at the Clubhouse, Piney was sitting up in bed watching tv while Gemma sat next to him and rapidly knitted the fourth placemat in what would eventually be a set of eight.

The HD screen was filled with a gossip show that somehow managed to add news to their title. Piney laughed until he choked, and his face turned as red as a tomato as a rising country music singer crashed his Maserati around a light pole with a triple the limit blood alcohol level. The kid survived with barely a scratch thanks to the airbags and his seat belt. The law enforcement dash cameras caught the singer trying to start the car even as the engine was on fire.

Back at Helena’s house, she was very aware of the tiled edge of the counter biting into her back as she tried to increase the non-space between her and Tig’s bodies.

Tig caught the rapid flick of her eyes as she looked past his shoulder. He couldn’t help but tense as he followed her gaze and found nothing but the microwave, toaster, and coffee maker.

Tig turned his eyes back to her face and found her covering a smile. “There’s a couple shows I like to watch that just started, do you mind?”

Tig smiled, “course not, lead the way,” he added with a melodramatic bow and gestured towards the front room with the half-finished crown molding and unfinished drywall.

Helena slid past him, holding her breath, unsure if she wanted his hands and lips to stop or not.

Tig watched her pass and followed her into the front room after he plucked the wine and beer from the table.

Helena fiddled with the two remotes, still too lazy to go buy a universal remote as Tig settled on the sofa and refilled her glass as he opened another beer.

“I think I’ve had my limit,” Helena said with a chuckle as her eyes landed on the filled glass. “I don’t normally drink this much as it is,” she added as she settled on the opposite end of the sofa as the same news program that Piney and Gemma were watching filled her 4K screen.

Helena and Tig watched the tv in collective silence until the commercial break.

Tig patted the space next to him on the sofa, “come here,” he said just shy of demanding.

Helena smoothed her hair behind her ears and slid across the sofa towards him as he dropped his arm around her. Tig crushed her close to his side, nestling her in the strength of his arms and the overwhelming aroma of leather and woodsy masculinity.

Tig peppered her with questions about the doctor sending her flowers as Helena tried to focus on the celebrity fitness trainer involved in a love triangle with an NFL quarterback and his wife.

Tig wanted to know his name, the kind of car he drove, where he lived and what exactly he had done to her.

Helena finally refused to answer any more questions and turned further towards him as she lifted a hand to press her fingertips against his lips. “Please no more questions tonight,” she practically begged.

Tig reached up and closed his large hand around her wrist. He nodded as he pressed his lips to her palm, thankful to any known deity as Helena relaxed against his side.

The undertow of too much unaccustomed alcohol pulled Helena into a heavy sleep and she slumped heavily against Tig’s side.

Tig smoothed his hand up and down the space between her shoulder and elbow as he fell into an alcohol induced nap after he polished off his current beer.

Hours passed as they both slept until Helena stirred first as her bladder screamed at her, straining.

Tig kept his eyes closed as Helena mumbled to herself and walked to the bathroom. He waited until the door closed before he rose from the sofa and turned off the tv and lights. He paused outside the bathroom door as he heard Helena’s steady stream of pee hit the water before he turned on the lights in her bedroom.

Tig’s eyes swept around the room while in the bathroom, Helena brushed her teeth and washed her face.

Helena left the bathroom light on as she walked into her bedroom and found Tig sitting on the edge of her bed.

“Hey,” Tig said easily as she paused in the doorway.

“Hey,” Helena parroted before she added in an unreadable tone. “Are you the monster under the bed?” she breathed.

Tig shook his head before he stood. “I’m anything you need,” he murmured as he kicked off his boots and pushed them under the bed.

“What side of the bed do you sleep on?” Tig asked as he unzipped his hooded sweatshirt and let it drop to the floor.

Helena didn’t trust her voice to speak and instead pointed to the closest side of the bed, the side he had just been sitting on.

Tig never took his eyes off her as he yanked back the covers and then walked around the bed and did the same on the other side.

Helena watched him pull his short-sleeved shirt up and over his head, letting it land on the floor with a whisper of a sound.

“Wait a minute,” Helena said as Tig began to unzip his jeans.

Tig paused his hands and met her eyes as she continued.

“What are you expecting?”

Tig raised his hands, “nothing cept’ sleep.”

Helena slowly nodded and shook her head at her nervous idiocy in her own fucking house. She pulled open the top drawer of her dresser for her cotton pajamas as Tig stepped out of his jeans and watched Helena disappear back to the bathroom to change.

Tig kept his boxers on as he slid under the covers and didn’t have to wait long for Helena to reappear. He kept his disappointment at her pajamas off his face, the oversized shirt and drawstring pants were blousy and hid every curve and line of her body.

Helena slipped under the covers on the other side of the bed and pulled the linen up to her chest as she rolled onto her side to face Tig. She found him already laying on his side, waiting to meet her eyes.

Tig could see the fatigue staining her beautiful features and that she was still tipsy. “Try to go back to sleep, we have all weekend to talk,” he finally murmured and raised up to reach over her and turn off the bedside lamp.

He could see relief at a reprieve from answering questions in the near darkness illuminate her face. “Thanks,” Helena mumbled, equal parts exhaustion and gratitude in her sleepy syllables.

For the second time that evening Tig told her to turn and face the other way. Helena rolled over and adjusted the pillow under her head as Tig slid closer across the mattress to pull her back into his arms. Tig tugged her close to the front of his body, her body molded perfectly against him, their bare skin separated only by her cotton sleep shirt.

Tig longed for sleep to claim his as fast as it had Helena. He wanted to stop being so acutely aware of her body under her thin pajamas. Tig craved an escape hatch from being bombarded by the warm scent of her skin and silken hair as he pressed his lips to the crown of her head.

As Helena plunged back into the depths of sleep, Tig squeezed the rounded cap of her shoulder before smoothing his hand down the outside of her upper arm and teased his index finger in a slow circle over the point of her elbow. Through the cotton pajama top, the rough pad of his fingertip moved in fluid grace before he continued to dance his fingers down the length of her forearm until he could intertwine his hand with her sleep-slackened hand.

Tig pressed his face to the curve of her neck as the stray strands of her silken hair tickled his nose. He breathed deeply as Helena remained locked in a dreamless sleep.

Tig clenched his teeth until his jaw popped as he fought to not wake her up by sticking his dick up her ass, in the quiet room, his mind dipped into wet memories from a pool of animal, human and aquatic sexual depravity. He unlaced his fingers from hers to slide and rest on the flat plain of her belly. Tig shuddered as he felt the dip of her belly button through the cotton nightshirt under his warm palm.

Tig smoothed his hands in slow circles on her belly, luxuriating in the warmth emanating through the thin fabric. His cock grew steadily harder until he hissed between the potent mix of titillation and pain as his rigidity pressed against the round curve of her bottom.

Tig groaned as he was assailed with foreign feelings of an unknown landscape as he listened to Helena’s steady breathing over the drumbeat of his heart pounding in his ears. He was not accustomed to asking permission from anything he wanted, and lesser so even caring if the answer didn’t echo his own base needs of the moment.

He squeezed his eyes shut as he stilled his hand against her belly and let his fingers splay open as he found himself surprised at the words that spilled past his lips.

“What’ll it take?” Tig murmured against Helena’s skin, her skin warm under his lips as he continued. “What can I do to make you want me?”

Helena’s sleeping mouth didn’t form an answer and Tig eventually lapsed into a fitful sleep. Tig awoke often, thinking he was only dreaming of sharing Helena’s bed, breathing a ragged sigh of relief every time he found her within the tight circle of his arms.

As night passed peacefully for Helena and Tig, the bloated moon rose overhead, across town at the Club House, Piney fell in and out of sleep, inside his chest cavity, fluid began to build up in his lungs. The rising liquid was full of rapidly dividing cancer cells, his lungs a womb giving birth to stage four death.

Out in the open bar, the green felt of the pool tables were soon covered by drunk bodies either in the process of passing out or vomiting in the side pocket.

Dawn came for Charming and with it a crisp Saturday morning, forecasts of sunny skies and nary a cloud until the following Tuesday evening.

Tig stirred awake first, the micro-suede, slate-grey duvet cover had navigated to the foot of the bed and was bunched at their feet. A low chuckle rumbled through his chest as Tig pressed his face against the crown of Helena’s head as he realized it was the first time he had woken up in bed or virtually anywhere with a woman without his sticky cum being in one or all of her orifices and/or any surface of her skin.

Tig propped himself up on his side, his elbow sinking further into the supple memory foam mattress and traced his fingertips down the center of her back, feeling the bump of each of her spinal vertebrates as his hand came to rest on the gentle curve of her lower back. Tig closed his eyes as he rested his palm on the exposed skin where her shirt had shifted during the night.

Helena began to rise into consciousness when she felt Tig’s lips press against the naked skin of her back’s natural curve. He shushed her and gently captured her wrist as she rolled to her side and pushed at his hand. Tig paused from where he had his fingers tugging at the waistband of her pajama bottoms.

“Why not?” Tig groaned, his cock painfully echoing his frustration as Helena resumed trying to squirm out of his embrace.

“Because I don’t know who you are,” Helena stammered. “And I, I,” she tried but failed to add.

“You what?” he growled as he shifted and tightened his grip on her hips. “Talk to me,” Tig tried to demand without forcing her to answer with a harder touch.

“I just don’t know you,” Helena finally repeated and continued to fruitlessly attempt slipping out of his ironclad hold, his fingertips burned like a molten lava bracelet around her wrist. “Who are you?” she added.

Tig stilled his hands as he met her eyes. “What do you want to know?” he rasped; his voice choked with a surging lust that sent testosterone sweeping though his nervous system like a high-winded wildfire.

“Everything,” Helena murmured, not blinking under the weight of his penetrating cerulean blue eyes. Tig returned her gaze, nodding as he longed to be swallowed whole in her brown irises, the swirling mocha hues a virtual event horizon. Tig nodded again, Helena in that moment became his very ecliptic.

