Chapter Ten: A Past of Toxicity and Future Made of Moon Beams
Hale clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw popped as he thought of that near-priceless memory card that Rosamund had inadvertently stolen. He clenched his manicured nailed hand into a fist and pounded the top of his desk's gleaming surface as every minute was potentially another minute that the card's contents were exposed and everything he'd worked, sweated, and directed others killed for, would come tumbling down like the Walls of Jericho and his quest for political power and the quenching of his corruption would end.
In the space of time before Gemma and some of the club brothers descended on her childhood home. Rosamund paced around the kitchen island, her anxiety growing as she mentally went through her cooking checklist. Tig let Rosamund move around the kitchen once the food was delivered and let her begin dicing small mounds of chives, lemon grass and scallions before creating two healthy-sized piles of fluffy lemon and lime zest.
Tig leaned in the doorway and popped open a long-necked bottle of beer as Rosamund dumped some wine, a handful of some of the chopped herbs and a copious handful of crushed, fresh garlic and an overflowing tablespoon of black pepper and enough salt to make your cardiologist frown in disapproval into two large gallon-sized storage bags.
She dropped in the contents of two packages of thick-cut bone-in pork chops into the bags and sealed them, swirling the contents so the meat could start sucking up the salt, pepper, and seasonings.
Rosamund began rinsing and peeling a large colander full of potatoes. She stared out at the window and lost herself in thoughts of the past, future and current moment, her hands rinsing the spuds, peeling them until they were smooth.
Rosamund was so stuck in the past and her first culinary lesson that she didn't hear Tig walk up behind her until his lips were suddenly on the back of her neck and his hands on the sink edge on either side of her, locking her into the circle of his embrace of barely restrained lust.
"You okay doll?"
Rosamund dropped the metal peeler and potato she'd been holding. "I will be," she admitted.
"What do you need?" Tig asked as he dropped her hands on the supple flesh of her hips and squeezed urgently. He would've done anything she'd asked, even if she wanted her ice for her raspberry margarita from the peak of Mt. Everest or shrimp cocktail from the albino shrimp hanging around the Marianas Trench.
Rosamund plucked a nearby dishtowel and stifled a surprised laugh. Tig didn't need to wait long to her to explain.
"I can't get used to being able to make a decision on my own, to decide something that just won't be taken away later," she added as she shook her head and turned in the tight circle of his arms to look up at him.
Tig stared down into her ethereal face, her features strained with worry and ugly fear. Rosamund lifted her hands and placed them on his chest, his heart thudded strongly under her palm as she looked up and returned his penetrative eyes full of blue fire.
"Are you really different than everyone else? Do you really not have an agenda that I need to follow?" Rosamund whispered as she moved her palms in slow circles over his chest.
Tig reached up and caught her hands, sliding her hands up to his mouth so he could press his lips against her palms. "I just want ya to love me doll, be yourself, but be with me."
Rosamund closed her eyes as the weight of his eyes became too much and she focused on the heat of his exhale with each of his spoken words.
"Is it more lies? More empty promises where in the end I always lose?" Rosamund asked herself before Tig stopped her thought process dead in its tracks when he crushed his lips to hers as his hands seemed to move everywhere on her body as though he could find the root of her fear and rip it out, expose it to the light and asphyxiate it with hope.
Rosamund felt how easily she could let Tig catch, cradle, and love her. She moaned when he took his lips and hands away, breathing hard. He knew that he should let Rosamund destress and try to find her feet. Tig brushed her hair back off her forehead, her eyes were bloodshot and tired.
"Maybe a nap before everyone gets here?" Tig suggested after he scanned the counters of fruit and produce and meat marinating in uniform blue zippered plastic bags, swimming in a spicy brown marinade.
Rosamund slipped her arms around Tig's waist and brought her lips to press against his. "Mmmm, a nap will be good after I get to all of this."
Tig grabbed a couple more beers and reluctantly left the kitchen. He leaned against the wall directly outside the kitchen and listened to her chop thick stalks of celery, dice lush, red tomatoes and macerate a triple berry blend with a heavy-handed dose of sugar.
Tig quickly drained the first beer, feeling his chest and abdominal cavity still on fire even after the cold alcoholic belly-filling deluge.
