The Rescuer Ch. 04

I'd promised Emma so very long ago, to never pry fully into her reasons for sending me away that night, in the hammock at the huge farm's Pecan Groves.

If I loved Em, which I still did, I had to keep my word. Part of my own mind had been walled off just to make that even possible. Luckily being a Trustee, having a full time job, working on my secret projects in my squalid little office, taking care of Ruthy, and dealing with all of my relationships that either failed to fully come about, or got destroyed by the meanness of other people?

I'd been too busy the last few years to even dwell on the true reasons for that old pain.

Jenny kept looking at me... in that new way that Emma must have taught her... and finally she nodded at me.

Whatever she found behind my own eyes had just eliminated the need for me to explain very much more. Jenny finally knew that I wasn't angry with her, about anything she had done in New York. Sleeping with Emma, cavorting around with Veronica, or even missing out on the chance to learn the kinds of secrets that would probably destroy me one day.

It took me holding Jenny tight in the deeper and even more secure shadows... looking right back at her and giving one more little nod... to finally put us back where WE needed to have been all along the last few weeks.

"I told Veronica what I couldn't tell Emma. I am so fucking afraid of losing you! I mean the relationship that we already have together right now! As artists! The statue is finished. There is no reason for you to visit me anymore at the loft! I love meeting with Avery downtown now. Someday, I will be going back up to see Emma at her farm. I'll sleep with her again, and hold her in her own attic bedroom, and we will both make each other scream again! But if you should completely disappear from my life tomorrow? The other two Trustees can absolutely do everything for me that ONLY you used to. Except for this one thing!"

The dark eyes grew wild and desperate again for a moment, before the voice Jenny had finally learned to use took back over.

"It's the Art! I'm sort of running creatively on empty! I'm so scared! People are starting to look at ME for THEIR inspiration now! They need ME to come up with something NEW! I just can't! Not right now! Even my roommates are worried about that! We both took so many MONTHS of their creative lives away, when they agreed to help US create the monster down in the garden! Without the Museum Project money, they can't afford to live in a place as expensive as YOUR loft! That you created for me! I'm lost! I feel afraid! I don't want to lose YOU! Or miss out on what WE would be creating next!"

The pain and fear in Jenny's watering eyes was all too real. Luckily I had the answer to her question already figured out. A long time ago. But as so many times before, I had to wait for the right moment to tell her. I'd figured on meeting with her sometime next week, to alleviate her worries about the future then. There was so many other better things to discuss right now!

Still, I forced myself to be patient, and let Jenny continue.

"Can you understand why I couldn't tell Emma that first! I could finally see what losing YOU has done to her and her life! How cruel would it have been for me to share all those secrets? And how much time WE had really been spending together? While we figured out how to build the statue! Sure, Avery had let her know how close we've become! But hearing that from my own lips? And how selfish I was being about losing you, as just an artistic collaborator? When she's given up her ENTIRE life with you for the sake of that damn Trust? How painful it must have been for Emma? To know that I would be seeing you, and holding you, just a few hours after I landed back home?"

Jenny's tears kept on falling in the sudden unexpected silence, finally giving me the opening to say a few words, and I needed to make sure that they were the perfect ones.

"Please tell me exactly what you want of me. I'll do my best to make sure that it happens. Just be honest, and don't leave anything out this time. Ok?"

A few more tears fell as Jenny nodded, and tried so hard to comply. This was the exact moment I had been fearing for so many years.

"... I'm not ready to go it alone right now... not without your help with my art... and giving me goals of things to do... to keep my recovery on track... I can't stand the thought of not seeing you around the loft a few times a month... who would keep it cleaned and organized if you didn't do that for me... but I want something more than that... if there really is someone in your life again... or almost so... tell me about her... then when the moment is right... tell her about me... I want to keep what WE have when we are alone together in my loft the same... even if that means me coming and screaming... and you still always holding off from joining me... I still need YOU touching me and massaging my body... or maybe even finally taking a shower with me... I want that sort of intimacy to keep happening... if it can... is that even possible?... but even more importantly I NEED you to give me another project... one that will refocus my friends too... and get them back on the path that WE interrupted both of them on... they need a little more time to restart their lives... just like I do... so tell me her name... this woman that might take all of that away from me and my friends... please... tell me her name... "

My own heart felt like it was breaking now, too.