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Five:  A Missed Call From an Emotional Rapist

Helena drained half the potent glass of alcohol, anxious to feel the numbing effect of the amber liquid, for a lessening in the electrical hum of her nervous system.

Tig watched her keep her expression neutral as she cleared her throat. “I was just about to call them.”

Tig captured her eyes under the weight of his cerulean blue irises, he didn’t bother veiling his thoughts and made her blush before she fumbled for her phone and pulled up her contact list where Nemo’s Pizza was one of her only new, frequently dialed numbers in Charming.

“I was going to get a calzone,” Helena murmured, avoiding his eyes as she continued. “What would you like?”

Tig wished she were looking at him as many answers came to mind that he didn’t speak aloud. “I’ll have the same,” he finally said after a lengthy pause.

Helena wordlessly held his eyes for a few heartbeats before she called and placed their order, she nodded when Nemo’s said it would be just under forty-five minutes for delivery and ended the call.

Helena quickly finished her drink, uncomfortable in her casual, well-worn jersey. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, there’s some white wine and beer in the fridge,” she said as she slid off the bar stool and disappeared down the hall.

Tig watched her go and tugged open the fridge’s double doors. He looked over the contents before plucking the Chardonnay and malt beer from the second plastic shelf.

He strained his ears and heard the faint sound of her opening and closing her dresser drawers. Tig walked over to the table where she had her purse hanging on one of the wooden chairs and tugged her wallet free, he pulled out her driver’s license and counted the years between them on close to two hands worth of fingers before replacing it in the bottom of her roomy bag.

Tig walked back to the other side of the counter and stated rummaging through the cupboards looking for plates and glasses while also searching for any way she expressed herself, whether it be through chicken scratch on brightly colored note pads or scribbled recipes on the back of take-out receipts.

Tig wanted to stalk down the hall, kneel at her feet and beg for all of her. He also was fighting just as strong a desire to kick open her door, strip her naked and demand her heart as he buried himself to the hilt inside of her.

He groaned as his cock pulsed behind his zipper at the thought of making her gasp under his touch.

Tig cleared his throat and twisted the metal cap off the bottle of beer as Helena reappeared. His forehead pulled into a frown as he saw her wearing jeans and a long-sleeved thermal shirt in a deep midnight blue.

Tig’s eyes moved over her body and before he could comment on her opposite appearance of unwinding, her landline trilled loudly.

Tig took his eyes off her for a moment as he glanced at the matte grey phone from where it continued to ring on the countertop.

“Are you going to get that?”

Helena shook her head and settled heavily on one of the four creaky wooden chairs around the oak dining room table. “No, it’s usually the A/C company at this time,” she said as she glanced at the digital clock on the microwave.

Just as predicted, the robotic answering machine beeped, and the A/C company announced its special tax rebate in a cheery tone and repeated a local phone number.

Tig poured her a glass of wine before he joined her at the table with his beer. Helena nodded her thanks and took a few quick sips as Tig looked around the room and some of the shabbily unpacked boxes.

Helena followed his gaze as it swept around the room. “I had to pack in a hurry, my lease was up.”

Tig nodded, “they must’ve really enforced the end of a lease,” he chuckled.

Helena was beyond relieved when the doorbell sounded in rapid succession.

As she stood, the landline rang again. “They really want me to buy a new air conditioner,” Helena murmured as she pulled her wallet from the depths of her oversized bag and went to the front door, greeting the teenager holding the square cardboard boxes.

As Helena gave the young driver a few folded bills, the phone’s answering machine’s robotic greeting ended, and the beep sounded.

Helena settled the boxes on the table, the bottom of the cardboard already bleeding grease as a man began speaking after the electronic voice ended and the sharp tone sounded.

“Did you like the flowers baby? I’m going to be in your neck of the woods soon and I ca…..”

The man’s voice was immediately ended when Helena crossed the room rapidly and yanked the cord from the wall.

Helena turned towards Tig and found his eyes already on her, searching her, waterboarding her without words or threat of drowning with his unasked questions.

“Is he the one who was calling you the other day?”

Helena nodded, “yes,” she answered carefully.

“Who is he?”

“Someone in my past,” she mumbled.

Tig set his beer on the table, beads of condensation rolled down the bottle and kissed the surface of the oak table.

“Tell me who he is,” Tig said just a shade away from demanding as he closed the distance between them.

Helena took a small step backwards and shrugged noncommittally. “Just a guy I used to work with,” she stumbled over.

Before Tig could press further, her cell phone rang from her back pocket. Helena moved away from him as he stretched out his hands towards her, looking like a leather-clad zombie, intent on reaching the ringing phone first.

“Lemme see that,” he growled before she scrambled to put the dining room table between them.

“No, it doesn’t concern you,” Helena said quickly, trying to ignore the muffled third ring.

Tig’s crystalline blue eyes moved over the rapid rise and fall of her chest and light sheen of sweat that blossomed on her forehead. “Tell me why he scares you.”

Helena shook her head, strands of hair loosening from her low bun. “It’s nothing, it’s just work bullshit, I’m dealing with it,” she murmured and blew out a low breath when her phone stopped ringing as the caller was directed to the factory setting voicemail.

Tig’s lips pulled into a smile as he found amusement in her thinking the table between them kept her safe from him.

They both stared at each other across the tabletop, the delivery boxes contents cooling as they stayed rooted in silence.

“Tell me what he did to you Helena,” Tig said raggedly.

Helena blinked her eyes rapidly and shook her head, “it’s nothing I want to talk about.”

Tig made Helena flinch and let an involuntary shout slip from between her lips when he reached out and gripped the edge of the table before nearly overturning it as he shoved it to the side.

“Give me the phone,” Tig demanded on a rasp.

His senses became overwhelmed by the feel of her body under his hands, the breathless gasps as he tried to contain her flailing limbs and the warm smell of her skin. Tig pressed his face to the curve of her neck and pulled her scent deep into his lungs, making Helena’s breathing change as his lips pressed against the pounding pulse in her neck.

Helena pushed at Tig as his hands seemed to be everywhere as he tried to wrap her up her flailing limbs and capture her phone.

Before Helena could find her voice, Tig moved his lips in a warm trail up the side of her neck, along the line of her jaw and found her lips with each of their next breaths.

He wrapped his arms further around her, encapsulating her in his strong embrace as he let his hands trail down to her waist. Tig gave a low growl composed entirely of raw, feral desire when Helena moaned into his mouth as his fingertips made contact with the strip of exposed skin between the waistband of her jeans and cotton top.

He reluctantly broke the kiss. “I’ve wanted to do that the moment I saw you, thank you,” Tig murmured, his potent gaze creating a twitch low in her belly.

The way he said thank you made Helena’s breath catch in her chest, the two amazingly simple syllables had the appeal of a god as they rolled off his tongue and through his lips. Her conscious mind assaulted her senses with frame-by-frame images of him relieving her of her clothes before pulling her flush against his naked body. The sound of him speaking those two words caused a rush of wetness between her thighs, making Helena sharply inhale.

The short, sharp, and quick but deliberate air exchange drew Tig’s full attention.

Tig trained his gaze on her face; her eyes were wide and unblinking but bright. Her face had drained somewhat of color but left her cheeks with a high rosy glow, and lips that were slightly parted. As he watched, Helena ran her tongue over her chapped lips, making his mind return to a frequent image of her lying under him.

The sound of Helena’s intake of breath made him want to push her down on the faded linoleum and order her to squeeze her thighs tight around his hips, his cock twitched in agreement of wanting to slide through her slick folds and deep into her wet center.

“I can keep that fear away,” Tig murmured as he cupped her jaw and traced the rough pad of his thumb across her lower lip. “I could drop by to check on you sometime, often, all the time,” he whispered raggedly as he slid his free hand to rest on the curve of her lower back as he added. “I could stay here with you all the time.”

Tig kept her from answering as he crushed his lips to hers.

Helena couldn’t help but shudder in Tig’s arms as he lifted his lips and dropped his face back to the curve of her neck, his exhale hot against her flushed skin as he smoothed a hand up her spine, his fingers tracing the protruding knobs of each of her vertebrates until he could fumble the elastic band free from her hair until he could lightly drag his fingers through its silken length.

“I can keep you from being afraid,” Tig repeated raggedly and fell silent as Helena blinked her eyes up at him, scrambling to find her breath and equilibrium.

“You’d stay here?” Helena lamely echoed.

Tig wordlessly nodded as he kept his embrace unbreakable as he smoothed his hands down her sides to settle on her hips and began to move in slow circles over the taut flesh, longing to have nothing between his hands and her naked skin.

“Tell me what you think about that,” he growled and tightened his grip on her hips, his fingertips threatening to leave grape-sized bruises in their wake.

Helena was surprised when a bubble of nervous laughter escaped from between her parted lips, having to drop her eyes away from his searching, penetrative gaze. “I think, I think we live a little too opposite of lives, I’m more comfortable with microwave popcorn and binge-watching tv,” she mumbled and brushed an errant lock of hair behind her ear.

“I could be too,” Tig murmured.

Helena smiled but kept her face turned away from him, “you’d want a change from the perks of your mechanic job?”

Tig lifted Helena’s chin and forced her to look at him.

“Yes.”

“Property taxes, what qualifies as a deduction and never seeming to finish the laundry?” Helena asked on a chuckle.

Tig nodded and slid his hands under her long-sleeved shirt, the rough pads of his fingertips burning a hot path along the skin of her lower back. “I want to share every part of your life,” he growled.

“How though?” Helena stammered as Tig’s touch made her words devolve into soft sighs before she managed to add. “I’m not like those women that hang all over you, the ones that give you what you need and want.”

