Ryker by Jeneveir Evans

Chapter 29

“Friendship,” said Christopher Robin, “is a very comforting thing to have.”

~A. A. Milne~

Deb

November 5th, 1999

Bane had told me that Ryker and his family were staying a week. I waited an extra few days before I went over there just to be on the safe side, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I wanted to see my grandson again. At that age, you blink and they change so fast. I’d already missed almost two weeks of seeing him.

Brax was home with the kids for his afternoon break from the tattoo shop so now was my chance to slip down to Bane’s house and get me some lovin’ from Dane. I couldn’t wait to hold him in my arms and breathe in his sweet baby smell.

I strolled up to Bane’s house and noted again how beautiful it was. Kenzie had picked out the house plans and all the finishes inside and out. Bane told her he wanted her to have whatever she wanted in her home. He said he didn’t care where he slept as long as she was there and happy. It still set me back a step to realize that my son now had a woman and child.

It seemed like only yesterday when he was a baby. While I love being friends with my adult children, I have to admit there are times I miss them being small. I missed rocking them, singing to them, playing with them. I missed the expressions on their faces as they learned something new. I missed the joy they exhibited when they got a simple treat.

There were so many more things that I missed about that time. Their innocent laughter. Their love for life. Their zest in learning new things, and the smiles they brought me.

I shook myself out of my thoughts when I realized I was standing at the front door. Instead of using the bell which would sound throughout the entire house, I knocked. If Dane and Kenzie were sleeping, I didn’t want to wake them.

It didn’t take but a few moments and the door was opened. A beautiful woman stood in front of me. If I had to guess, I’d put her in her early thirties. I knew I’d never seen her before and decided she must be a friend of Kenzie’s.

“Hey, is Bane home?” I questioned.

“No, he went to town with Eagle to pick up some items from the grocery store.”

“Oh, okay. You must be a friend of Kenzie’s, is she and the baby awake?”

“They are both down for a nap right now. I actually just met Kenzie not long ago. I’m Trina. My two sons are Bane’s youngest brothers. You must be Deb, Bane’s mom.”

I blinked in shock. This woman was the mother to Bane’s siblings? Oh my god, this was Ryker’s woman? The pain that swept through me made me stagger backwards. Ryker and his family were still here? I had to get out of here. I couldn’t see Ry again. I just couldn’t, especially knowing his woman was here with him on the compound.

Somehow I managed to find my voice. “I didn’t realize Bane’s father’s family was still here. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

I vaguely heard her call out to me as I turned and walked away. Mindlessly I headed for the one place I found any solace. The gazebo behind Brax’s house. Once again, I found myself snuggled into one of the large wicker chairs with my legs drawn up and my arms wrapped around them. I rested my head on my knees as I struggled to come to terms with what I had just seen.

Ryker’s woman was everything I wasn’t. She looked like she was barely in her thirties. She was gorgeous. She had long brunette hair, stunningly bright blue eyes, and full lips. Hell, she even had dimples. ‘There was no way I could compete with that,’ I mentally muttered. ‘Not that I wanted to compete,’ I admonished myself.

She was everything I wasn’t. I was forty-eight years old and while I didn’t look bad, the bloom of youth had long ago left my skin. There were parts on my body that weren't quite as perky any longer. The woman who answered the door didn’t look like she had anything that sagged.

I kept trying to tiptoe around the one thing that was pushing at the back of my mind. She was his woman. She shared his bed. She was the one who got to lay beside him every night. She was the one who he made love to. She was the one who had his love.

Not me.

I sighed raggedly. I had never really had those things. I had been temporarily his woman. I had temporarily shared his bed. He had temporarily made my body sing when he fucked me. I didn’t have his love then and I never would.

Hearing the echoes of his murmured words, ‘You’re fucking mine, Sunshine,’ caused me to moan. An ache settled in my chest. I had only been his during the first Sturgis I had met him at and for two days and two nights of the second rally. Other than that, I’d never been his. My heart had always said otherwise, but my mind knew the truth.

I hadn’t really tried to find another man to replace Ry. Yes, I’d had sex with other men but that’s all it had been. Sex. I grimaced as the thought hit me that for most of my life I’d always been the other woman.

