Page 89 of When The Mountains Held Us

Is that… worry?

“Never,” I promise.

In truth, it’s becoming increasingly more impossible to imagine my life without Levi. I’ve never wanted to be one of those girls whose entire life existed around their relationship, never realizing that that’s exactly what happened when I got together with my ex. But still, I’m a little confused about where we go from here. This relationship is clearly so much different than my last, but I don’t want to assume something I shouldn’t and make a fool of myself.

“What’s on your mind?” Levi prompts, right as I’m summoning the courage to voice my question out loud.

How does he already know me so well?

“It’s stupid and juvenile, but what… are we?” I pull back to peer up at him, and as usual, there’s no annoyance or judgment in his eyes.

“I am yours,” he says simply with a shrug. “The rest we can figure out along the way. All I know is that I don’t want to be without you again. I don’t think I can. You calm a part of me I thought was untamable, and I don’t think you even realize you’re doing it. My father was not a… good man. He was like your ex.”

My breath catches in my throat, but I stay quiet, hanging on every word he says and giving him the space to speak.

“I watched and listened as it happened to my mother, my sister, to me. One day, I snapped. It was like someone had lit a fuse that took years to detonate, and when it finally did…”

A flash of distress lights the shadows in his eyes as he trails off. My hand falls over where his rests against my leg, and I draw soothing circles over his skin until his tense muscles begin to relax beneath me.

“For a long time, I thought that’s who I was destined to become. That I would be no different from my father. That the…” a muscle in his jaw ticks, “violence was inside me, and there was no way to avoid it. Sometimes I still think that.” He struggles with his words as he speaks, whispering some and choking on others.

“I think you underestimate yourself. No one becomes someone like your father without a conscious choice to do so.” We could sit and debate the ins and outs of violent relationships until the sun comes up, but it doesn’t change the fact that good will outweigh evil when there is motivation to be better.

“It’s not that simple. I saw that shit growing up. I experienced it. How can you say the same violence isn’t in me? That I won’t snap again one day and become the very thing I fear most?”

“The fact that you worry about it is proof enough. Do you really expect me to believe your violence is without reason?”

“No.” His answer is quick and hard. “I did what I had to to protect my family and myself.”

“You’re a good man, Levi. You keep me safe. You would never hurt me. Don’t let that fear win out.”

He plants a kiss on the top of my head. “I don’t deserve you,” he murmurs as I nuzzle closer.

“You’re wrong,” I argue. “I think maybe this is what we’ve needed all along. Someone to remind us of who we are when our minds try to tell us otherwise.”

The night passes in a blur of soft caresses, tender kisses, and the sighs of breaths whispered over skin. Only after we’ve crawled beneath silken sheets, our bodies bare and slicked with sweat, do my eyelids droop, and I stop fighting the pull of sleep. Curled up against Levi’s body, his chest rising and falling in even breaths against my back, I finally close my eyes and let sleep take me.

Forty-Three

Oakley

“Levi…” I moan, still dazed and half asleep as his tongue swipes through my center, drawing lazy circles over my sensitive clit. I let my thighs fall open, allowing him better access. My eyes squeeze shut as he works his tongue over me, each pull of his mouth sending molten heat flooding between my legs.

“Always so wet for me.”

He moans his approval over my sex, the rumble of his words against my skin drawing me closer to the brink of insanity. He draws my clit into his mouth, sucking and dragging at the tiny bud and causing another moan to fall from my lips. Tension coils low in my belly at his whispered praise, and I lose myself in the sensation of him.

A thick finger joins the ministrations of his tongue, slipping into me with ease and curling to place pressure against the spot deep inside me. It’s an exquisite torture, and I lose myself in blissful agony. Everything within me tightens, and colors explode on the backs of my eyelids as Levi tears the orgasm from my body with one hard, demanding stroke.

“That’s it, baby. Be a good girl. Come all over my tongue.”

His wicked words should have me hiding my face in embarrassment, but I’m too far gone. Too lost in this tidal wave of pleasure, with only Levi’s touch as my anchor to keep me from floating away.

I’d been wandering aimlessly before I met him, lost in the panic and adrenaline of my own life and haunted by the ghosts of my past. I wandered a dark path through dreary woods, surrounded by trees whose limbs reached for me like gnarled fingers, tearing at my hair and my clothes. It seemed that everywhere I turned, I hit another dead end, another boulder, another terrifying thicket of trees—all of which sent me sprinting back in the direction I came from, only to realize the path had been overtaken, and I could no longer find my way out.

That is, until I stumbled upon Levi’s light. He reached out to my broken and shaking form, gripping my hand and pulling me forward towards a new start, a new adventure, while never once expecting me to be anything other than who I am, tattered remains and all.

It takes several minutes to fully come down from my high, and when I finally pry my eyes open, Levi is already grinning up at me with a devilish smirk, his eyes bright and his lips still glistening from my release. Slowly, he licks his lips, the sight enough to catapult my body into overdrive again.