Tig slipped his fingertips under her chin and lifted until she had to meet his eyes. Helena blushed under the intensity of Tig’s gaze and silence, she felt her chest tighten until he spoke.

“Don’t compare yourself to anyone else, I’ve never met anyone like you,” Tig said softly and raised a hand to lightly drag his fingers through the silken length of her hair.

The combination of Helena’s breathless sighs and supple flesh under his hands fueled his lust until his nervous system hummed with energy. Tig’s breath began to turn ragged as he could barely restrain his desire to tear her clothes free, shove her thighs apart and fill her wet femininity. He felt like a snow globe that had been picked up and shaken as he fought to not shove his cock into her with deep, thrusting enthusiasm, being stopped only when their intimate flesh kissed.

Helena could see his thoughts painting a primitive, wet picture in his sparkling blue irises as he saw inside her bones and their very rich cellular matrix center.

She shook her head, trying to catch her breath as her pulse pounded in her ears. “I don’t understand how you can think things like that,” Helena admitted and trailed off into silence when she couldn’t formulate anything further coherent.

“That’s an easy one to explain,” Tig chuckled, the heated want and fiery needs inside of him made his central nervous system feel like it was being milked dry.

“You’ve made me feel unlike any of those women that pass the time,” he added as he abruptly smoothed his hands under the curve of her bottom and gripped the back of her thighs.

Helena gave a startled shout as her feet left the floor as Tig lifted her and crushed her against the wall, yanking her thighs tight to his sides as he insinuated himself closer. They both had a shift in their breathing and an electric shock to their hearts when Tig pressed himself against the apex of her thighs, his cock growing hard behind his zipper, straining to find out what she looked like when she came.

“Feel like what?” Helena managed before Tig stopped her words by capturing her lips under his.

“Like I could breathe,” Tig murmured as he lifted his lips.

Tig’s confession washed over Helena like a tsunami and flooded her brain’s processing center, leaving her torn between the physical sensation his touch elicited and the near palpable heaviness of his words.

Tig could practically hear the neurons firing inside her beautiful skull as he shifted his weight until he could rhythmically press himself against her clothed center, his cock painfully hard behind his zipper as he dry-fucked her from the cage of his well-worn jeans.

Helena let her hands settle on the tops of his shoulders as Tig slipped a hand between the seams of their denim rubbing together and fumbled at the top button of her designer jeans. Her voice found a well of renewed strength when he tugged at the zipper and started to fumble her pants open.

“Oh wow, wait,” Helena yelped in too shrill of a tone. “Stop, slow down, stop,” she stammered as Tig’s hand froze on her jean’s zippered closure and he locked his glittering, bright sapphire eyes on her.

“What do you need baby?” Tig growled and toyed with the metal pull tab of her zipper, neither raising nor lowering it.

Helena pressed her lips together as she tried to answer. The words she couldn’t say outweighed the words she could. “I don’t know what you want, what you expect,” she managed and added before her words broke. “I’m…”

“Talk to me,” Tig demanded and smoothed his hand up from her zipper, over the smooth plain of her belly and teased his fingertips along the curve of her full breast until he could cup her jaw, speaking as he traced the pad of his scarred thumb across her lower lip.

“I’m worried you’re going to take more than I can give you right now,” Helena breathed and tried to look away from him. Tig slid his hand to cup the back of her skull and tightened his fingers into a loose fist within the lustrous fall of her hair. The strands wove themselves around his strong fingertips, undulating like uninhibited lovers as they wound around previously broken knuckles and snagged on his ragged cuticles.

Tig’s assertive grasp made Helena arch her neck, gasping as his lips found her neck, the strong pulse of her carotid artery, pounding like a racing day thoroughbred under his mouth.

“I’ll do anything you tell me, just lemme stay,” Tig groaned, the sweet rotting aroma of unashamed begging permeated from his pores and filled the air.

Helena could hear the need in his voice, the vulnerability his words placed him, unprotected on the Serengeti. Tig had made himself a turtle stuck on its back; it’s exposed soft belly available to any passing by predator. He put himself at risk to be trapped and trussed by his own words, gave his murderer the knife in which to eviscerate him.

“Can we move a little slower?” Helena finally asked as Tig raised his face from the warm curve of her neck at her question.

Tig moaned his appreciation at her words, his cock gained a resurgence of arterial blood flow as he chuckled lowly and blew out a sharp breath before speaking.

“I’m going to try and not fuck things up, but this is all different,” Tig started to say as he closed a large hand around one of her wrists and guided her hand to the scant space between them until he could press her palm against his painfully hard cock behind his jean’s zipper as he added. “You’ll need to keep me in line,” he growled.

Helena tried to hold his gaze, her swirling brown eyes were no match for the profound weight of his gaze, his unblinking blue orbs glittered with danger.

Helena licked her dry lips before she pulled her hand away from his rigidity pulsing behind his zipper. She raised her hand to his face and traced the tip of her index finger to the prominent scar on his cheekbone.

Tig held his breath as she traced the roughened ridge marring his skin before he snaked his hand up to capture her wrist and pressed his lips against her palm. “I do jobs on the side sometimes, when things are slow at the shop,” he whispered when he lifted his mouth, his words delivered on a hot exhale against her soft skin. Helena chuckled, “I gathered you were more than a mechanic, that scar doesn’t look like it was from an engine rebuild.”

Tig smiled before asking in a solemn tone. “Does that bother you?”

Helena pressed her lips together, “I’m not sure exactly, I’d like to know more about what these side jobs entail.”

“I’ll tell you everything,” Tig rasped as he lowered Helena to her feet.

Helena smoothed her clothes back into place as she stared up at Tig, he was so much more imposing once her feet were planted back on the earth.

Tig swallowed hard as Helena finally nodded up at him and mumbled an agreeable sound.

“You’ll let me stay?” he asked in a hollow voice.

“Yes,” Helena said. “You can stay,” she added in a stronger tone.

Tig dropped his head and brushed his lips against hers, “thank you.”

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Four:  Whiskey, Leather, and the Ambient Noise of Enthusiastic Fucking

Helena was relieved and would’ve gladly sacrificed a herd of goats to any known deity when Tig stopped pestering her about her phone.

He quietly helped her carry all the medical supplies into Piney’s room. Tig followed her equipment set-up without question as he kept sneaking side-long glances over at her.

Tig could see the bright pink of Helena’s plastic phone peeking from the top of her pocket as she bustled around Piney, keeping her voice low as she asked Piney about his symptoms and pain level.

Tig watched Helena inject a pain reliving cocktail into Piney’s IV and smiled as the pain fell away from his face as he lapsed into the pharmaceutical stranglehold.

Tig followed Helena from Piney’s room and cleared his throat. “Are you headed home?”

Helena zipped up her hooded sweatshirt as she nodded. “I’m going to go get my grocery shopping done, start the slow-cooker for dinner all week and stop at the post office. I’ll be back later to check on Piney and get him his evening medication.”

Tig nodded, unsure of what to say further until Helena was called away by Gemma to look at an outrageous bill from St. Thomas’s.

After Helena left, Tig ended up getting stuck driving the tow truck when one of his Brother’s needed a tow. He was gone so long that he missed Helena returning and checking in on Piney.

Tig drowned his irritation in a bottle of Jack and was passed out face down, drooling on the green felt of the pool table when Helena let herself in the following morning.

She covered her lap when Tig groaned as the shaft of light hit his closed eyes, a hungover, patched vampire in leather. Helena went and checked on Piney before returning to her traveling medical kit for some dissolving antacid seltzer tablets and dropped them in a glass of tap water.

Helena soaked a washcloth and wrung it out before she walked over to where Tig had managed to roll onto his side and curl into his best fetal impression.

“Morning,” she murmured as Tig flopped onto his back, his limbs akimbo, one boot heel in the corner pocket as he stared up at her and blinked rapidly as Helena’s beautiful face came into focus.

“Hi,” Tig murmured gravelly and closed his eyes as she pressed the folded, damp washcloth against his clammy forehead.

“Here,” she whispered and set the glass of fizzing water on the wooden edge of the pool table.

Tig squinted as he turned his head, wincing at the pressure in his skull as his eyes fell on the citrus-flavored stomach settler. “Thanks,” he said on a cough as she brushed the cloth down his nose, along the sharp shelves of his cheekbones and down his neck.

An involuntary gasp slipped from Helena’s lips as she started to lift her hand from the cloth when his strong fingers closed around her slim wrist. “Thanks,” he repeated as he squeezed her wrist.

Helena cleared her throat nervously as Tig allowed her to pull her wrist free. His words conveyed gratitude as his eyes filled with other thoughts as he rose to fuller and fuller consciousness.

Tig rolled over and drained the glass as he watched Helena return to Piney’s room and close the door behind her.

Tig stumbled as he awkwardly climbed off the table and made a pit stop at the bathroom before he went and took up his post at his now surveillance station. He had brought booze, cigarettes, and stuff to snack on while he spent most of the time Helena was there observing from the other side of the wall.

Clay and every other Brother had begun to notice that Tig only worked when Helena wasn’t there. They also began to notice that even when Helena wasn’t there, Tig often had important nonspecific errands that needed to be accomplished.

As Tig leaned against the wall, sunglasses over his closed eyes as even the filtered sunlight through the curtains exacerbated his headache.

Tig figured out that Piney must’ve come down with a fever during the night judging from Helena’s questions and the slurred quality of Piney’s voice.

Tig lifted his sunglasses and pressed his face to the wall as he watched Helena tuck a blanket around Piney.

Tig blinked as Piney reached out a hand and gripped the same wrist he had earlier. “Is it going to hurt?” Piney whispered, his voice interrupted as he needed to stop and take a ragged breath.

“Is what?” Helena asked, concern etching her forehead.

“When I die.”

Helena dropped her free hand over his and squeezed gently, being careful of his IV line as she settled on the edge of the bed. “I promise I will do everything to ensure it’s not,” she whispered.

