Under The Magnolia Page 15
“Am I a bitch? No. Have I gone through hell and deserve some peace?
Hell yes. Now fuck off.”
“Which one are you fucking? You must be something special for them to
want to bed a cripple.”
“Damn right I’m something special. Haven’t you realized that yet? I’m
sensing another motive from you- jealousy. I may not be able to see any of
you, but jealousy doesn’t look good on anyone. I’m fucking all of them
because my vagina is fucking gold. So go find some other shmuck to waste
your attentions on.”
Okay, that was pretty much perfect. I bury my face into the nape of her
neck to try and stifle my laughter, but it doesn’t work so well. Once the
women realize we’re all laughing at them, not with them, they saunter off
all haughtily, acting like they were the ones wronged.
“Fucking bitches. This is why I don’t go anywhere. I hate people. Well,
you guys are fine. I hate pretty much everyone else.”
The other guys lose it too and all get closer to our girl, kissing her cheek.
“Damn, grown-up Amelia has balls bigger than any of us.”
“Balls are like the most fragile organ you have. I’ve never understood
that expression.”
Cam laughs again and kisses her, and I guess we’re all just not going to
give a flying fuck if people see us all kissing on her because she doesn’t
seem to care.
“Damn that was hot, babe. Feel this.”
He grabs her hand and drags it under the water, I’m assuming to put it on
his crotch. She hisses a breath and rocks against me on instinct, feels mine
as well, and then she just doesn’t know what to do with herself. “Seeing
you stand up for yourself, claiming us, and being such a bad-ass is really
fucking sexy.”
“Fuck, Mils. That God-damned mouth on you might be my favorite
thing. No, no. Not my favorite, but close. My favorite is definitely your
golden vagina.” Constantine kisses her next, then Alex is pulling her out of
my arms and climbing out of the water.
“What the hell, man? I was doing something!”
“I think we need to get our fiancée home so we can get a taste of her
golden vagina.”
We all groan and try to cover ourselves as we run to the car dripping wet,
hastily grabbing all our shit as we stuff it in the back. Amelia’s sweet giggle
is music to my ears as we gun down the back roads, straight to their house
that they’re intent on us all moving into.
Amelia
“Fuck that felt good. You know how long I’ve wanted to tell people like
that off? Damn.”
Constantine has his arm around my waist in the backseat as Alex drives
us, and I can’t even wait until we get home because all this talk about my
vagina is making her quite feisty. After Cam and Theo both had to prove
they were hard as granite, I’m determined to find out if Tina is, too.
I lean over like I’m reaching for something on the floor, letting my hand
slide up his thigh and…yep. Definitely hard.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
“That’s a dick, sweetheart. A damn erect one.”
I bat my eyelashes at him as I slowly lean down, twisting my hips as
much as I’m able in the seatbelt to put my mouth on him. I can feel every
ridge of him under the thin material of his sopping wet swim shorts, and a
strip of Velcro is all that’s preventing me from tasting his bare skin.
“Fuck, Mils. You don’t play fair. You seriously going to do this right here
in the back of the truck?”
“What is she doing? No fair, driver should get privileges.”
The car swerves a bit and then straightens, right as Alex lets out a string
of colorful curses. I’ve got Tina’s shorts open to me, pulled out his
throbbing dick, and I’m just staring at it because I can. I’m not sure how
long this drive will be, but I’m going to make it a damn good one.
“Amelia Poppy, if you put your mouth on his dick while I’m driving and
I can’t watch or participate, I’m going to have to demand some
recompense.”
“I’ll suck yours later, Alex, chill your tits.”
I ignore all the rest of their banter, feeling several sets of heated eyes on
me. The energy of the car is all focused on me, and I know Theo is doing
something right next to me, touching himself maybe, because he’s got one
hand on my hips, gripping me and flexing over my ass, but I can sense
movement as well. If I could have eyes for one thing only and still be blind,
it would have to be for sexual purposes. I don’t think anything would beat
the sight of one of my men pleasuring themselves.
Constantine’s skin is cool and damp as my mouth touches it, warming up
his eager flesh as I taste him. I let my tongue swirl over the head, tracing
the nice plump tip and right over the slit producing the precum, before
lowering my mouth over him entirely and wrapping my lips over my teeth.
His hand tightens in my hair and gently guides me, and I start getting lost
in sensation and the smell of him.
“Damnit. Fuuuuck. Amelia, shit. Baby, this is almost too much. Feels
way too damn good. You don’t know how many fantasies I’ve had about
seeing your lips wrapped around me before.”
“No, Alex. Keep driving. You pull over now and we’ll never get home.
