CAMELOT FANTASIES

An excerpt from Chapter 16: Bronagh's love for Shaw:

During the next few weeks, this is how they lived. Shaw never left Bronagh’s side, which he loved because he didn’t have to experience nights away from her like they had practiced in the past. Marsh or Billy, usually Marsh, accompanied Bronagh and Shaw everywhere. They spent some weekends at Bronagh’s house, but most weekends in Baton Rouge. Karen and King ran the studio with Billy and Marsh helping out part-time when they weren’t with Bronagh and Shaw.
Their lives eventually went back to normal. Mike Allen had seemingly disappeared. He hadn’t been back to Charley’s Pub. Biloxi was a bust, Billy and King having found no sign of him in Mississippi. None of his local haunts panned out, either. In the following weeks, Mr. Allen finally became a fading memory of a very bad night.
That didn’t mean things didn’t get shaggy from time to time. It was early March and Grace and Karen were planning to go shopping with Bronagh.
“Aye, right! Not happening,” Shaw told them.
“I’m sick of sitting around this warehouse week after week,” Bronagh protested. “I want to go shopping and have lunch with my friends.”
“Bane, we all have a job here, Bronagh doesn’t,” Grace said. “She needs to get out of that little apartment and out of this warehouse.”
“I won’t let you girls go shopping alone.”
“You are being ridiculous, Bane,” Karen said.
“No! I’m not!”
“Then, you’ll just have to come along with us because we want some new shoes and some girl time,” Bronagh said. Grace and Karen laughed at Shaw’s expression.
Bright and not so early Saturday morning, they all met at the studio, and Marsh, Billy, and Shaw followed the girls to the mall for some “much-needed shoe shopping.”
Shaw had never understood women and their shoes. He appreciated nice clothes. He had a closet full of clothes for every occasion. He was a clothes horse, according to King, who always razzed him when he dressed to go out with Bronagh.
“You’re a narcissistic fashionmanista, cabrón. Hell, man, you dress better than my girls,” he’d say. He had boots, several pairs, a couple of dress loafers, but he would never understand a woman’s obsession for so many bloody shoes.
The girls were laughing and having a great time, but Shaw couldn’t, and he didn’t want to remember the last time he had been shopping with women at a mall. He hated it. And he hated that Marsh and Billy were having to endure it, too. They didn’t like it either, but Shaw’s attitude was the worst. He cussed and complained the entire time. For God’s sake, he thought. We could be on the golf course. It felt ridiculous to follow the girls from store to store. They drew odious looks from store associates and customers as Marsh, Billy and Shaw sat around the women’s departments dressed in their biker gear while these three beautiful women spent endless hours trying on shoes and clothes. Shaw was obnoxious, propping his boots on the seats in the shoe departments or pulling two chairs out of the ladies’ dressing room, one to sit on and one for his feet. Misery.
Marsh finally pulled him aside. “Bane, you need to lighten up.”
“This sucks. I would rather be fishing, and I hate fishing,” he said.
“You want to leave them alone? Do you really want to risk that?”
“No!”
Marsh patted his back. “Relax, brother, no matter how bad or long the day, the evening does come.”
Marsh walked over to the women and took several shopping bags to carry for them. He looked over at Shaw with his ‘Bama-boy grin, and Shaw knew he had done it just to tick him off.
“You ‘Bama, prick. I hate that Southern gentlemen bullshit of yours,” he said.
Bronagh asked Marsh if she could take Shaw to one more store. “Just a few minutes, Marsh. It’s right over there,” she said. She pointed at a small boutique store, and Marsh reluctantly agreed.
“I’ll keep him safe, I promise, Marsh,” she said.
She was in such a good mood, he couldn’t resist her. He knew she would have pouted until she got what she wanted anyway.
Bronagh grabbed Shaw’s hand and kissed his cheek. “Last store, I promise.” She then dragged him through yet another store where she picked out a few things to try on while he again leaned against the wall by the dressing room. He heard Bronagh call to him.
“Shaw, come look at this.”
The only employee in the boutique was an older woman who smiled at him. “Go look at her dress, dear,” she said. “There’s no one else back there.” Great, he thought and nodded at the woman simply to be polite, but he was thoroughly annoyed.
“What?” he growled at Bronagh, as she opened her dressing room door. She held up a dress to her body that was still on the hanger. It looked like something his mum wore a decade ago to his da’s funeral.
“Are you shitting me?” he said. “Get dressed! Let’s go!”
“Keep your voice down, Shaw,” she scolded, then moved the dress away from her body. He looked at her, took two steps backward, and slammed into a dressing room door across the hall. She was wearing a piece of black-lace lingerie. He hesitated, then stepped forward into her dressing room, closing the door behind him. He couldn’t keep his hands off of her mostly exposed hips and breasts. He pushed her gently against the mirror.
“God, woman, what are you doing to me?”
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“**** beautiful!”
“Should I take it home?”
“Absolutely,” he moaned. He pressed against her and kissed her madly. She pulled at his hair and stroked the side of his face, then she pulled open his shirt and kissed his neck near his collar bone, bringing blood to the surface of his skin.
“Bronagh, what are you doing to me?”
“Trying to make you happy, sweetheart.”
Shaw swept his hands over her body, aching to consume her. He pressed into her and kissed her fiercely still running his hands over her breasts.
“Oh God! Oh, Phillip, we have to stop,” she protested, but her excitement mounted.
“You don’t want me to stop, darlin’.” And he didn’t stop. He groped her roughly and pressed his **** against her body.
“And, you say you never try to twist me up?” he whispered into her ear.
“No. This time I am trying to twist you up. You’ve been miserable all day,” she whispered back.
“More than ever, woman, you’ve got to let me in,” he begged.
She closed her eyes and, trembling beneath his touch, she kissed him roughly, biting his bottom lip. “Oh, Phillip, wait,” she moaned. She walked him backward to the opposite mirror in the dressing room, slid the panties down her legs and stepped out of them as she pushed herself into him. She kissed him passionately as she unzipped his jeans and placed him inside her.
Shaw grabbed the back of her thighs and picked her up. He pulled her deeply into him as she wrapped her legs around him and cried out in a whisper. He watched, in the dressing room mirrors, as his girl made love to him. Another hit and run.
The store associate eyed Shaw suspiciously when he walked out of the dressing room, and he resumed leaning against the back wall. He held up two fingers. “Two dresses,” he said. “I had to help with the zippers.” She smiled and nodded. They left the store after Bronagh purchased a slightly used, pure-dead brilliant, piece of lingerie and a brown skirt. They met up with Grace and Karen, and Marsh and Billy. As the girls loaded their packages into the trunk of Bronagh’s car, Shaw smiled at the little, light-gray bag that Bronagh put in with the others.
He grinned at Bronagh. “Let’s eat. I’m starving!” The men mounted their bikes and Shaw slapped Marsh on the shoulder. “I love shoe shopping, brother.”
He seemed confused by Shaw’s comment and sudden mood change. Then he said, “You’ve got to be fricking kidding me!”
Shaw smiled, started his bike, and revved the engine as he rode out ahead of the Cadillac.