Once. . . .

There once was a child who spoke in dreams.  The meaning the understanding in rivers and streams. The child was one with all that they saw.  The light was a ghost the darkness a claw.  Words were extinct and unable to bear weight. The sounds incomplete not expressing the core of what to make. Every day the most complex tale in a blade of grass. Patterns too great that simplicity has made crass. While I see a shape that bares little meaning. The child sees a world awash in feeling. In each molecule a universe lives.  In every speck another side it gives.

There once was a child who spoke without sound.  In each crinkle of their brow a book was bound. Most sounds are too harsh for the delicacy of thought. They interfere with the true meaning which is sought. The light brought colors that were outside of the spectrum. The beauty and brilliance was far beyond the conceived doldrums. The essence so bright it can’t be undone.  While I see a shade too faint to run. The child sees a glow that rivals the sun.  An experience of life that is second to none.

There once was a child who saw without eyes. In the core of their being they were free of all ties. The world was not bound by the limitations of mere men. What they saw went beyond the confines of sin.  Were we so lucky to see as that one does.  To know life as again as the gift it once was. To see the world without labels, boundaries or walls. To live once again complete not fractured but in alls.

Charlotte's Chance

Near the end of Chapter Six:

'It was a very near thing because they had almost made it out of the club.  Sparked by whatever insane notion, she stopped on the dance floor as “World in My Eyes” by Depeche Mode started to play.  All of a sudden she was 19 again, hanging out in one of these places for the last time, as she knew she was heading to design school.  That night she had let everything go.  She had danced her heart out, drank too much, and flirted too hard.  She would remember that night till her dying day as being one of the best nights of her life. 

The day after tomorrow she could be dead.  It wasn’t just a morbid thought any more.  It could be the truth.  Just like that this trip could be over.  She was in the company of one of the most delicious men she had ever had the chance to encounter.  Even if her over wrought moral code wouldn’t let her sleep with him, it would let her dance with him.  It would not only let her dance with him, it would even allow her to dance dirty with him.  She looked back at Thomas, and started to dance. She began moving slowly, seductively.  For a few moments he just watched her not moving, and not saying anything.  Then he pulled her into himself. 

Most people who witnessed what happened on the dance floor would call it what it was, vertical non-penetration sex set to song.  But it was a gothic club; there was a lot of that going on.  Most of the time he let her set the rhythm, and then he would take over by pulling her hips in the direction he wanted. When the song ended she had her arms around his neck, her body pressed intimately to his, and his hands on her ass as she nearly rode his thigh.  His hands slowly slid up, and lifted his hood just enough that she could see his lips. He then he lifted her veil only enough to settle his lips over hers.

She moaned into his mouth when he pushed his tongue between her teeth as the original German version of “99 Luftballons” played overhead. Her arms tightened around his neck as his hands trailed down her back pressing her even closer than when they had danced.  Suddenly he pulled back his eyes closed.

“Slap me,” he ordered in a husky but sharp tone.

Charlotte frowned, but more at the fact that he wasn’t kissing her anymore. She opened her mouth, and he cut her off before she got any words out.

“Just do it, hard.”

So she wasn’t waiting till they got back.  She pulled back, and wailed across his face as hard as she could.

He grabbed her hand, and they finally made it out of the club.  Thomas had needed that slap.  While he had been kissing her he hadn’t been able to find one single solitary good reason why he shouldn’t just pin her against the nearest wall, and have her.  However he had been reasonable enough to understand that not being able to think of a single good reason not to take her against some random nearby wall was very unreasonable.  Charlotte muddled his mind when she was being a good girl.  Naughty Charlotte was sending him into premature meltdown, and he needed to get her secured, and back to her old self quickly or his self-control wouldn’t last the night.

“I’m sorry” Charlotte whispered in the quiet of the long drive back to their base of operations.

Thomas was a little distracted making sure they weren’t being tailed, but he did eventually respond. “For?”

“I was an unmerciful tease tonight.”