As he worked on his second beer, he closed his eyes and listened as Rosamund continued chopping and dicing, preparing a quintet of delight appetizers, a savory entrée with a few sides, rolls, a green salad, and a decadent chocolate cake.
Rosamund poured herself a carbonated cola soda after she put the roast in the oven, she nearly tripped over Tig's feet from where he was sitting and leaning against the wall directly outside the kitchen.
"Are you alright?" Rosamund asked as Tig was slow to wake up until he remembered what they were doing there together.
For a moment Tig felt vulnerable and exposed, unsure of how much his face held an expression of pure need and lustful want.
"Yeah doll, just restin'," Tig said vaguely as he rose to his feet.
"Everything in there under control?" he teased as he nodded back at the kitchen. Silent save for the intermittent beeps from the oven timer.
Rosamund smiled and covered a yawn, "definitely time to nap or just lay down."
Tig glanced at the clock over the brick mantle, "we got a couple hours of quiet."
As Tig left his empty beer bottles on a low ash coffee table and followed her to the master bedroom.
While Rosamund washed her face and Tig arranged the bed's linen, back in Charming, Jacob Hale got a call from a friend of his who worked in law enforcement and provided him with a list of names that the van could belong to and were also registered within one hundred miles of Charming.
Hale frowned as he traced his manicured nail down the list, not recognizing any names until he got to Morrow, Clay Charming, CA.
"Goddammit," Hale shouted, slamming his fist for a record number of times on his desk since he'd purchased it from a reclusive Hollywood director. "I knew that fucking biker knew more," he ranted as he struggled into his trench coat and hustled to one of his many sedans that Rosamund hadn't stolen.
Hale kept the accelerator pressed to the floor as he crossed the city to the Teller-Morrow shop and screeched to a halt in front of the office .
Time passed easily for Gemma and the SAMCRO boys as they continued north, and Hector Salazar returned like a lap dog when ordered back to Charming by Hale.
The money was too high to refuse, Salazar hated bowing and scraping in front of Hale. He despised himself that he bent the knee towards the reptilian mayor who was more mutant than human. Hector watched the miles tick by on the odometer, grinding his teeth as he followed the orders hissed by the slithering, slimy mayor, trying to focus on the money and how it would create a new life for Luisa and himself.
"All for you baby," Hector whispered to himself as he pressed the rough pads of his fingertips to a wallet-sized picture he kept with him at all times. Her high school graduation photo boasted bent corners but still had her childish scrawling on the back, declaring her love with looping hearts in blue ink.
As Hale arrived at the Teller-Morrow shop and found Morrow gone, his fury hit the roof and the vein in the middle of his forehead threatened to pop. Opie was one of the guys that stayed behind to help mind the shop and quickly told one of the prospects to go call Clay and let him know the illustrious mayor with an ego that intimidated Mt. Everest had arrived and was growing as red as a fresh, summer tomato, fresh from the vine.
As Opie tried to talk Hale off a homicidal ledge and attempted to field his questions and mollify his accusations, hours, and hours north, Tig stirred from his alcohol-touched nap and rolled to his side to find Rosamund on her back, staring up at the ceiling.
"Hey, you okay?" Tig asked, instantly alert and struggling to sit upright on the plush mattress.
"Mmmm hmmm," Rosamund murmured without taking her eyes off the creamy white ceiling.
"Rose?" Tig rasped.
She rolled towards him and reached out a hand to cup his jaw. "I'm okay," Rosamund whispered as she traced her thumb across his lower lip.
Tig shot out a hand and captured her wrist, tugging her closer. He was eternally grateful to the very gamma rays emitted from the sun when Rosamund allowed him to pull her into his arms and wrap her up in his strong embrace.
"Talk to me baby?" Tig growled in a whisper that was close to a demand.
Rosamund shook her head, unsure of how to summarize the amount of racing thoughts that were threatening to drown her on a land-locked lighthouse. "I think I smell the roast," she murmured and disentangled herself from his arms.
Tig yanked her back towards him, his eyes looking deep inside her, trying to find and extinguish her gushing anxiety. Rosamund's adrenaline began to spout forth like an oil spill in the Pacific Ocean as Tig wrapped her up in his arms like a hungry octopus that inexplicably had extra tentacles.