Piney closed his eyes and nodded as a tear escaped down his cheek in a hot line.

“How long have I got?” Piney asked with his eyes still closed.

Tig watched Helena’s face before she answered, carefully forming her words. “I don’t know, it’s really just day by day,” she admitted. “I wish I had a better answer,” she added.

Piney opened his eyes and smiled weakly, the fever raging inside his body made his face flush like an overripe tomato. As the fever wreaked havoc, it left his body waffling between shivering with a bone deep cold and sweating with inferno-like heat, soaking the sheets with sour sweat.

“Why do you take care of old dying men?” he asked with a chuckle before he started coughing.

Tig pressed his ear to the wall when she lowered her voice after Piney’s coughing fit passed.

“My parents died alone, no one was with them who truly cared,” Helena whispered and rubbed the smooth pad of her thumb in slow circles over the top of Piney’s liver-spotted hand.

Piney’s curiosity overrode his discomfort for a few heart beats, and he struggled to sit upright in the narrow hospital bed. “What happened?”

From the other room, Tig mouthed the same question.

Helena shifted on the bed and looked out the sunny window before speaking. “They were skiing in Europe and got hurt in an avalanche at this popular resort. A couple other skiers were killed immediately but my parents were taken to a medical center and died two days later. The airport fucked up my ticket and I got there a few hours after they died. They were in this cold room that looked like it was a part-time storage closet. The staff hadn’t even cleaned up their blood-stained faces,” Helena said and squeezed Piney’s hand as she sniffed hard. “Sorry, I’m getting morbid here.”

Piney was quick to speak. “No, talk to me, take my mind off this,” he pleaded and pointed at his collection of varying sized IV bags.

Tig nodded in agreement from the other room as Helena was relieved to be able to continue speaking. The first words she spoke of her parents, ripped the thick scab from some dormant pain.

“My parents died alone with no one who cared by their side, as I was cleaning my mom’s fingernails, I decided at that moment that I would spend the rest of my life making sure people didn’t have to die alone.”

“What about your home life? Do you go home to a husband and kids?”

Helena shook her head, “no, I’ve pretty much been in school for the last few years and not done much else.”

“Now that you’re here and done with school is that something you’re looking for?”

Tig strained his ears as he squeezed his eyes shut, he was certain his heart didn’t beat in the space until she answered.

Helena cleared her throat. “I’m not opposed, just a little…….cautious,” she added after a pause.

Piney nodded, “you do need to be careful out there.”

Helena saw Piney stifle a yawn. “I’m going to get out of here for a while, I’ll be back after dinner. I’m a phone call away if you need anything,” she said as she stood and closed the curtains.

Piney was already nodding off and could barely articulate a goodbye.

Tig counted to ten after Helena left the room before he slipped out of the spare room, turned storage closet and most recently his surveillance station. Tig’s gaze swept around the room and found Helena and Gemma deep in conversation at the bar, their heads close together as they talked lowly to each other.

Tig watched the two women for a while, Gemma nodded as she followed Helena’s finger as it moved over a stack of pages and paused in random places.

Filthy Phil was quick to bring Tig a beer before he had to waste the air to ask.

Tig took a few swigs off the bottle as he sidled closer to one woman he admired, deeply loved and respected and the other that made him forget his name or how to breathe.

Gemma looked over and slowly smiled when Tig came into her line of sight before she patted the top of Helena’s hand and gestured towards Tig.

“Tig can drive you to the pharmacy.”

“Absolutely,” Tig murmured without a shred to what he was agreeing to.

Gemma’s smile grew wider as she continued. “Her car got blocked in, it’d be easier if you drove her to the pharmacy and back.”

“Yes, definitely,” Tig said, more in debt with gratitude towards Gemma in that very moment.

“Great, thanks,” Helena said brightly as gathered her purse and coat before following Tig outside.

She stopped short when Tig held out a matte black helmet towards her. “Oh, we’re driving on that?” Helena asked nervously.

Tig smiled at her stilted tone, “there’s no one safer for you to be with.”

Helena blew out a breath and shrugged her shoulders as she reached for the helmet.

Tig started the engine and let it idle as Helena adjusted her purse until she was wearing it cross-body.

Helena carefully slipped behind him on the worn leather seat, her tension keeping her back ramrod straight, energy swirling under her skin as she lightly settled her hands on the tops of his shoulders.

Tig smiled as he exited the parking lot faster than he needed to, making her reflexively drop her hands to grip his sides.

Tig took the scenic route to the pharmacy and even drove a few miles under the speed limit. He found his irritation growing when the small line at the counter moved fast when another register was opened and he somehow managed to get a green light at nearly every intersection.

On the way back to the clubhouse, Helena found that some of her anxiety had fallen away enough for her to enjoy the air on her face and the unobscured view compared to being inside her SUV with the side airbags.

Tig felt every red blood cell quiver with anticipation when he felt Helena relax against him slightly, hearing her deep inhale over the rushing air as she pulled his warm, intoxicatingly masculine scent into her lungs.

Tig’s irritation quickly returned when he no sooner had cut the engine when Gemma hurried over, saying Piney had gotten sick in the bed and that she had nearly pulled his IV line out as she had begun cleaning him up.

“Thank you again,” Helena murmured to Tig as she squeezed his shoulder before she jogged inside and disappeared into Piney’s room with Gemma.

Tig eventually made his way inside the clubhouse, Phil again was Johnny on the spot with another beer.

Down the hall, while sweat formed in bloated beads on Helena’s forehead as she concentrated on starting the IV line with Piney’s persnickety veins, she was oblivious that outside Piney’s closed door, the clubhouse was beginning to fill with warm bodies, alcohol began flowing and the sounds of enthusiastic wet fucking were barely audible over the pulsing music.

Helena closed Piney’s door behind as she emerged into the bustling room, the air heavily scented with sex, whiskey, and leather.

She paused when her eyes landed on Tig from where he leaned against the bar as a bottle-blonde with huge tits brushed her manicured hand down the front of his chest.

Helena and Tig’s eyes met before she pivoted sharply and made a beeline to the exit. Helena didn’t see Tig shove the blonde’s hand away and quickly followed in her footsteps.

Helena took a deep breath when she stepped outside, dusk giving everything a dull glow.

Helena shook her head as she plunged her hand in her purse and searched the vast depths of her purse for her keys. She chuckled to herself at her reaction, part of her wanted to go back inside. The only reason Helena continued looking for her keys was because she wasn’t sure what would fall from her lips.

Tig’s voice found her the moment she closed her hand around her keys. “Where ya going?”

Helena looked back at him as she unlocked her door, “home, I’m exhausted.”

“Stay a while,” Tig said easily and leaned against the cool hood of her car. “You’re off the weekend right?” he added.

Helena nodded, “I haven’t had an entire weekend off in a while, I’m quite looking forward to a lot of nothing.”

“Then stay a while, you can sleep in late tomorrow,” Tig said and casually moved towards her, blocking her from opening the car door.

Helena shook her head as she kept her hand on the plastic door handle, centimeters away from his leather-clad side.

“What will you be going home to instead of this?” Tig asked and nodded his head in the direction of the clubhouse.

Helena dropped her head and chuckled. “I’m going to order a pizza and have some recorded movies waiting for me along with my pajamas on the waiting sofa.”

Tig let a hand drop and close over hers holding the car keys. “I like the sound of that more, why don’t you invite me over?” he added as he squeezed her hand gently with each word.

Helena pointed to a couple making out by the swing set, “and leave all this?”

Tig nodded and smoothed his hand from her wrist, up her smooth forearm until he could cradle her elbow. The point of her elbow joint poked into the center of his palm as he continued in a low murmur, “I don’t want that.”

Helena felt herself flush with giddy nervousness. “You’re only saying that until you realize that I actually just mean junk food, pizza and tv watching.”

Tig took his attention off her for a few moments to look around, anyone outside the clubhouse was occupied as he dropped the weight of his gaze around her again.

“Can I come over?” he asked boldly and tightened his grip on her elbow when she initially stiffened.

“You can pick the pizza toppings,” he added as he released her.

Helena looked down at her watch, “is someone going to come pick you up later or do you want me to drive you back?”

“I’ll ride in with you on Monday morning,” Tig rasped as he watched her quickly look away. His eyes moved down her slim neck and watched her strong carotid pulse pick up the pace at his words.

Helena shook her head and covered a laugh, “you should really get back to the party. I‘m definitely not inviting you over to spend the night, let alone the whole weekend.”

Tig shifted to the side as she resumed tugging on the door handle. He opened his mouth to speak, unsure of if he was going to plead, beg or bargain when the high-pitched voice of the slut of the month reached them.

“Tiggy, Tiggy, there you are,” the ultra-blonde said as she tiptoed over to him on impossibly high heels, a tiny skirt and hungry, sucking cunt.

Helena arched an eyebrow and smirked at Tig as she slid behind the wheel and maneuvered out of the parking lot. She looked up in the rearview mirror as the living blow-up doll molded herself to Tig’s side.

Tig watched her go, he clenched his teeth so hard his jaw popped when the blonde toyed with the zipper of his pants and whispered wetly into his ear, smelling like bubblegum lip gloss and orange liqueur. “Let me help you forget her baby,” she cooed.

Tig assertively closed his scarred fingers around her wrist and pushed her hand away. “I don’t want to forget her,” he growled as he marched back inside the clubhouse and plucked a nice bottle of scotch from behind the bar before he hopped on his bike and tore off in the direction of her house.

The drive to her house seemed to take longer than it should’ve, Tig hit every red light and got stuck behind a slow-moving semi at one point.

He blew out a breath of relief when he pulled to a stop in her driveway and knocked on the front door. Tig waited before he knocked again, seeing a few lights on and the murmur of the voices from the HD television screen.

He walked around the side of the house and found her sliding glass door open with only the screen as a flimsy barrier. Tig held his breath and pushed open the door which squeaked angrily on its track.