“Yes, but you were supposed to be.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Got reminded of who you used to be. It’s unsettling.”

She paused, and nodded knowing that he was right, and that really had been her problem. “I’ve come a long way. I don’t want to start back peddling.  But with you---,” she stopped herself.

“Charlie, I’m not going to judge you, not now, not ever.  There’s a saying about whores, stones, and glass whorehouses that I’m sure you’re familiar with.”

Despite herself, and the twinge of self-hate she was feeling, Charlotte giggled a little.  Then started to laugh in earnest. “I fogged up your glasses pretty good huh?”

They came to a red light, and he looked over at her until she locked her eyes with his. “There aren’t words to describe the type of desire you make me feel. You respond to me without being ashamed of your own reaction, and that’s hot enough.  But when you bait me without feeling guilty or without being apologetic it’s like tossing out the Bunsen burner for a flame-thrower.  I was nearly unmanned.”

The light changed, and the force of his golden eyes was pulled away from her.  Charlotte tried unsuccessfully to suppress the shudder of sheer desire and awareness that flooded through her at his words.

“I can’t be the only woman that’s ever tried to entice you.”

His eyes didn’t leave the road as he answered. “You are the only one that has done this for the most basic reason.  It’s not because you want me to save you, protect you, or back your play.  You already have that from me. You bait me because you want me to want you for the sake of your own desire.”

Charlotte understood now why this was uncharted territory for him.  Honestly she had never had a man just desire her for the sake of desiring her.  There had been guys that had cared for her, but it hadn’t been insane love or even nearly unmanageable desire.  There had been the guys that had just wanted to get laid, and for them any woman would do.  Then as her self-esteem had done a real noise dive there were the guys that had wanted her to support them because of her business.  Charlotte had been in love, and in lust before, but she had never felt the type of emotions that Thomas Glendel made her feel. As they spent more and more time with each other she was starting to understand that he could say the same for her.

“Thomas—” she started.

“I meant what I said tonight. We’ll get to it.”

~ CHARLOTTE'S CHANCE Book 2 of The W.A.R.M. Front Series Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Excerpt From Brenda's Bounty Book 3 of The W.A.R.M. Front series

A little insight into the self-made woman:

Brenda was on her third shot of Patron, and not really understanding why that memory had presented itself so freshly upon her getting home.  All she knew was that she needed to drive it out right now. It had been her first lesson in love. Only she had been too young to understand what it meant.

“Brennie Ann. .”  Brenda started in the heavily accented way her mother used to say it. “I should’ve told you, what trouble men will make ‘or ye. The greatest disservice I ev’r did to ye was ‘ot ‘elling you what a bleedin bastard yor father was for ‘eavin us till I died.”

Her mother hadn’t lived for much longer after that night. She had been near the end when the doctor relegated her to bed rest.  Instantly her gaggle of sisters that hadn’t been able to stand Anthony Margiani had not hesitated to come to their sister’s bedside. Each and every one of them, Aunt Sarabelle, Josephine, Margery and Carolyn had come to Willie’s home and stayed to make their sister as comfortable as possible as they took care of house and the child that Tony Margiani had left behind.

Brenda shivered as she remembered the last days.  Her mother had wept and called out for Anthony.  The pain from what she was experiencing had rendered her nearly mad.  Aunt Carrie had started feeding her shots of liquor to try and ease it.  But even that was eventually not enough.  Those last days she couldn’t be consoled and the whole time she had yelled the one phrase over and over again. “Tony, I ‘ought ye loved me, ‘ow could ye ‘eave me to do this alone. Our Brennie, take care of Brennie.”

Her aunt Margie would hold her in her lap rocking her and whispering in her ear the whole time. “Don’t mind ‘er love. She’s ‘ust upset. It’ll be o’er soon.” Her aunts Margie, Carrie, Sara and Josie took turns staying with her mother or staying with her. She could always feel the wetness from their tears falling into the mop of her hair. 