No one really knew what Keeley had come to mean to me.

I'd kept her a complete secret from as many people as possible. Far too many friends and enemies had either learned or guessed about my relationship with Karen. That had put her in danger, and her little boy as well. To try and hurt ME, someone had exposed the truth about my past and family to that poor girl! Long before it would have EVER been necessary to do so!

I'd lost Karen almost completely from my life because of that treachery... now only Emma and Avery had dealings with her... and I had lost yet another piece of myself when she had understandably run away.

This time, not even Jack knew about Keeley.

The martial arts instructor, that formed the backbone of my fight against the forces trying to destroy the Trust, was completely in the dark about my little redhead. It wasn't that I didn't fully trust my old friend, but SOMEONE had let Anthony know about Karen. Whether or not my so-called cousin had tried to ruin my life again, or he had just taken advantage of the situation? I still hadn't found out.

How many people DID know how much I loved Keeley right now?

Kathy, the house mom at the strip club? Shelly? William the bouncer? Andrea certainly did, but who knew where she was these days? Andrea was yet another woman that had completely vanished from my life! Four people? Was that really all that knew for certain?

Shelly wasn't all that trustworthy, not in the long run. But even the worst side of her personality, The Bitch, that everyone was so afraid of? With what she had to lose, if she finally made a REAL enemy out of me? I felt my secret feelings for Keeley would be safe with her.

At least as long as Shelly kept enough physical, emotional and sexual distance away from MY little redhead! Maybe I could even trust that blonde terror, to keep an eye on Keeley for me, if only for just a few more months.

The house mom, who knew far too much about me and my family as it was? If Kathy thought exposing who I was to Keeley, too soon, would help me in the long run? Yes. She would do that. But I thought it much more likely that Kathy would finally force Keeley to take steps to leave her current sleaze of a boyfriend.

The ex-stripper had almost become true family to me at one point. A late last marriage to my own Grandfather, a few years before he had died. How Anthony would have howled helplessly at that prospect of having Kathy as a relative! Tying up everything my Grandfather had taken a lifetime to build up, in a marriage that no one else besides me would have understood, or believed in!

But at the heart of it all, Kathy would only tell someone about Keeley, if it would help either my redhead or me have a life together. The odds that she'd probably already told a few people, to begin watching out for and protecting her? They were pretty good. But I'd probably never figure out who they all were. At least not in time.

William loved Keeley, as much as he did any of his own grand-daughters, and was already fiercely protective of her as well. The Opera House had needed some help getting restored, and both I and the Trust had secretly eased the last of his obstacles out of his way. Money surely helped, but it was exposing the corruption on the City Council, that had finally let that whole neighborhood's restoration finally begin.

No.

William wouldn't deliberately hurt Keeley, or me, but he might make the mistake of trusting the wrong people to help him watch over her. He trusted in family too much, and hadn't yet learned the hard lessons about 'relatives' that I'd been brought up with.

No one at the strip club ever thought too much of which dancer I spent too much time with these days. They'd had years and years of my one and only weekly vice to dull their suspicions. If no one had ever looked into Andrea's background? Why would they look into Keeley's?

Jenny's eyes finally stopped watering after the last tear had fallen. She was giving me a few more moments to figure out what to do. I hated to be sort of frozen like this in front of her. A motionless victim to whatever really was behind my strange so-called gifts.

Or curse.

Somebody of my own choosing had to know about Keeley... including all of my hopes with her... sooner rather than later.

How could I refuse Jenny's request? Or keep that part of my life secret, even as I revealed the next project I had already long since set in motion for us to share? If the woman still shivering in my arms couldn't be trusted to help me protect Keeley? Who could? The final night of the Trust was just a few months away!

