CHAPTER 10

BROCK STORM

            I was dreaming of holding Destiny in my arms. She didn’t fit quite right, and when I tried to kiss her forehead, my lips didn’t quite make contact. Also, I couldn’t smell the lilac scent of her shampoo. Then Jezebel suddenly appeared wearing a devilish grin. I awoke with start.

            I tossed aside the pillow I had been clutching to my chest. No wonder it didn’t feel like Destiny had the previous day. She had fit so well as we molded together. I was comforting her, but I in turn felt comforted. It felt like I was what? Home?

            So why was I going to marry Nora? Because I had to. Marry Nora, or go to prison. For she knew I had been a vigilante serial killer. I made myself think of Nora as I meandered to the bathroom. It wasn’t right to be feeling desire for another woman besides my fiancée.

Yet when I spied Destiny’s bottle of lilac scented shampoo, I couldn’t help flipping back the top and sniffing. Although a pleasing fragrance, it was more alluring mixed with the scent of Destiny herself.

I had borrowed Bentley Bonnano’s pickup truck to move Destiny’s bed as well as a small dresser to my acreage in the country. I also borrowed Bent himself. Bent, Destiny and myself were quite cozy crammed into the cab of the pickup. Destiny was pressed extra close to me, I suppose in an effort to distance herself from Bent. It was both tantalizing and frustrating.

After moving some of Destiny’s things, we went to buy a twin bed for Nora to sleep on. She was due to arrive sometime that evening. Nora had shown her superiors proof that Malcolm Reed intended to do Destiny and or me harm. So they assigned her to watch Destiny for at least three days.

With everything in place, Destiny and I retired to the back porch with big glasses of raspberry flavored iced tea to watch the sunset. Destiny had changed from a knee length sundress into a light pink t-shirt and black gym shorts. We sat side by side on the porch swing.

“It’s so peaceful here,” Destiny said as she stretched her fantastic legs out in front of her.

I tried not to look at the spectacular flesh of the lower half of her body. I was days away from marrying another woman. Why was I so keenly aware of Destiny’s exquisite beauty? The strange thing I was trying to understand was the differences between the two women. Nora was an absolute knockout. But she was hard, cold, and controlling. But with Destiny, something like light radiated from her personality. It gave her a wholesome beauty I couldn’t get my mind around. Was it just because she because she was a former porn star that this unsettled me? Was I being judgmental?

“I love it here,” I managed to say without stammering as I eyed her wiggling toes, the nails of which were painted light pink.

“It’s so cool how you can watch the sunset from here and the sunrise from the other end of the porch,” Destiny declared.

“It is,” I agreed as I subtly inspected the arch of her foot and the curve at her ankle.

“This raspberry tea is fantastic, ” Destiny said before she took a long pull and sighed with satisfaction.

“Thank Bent. He made it,” I told her.

“I will,” she said with a contented grin. “By the way, where is he?”

“I think he was setting up his tent in the woods.”

“Setting up a tent in the woods? Why?”

“To keep guard for intruders,” I replied. “He’ll be in a spot where it will be impossible to sneak in here without him noticing. Unless they go through about a mile of thick corn.”

“I feel bad that he’s gonna sleep in the woods to protect me,” Destiny said with a frown.

“No need to feel bad,” I told her. “Bent’s excited to have a reason to camp.”

“Really?” she asked, turning her head to look toward the woods.

“Really,” I assured her, taking advantage of her turned head so I could stare at her luscious calves and perfect knees. Then, feeling guilty, I pinched my eyes closed and looked away. Oh the human condition!

“That’s good to know,” she said before she downed the rest of her beverage. “I’m gonna get some more of this delicious tea.”

I took a sip of my tea and had to agree that it was quite tasty. The lustful inclinations I was battling was about to cause a bodyguarding blunder. I should have been praying for strength, not trying to sneak peaks of flesh.

I watched the sun start to disappear below the horizon and sat in awe of the color show of bright lavender, pink and orange along with darker shades of blue. All of this amongst sparse cumulous clouds that highlighted the colors. I marveled at how calm Destiny seemed. Did she not realize she could be in imminent danger? I needed to make sure she was aware.

“Say, Dee,” I began when she returned through the back door. “You seem pretty at ease for someone that has a probable hit out on them.”