After I had gotten back from that last trip to South Dakota, I had concentrated solely on Bane. Thanks to my parents supporting us, once I realized I was pregnant with Leigh, my attention was focused only on my children for the next four years. For the most part, I became a woman who was the total opposite of the fun-loving free-spirit who I had been. That woman only came out to play with my kids.

When Leigh turned three I realized it was time to find a job. I didn’t really have much experience in anything. I knew how to handle children and that was about it. A friend of my mom’s knew of a couple who were hunting a nanny. She had gotten me an interview with them and, luckily, I’d been hired.

My job as a nanny eventually turned into a dual purpose job. I was only hired for the daytime hours because the father of the kids took over in the evenings. I worked some weekends during the day and, when I did, I took Bane and Leigh with me. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect job.

The household I worked for had four children. Gloria, the kids’ mother, had been in a car accident that left her a quadriplegic. Once she recovered, she was left only able to use her arms and hands enough to get around in a motorized wheelchair.

Gloria and her husband Elliot had been married for ten years when the wreck happened. Their two sons were six and eight years old, their oldest daughter was three and a half and their youngest daughter was almost one when the accident occurred.

When I was hired, the previous nanny had been there a couple of years. She had left because she was getting married and moving out of state. When I took over, all the children, but the baby, were in school. I was only with the three oldest before and after school in the mornings and afternoons and all day on some of the weekends.

Even though Gloria had nurses that helped take care of her, she never developed a closeness with them. Instead, she and I clicked at my interview and soon we became best friends. We told each other our troubles and our fears. There had been many times I’d held her as she cried in bitterness for all she had lost. Yet once she cried and got it out of her system, she sucked it up and became the effervescent person that Elliot had fallen madly in love with. No matter what, she rarely let him see her down.

Her one major fear was something any woman could understand, she was afraid of losing her husband. No matter how often Elliot told her otherwise, she was scared he would leave her for a woman who could give him what she couldn’t.

Sex.

He’d done his best to tell her that he could live without sex as long as he had her, but her fear was too great for her to truly believe that.

A year after being hired as their nanny, she came to me with a crazy idea. She wanted me to have sex with her husband. I’d said no immediately. She wouldn’t acknowledge my dismissal of the subject, she kept on and on about it. Soon she had me thinking about it.

It had been five years since I’d been with Ryker. I admitted to myself that I missed being with a man sexually. While self-stimulation was great, there was nothing that could really replace the feel of a man’s hands running over my body. The feel of a man’s lips sucking my nipples or his tongue laving my pussy.

Gloria had come to know me well and she knew getting me to agree would be half the battle. It had taken her six months of constant badgering before I finally told her I would consider her idea.

I’d thought she would bring this up to Elliot when they were alone and he would shoot it down, but did she do that?

Hell, no, she didn’t.

She floored me and stunned Elliot one day with her request. Since he owned his own company, he was able to set his own hours. She had asked him to be home early one day because she had something very important to talk to him about. I had put Mallory down for a nap and was in the living room talking to Gloria when Elliot came home. When he walked into the room, I tried to leave and go to the kids’ bedrooms to straighten them up. I had been trying to give them some alone time. Gloria wouldn’t hear of it.

I should have known what was about to happen but I was as shocked as Elliot when she presented her idea to him. That is one conversation that I will never forget.

“Elliot, do you still love me?” she asked him.

He looked at her like she had lost her mind.

“Ria, I’ve always loved you and I always will. You know that. You’re my life. You and the kids.”

“You mean that?”

“As God as my witness, I do.”

“Would you do anything for me? Give me anything I wanted?”

“If I can physically do it, you know I will.”

“Promise?”

“Where’s this coming from, Ria?”

“Promise me, Elliot.”

He looked helpless as she continued pushing him.

“Yeah, honey. I promise.”

“There’s something I want from you, something I need.”

“Tell me what it is, Ria, and it’s yours.”

“I want you and Deb to have a sexual relationship.”

I know the look on my face had to mimic his. His eyes had widened in shock. He glanced at me briefly before he looked at Gloria again.

“What the hell, Ria? You want what?” he exclaimed in disbelief.

“Elliot. It’s been over three years since the accident. We always had a healthy sex life. You were almost insatiable in bed. You can’t tell me that you don’t miss sex.”

“Ria, we’ve had this conversation before. I can do without sex. I was only insatiable because it was you who was in my bed. Honey, I only want you.”