Tig held his breath and strained his ears as he realized he could hear the water from the shower which prompted him to exhale and walk in his normal stride to the brightly lit kitchen.

He listened to the water continue running as he looked through the cupboards until he located a few squat glasses before pulling a few uneven ice cubes from the freezer.

Tig drank directly from the bottle, taking a few burning swallows that spread warmth through his chest and belly, anxious for the alcohol to settle his nerves.

Tig leaned against the chipped, tiled counter that needed replacing and glanced down at the floor when he realized he was standing in a puddle of scattered rose petals. He frowned and squatted down and picked up a few of the velvet blossoms, some were torn and smashed while others looked like they had fallen away without any effort. Tig’s frown grew deeper when he pulled open the cupboard under the sink and found the rest of the bouquet and sturdy white floral delivery box shoved into the stretchy plastic trash bag.

Tig dug through the fresh, floral grave for the small rectangular card from the florist. His eyes ran over the dark blue calligraphy on the creamy-white local florist card.

“I love it when you wear those blue scrubs, see you soon.”

Tig reread the short sentence and tried to remember when Helena was wearing blue last. His recollection was sidetracked when Helena cranked the water off in the shower.

Tig shoved the destroyed bouquet’s card in his pocket and poured two nearly full glasses of the potent booze until Helena walked into the kitchen, her wet hair wrapped up in a purple towel turban.

Helena covered her mouth with shock when she found Tig standing in her kitchen, immediately thankful she had put on her oversized football jersey with the GOAT’s number and matching slippers with the team’s logo.

“The front door was locked,” she finally managed.

Tig nodded and pushed her glass towards her, “the screen door wasn’t.”

Helena nodded. “Yes that also needs to be repaired,” she added as she settled on the other side of the counter and sipped the strong drink.

Tig watched her over the rim of his glass, drawing her attention as he let the glass land loudly on the counter, the ice swirled and made the potent alcohol splash up the sides. “Did you order the pizza yet?”

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Three:  IV Antibiotics, Sugar Colon Cleanses and Missed Messages

The next day Gemma leaned against the doorframe of the clubhouse as she watched Tig pace. She looked down at her watch and smirked as she carried him a cup of sweetened, scalding coffee and held up a tray of blueberry-lemon scones Tara had made and dropped off earlier.

“She’ll be here at 9,” Gemma murmured as she pressed the mug of near-scalding French roast into his hand.

Tig shook his head and ignored her knowing glance, nodding his thanks for the coffee, and plucking a sweet treat from the stacked sugar triangles as he continued to wait and pace.

Tig straightened up when he saw Helena’s import pull into the lot and come to a stop in one of the crudely marked visitor parking spaces.

“Hi, morning,” Tig tried to say easily as Helena slammed the door and clicked the fob until the car chirped twice.

“Good morning,” Helena said and smiled as she drew closer and saw the large chunks of raw sugar clinging to his upper lip, sweet ornaments perched on the dark strands of his facial hair. “Thanks again for looking at the home repairs,” she continued before swallowing hard and struggled to meet his eyes before she added.

“Hey, so I feel like I just sort of kicked you out last night, I hope that you didn’t feel that way.”

Tig smiled and shook his head, “I didn’t give it a second thought; beside you might’ve had good reason to slam the door in my face,” he winked.

“I didn’t slam the door in your face,” Helena said with a chuckle as she proceeded to the clubhouse entrance.

Tig quickly left his cup and uneaten scone on a gray bench and flanked Helena as she crossed the asphalt.

Tig cleared his throat and fished a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, keeping his hands busy as he tried to find his words. “How many days a week are you going to be seeing Piney?”

“We’re going to talk about that today, I’d think before we really talk that three days might be fine for now,” Helena said as Tig skipped ahead and opened the door for her.

“Thank you,” she said as she walked past him and let her eyes adjust.

Piney was sitting at the bar talking with Bobby when Helena and Tig walked in.

Piney grumbled a grouchy good morning at Helena who greeted him with a pleasant smile and some comment about the game the evening before.

Helena glanced back at Tig and found his eyes already on her. She blinked and smiled before following Piney to his room where they could discuss his needs in privacy.

Tig frowned at her retreating form before he thought of the shitty piece of cardboard that was a placeholder for actual repair in the unoccupied room that shared a wall with Piney’s room. Tig ordered one of the Prospects to give him a beer before he tried to casually move to the empty room that was now more of an oversized storage closet.

Tig locked the door of the cluttered room and pulled a few boxes aside in order to tug the cardboard band aid aside just enough to hear Piney and Helena chattering mildly about the weather here versus this time of year on the west coast.

While Piney sat on the edge of his bed and Helena settled opposite him with a notepad and ink pen, on the other side of the wall, Tig listened as Helena went over a verbal checklist with Piney about his symptoms, pain scale and personal details.

Tig sipped on his beer, wishing he had more alcohol handy as he listened to Piney describe the intimate details of his chest and body pain, his struggle to bring air into his damaged lungs and diminished feelings in his feet.

Tig shifted the cardboard when Helena asked if Piney would be comfortable with her performing a physical exam.

Tig looked away as Helena slipped on a pair of dark-green chemotherapy gloves before she helped Piney disrobe and slip on a paisley blue gown that opened in the back.

Tig listened as Helena asked Piney a series of questions as she started with his ears and eyes and continued with his other organ systems. After Helena checked his blood pressure, heart, lungs, and temperature she began a visual inspection of his skin, checking for areas of breakdown especially since Piney said he had diminished sensation in is lower legs.

Tig’s eyes flew back to the miniscule half-moon he had created by shifting the cardboard as Helena’s tone turned serious and clinical.

“How long have you had this?”

“Had what?” Piney grumbled, annoyed she’d think he would know what his fucking back looked like.

“You have an open sore here, this is pretty advanced Piney. I’m going to clean this out and then call your case physician. You might need to be admitted on a short-term basis for antibiotics unless they’ll administer them here,” Helena stated matter of fact and ripped open a few packages of clean gauze as she dabbed at the edges of the deep fissure of skin that had opened from lack of blood flow and no one bothering to check his body or even wonder what the cause of the rancid odor was, that sweetness that comes right before gangrenous rot filled the air as Helena packed the wound and helped Piney get dressed.

Tig put the cardboard back in place and arranged the boxes to where they were before he ended up leaning against one of the pool tables with a bottle of bourbon before Helena emerged from the rear of the clubhouse.

“Everything okay?” Clay asked as his eyes widened at Helena’s stern expression.

Helena paused as she pulled her phone from her side pocket and shook her head before she spoke. “No, Piney’s got a really bad bed sore, I need to see if the on-call doc can come here, or I’ll drive him to St. Thomas’s.”

“Let me know if you need us to do something,” Clay said as Helena walked outside to get better reception as she called the hospital.

“Let me know if you need us to do something,” Tig parroted and quickly drowned his oddball behavior in eighty-proof booze as Clay shook his head and walked to Piney’s room.

Helena got behind the wheel and flipped the air-conditioner to its highest setting, rolling the windows down to let some of the stagnant air out before it began to cool off.

Tig peeked out the window and watched her full lips move as they formed words with her hands-free call with the hospice lead physician. He watched her nod as she scribbled a few notes on a paper napkin that was shoved between the seats.

Tig made sure he was already walking outside and lighting up a cigarette as Helena made her way back to the clubhouse.

“Everything okay?” he asked as she drew closer.

Helena paused and blew out a low breath. “I’ve got to go back to the pharmacy and then stop by the hospital for IV supplies, the doctor authorized me running the IV antibiotic therapy here and,” she started to add before her phone rang from her back pocket. She answered it without looking at the caller ID, assuming it was the hospice physician.

Helena met Tig’s eyes, and he watched in live time as the color drained from her beautiful face and she shut down any flicker of emotion in her eyes and forced her expression into carved unreadability.

“Are you okay?” Tig asked as she nearly dropped her phone trying to end the call before she returned it to her rear pocket.

“Mmm-hmmm,” Helena mumbled as she continued to the door without another pause to go relay the pharmaceutical treatment plan with Piney.

Tig rushed inside after counting to ten and blew out a relieved breath to find Piney’s door closed.

He ran his fingers through his glossy hair as he opened the door to the vacant room and interrupted Juice whose lap was full of a blonde head.

“Out,” he growled without a trace of remorse and waited as it seemed to take eons for Juice to pull up his pants and the girl to wipe the pre-cum from her perfectly shaped collagen lips.

Tig locked the door after the two left to find another perceived private space.

Tig settled on a pile of neatly folded pile of blue shop rags and shifted the cardboard a miniscule sliver at a time until he could see into Piney’s room.

A very small part of Tig felt bad about eavesdropping but the visceral need to see and hear Helena overrode it.

Tig stilled his breathing as Helena summarized her conversation with the hospice physician.

“Dr. Stephenson is going to phone in an antibiotic I’ll administer in an IV,” Helena told Piney as he grew more nauseated as she tried to be as generic as possible when explaining how the topical gel dressings and foam pads would function in assisting his healing until he died from the stage four cancer.

Tig swallowed hard as hot gastric juice raced up his throat as Helena continued with the short-term, aggressive treatment of his bed sore and expected side effects from the antibiotics. Tig slipped the cardboard back into place as Helena seemed like she was wrapping up her conversation as she told Piney that she was heading to the hospital after the pharmacy and would be back in a few hours.

Tig bumped into Juice in the hallway.

The younger man puffed his chest and bumped Tig’s chest in his very best impersonation of a professional hockey player. “That wasn’t fucking cool.”

Tig smiled slowly, his eyes glittering like brilliant sapphires in the muted light of the hallway as he shot his hand out with viperlike speed and pulled Juice towards him, planting a wet kiss in the middle of his forehead, Juice’s startled expression priceless. “You’ve got lots to learn young one,” Tig chuckled as Helena emerged from Piney’s door.