She sat back down and tucked one of her legs under the other. Was it my imagination, or did she sit closer to me?

“I’m in good hands,” she said, shrugging and giving my knee a little pat. “Besides, I gathered from what Mary Gold said that if I stick with you, I’ll be fine. I intend to do just that. Unless you end up telling me to get lost or something.”

“Not a chance,” I reassured her, peaking at her thigh.

“Plus, last night I had a good little prayer session,” she told me. “I had terrible anxiety. Not only because I had been stalked and there was a threat of an attack, but my little tranquil world of hanging with my aunt and church family had been disrupted. As I prayed and flipped through scriptures, I came to first John chapter 4.”

“Let me guess,” I interrupted. “There is no fear in love.”

“Yes!” Destiny’s bright countenance increased yet another watt, which I didn’t think was possible. “Sin has a large element of fear coupled with it. When we seek God and walk in the Spirit, we have eternal confidence and peace in God. When we pursue carnal desires, whether that is fleshly sex lusts, wealth, power, prestige, or drunkenness, we walk in darkness and at the bottom of it all is fear.”

“I completely concur,” I said, feeling guilty about my lustful inspection of her legs.

“The thing I find the most mindboggling was just how wrapped up I was with all of the sinful characteristics I just mentioned. Obviously, being in porn was a major sexual dysfunction. But I was in it for the money, power, and even the circumstantial prestige that it brought. Then I indulged in heavy amounts of pot and alcohol to numb my conscience. I used speed and cocaine to get myself up for stripping. When Sophie and I got out of the sex trade and moved back to the Midwest, we both tried to quit smoking pot and drinking.

“I actually became very depressed. I had been self-medicating for years and didn’t even fully realize it. So I wasn’t very successful. But Sophie was. She started exercising and reading spiritual books. I think my addictions were just as much to blame for our breakup as was her religious convictions.”

“But now you’re clean, right?”

“I am,” she said happily as she took another sip of tea. “I’m not gonna say I haven’t been tempted, especially with this ongoing ordeal. But prayer and Bible study have given me strength. Not just from chemical abuse, but all of my sins. Sex, pride, the love of money.”

“It’s interesting,” I said. “You left out the sin that has plagued me the most heavily.”

“What’s that?”

“Violence.”

“God can forgive anything Brock,” Destiny said smiling and pronouncing ‘anything’ slowly to emphasize her statement.

I smiled back and drained the rest of my tea, smacking my lips. Destiny probably thought by violence that I was talking about roughing up guys as a bouncer. My heart rate increased as I considered telling Destiny the whole bloody story.

“I’m gonna get some more tea,” I said, rising.

“Would you mind getting me some more?” Destiny said with a little giggle as she offered me her empty glass.

“Wow, you’re really thirsty,” I said as I took her glass.

I weighed the risks of telling Destiny about my violent past as I refreshed our beverages. She likely would be appalled and no longer want to be friends. Yet I longed to confess my dark sins to a fellow brother or sister in Christ before I was baptized. Who better than someone who also had an exceptionally dark, albeit different, past?

  I felt a little lightheaded as I walked back to the porch, yet very content and open. I handed Destiny her tea and opened my mouth to ask her if she could keep a secret. I noticed that she frowned as her hands wiggled in her shorts pockets.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know where my phone is,” she replied.

“It’s on the kitchen table.”

“I better see if I have any messages,” Destiny declared as she sat her glass of tea on the porch floor and left for the kitchen.

When she returned a half minute later, she stumbled and twisted her ankle coming out of the door. She clutched at the door handle to keep from falling and winced in pain. Then she hobbled quickly in a few circles in an attempt to walk it off, saying ‘ouch’ several times. Then she sat down hard next to me.

Without thinking, I pulled her leg onto my lap and began rubbing first her ankle and then her foot.

“Mmm, that feels good,” she purred.

“Tell me what you think of Nora,” I blurted, trying to divert our attention from this seemingly innocent, but somehow intimate, act I was performing.

“I don’t really know her,” she said with shrug.

“I know, but what do you think of her from what you do know? Your first impression?”

“She’s all right,” she said, shrugging again.

“She’s all right,” I laughed. “You might as well say you don’t like her.”