“You can’t have me now,” she said as she started crying. “My body is useless. The only thing left of me that is any good is my mind.”

“Ria, that’s all I need.”

I felt like an intruder being in the room with them. I wanted to get up and leave, yet knew as soon as I moved Gloria would shoot that down.

“Elliot, what if I live for ten more years? Or twenty? We don’t know how long I will live. How are you going to go that long without sex, unless you are secretly already having sex with someone else?”

“There’s been no one in my bed since I first met you but you. I wouldn’t ever cheat on you, Ria.”

“You dodged my question, Elliot. What if I live for twenty more years, what then?”

“Then I’ll be a happy man, honey.”

“I won’t be happy, Elliot,” she whispered. “I will feel like I stole a part of your life away.”

“Ria, I want you to be happy. Ask me for anything but that,” he begged her desperately.

“If you won’t consider this, if you won’t do this, then I will have my parents move me back to their house. I will set-up a visitation schedule with the kids. Deb can bring them over there a couple times a week. They need you more than they do me. You’re the only one of us who can do anything for them.”

“That’s not true, Ria,” he said hoarsely. “You give them something I will never be able to give them. A mother’s love. I know you love the kids, Ria. Don’t act like you don’t.”

“I love them with my entire being, just like I love you,” she cried out passionately. “But I want the best for all of you. If removing myself will provide that, then that’s what I’ll do.”

I heard the pain in her voice, yet underlying that was a steely determination. She wasn’t giving up on her idea. I think Elliot heard it too.

“Ria, I can’t lose you,” he told her as he dropped to the floor in front of her chair. He raised shaky hands and cupped her cheeks in them. “You’re my life, honey. You always have been. Without you, I’m nothing.”

“Then give me this, Elliot. Don’t make me live everyday with the fear that one day I’ll hear through the grapevine that you have a mistress. That would destroy me, Elliot.

“If we can take an adult approach to this and recognize it for what it is, then that never has to happen. Because one day, Elliot, you’re going to want sex again. If you really love me as much as you say you do, as much as I believe you do, then you’ll do this for me.

“I trust Deb. She’s not out to take you away from me. I brought this up to her six months ago and she’s fought with me about it and turned me down every single day. Finally today, she said she would consider it. I know she was humoring me, but I’m holding her to that.

“Deb is my best friend. She loves me for who I am, Elliot. A woman who is nothing more than a shell, but a woman who still has all the feelings and fears of a normal woman. Elliot, please,” her voice broke on her plea, “please do this for me. I can handle it if it’s between you and Deb. I’ll know it’s nothing more than sex for both of you.”

I had started crying as I listened to her tell him of her fears, her feelings of insecurity. Yet I knew where she was coming from. Women are emotional creatures. We fear the unknown. We fear having our happiness taken away from us. We fear never being good enough for our man. Gloria’s condition, added on top of all her other fears, was slowly driving her bat-shit crazy. She constantly feared she would lose Elliot if she didn’t do something that would give him the one thing she couldn’t.

Elliot had gazed into her face with tears streaming down his. The denial of her request was on his face and she could see it.

She kept her eyes on him and said again so quietly it was hard to hear, “If you love me, you will do this for me.”

He held her stare for several minutes. His eyes had searched hers. He was seeking the truth of her plea. I knew the moment he realized that this was truly what she wanted, his head dropped into her lap and he sobbed. It was the cry of a heartbroken man. I had opened my mouth to say I wouldn’t do it and it was like she had known what I was about to say.

She looked at me and said, “You’re my best friend, Deb. You’re the only one I trust enough to do this. I know you won’t fall in love with him, not when Ry still has your heart after all these years. Please, Deb, do this for me. Give me the peace of mind this will bring to me. You understand what I’m asking and why, Deb. I’m begging you, please do this for me.

“And don’t think you can pretend that the two of you are having sex. Trust me, I will know if y’all do that. Don’t insult my intelligence by trying.”

For her, I’d caved. She was my best friend and I could understand the logic of her decision. He was her husband and there was no way in hell that I would ever come between them. She knew me well enough to know that I would never harm her like that.

Ever.

She was right about another thing, there was no way that I would ever fall in love with Elliot. It wasn’t because he wasn’t an attractive man, he was. However my heart belonged to another. I’d tried my best for years to forget about Ry but my feelings for him had never wavered.