"Hey," he murmured and squeezed the round cap of her shoulder.
Rosamund stopped squirming and sagged against him, her words muffled when she finally did speak. "Am I really safe now?" she asked, her words hot against his chest with every spoken syllable.
"I'll destroy the cloud that blocks your sunlight," Tig growled as he captured her lips under his.
Rosamund moaned into his mouth before he lifted his lips. "Let go baby," he hoarsely rasped, pushing her onto her back and smoothing his hands down her sides.
She couldn't find enough breath to form words as he pushed her thighs apart and slid closer to her clothed center.
"Trust me," Tig added as he urgently squeezed her supple hips.
Rosamund nodded as she raised her hands and danced her fingertips down to the front of Tig's pants and fumbled with the zipper. "I'm trying, I swear," she murmured on a choked whisper.
Tig was satisfied beyond words that her trying involved freeing his rapidly hardening cock as she let him relieve her of her own pants.
He didn't try to yank her shirt open when he felt a wave of tension spill through her when her disfigured skin threatened to be exposed to the light. Rosamund began to retreat like a vampire until Tig abandoned tugging at the plastic buttons of her shirt.
"You want this?" Tig asked on a groan, his chest heaving as he slipped a hand between them to grip the painfully hard length of his cock.
Rosamund nodded as he smoothed the round, bulbous tip of his rigid length along the soft, shell-pink folds of her pussy.
"Tell me," he growled as he gripped his shaft tighter and bobbed the sensitive head shallowly in and out of her tight, wet center.
"I want this," Rosamund managed breathlessly as she dropped a hand over his, squeezing her hand over his as he circled her intimate opening. "I want you," she added as she urged him to slide into her.
Tig needed no further encouragement as he plunged inside of her. "Say that again," he practically begged as he rhythmically thrust his rigid length to the hilt inside of her, his balls slapping against her as their intimate flesh wetly kissed.
"I want you," Rosamund gasped as she tightened her thighs around his waist and dug her hands into the gentle curve of his lower back.
Tig tightened his arms around her and buried his head in the curve of where her shoulder and neck met, his breathing growing labored as he approached a climatic precipice. "Again," he panted as his balls pulled up close to his body, ready to explode.
"I want you," Rosamund moaned as his cock's quick pistoning, assaulted the spongy cluster of oversensitive nerve cells deep inside her until she was bucking her hips to meet each of his plunges, keeping pace even as his thrusting became erratic. "You," she cried out as her spine bowed as she was hit with an orgasmic rogue wave.
Tig squeezed his eyes shut as he quickly followed her into a body-shuddering climax.
As they both caught their breath and let their feet come back to earth, back in Charming, Hale paced the Teller-Morrow shop, demanding to talk to Clay.
Opie followed and tried to play peacemaker as the reptilian mayor ranted and then hit his shin on a red toolbox.
"Where's Clay?" Hale shouted as he stomped towards Opie and pointed his twisted finger up into his face. Jack facing off against a flesh-eating Giant fresh from the top of the beanstalk.
As Opie tried to stall Hale, offering him booze, up north, Tig eventually allowed Rosamund to slide out from underneath him and clean up. She did a couple loads of laundry with the overpriced detergent pods she'd asked Tig to add to the shopping list. Tig walked up behind her as she tossed a teal and dark blue pod into the churning water.
"What do ya need me to do doll?" Tig murmured as he pressed his lips to the side of her neck.
He had sensed her rising anxiety at so much more being added to her emotional and psychological plate at once.
Rosamund leaned back against him and allowed herself a moment to breathe. "Could you go strip the bed linen and then help me set the table?"
Tig squeezed her tighter, his answer plain in his hands moving over her body.
In the space of time before Gemma and the SAMCRO guys took the final exit into the subdivision and pulled to a stop in the driveway of Gemma's childhood home, Tig and Rosamund set the table with sturdy paper plates and plastic wine glasses.
Tig watched as Rosamund arranged appetizers, lush slices of fruit and blue cheese on an oval platter.
As Clay climbed off his bike, his phone rang. He looked down to see Hale on the caller ID.
He shook his head and sighed heavily as he answered on the third ring.
"Where the fuck are you Clay?" came Hale's high-pitched greeting.
"Beer run man, I'll be right there," Clay chuckled.