You really want someone to stop and see why we’re sitting on the side of
the road?”
“This isn’t fucking fair! I’ve always wanted road head! Why does he get
it???”
I pull off Constantine to giggle, because Alex just sounds like a petulant
little kid. I reach forward to find his head, yanking on his hair a bit.
“Alex. Drive the damn car. You can play with me when we get home.”
I’m really not sure where this super-confident version of myself is coming
from, but it feels freeing. Just taking what I want, damn the consequences.
“She always like this?”
This question is directed at Theo, who is now grabbing my hand and
putting into his pants to feel what I’ve done to him on a closer level.
“Fuck. No. She…” He’s scraping these words off his tongue, and I can
hear how tightly clenched his jaw is as he tries to talk while I rub my thumb
over the tip of him, smearing all that moisture around.
“I think…this is Amelia feeling happy.”
“Huh. That makes sense. You guys being here kind of makes me feel like
super woman. It’s like as soon as I gave up on fighting any of this, I get to
just enjoy you all, and for once I feel like my life is something that I can get
excited about.”
Constantine pulls my head over to him and kisses the shit out of me,
tongue dueling mine and his hands digging into my neck. “Baby, if this is
you happy, you’re probably going to be the death of all of us because we
plan to make you the happiest woman on earth. You’ve already made us the
happiest men on earth by agreeing to marry us, and I fucking love seeing
you come into yourself and start owning what you want. It is so damned
sexy to see you confident enough to just do what you want and not have to
justify anything. I love you, Mils. Foreve
r.”
He wipes the tears out of my eye and kisses me again after I choke out a
‘love you too’ response. The heat has faded a little as the car finally stops,
Alex wrenching the doors out and presumably pausing as he sees my face.
“Damnit, Constantine, you killed the orgy energy. Alright, Mils, let’s get
you inside your new home.”
∞∞∞
This whole night has been far too smooth, far too peaceful, for it to be an
evening that belongs to me. Even knowing I wouldn’t be able to see
anything, the guys gave me a tour anyway, making me tear up when they
talked about how they had a diffuser going in each room with a different
scent so I’d always know where I was. I mean, are you kidding me right
now?
And then there’s the fact that Cameron built me a ramp to get into the
house and has his bathroom half torn up to install a handicap shower for me
and has already ordered a lift for the stairs so I can get anywhere I need to
go.
They’ve basically thought of everything and there’s this stupid little
voice inside me, that sounds suspiciously like my late aunt, or maybe my
very-alive cousin, telling me I don’t deserve any of it. That ugly voice is
trying so hard to take root inside me, but then I think about the fact that they
really have imagined what it would be like to have me in their home
permanently, and I realized for maybe the first time I can’t make that
decision for them.
When they were all three taking turns talking about plans for the house,
or what they’d already done on short notice to make it more accessible for
me, I had an ‘aha’ moment where I realized how deep this goes between us.
I mean, they were talking about how we were soulmates, and I have
known that forever, but I’m not sure I really believed they felt the same.
Plus, they were including Theo in on all these plans, pointing things out to
him and explaining how things would eventually be and he just jumped
right in to offer more ideas and his hands.
Love shouldn’t be this easy, should it?
No, love isn’t easy. I had to fight really fucking hard to land here. I hear
the chirps of cicadas starting up and I’m instantly brought to the here and
now, all those ugly voices swept away like cobwebs from my mind as I
remember Constantine’s shaky voice earlier when he told me he loved me,
the feel of their bodies under me when they all made love to me a few days
ago, the pride in Cam’s voice as he pushed me up the ramp to their home.
And Alexander, well, I could tell there was something not quite so sure in
him. I can tell he still feels guilty for whatever went down with my cousin,
and even though the thought of them together, naked, makes me want to
puke, I force myself to let the past go. Because we really can’t move
forward together if the past is still going to be a player. We’ve all been
given a do-over together and I don’t want to waste it.
“Have we given you enough time? You ready for all your men to bug you
again?”
I can hear the smile in Cam’s voice, but I know that he’s trying so hard to
make me happy that he needs to be reassured he’s doing a good job of it.
“You guys could never bug me. I think I needed the fresh air, though.”
“Come on, I haven’t shown you the best part of the property, the reason
we bought this house out of everything we looked at.”
Normally I’d try and be all independent, asserting I could push myself
and didn’t need anyone’s help, but I really had no idea where we were
going, and if I couldn’t hold his hand like I wanted to, then letting him push
me was the next best option. Made it feel more like a co-dependency; I
actually did need him to push me the right direction, but he needed me to
need him so that he knew he had a permanent place with me.