"Her name is Keeley. She is just as special to me as you, Emma, Karen and anyone else I have ever wanted to bring into my life. Like you, my real relationship with her is very complicated. Right now? I am just her friend, but she knows that I both want and need more between us someday. She's trapped in her old life, and is in just as much pain as you were, when I found you in your old attic. Maybe Keeley and I will get together soon? It's sort of up to her. Wait. That's not the real truth! It HAS to be up to her!"

Jenny slowly nodded. Her relief that I was finally talking frightfully clear on her face.

"But as far as what WE - you and I - share together? All of it? If she ever got to meet you, and see your loft? I think she would let me continue to see you. I don't know why I think that, but I really do. Even me giving you massages, and everything that comes from that. Keeley just risked our entire friendship, so I could help a very close friend of hers! Just for a little while! Even knowing that Andrea and I might get too close, and start sleeping with each other? Keeley was still brave enough to introduce us! She trusts me! Even that much! I'm probably not worthy of even half of that much faith though! No. I'm sure that Keeley wouldn't make me stop seeing you, not after she got to know you! And got to see what I hope will be our next project for us to share."

A thousand questions suddenly lit up Jenny's face! But it was a good sign of her continuing emotional recovery that she let the torrent of words just wash over her, without blurting them out. Then only the most important question won out, and the soft voice I loved so much? That meant Jenny was becoming a real and whole person? Came confidently out next.

"So you really have something for all of us to do next? That my roommates and I can help you with? For at least as long as the statue took? And it will keep at least my two friends from going broke? What is it? Please! Tell me!"

The face I fell for so strongly... the first time Jenny had so eagerly shown me all the artwork she'd made and crammed into her old attic... was finally back again!

It had taken so many years for it to come fully back into being! Who was I to doubt her restored life any longer! I was so glad that I had spent so much of my little free time to prepare for this very moment!

"It's a series of murals! Fifty-six of them! It's for a commission for all four of us! I've already done all the initial drawings! Even fifty-six little paintings! In old fashioned oils, if you can believe that! I'll have Billie run all the materials and the little canvases over to your loft tomorrow. She's already headed over there anyway, to drop off the delayed supplies for the workmen downstairs. Your roommates will have to help you unloaded it all though! It's a lot of stuff, and will barely fit in Billie's beat up white van! Just make sure that you watch the video explaining everything on the tablet, with Billie and your roommates, at the same time. Billie will grouse and complain at having to stay, but not after you all start watching!"

To keep her trembling enthusiasm under control, I sort of lifted her entire body off the ground and twirled her around a few times, as she laughed out loud in relief! Only then did I carefully put her back up against the brick wall, directly underneath the light bulb, that was still thankfully lit. Maureen hadn't even reached the top of the spiral staircase yet!

Jenny rushed on with a few breathless questions.

"A mural? Fifty-six of them? How big? What medium? Where will they go? A museum? Maybe even here? Are they for the new school rooms in the Warehouse?"

I gave Jenny a little kiss on her lips, to calm her back down, even as she gave in to her sexual nature again and rewrapped her entire body against mine. The nipples were already hard again underneath her thin cotton sundress, and her hips pushed fiercely into my waist in her joy at having something to do again.

Real sex was usually how Jenny usually celebrated such things, but her roommates would be much better targets than me tonight!