That began a consensual relationship between Elliot and me until Gloria passed away. For Gloria, and I think Elliot too, they got the peace of mind and security it brought to their marriage from knowing another woman wouldn’t ever come between them. For me, I was able to have sex without having to leave my children at night and risk the danger of going out to bars to pick up a random stranger and have a one night stand.

For both Elliot and me, it was nothing more than sex.

We agreed not to kiss. I felt like that would make our brief periods together too intimate and I didn’t want that. I told him that kissing was the one thing he could still do with Gloria, and that the only man’s kiss I wanted to remember was Ry’s. He agreed with me completely.

Some may think what I had done was wrong. It wasn’t like I set out for it to happen. Yet I know if I hadn’t done it, Gloria would have left Elliot and died much sooner of a broken heart.

I had been so afraid it would ruin my friendship with Gloria. I had been scared Elliot would hate me. It hadn’t ended up that way at all. Instead, I’d watched Elliot and Gloria grow closer. She and I had grown closer as well.

In a roundabout way, it ended up that our sexual encounters were more satisfying for us because of Gloria. The first time she had made a comment about the sex between her husband and me, I hadn’t known how to respond. She’d picked at me about it and soon had me laughing.

She ended up telling me the things he liked. She would ask me to do some particular act for her and tell him it was from her. I’d felt awkward the first time I’d done that, yet Elliot had loved it. When he came he’d groaned her name. That hadn’t bothered me at all. Because I often pretended he was Ryker. I think we kept our eyes closed the entire time we were together because that allowed both of us to fantasize that we were with the person we really wanted.

After about six months of Elliot and I having sex, I’d told her we needed to talk.

“Gloria, are you sure, absolutely sure you want us to continue with this? You know we are only doing it for your peace of mind.”

“God, yes, I’m sure,” she responded. “Elliot and I haven’t been this close in forever. I had felt like I was losing him, Deb. I knew I had to figure out something. Oh, I know he loves me, but he had gotten to where he didn’t hold me in his arms at night. His excuse was he was scared of hurting me. He also wouldn’t do anything more than peck me on the lips when he would leave, come home or in bed.

“Now, he holds me close to him all night long. I might not be able to feel it, Deb, but it’s wonderful knowing he’s doing that. While I can’t feel anything from basically my neck down, my mouth still can. Now he’s kissing me again. Not just gentle kisses either. He’s making love to me with his mouth and, Deb, it’s so hot. There have been a few times he’s gotten so excited that he’s come. Kissing me made him do that, Deb.

“You have no idea what that means to me to know that he gets that turned on just by kissing me. We sometimes talk about the times you and he are together. He tells me that he closes his eyes and imagines it’s me. And, Deb, he says he loves the times when you do something to him and say it’s from me. I know that is so wrong of me to be happy about that, but I am. ”

“It’s not wrong, Gloria. Normally, he just groans when he comes, but the times I do what you ask me to do, he calls out your name when he finishes. Since this started, I’ve known he’s imagining it’s you with him and I’m glad he does. Besides, I’m just as bad. I imagine he is Ryker.

“Gloria, I want you to know that we don’t kiss. That’s the one thing we agreed on between us. That is something just for you and him.”

She’d cried happy tears at hearing that. It had only reiterated for her that their kisses were special between just the two of them.

We all came to terms with our unique relationship. Once the children were all in school, my main job turned into being a companion for Gloria. I would have done it for free if I could have afforded it.

Elliot and I didn’t have sex every night. Sometimes it wasn’t even every week. For the most part though, Elliot and I were together once or twice a week. It never became anything more for either of us. Besides giving us a safe partner to have sex with, we wouldn’t have ever started a sexual relationship if Gloria hadn’t requested it.

Elliot and I did become friends over the years, but at the hub of our friendship was Gloria. Our sexual relationship lasted for almost twenty years. It stopped when Gloria left this earth and flew away to her permanent home with the Man upstairs.

After Gloria died, Elliot had a friend who needed a nanny and I had gone to work for them. I still occasionally saw Elliot. We would go out for dinner once in a while. We never talked about our sexual relationship. Instead, we talked about the wonderful woman his wife and my best friend had been.

~***~