At that moment Helena was the ecliptic and Tig couldn’t breathe.

“Hey,” Tig said lamely and pushed past Juice, “everything okay?” he asked as he gripped Helena’s elbow and guided her to the bar stool with the best padding and no rips in the stitching.

Tig nodded to Filthy Phil to bring a bottle and two glasses.

Helena shook her head and pushed away the half-filled glass he set in front of her.

“Oh no thanks, I wish but I have to make a few stops. I really want to get Piney’s medication on board.”

Tig nodded, “yeah, you’re going to that same pharmacy?”

Helena nodded as she rummaged in her over-sized bag for her keys. “St. Thomas’s too.”

“Would you like some company? I wouldn’t mind picking up some pizza for later,” he added as he stood from the bar stool and rose to his feet, towering over her as she nervously tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear.

Tig’s fingertips itched to be pushing her hair away from her face, tracing the soft shell of her ear lobe.

“Are you sure? It’ll be a lot of waiting around for the vast medical machine to move.”

“Yeah,” Tig murmured as he swallowed his glass of booze in a burning wash that spread warmth throughout his chest and belly as he held his scarred forearm towards her and tipped his imaginary cap.

As Helena exited the clubhouse and turned left in the direction of the pharmacy, her phone’s playlist paired with the stereo and picked up where the last song left off.

Tig couldn’t help but chuckle as some bedecked in polyester, roller skate wearing band began pouring out of the factory issued speakers.

“Stop it,” Helena said with a growing blush as she slapped Tig’s hand away from the volume dial, flooding the car with the lead singer’s high-pitched crescendo.

Tig settled back in the seat and adjusted it for more leg room. Helena glanced over and caught him staring, his crystalline blue irises dancing with suppressed amusement.

Helena prayed to any deity that might be listening as she willed her blush to stay at bay under the weight of his gaze.

The drive to the pharmacy wasn’t far and this time they found a better parking spot. It was too early for pizza or most of the other eateries in the shopping center. If one was driving a handicapped vehicle it would’ve been difficult to get a spot though, the long line at the pharmacy was mostly seniors picking up their colonoscopy prep kit, annual flu shot or blood sugar test strips.

Tig would’ve been happy to stand in line with Helena for days and tucked his hands in his pockets as he drew slightly closer until he could nearly stare down the front of her blouse. One of the buttons had sprung apart earlier and she had failed to notice.

Helena’s phone chimed twice from the depths of her bag. Tig watched her angle the phone away from him and quickly run her eyes over the succinct text. Not many words were needed to imbue fear in the short message.

Tig’s eyebrows pulled into a deep frown as Helena looked away from him. Tig caught her reflection in the spinning eyeglass display’s mirror as she pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut. He watched her mouth the numbers one to five before she blew out a sharp breath and dropped her phone back into the bowels of her bag.

“Everything okay?” he asked quietly as they advanced a couple spaces in the line.

“Yeah, nothing too important,” Helena mumbled, wishing she could leap-frog the senior citizens and get out of the pharmacy that was growing too hot. She was certain the oxygen was being sucked out of the room as Tig continued to press.

“It looked like it was important.”

“Nope, nothing much of substance,” Helena said as she looked up at him, her full lips pulled into a tight smile.

Tig held her eyes until he bowed his head and held out his hands. “Okay, okay, sorry, not my business,” he offered.

Helena nodded, “it’s fine,” she said and was beyond relieved when another pharmacy technician began calling people from the line.

She filled out the request with Piney’s info as Tig leaned against the other end of the long counter, watching her consult her notes until she memorized Piney’s date of birth, social security number and insurance information.

Tig watched her flinch and her hand pause in a mid-cursive “P” as her phone chimed from where it was nestled between her wallet and matching coin purse.

Tig fought to keep himself quiet, his expression one of complete neutrality as Helena continued writing and forced herself to not pause when her phone gave a follow-up reminder chime.

After the technician ran the insurance paper, the wait wasn’t long and they left with a large paper bag of celluloid colloidal-infused foam pads, a handful of topical creams and a glass vial of antibiotics.

“Did you still want to get pizza?” Helena asked as Tig pulled the light bag from her arms as they returned to her car.

Tig looked over and his stomach gurgled in protest at dumping garlic and marinara on his bellyful of booze.

“Maybe breakfast instead?” he asked and pointed to a pancake shack at the other end of the parking lot.

“Sure,” Helena said, “but we need to get it as take-out.”

“Whatever you want doll,” Tig purred as he dropped an arm around her shoulders.

Helena’s shoulders stiffened under Tig’s touch. He gave her shoulder cap a gentle squeeze before he lifted his hand and they walked to the carbohydrate house with its maple syrup waterfall.

Tig and Helena looked over the takeout menu and the variety of specials and limited run pancake stacks, the choice so much harder when you were hungry.

Tig decided to order a bunch of specials for the clubhouse, and they settled on a plastic bench after they paid and waited for their order.

Tig was tapping out a message to Gemma that he was bringing back breakfast for everyone and they just needed to stop at the hospital when Helena’s phone chimed, the sound somewhat muted in the bustling restaurant.

Tig pretended to ignore the reminder chime but couldn’t hold his tongue when her phone chimed again.

“Who’s texting you?” he asked as Helena grew still.

“No one,” Helena muttered and stared down at her fingernails, pretending to examine a hangnail.

“Answer me,” Tig growled.

Helena pulled a lungful of the sweetly scented air into her lungs as she turned on the bench to look at him. “Please stop asking me,” she pleaded, hating the belly-dragging groveling evident in her tone.

Tig narrowed his eyes at her, his gaze piercing, sliding through her blood-brain barrier as he decided how far to press her in the house of pancreatic nightmares.

He never got the chance to verbalize an answer when their order number was called and Helena was off the bench, receipt in hand like she’d won fucking bingo.

Tig carried the plastic handled bag of sugar-laden foam containers and individual packets of strawberry jam for the triangles of wheat toast.

Helena’s tension was near palpable, the melted spoon taste of her anxiety practically filled the air as they returned to her car.

They were both largely silent on the drive to St. Thomas where she parked in the employee lot a stone’s throw from the rear entrance of the building.

Tig wandered around the sprawling storeroom as Helena collected the IV equipment, paper tape and sterile dressings.

“Ready to go?” Helena called as Tig was fixated by the wall of gynecological equipment, finding himself mystified by some of the individually wrapped instruments, packing and suture.

Tig shook himself back to reality and joined her at the exit as they returned to her car. The drive from St. Thomas’s back to the clubhouse was quiet aside from the playlist on shuffle, random songs filling the inside of her car. Helena’s tension was a little lessened since turning her phone to silent mode but the unasked questions he was lobbing at her remained unanswered and hung in the musical air.

Tig was fine with the silence as he began to formulate a plan to steal her phone and find out exactly what was scaring her.

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter Two:  To Follow Without Question

Several days passed before Tig saw Helena again. His anxiety only grew with each passing minute until he was mount fucking Everest. Piney had reluctantly excepted Helena‘s help at Gemma and Tara’s urging. He had decided to spend a couple days with Mary doing some bucket list bullshit before letting cancer take the wheel. Piney allowed Helena to order some medical devices even though he knew he could just go put a gun to his head but he didn’t wanna do that to the club.

Tig felt his bowels turn hot and threaten to loosen and he was certain he forgot how to breathe for a second when he walked into the clubhouse and saw Helena filling a medication tray with a veritable rainbow of round pills and glossy oblong tablets.

Helena looked up as she was pouring a bottle of triangular mustard yellow tablets into her palm and found herself in the sudden crosshairs of his gaze. She felt a constriction in her diaphragm as she suddenly felt like a gazelle under the predatory eyes of a lion on the Serengeti.

Helena couldn’t stop herself from flinching and fumbled the entire bottle of pills onto the carpeted floor. She blinked rapidly and blushed as she looked at the pills that had rained down around her sensible fluorescent pink cross trainers that were endorsed by the most current and famously celebrated NBA player.

Tig smiled, letting his eyes move over her features and memorize the rapid pulse in the smooth skin of her neck.

“Hey,” he said easily. “Do you want a beer or something?”

Helena smiled and broke herself out of her paralysis, “no, no thanks. Do you have soda?”

Tig glanced over at one of the new prospects and nodded. The eager prospect rushed over and brought her a cold can of soda.

“Thank you,” she said before she set the aluminum can aside and squatted down to retrieve the spilled blood pressure pills. Helena counted them as she dropped them into her palm. She didn’t notice that Tig had been brought a cold beer by the same prospect and was perched on one of the padded stools openly watching her retrieve the pills.

Tig’s thoughts evolved back to that of early man when communication was from grunts and beating broad chests. He had a sudden desire to go help her but worried what he would do if he got too close. Tig looked away just before she raised her head and rose to her feet.

Helena put the pills into a baggie and made a few notations before fixing a white label around it and putting it in a small-locked box

Tig took a long drink from his beer, he couldn’t believe the awkwardness he felt about speaking to her. Tig nearly chuckled as his mind dipped just the tip of his toe into the pool of his memories when he thought about what depravity he’d committed and now he couldn’t even talk to someone who was fully clothed.

“Where’s Piney?” he finally asked.

After Helena had finished her notations on the bottle of spilled medication she glanced over before reaching for her soda. “He’s at St. Thomas’s talking to the hospice director about emergency contacts and how many hours of care he needs per week at this point. And of course what his insurance will cover,” she added as she rolled her eyes.

Tig nodded, not having another question in the barrel. Helena sipped off her soda as she went over the list of medical devices she’d ordered and what had arrived so far. She was counting IV bags of saline solution when a question finally came to him.

“Have you done this kind of job long?”

Helena glanced over and settled into the new wheelchair that still had plastic wrap around its wheels. “A couple years now. I worked through a hospice agency all through nursing school,” she added as she took a few more steps from her soda.