"I've paid you a lot of money Clay, I expect a return."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm taking care of it," Clay grumbled and abruptly ended the call.
Back at the Teller-Morrow shop on the other end of the line, Hale stomped to his luxury sedan to pout inside the plush air-conditioned interior.
As Gemma made her way up the familiar driveway of her youth in her impossibly high boots, she didn't have to decide whether to use her key or not when Tig opened the door before they stepped onto the fern covered porch.
Before Tig unlocked the deadbolt and pulled open the heavy door, Rosamund reached out and clutched his forearm. "Wait," she spit out, feeling paralyzed by the deluge of people approaching.
"Hey, it'll be okay baby," Tig murmured and urgently pressed his lips to her. Tig lifted his lips from hers and dragged his gaze down the front of her body and back up to meet her eyes, making her blush with his unspoken vulgar appraisal.
Tig reached for Rosamund's hand and squeezed it gently as he began introducing her to everyone by her full name after everyone filled the airy foyer.
"This is Rosamund Vinzenci."
"Hi, please call me Rose," she said as she shook Gemma's hand first, nerves making her hands clammy.
"Nice to meet you, Rose," Gemma said before pausing a beat, thinking briefly to how happy Nate would be to know there was a rose back under his roof.
Gemma took over the introductions before everyone split to unpack the van.
Rosamund was lightheaded with the whirlwind of meeting Clay, Bobby, Juice, Chibs and finally Chuckie. She ducked away as soon as she could to the kitchen to absently stir a red wine and black peppercorn reduction.
Tig couldn't wait to get Gemma alone and followed her down the hallway as he carried her suitcase to the second bedroom and closed the door behind them. Gemma pulled the weathered box with the ring from her purse before Tig could ask, she had seen the antsy waves spilling from him the moment he pulled open the door.
"Thanks Gem," Tig murmured raggedly and dropped heavily to the surface of the neatly made bed as the weight of the ring took the wind out of his sails and made his knees weak.
"You okay Tigger?" Gemma asked as she settled next to him.
Tig nodded his head, struggling to find his words, fracking for suppressed emotions and feelings he never thought would be uncovered again.
Gemma rested her hand over his as he found himself pouring out his fears that Rosamund would reject him.
As Gemma continued to listen to Tig, out in the spacious kitchen, Rosamund carefully pulled the pork roast from the oven and settled it on the tile countertop.
She couldn't help but jump when Clay's voice sounded from the doorway.
"You really pissed off your uncle."
Rosamund looked over at him as she poured the red wine reduction over the roast. "I wish I could've seen his face when he saw the empty safe," she chuckled.
Clay parroted her chuckle as he walked further into the kitchen and plucked a cold beer from the fridge.
As Clay and Rosamund discussed the stolen memory card and speculated on the content's, Juice, and the rest of the guys all began to mill in and out of the kitchen, eager for booze and a homemade meal after so many hours on the road.
Tig and Gemma rejoined everyone in the kitchen.
Rosamund met Tig's eyes across the room before he made his way to her side where she was leaning against the counter snacking on some cucumber rounds, cherry tomatoes and Vidalia onion dip.
Dinner passed without much conversation as everyone ate until their pants felt too tight, Rosamund's anxiety had led to an army-sized meal for a small group of Boy Scouts.
The guys made their way out to the backyard and lit up respective cigarettes, cigars and fat joints after Gemma shooed them out of the kitchen so she could clean up with Rosamund.
Gemma watched Rosamund stack up the used plates, some soggy from the salad dressing slowly bloating the paper fibers. "I, uh, I brought some clothes from my daughter. They'll be a little roomy."
"Thank you," Rosamund said genuinely and dampened a paper towel before she started wiping down the counters.
"Gemma?"
Before Gemma looked over at the sound of her name, Tig paused just outside the kitchen, slowing his breathing, and straining his ears as Rosamund spoke lowly.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Of course you can," Gemma said quickly and set aside the plastic cups she'd been gathering from the table.
"Can I trust Tig?" Rosamund asked softly.
"Oh honey," Gemma soothed and plucked the damp paper towel out of Rosamund's hand before she pulled her into a strong hug. "I don't know anything about you, but I can promise you that you'll never be safer than with Tig."