“You guys look at a lot of places?
“Yeah. When you- when the accident happened, Mils, we were so
broken. None of us could function. Like, at all. We all had to finish high
school online because none of us could face school and all the questions
from everyone.
“It fucking destroyed us, thinking we had finally lost you.” His voice is
breaking apart, making me tear up too, because that whole situation was
just really fucking terrible.
“I’m sorry, Cam.”
“Don’t you apologize. You have nothing to apologize for, ever, you hear
me?”
I nod and hear footsteps and quiet voices behind us, talking about who
knows what.
“Anyway, our parents all more or less forced us into grief counseling
eventually, and we finally got around to seeing the world again, though
without you in it, none of us really wanted to be a part of it.”
“He’s right, Amelia Poppy. We were not in a good place. That’s why…
well, that’s why.”
I heard what Alex wasn’t saying. He wanted me to know that Sophie was
never a part of his plan, that she ended up in it because he needed
something to help him cope. I hold out my hand, reaching for the direction
of Alex’s voice and when his rough palm meets mine, I feel a shudder run
down my spine.
“After we finally started to live again, though it was just a shadow of the
life we had imagined, we got drunk one night and came up with this grand
scheme to build you your dream house or fixing one into it. I don’t know
what possessed us, we were all 19 with very few skills, but we decided that
buying something together and making it exactly how we thought you’d
like it would fix something in us.”
I stop moving forward and then Theo is helping me to stand, supporting
most of my weight with his arm around my hips.
“Reach your hands out, Amelia Poppy.”
Alex’s voice sounds reverent as he puts his hands on top of mine, the
feeling of rough bark itching my palms.
“We thought this farmhouse was exactly you. It’s like a soft denim blue
color, in case we didn’t mention that. It’s got white shutters on all windows,
and the first thing we did was build a wrap around porch and put in a swing.
“We always thought you’d be a front porch swing kind of girl, and as
soon as that went up, we felt your ghost everywhere. Every time the breeze
blew against the house and moved it, I felt you there. But this, this is the
heart of the property. This is how we knew it was meant to be.”
I hear someone climbing and branches rustling, then heavy footsteps as if
someone jumped down from something high up. And there’s something
white and huge in front of my face, lighting up my senses.
It hurts to breathe as I get stuck in all our memories, of how we slowly
fell in love as kids under this same exact type of tree.
“It’s a magnolia.”
“A damn big one. Maybe even bigger than the one by your parents’
house. This one is all ours, and I think it grew to be this big because it knew
you’d need it one day.”
Alex traces my fingers over something scratched into the trunk, and
before we even finish the outline I know exactly what I’ll find. A heart, and
&nbs
p; all our initials. Like some super cheesy film, but made real life and perfect.
“Come here, Mils. There’s this branch over here, that grew perfectly
straight out, just for you. We built you a swing.”
Constantine is carrying me, his hands igniting fire everywhere they
touch, before settling me onto a simple plank that sways gently under my
weight. I run my hands up the rough rope that is holding me up, testing it’s
strength.
“Do you like it?”
I don’t bother wiping the tears away as Constantine pushes me in shallow
arcs, I just tilt my head up and let the air consume them.
“I don’t know what to say right now. Everything…its perfect. You really
think we can do this? Live a normal life together, and be happy?”
The swing stops and I feel Cam kneeling in front of me as I wrap my legs
around what I can reach to stabilize myself. At least, that’s the reason I give
myself.
“I want to promise you yes, but we’ve already learned we don’t know
what the future holds. All I know right now is that this tree, this magnolia,
is the start of what we’re going to build, all of us, together. Whatever
happens, happens to all of us, and we figure it out.”
Alex
I can’t stop looking over at Amelia as we drive to the fire station. We’ve
had her back, been engaged, for weeks now, but somehow, I still wake up
terrified I dreamt it all. Every damn morning, I wake with my heart racing,
and if I can’t get to Amelia within five minute to reassure me she’s under
my roof, I have a panic attack.
So much time wasted not being with her, I worried that we were stifling
her, but she hasn’t made any noise of complaint yet, or insisted she needed
a bit more space. Today I was taking her into the station, because even
though a lot of the guys thought it was weird as hell that me and Theo were
engaged to the same girl, they still wanted to throw us some sort of
engagement party.
Some of them were there when Theo pulled Amelia from the burning
house and haven’t really seen her since. She definitely had fans at the fire
house, and I don’t think it’s only because she was a success story. None of
them saw her as a lesser woman because of her injuries, they’d been in the
industry long enough to know she was miraculous for moving past it.