“Thanks for helping out Piney,” Tig said.

Helena smiled and chuckled, “he’s not exactly thrilled with the idea of me helping him, but he seems like a nice guy.”

Tig chuckled before he drained his beer and nodded to the prospect for another. “He is a stubborn old bastard.”

They both trailed off into silence. “Do you live nearby?”

Tig nodded as Helena described an area about fifteen minutes north west.

“Do you live there alone?”

Helena tilted her chin as she swirled her soda, “pardon?”

“Do you live alone or with a boyfriend? Husband? Girlfriend?” he asked with a gravelly rasp and winked.

Helena fought to not roll her eyes. “I have a lot of ferns,” she finally said with a chuckle.

“Do you and your plants live in a house or one of those new apartment complexes out there?”

“It’s a two-bedroom house on half an acre. I got an amazing deal on it because there’s so much wrong with it. The hardware store has free classes that show you how to do home repairs and I’m going to try that or if that fails, find a local contractor.”

Tig spoke without really thinking, wanting to promise anything in that moment for even just the opportunity to exchange further words with her. “What kind of work do you need done on the house?”

Helena made an explosive motion off the top of her head.

“Quite a bit, there are some bad patches in the roof, flooring, plumbing, electrical, pretty much everything, that’s why I got such a great buy. The foundation is solid though and there isn’t much drywall to repair. The appliances are fairly new plus the property is beautiful and I’ll have space to have an amazing garden.”

“I could come out and see what some of us around the shop could do.”

“Oh no, you don’t have to go through that bother. I drive by the hardware store almost twice a day.”

“It’s not a bother. When are you getting out of here today?” he bluntly asked.

Helena blinked a couple times and tried to keep her composure as she glanced down at her digital watch that matched the shade of her shoes. “I can pretty much leave anytime, I just have to stop by the pharmacy and pick up a few things and of course get another refill authorized,” she added and tapped the locked case with the contaminated medication.

“I can follow you there and then back to your place to check out what you need done.”

“Are you sure? That seems kind of inconvenient and I feel like I just dumped it in your lap somehow.”

“You didn’t and I’m not doing anything else right now.”

“Thanks, I can pick up the prescriptions on the way over tomorrow so there’s no need for you to wait for me to do that. The refill will probably take about an hour with communicating between the pharmacist and on call hospice physician.”

Tig moved his rough fingertips through the drops of condensation that had rolled down the side of his beer bottle. “There’s a pizza place next to the pharmacy right?”

Helena nodded, “yeah it’s Nemo’s I think.”

“Do you like their pizza?”

She was digging in her purse for her car keys and wasn’t really following his train of questions. “They’re great, they have that incredible buffet with those cinnamon sugar twists, there is some sort of an illegal drug in them,” she chuckled.

“Why don’t we go have an early dinner and wait for that prescription to be filled?”

Helena licked her dry lips as her mind absorbed his words and broke them down like gastric acid first destroying food molecules before getting waterboarded with bile.

“I haven’t been there in a while,” she lamely stalled.

“You gotta eat,” Tig teased until Helena had to smile and nod.

The prospect watched Helena gather up her purse and then zip up her sweatshirt.

The prospect kept his amusement to himself as he watched Tig nearly stumble over himself pushing open the door for Helena, giving her a wide berth even though every part of his body wanted to do the opposite.

Tig followed Helena to the shopping center with the pharmacy and several other shops just under ten minutes away. They both had to circle the lot a few times to find parking spaces with the dinnertime hour.

They both walked to the pizza place and got a table before Helena told him what she’d like and then jetted over to the pharmacy.

Tig jammed his fingers on the plastic-coated menu feeling a trail of excitement from the crown of his head to the very tip of his coccyx. He felt a sick bubble of nausea in his gut like a nervous teenager. He wanted to run his hand over his face to see if he forgot how to grow facial hair and was covered in zits. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked himself. “Knock it off,” he scolded himself.

Tig chuckled as he shook his head and rubbed his hands over his eyes after he tossed his sunglasses to the shiny waxed tabletop. “Whore’s are so much easier to deal with,” Tig groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Tig looked up when Helena was suddenly sliding into the booth across from him. “It’ll be about an hour,” she said.

“I ordered just a few minutes ago,” he said deflecting so she wouldn’t see the happiness sparkling in his cerulean blue eyes.

Helena pulled the paper off her straw before dunking it into the glass of ice water “Do you want an appetizer?” Tig asked. “Yes, I’d like the potato skins and their buy one, get one. Which one do you want?”

Tig would’ve agreed to anything. A bowl of croutons would’ve been just fine with him. “How about those mozzarella sticks?”

“Sounds good,” she said.

“Neither of them spoke until the server returned and they placed their appetizer order.

The young server gave them an annoyed look and said that their pizza would be out before the appetizers. The same server’s attitude evaporated as soon as he met Tig’s eyes and saw his life draining in the reflection.

“I’ll just go put this order in now and then delay the pizza until you’re done,” the server said nervously. “How about some sodas, free of charge of course?”

Tig looked over at Helena. “Would you like a soda?”

Helena struggled not to smile. “Do you have iced tea?”

The server was bobbing before she finished speaking.

Tig ordered a beer and finally smiled when he met Helena‘s eyes. “That kid is probably back there having a heart attack right now you know,” she said as she shook her head.

Tig didn’t initially say anything.

Before either of them could speak, her phone gave two large chimes. Tig watched her pull her phone from an inside pouch of her oversize satchel. He narrowed his eyes and felt himself grow more alert as Helena’s expression tightened and the color drained from her beautiful face as her eyes moved over her phone’s screen.

Tig watched her click her phone into silent mode and shove it back into her purse. Helena pushed an errant lock of hair behind her ear and pretended that her soda was incredibly interesting as she stabbed the ice with her straw.

“You alright?”

“Yes, fine.”

“You look like you just read something bad.”

“It’s nothing,” Helena said sharper than she intended.

“It doesn’t look like it was nothing,” Tig pressed as he rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward, closing the distance between them.

Helena sat back, her shoulders stiff. “It was nothing,” she spit tersely, her tone not inviting further conversation. Tig held her eyes for a moment, thinking inside that it would be a moment he would return to but for now he would let it lie dormant.

They were spared any sort of nervous chatter about the weather or price of gas when another server showed up with an extra appetizer in addition to the drinks they ordered. “Thank you,” Helena said as she dipped a chip into the extra hot artichoke dip.

For the next few minutes they both were satisfied with melted cheese, and bountiful sour cream crowned with bacon bits.

“You like the work?” Tig asked when they both came up for air from there endless abyss of carbohydrates and ranch sauce.

Helena nodded before she spoke. “I just recently moved here; I’m still getting to know the area.”

“Where did you work before in Florida?”

“Tampa.”

Tig wiped the red sauce off his fingertips. “That’s a big move, what made you come out here? Family?”

If Tig hadn’t been paying as close of attention and been well-trained to recognizing when someone was lying, he wouldn’t have noticed the subtle facial nuances she had constructed for her past. Tig admired her façade, very seaworthy as long as you didn’t dig or lean in for a closer look.

“I just wanted something different, the pay here is a lot better,” Helena said airily.

Tig took a few minutes to decide if he was going to press her further for the truth as he tore apart a breadstick and mopped up some marinara sauce that was garlic forward.

“How do you like Charming so far?”

Tig saw her visibly relax. “It’s great,” Helena said honestly. “The moment I stepped off the airplane and didn’t have the humidity I was ready to call this my new home,” she admitted with a chuckle.

Her words made Tig happy and he kept a smile hidden as he bit into a loaded potato skin that was growing soggy under the weight of the cheese and pile of green onions.

Tig almost choked on a mouthful of sour cream and bacon bits when she asked naïvely. “So you’re a mechanic?”

Tig found himself nodding. “Yeah. Yes, yes, I’m a mechanic,” he said and fought to not shake his head as he cleared his throat to clarify.

“I’ve worked at the shop a long time,” he said. “Flexible hours,” he added vaguely.

Tig waited until their appetizer remnants were cleared and their pizza settled to the center of the table.

“Did you know anyone when you moved out here?”

Helena shook her head. “No, a whole new start.”

Tig really wanted to know the foundation of her thoughts but didn’t want to scare her away from her work with Piney.

They ate the rest of their dinner as they chatted about generic topics and ended up discussing the price of gas and how much time the downtown roadwork was taking.

Helena picked up the prescription before Tig followed her back to her house.

She kicked off her shoes and adjusted the heater before she unzipped her sweater and settled it over the back of her sofa. “Do you want some coffee?”

Tig would’ve accepted a glass of goat piss over ice if it added to the amount of time he could spend with her.

While the coffee brewed, Tig went and sat on the plush pad of the bay window.

“How do you take it?” she called from the kitchen.

“Cream and sugar.”

Helena brought him a mug that matched hers and for a few moments, the only sound was their metal spoons clinking against the insides of their cups.

“So, should I give you a room by room show and tell of repairs?”

“Lead the way,” Tig said as he rose to his feet.

Helena led him from room to room. He followed without question and would’ve walked across a field of lava without realizing it as he listened to her point out the various repairs that needed to be done.

Tig murmured to himself as he ran his hand over a windowsill, he mumbled about how long it would take and the cost of supplies.

He turned to her, but Helena didn’t let him finish speaking before she raised her hands and interrupted him as he said how the shop could take care of it and Chucky could probably even find a way to make it a tax write-off.

“I can’t accept that at all, I want to pay for the work here.”

Tig turned from the windowsill, letting the full weight of his gaze fall around her. “You don’t understand how grateful the club is for you helping Piney. This is the least we can do.”

Helena wrinkled her nose, “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a lot of work and not to mention the money and time commitment.”