Brenda quickly poured herself another shot and hit it.  She let the liquid burn making her ice blue eyes water.  At least she told herself that was why her eyes watered.  Brenda hadn’t cried over anything in over 10 years.  Not something she was proud of, just a fact. 

She had spent so many years crying, over her mother, over her jilted at the alter status, over years and years of trying to please a man that only saw his failure in the eyes of his daughter. It had taken her father 2 years after the death of her mother to actually come back to Wales for her.  By then she was the community child of her four aunts, and the 6 children that were her cousins that they were also trying to raise. Her aunts were good women, but also brutal women.  Only Josie and Carrie where even still married. They spoke their mind and didn’t care who heard it or how graphic it got. They hadn’t spared Brenda’s ears over the evils of her father those years after they had bitterly buried their sister as she had jumped from house to house.

She remembered the day like it had just happened.  She had been on the streets hustling tourists.  Wasn’t something she had been proud of, but it was what all the kids were doing.  Little wharf rats they had called them. They would do bait and switch on unsuspecting travelers.  Take them through seedy neighborhoods and get them lost there. It was amazing how many people came to England looking for a waifish orphan child to swindle them. Even in the 80’s when Brenda was coming of age they expected 17^th century.  She and her little crew saw opportunity and were there to deliver.

Punk rock had started to take over the airwaves and British teens and pre teens alike became rebellious and cliquish. Walking around with a chip on their shoulder and willing to thumb their noses at authority. She had been 12 years old and all bony limbs in one of her punk girl outfits.  Her favorite in fact was a red plaid school girl skirt, some torn fishnets, Doc Martens, a ripped Sid and Nancy T-Shirt and a moppish haircut like the one Chrissie Hynde wore.  All bought and paid for by her swindling money. Her aunts had gotten to the point where they didn’t ask the child how she came about these funds knowing they wouldn’t like the answer.

“Little girl, what’s your name?” the man called from the other side of the street.

She had barely glanced at him as she yelled. “Piss off,” in her roughest voice.

“Brennie..” he had called. “Brennie Ann.”

Brennie had been fine, it was the Brennie Ann that had set her off. She had turned enraged by being called that. “Sod it off old man, no one in the bleedin ‘ell calls me that any- .” she had thought to finally push her moppish bangs out of her eyes and stopped speaking as she recognized the man. “Pa,” she whispered.

He nodded down at her as he stared at her as if he couldn’t look away. “Christ you look just like her,” he whispered.

And then the rage came flooding back. “You piss’r! You left us! You left ‘er to die!” She threw herself at him trying to hit him. In her rage she only noticed after she began to get tired that he wasn’t fighting back. He was taking it; letting her rage against him.  As she wore herself out she could finally hear what he was saying.

“Mi bella, mi dispiace.” My beauty, I’m sorry.

Her rage gave way to tears as her hits became weaker and less impassioned.  He finally was able to lift her up and just hold her as she wept.

Sacramento California hadn’t been a terrible place for a teenage girl to grow up.  If you didn’t spend the whole time being a self-righteous brat.  Of course Brenda had spent most of her years with her father reminding him of what he had done wrong. Melanie, her dad’s new wife had put an end to that a few years after he had moved her there. Luckily Brenda had found the street punks in Sacramento so she always had someone to go whine too when home life became unbearable.  

But something odd happened to her when her first baby brother was born.  It had happened right there in the hospital when she had seen him for the first time.

“There he is Brennie. Your little brother, Lawrence.” She had moved her moppy bangs out of her face to stare at the bundle from the window.  He had looked so perfect, unspoiled.  She had felt this welling of hope.  It would be different for him.  She would see to it. He would be a good man, and he wouldn’t leave his family just because times got tough.  There was hope still.

It had been the same with the twins, Warren and Walter.  Each little boy represented an opportunity to build a new man.  One that would be the way they were in storybooks, and not the way they were in real life.

Brenda's Bounty Coming November 2016

Catch the 1st two books of the Series, Sandra's Social and Charlotte's Chance on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords

w/ love

Sue