"No. Not a museum! Even better! A spiral staircase at a very special place! One you will love! Plenty of really interesting people to watch, when you want them! Complete and totally secure privacy when you don't! I think you will like that place even MORE than Avery's office! Even better, I've made a place for you to call your very own there! To stay overnight! For as long as it takes for you to get the entire project done! Your friend's will have smaller places to use, too! One for each of them! And plenty of food! You'll just have to call in, for whatever you want to eat! They'll bring it right to you! A year! A full year to get the entire project finished! Right here in the city! You can come and go as you like! Staying there in your own private suite, you'll just have to walk thru one door to get to the staircase! Or just a few minutes ride up a private elevator, to get to the stairwell, once you arrive in the building! If you will finally accept having a new driver? Besides my tired and grouchy overworked Billie? You can get driven there, from your loft, anytime you like! Day or night! A few hours working each session, or days at a time! All alone, or with both of your friends! I know your roommates will love it, too! Animals, trees, plants, water, sky, sun, moonlight! Winter, spring, summer and fall! Plenty of intricate detail for her! Wide expanses of randomness for him! But the animals? Each one of them? All fifty-six? They are all yours!"

The now strong again body shivered fiercely, as Jenny began to grind herself on my cock again. Her clit pushed harder and harder into me, as she began to grow even more excited than a few minutes ago! To keep her in check, at least a little, I kept talking and feeding her imagination. Letting her take care of her fast growing sexual needs all on her own.

"The oddly shaped test canvases are huge! You'll have to do at least one, at your loft, to get our client's approval. That is what all three of you need to do first. But then you will have to paint the actual murals on the walls of the staircase themselves. That is a firm part of the contract! This will all be another part of a very important permanent display! Eventually? Thousands and thousands of people will get to see it each year! I helped make that entire place as special as I could! You keep wanting to see more of what I have done? Both before and since I have met you? This is one of my best places! Perhaps my most favorite! The gardens outside? Both of them? They are huge! You'll love to walk thru them! Someday! I know that you will feel right at home there! At night, when it is all quiet and dark? You'll love walking thru the maze and learning your way thru... "

Jenny sort of moaned aggressively, as she grabbed both sides of my leather dress belt, to firmly hold me in place for her body to push up against.

That use of such an artificial physical restraint was so out of character for her... that I sort of froze... and stopped talking mid sentence.

So fiercely were her hips grinding against me that it took Jenny almost a full minute to realize that I had stopped talking and pushing back against her clit. The dark eyes flashed back open, and then sort of shyly looked up at me, but her body never completely stopped getting used to pleasure.

"... I just messed up... didn't I... Emma was worried about that... everything you said about the project sounds so wonderful... it really does... and Billie will drop it all off at the loft tomorrow... don't you ever give that poor girl a break?... but you caught on just as quickly as Emma said you would... a lot happened at the penthouse... more than Em wants me to tell you about... my roommates... they have sort of figured it out too... I am finally learning the Rules that your own Aunt told you and Em about... all those years ago... that is why I KNOW that I will be going back to Emma's farm soon... so she can teach me all about what you and her had to learn... but hopefully without so many mistakes... I'm actually just as smart as you two... learning the Rules will help me to get better control of myself... but if even how much you loved each other back then... you two still messed up?... and hurt each other badly?... I will need BOTH of you to teach me a few things... Emma said that you would... if I asked you nicely enough... will you be teaching Keeley the Rules someday too?... "

I felt like someone had just kicked me in the stomach.

Why would Emma EVER agree to do such a thing!

Or try to include ME into such a dangerous bargain!

Kinky sex play was one thing! Actually learning to tie someone up for real? That was a completely different matter entirely! Emma still had three small scars on her back! I was the one that fucked up one horrible night and put them there! Worse, Em loved those scars, even as I flinched every time I saw them!

We'd agreed to NEVER teach Linda a single DAMN thing about that part of our lives together! To not even tell her about what we got up to that way! Emma NEEDED to learn to be both a submissive and a dominant. It was part of what had healed her of most, but not all, of the guilt she felt about what had happened to us when we were so little!

Truly unstable people should be kept away from such sexual play at all costs!

Emma and I?

Separately?

We were just damaged and broken. Almost beyond all hope. Together, we had learned how to heal each other! At least a little! Even so? Love all by itself wasn't enough to protect either of us! Not in the long run! Why would Emma agree to teach Jenny ANYTHING about those DAMN Rules?

A very soft and tender kiss on my lips brought my panicked mind back to the present.