Tig pushed away from the wall and walked towards her slowly, never taking his eyes from hers. Helena swallowed hard and tried to appear casual as he stopped within an arm’s length of her.

“Please let me, the club, do this for you?” he murmured and reached out to squeeze the taut flesh of her upper arm.

Helena nodded and relaxed when he released her arm. “If you’re sure then thanks, thank you so much. That’s a huge relief, I didn’t really want a bunch of strangers milling around the house, plus the costs are outrageous.”

Helena and Tig both looked towards the front door when a few sharp knocks sounded.

“Excuse me,” Helena said and went to the door. A quick look through the peephole showed the delivery driver. Tig held his breath and yanked open the top couple drawers of her oak dresser and yanked a silken pair of panties from the satin, lacy pile and shoved them into his pocket before she closed the door with the catalog purchase.

Tig could feel her uncertainty around him and didn’t want to create any reason that she couldn’t return to the clubhouse.

He left soon after the delivery driver, relieved that he would be seeing her the following mid-morning.

Helena closed and locked the door after Tig, a fine tremor passed through her hands when she engaged the deadbolt.

Tig left her house and took a side road to a park that was usually vacated with the time of the hour. He let his bike idle, the warmth vibrating against the inside of his thighs as he tugged her lilac silken panties from his pocket and squeeze his hand into a tight fist around the delicate fabric.

Tig shoved his nose into the panties, smelling the ocean scent fabric softener as he dropped his free hand to the front of his pants and fumble his cock free. His breath turned ragged as he frantically stroked himself to painful hardness, shoving the fabric in his mouth, soaking it with his spit.

Tig groaned as he felt a hot coil of tension ratchet down in his groin as his balls pulled up tight against his body in anticipation of release. He let his cock fuck his loosely closed fist containing the panties as he closed his eyes and imagined thrusting into Helena and finding out what made her moan and gasp breathlessly. He wanted to make her thighs tremble as she forgot how to breathe.

Tig grunted as his cock twitched and spit out a couple sweet, sticky spurts of come. His breath shuddered as his heartbeat returned to normal.

As Tig caught his breath and returned to the club house, already looking at the clock and calculating how long until he would see her again, back in Helena’s living room, she pulled her phone from her purse and took it off mute.

She sniffed hard as she scrolled through the missed text messages, calls and unheard voicemails. Helena felt hot tears sting her eyes as the anger and obscenity of the messages grew exponentially.

Helena shook her head and took a deep breath as she plugged in her phone to charge, not having the strength to listen to the voicemails at the moment.

Helena and Tig’s evenings both passed drastically different.

Tig drank until he passed out under the pool table, waking in the middle of the night to take a piss, not sure which holes of the naked chick next to him he had filled.

Helena took a long, hot bath with a hot coffee spiked with an aged brandy and fell asleep during the eight o’clock news.

Night passed and the same sun rose above Charming and welcomed them both to a new day.

[herradhighpriestess]

Love Grows in the Valley of Death

Chapter One: Stage IV

A Sons of Anarchy fiction:  This story doesn’t really take off anywhere specific but only encompasses the events up until what I’ve seen. Piney’s cancer metastasizes and Tara arranges for a hospice nurse from St. Thomas to care for him as his body shuts down. Tig discovers something inside him as Piney prepares to leave this world. Love is born from death. Lots of triggers, foul fucking language, drugs, guns, drinking, sticky wet fun, grey consent, I hope you enjoy, xoxo

Chapter One: Stage IV

“I’m sorry,” Tara whispered after she told Piney his recent treatment had zero effect and his cancer had metastasized to his liver.

Piney looked down at his hands as the rest of the Club present lapse into respective silence.

“Piney?” Gemma whispered as she laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly.

Clay walked towards them as Piney raised a hand and patted Gemma’s from where it rested, strong in its silent comfort and groaned as he rose to his feet. “I just need a few minutes,” Piney reiterated with a second pat to the top of Gemma’s hand and slowly shuffled to his room and closed the door quietly behind him.

Piney could feel the concern wash over him from the eyes on his retreating form, he couldn’t dial Mary fast enough, anxious for the comfort from a place of genuine love despite their lives breaking apart and going their separate ways.

“What can we expect?” Clay asked Tara after Piney closed himself away.

Everyone in the room heard Tara describe the process of the cancer as it spread and devoured Piney’s healthy tissue and stole his life.

Happy rubbed at his eyes as Tara explained that with the secondary liver cancer diagnosis, that Piney would likely begin to rapidly lose weight and not have much of an appetite.

Juice put his hands on his hips and cleared his throat as Tara added that she’d prescribe a good pain control pharmaceutical regime for the imminent belly pain, internal pressure and swelling.

Gemma and Bobby openly cried as Tara said that many medical interventions were off the table due to the multiple diagnoses and advanced stages of Piney’s cancer.

Opie squeezed his arm around Lyla’s shoulder, a spark of false hope when Tara explained that there were certain immunotherapy treatments that could improve the health of Piney’s noncancerous tissue.

Jax crossed the room and grasped Tara’s hand as she said she’d be heading to St. Thomas’s to talk with the head of Hospice and Palliative Care services.

Clay nodded his thankfulness, not trusting the strength of his voice as Tara said she could have a hospice nurse and rotating staff there as needed within a few days.

At the back of the room, Tig crossed his arms over his chest as Tara sadly stated that Piney could be gone from this world before the end of the year. He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw popped and danced his fingertips along the edge of the pool table to pluck a bottle of whiskey from the top of the bar.

He quickly took three large gulps, anxious for the alcohol to spread its warmth throughout his chest and belly.

Tig glanced over at Kozik who was perched on a barstool at the end of the bar and took another drink before pouring out a tall glass for the man he pretty much hated and despised.

Jax eventually walked Tara to her Cutlass and watched her drive away to St. Thomas’s.

The mood in the Club was subdued and the music was a low murmur in the background as everyone was lost in their own thoughts.

As Tara met with the Palliative Care Director Olivia Collins, Piney eventually emerged from his room and joined the others.

The next few days a heavy sadness shrouded the shop and infiltrated every part of SAMCRO, everyone was affected by Piney’s diagnosis and bleak finite future.

Clay and Tig were hunched over in conversation about the click emitting from a twin cam 103 valve engine when a grey SUV pulled to a stop near the office.

Bobby nudged Juice as the woman in sapphire blue medical scrubs slipped from behind the wheel and zipped up her dark grey sweatshirt with the brisk touch of the breeze. The back of her zippered hoodie boasted a rhinestone pair of wings from the Really Pretty in Pink lingerie boutique.

Tig happened to look up the moment Helena, the hospice nurse from St. Thomas was pulling her auburn hair up into a loose bun.

He lost his train of thought as Helena squinted against the bright sun overhead, not seeing him in the rear of the shop, allowing him to openly move his eyes over her.

Tig memorized her cheekbones that could cut glass and her full lips that pulled into a warm smile when Gemma came out of the office to meet her.

Clay snapped his fingers in front of Tig’s face as he continued to stare at the spot where Helena had been standing until she followed Gemma into the office.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Tig mumbled and walked like a man in a hypnotic trance to the office.

He pushed open the door and found Gemma passing the newly arrived female a heavily lightened coffee in a foam cup.

Gemma looked up and concealed her smirk as she watched Tig’s eyes find Helena like a man stumbling through the desert towards a life-saving oasis.

“Tig, this is Helena Onassis. She’s from St. Thomas.”

Helena stood and switched her coffee to her left hand before extending her right hand towards him. “Hi, nice to meet you,” she said cordially and offered a small smile.

Tig felt himself tip forward into the swirling depths of her jade green and fiery chestnut brown irises.

“Hey, you’re a nurse,” he said lamely as he wiped his grease-stained hand on the leg of his jeans before grasping her smaller hand in his. His rough skin was a stark contrast to her smooth flesh enclosed in his larger hand.

Helena tilted her head slightly at the timbre in his voice before she resumed sitting, nodding as she sipped the near-scalding French roast. “Yes, from St. Thomas’s Palliative Care unit.”

Gemma settled behind the desk and crossed her arms over her full, round breasts as she watched Tig struggle to find his words. “Thanks for being here,” he finally said, ignoring Gemma’s wide smile and her bright eyes that danced with suppressed amusement as she watched the man who had no boundaries and felt no fear of sticking his cock in any kind of mammal’s wet orifice stumbled over his words.

Gemma decided to save Tig from drowning and rapped her knuckles against the desk before rising to her full height, enhanced by her boots that fit better since she had lapsed back into cutting her heart medication in half or accidentally forgetting to take it.

“Piney’s out in the shop, I’ll introduce you,” Gemma said.

Tig’s gratitude was clear to Gemma’s eyes as she led Helena through the other door to the office that led to where Piney was sitting on a low stool watching Opie work on repairing a faulty shifter shaft seal.

Tig leaned against the door jamb as he watched Helena follow Gemma and heard their voices all mixing and overlapping as introductions were made. He couldn’t tear himself from the doorway, he had been turned into a pillar of salt as he watched the goddess who had tumbled down from the clouds and landed in his line of sight. Tig watched her shake Piney’s hand again before Gemma walked her back to her dark grey compact SUV.

Helena glanced over at him and caught him staring. Tig felt his mitral valve flutter as it dilated under her sudden attention and she gave him a small smile before turning back to Gemma when she spoke. His heart pounded erratically in its opaque pericardial sac deep within his chest, long after she drove away.

“Take a breath Tigger,” Gemma said with a chuckle as she squeezed past him in the doorway and answered the ringing phone.

[mijagif]

[maekar76]

Horror Classics

[herradhighpriestess]

I love them all, in descending order, most to least favorite. 

1. Hellraiser 

2. Halloween

3. Texas Chainsaw Massacre

4. Friday the 13th

5. The Witch 

6. It

7. The Exorcist

8. Nightmare on Elm Street

9. Reanimator

10. The Evil Dead