“Please, just let me fucking keep you,” he begs.
A tear rolls over my top lip. “Please, take care of me.” My words are a breathy moan, another tear falls, and then Harlen explodes with me.
He groans, his hand tightening around my throat slightly, the fingers at my hip digging into my skin.
He holds me just as tightly as I hold him.
“In this life and the next.” He pauses, smiling, collecting my tears with his palm. “And the one after that too,” he rasps, pushing himself through me in an all-consuming way.
And as we fall, I feel the essence of everything that is him filtering through the cracks of my broken heart, gluing the pieces back together,until I’m whole again.
“What’s this?” I ask Cherry, picking the gray fabric off her chest and holding it away from her trembling body with a grin.
I knew the hoodie was mine, but I wanted her to tell me she kept it, that she couldn’t get rid of it, you know, ego shit and all.
“You know exactly what it is,” she rasps, a small smile curling the corners of her now swollen lips.
I meet her smile with my own. “Do I?” Cocking my head to the side, I challenge her with a finger to my chin. “Tell me, I seem to have forgotten.”
Cherry surprises me when her legs tighten between mine before she rolls over, taking my ass to the ground with a weighted thump.
She’s smiling above me, her hair a blanket of crimson around us, and it has my chest tightening, painfully.
I don’t know the lengths of depravity my girl endured, though what I saw beneath the water and on that pier was heartbreaking in ways that were truly inhumane, and what surprises me in this moment is how she hasn’t lost her bite,even though she had every reason to.
I reach upwards in an attempt to brush the waterfalling curls away from her eyes, only she quickly latches her fingers around my arms, pinning them to the ground beside my head in surrender.
“That’s cute,” she whispers, and I can’t help but feel the vibrations of a chuckle rumble through my chest. She remembers well, because I recall saying those words to her a few times.
It has me grinning. She didn’t forget me, like she very well should have,and I wouldn’t have blamed her.
I jolt my hips upwards, feeling the wetness ofusover the bare, heated skin at my abdomen, and my cock is instantly aching, pulsing with the need to feel her again. I inhale sharply when she purposely grinds herself over the now hard bulge in my pants.
“You should maybe tap out,” she whispers.
I swallow tightly when her hand wraps around my throat. It’s sexy as hell watching her take control. I tsk, “Fuck no.”
Her eyes spark before they turn icy and, in one quick moment, the playfulness between us disappears.
Fuck.
Her smile is gone, and at the sight, I feel my own hide behind the tasteful walls of freedom. There are so many unspoken words, so many captured truths yet to be shared, and until we are able to voice them, there will be no clear future for us.
So, I take matters into my own hands.
Because I’m not having it any other way.
I crunch my abs together, pulling myself upwards until I’m in a seated position. My right arm wraps around Cherry’s small waist as I slide the weight of us backwards across the black padded flooring until I’m resting against the solid squat rack behind me.
She tries to lift herself off me, only I hold on to her waist tighter while my free hand wraps around her jaw. With a deep inhale, her forehead falls to mine, her willpower dissipating as my thumb brushes over her parted rosy lips on their exhale.
At this moment, I know what she needs. She needs my truth, my reason, and honestly, I’m glad. I’m tired of holding on to it, tired of feeling its serrated blade buried beneath the surface.
“That night, I was on the pier…” I start to say, and a violent shiver courses through her bones. It’s intense, so I hold her tighter, taming her through the first quake. “I was finally able to make a trip back to you after my schedule had been fucked around a bit. I took the first chance I could.” I pause to swallow, otherwise I’ll choke from my nerves.
I just hope she hears me fully.
“I looked for you everywhere, and when I say everywhere, I fucking mean everywhere. And Wes, he didn’t seem phased in the slightest, said you liked to take little hiatuses and that you would be back when you were ready.”