“Well, what am I supposed to say?” she asked, slurring the word ‘supposed’ for some reason. Then giggling.

“I want you to be honest with me,” I told her.

“Do you?” she replied with a sultry smile that puzzled me. She winked. Then she took a long pull on her iced tea.

“I do.”

“Okay,” she said and sighed with a strange heaviness. “Are you sure you want the truth?”

“Absolutely.”

“What if you can’t handle the truth?”

“Trust me. I can handle the truth,” I promised her.

“You can’t handle the truth,” she said in a deep voice trying to imitate Jack Nicholson from the movie “A Few Good Men.” Then she giggled some more, and I frowned. Destiny was loopy; she must be getting tired, I thought. She took another long drink of tea, almost draining the entire large glass. That would be her third. With all of that caffeine, how could she be getting tired?

“Seriously, Dee, I want you to be honest.”

“You really want me to be honest?” she asked, bungling the word ‘honest’ this time.

“I do.”

All merriment left her face. She looked at me with misty eyes for a long moment before she spoke.

“I love you,” she said so quietly that I didn’t know if I heard her right.

“Huh?” I replied dumbly.

“Ever since you saved me from being raped,” she began. “The moments afterward were the most precious moments I ever spent with a man. Maybe it was because I was so terrified, but being wrapped in your arms, I felt so incredibly safe. Then when you told me I got you … oh, my!”

Destiny put her hands to her face and began to quietly sob. I was stunned, absolutely dumbfounded. I gently removed her leg from my lap, slid up close to her, and draped an arm awkwardly around her shoulder.

“Dee, it’s okay,” I stammered and she settled down. She nestled her head into the crook of my neck. My arm relaxed around her and I gently pulled her into me. She folded her arms in front of her.

“That sounded weird,” she declared as she stretched her legs out in front of her. Half of me wished she wouldn’t have, and the other half was transfixed with the sight.

“Well, it wasn’t what I was expecting,” I admitted. “But not weird.”

I marveled at how well we fit together, with her leaning into me and me wrapping her gently into myself.

“It’s just,” she croaked. “In the time after that horrible night, I began to fantasize about you and me. I even changed your gentle words in my ear from ‘I got you’ to ‘I love you’ when I daydreamed. But you and I didn’t really know each other, so I know it was me being silly. But now that I am getting to know you all these years later, the reality of you is even better than my fantasy.”

“How can that be?” I mumbled, knowing that she didn’t know what a ruthless killer I was. Plus, she was kind of garbling most of her words. Was I even hearing her right? Destiny leaned up and looked into my face with searching eyes. She put her hands softly onto my cheeks.

“Guys like you are usually arrogant and cocky,” she told me, her face only a few inches from mine. Her warm breath was sensual and warm on my skin, but smelled like… Was it alcohol?

 “But you are so gentle and sweet for a big muscle stud,” she continued. “I assumed that  night it was just the circumstances that made you so caring and gentle. Now I know that it is really who you are.”

“Dee, I … you don’t really know me as well as you might think.”

“Oh, I’m so embarrassed,” she blubbered as she abruptly pushed away from me and stood.

“No, Dee, don’t be,” I insisted, grabbing onto her hand.

 Just as she stood, a blood curdling scream erupted right in front of us and a hideous, monstrous face loomed up from the front of the porch. Destiny flung herself into me as I began to rise. The porch swing we had been sitting on swiveled and bounced from the two chains that hung from the big wooden awning. When our bodies collided, we both toppled over backwards onto the floor, and thankfully she landed on top of me instead of the other way around. I was about to shove her off of me and spring into action when I saw that the monster was actually Bent.

“You idiot!” I barked. “What was that?”

“Sorry, guys,” Bent said with hound dog eyes. He held a hideous Halloween mask of an ogre creature in his hand.  “Just a little joke.”

“Given our situation, it was in very poor taste,” I told him.

I was already kicking myself for not being prepared. How could Bent playing a little prank make me end up toppled over backwards on a porch spring with the woman I was supposed to be protecting? Man, I was more than rusty! Yet when I looked at Destiny, she was staring at me with a stricken expression. Our faces were only inches apart with our limbs tangled. It was then I noticed something warm and wet on my thigh. Was it blood?  Was Destiny hurt?