by Ace Gray
“You did what?” He gasped.
“I chose you. Every day that you were gone.”
His head sagged, rounding like his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he whispered but his words whipped away on the wind. I wasn’t sure if I was interested in holding onto them.
“I want to slap you so hard when you say sorry.”
He tensed against my hand.
“I’m not going to, but honestly, what good does sorry do me? Sorry doesn’t take back those nights. That pain. Sorry doesn’t erase the feel of his hands on me.”
His whole body went taut again but this time it was different. Before it had been resigned and ready for my swat, now it was utterly furious. He rocked back from me before I could adjust my hold.
“Dantè,” I called after him. “Dantè,” I yelled again as I got to my feet to follow him. “Stop!”
“I wasn’t a murderer before, Mercy, but I will be today. I’ll kill him for that exact reason.” Thunder clapped again, highlighting the raindrops that flew from his face in his fury.
“No,” I screamed and started to sprint after him.
Before I could grab his arm, my feet tangled on each other as my toe caught the edge of a rock. I humphed and whimpered as I flung my arms out to catch myself.
Big hands reached out and wrapped around my shoulders, catching me before I could crash into the ground. “Mercy,” he breathed my name as he pulled me to my feet and into his chest. “Are you okay?” His words were a little too gritty and his hold on me a little too tight.
“Yea…yes.”
“Good.” He set me on my feet and turned back for the trail.
“Don’t. Please don’t!”
“He deserves—” he started and I cut him off.
“What about what you deserve? What about me?” If he was any bit of the man I knew before that would be my ace.
“I don’t—”
“Shut up. You do. You deserve the life they took from you.” Rain dripped down dips and valleys of his broad shoulders, the gradient of his excessive ink. “You deserve the love they took,” I added, quieter this time. “So do I.”
He looked back at me and this time I didn’t know what he saw. I was too raw to put up a wall, to pretend. Physically, I had to match, bruises and a little blood, a hell of a lot of pain. The rain had soaked my tattered clothes.
“Even then I didn’t deserve you.” He took a step back toward me.
“I’ve always felt the same way.”
His nostrils flared and a hint of mischief colored his face. “I’m an ex-con.”
“I’m homeless.”
“No,” he said softly, as he reached for my hand and placed it on his heart. “You live here. Always here.”
A huge ball lodged in my throat and tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. And before I could wipe away the first tears I was happy to shed in years, he slid his arm behind me and pulled my body into his. His hand squeezed overtop of mine where it still sat, keeping time with the heartbeat that seemed to meld with mine.
I knew when he pulled me in what would happen next. I remembered the way he bowed into me and licked his lips. The way his hand grazed across the groove of my spine. Heat rushed into my cheeks and a blush-fueled fire spread wild across my chest. My breath caught in my chest.
Then he leaned in and kissed me.
His breath became mine and my life hinged on the kiss itself. The rain didn’t pelt against my skin any more. We moved against each other as if no time had passed. Each time my lips tumbled, his were there to catch me. His hands held me, together, completely, carefully. Even as he explored my body, he did it with a delicate reverence.
Dantè was everything that Diego was not.
The simple comparison made me shove against Dantè’s chest as I heaved.
“Merce?” His voice was panicked, and he kept hold of me even as he gave me space.
I broke out of his hold as I doubled over, acid burning in my throat. I waved him back, sure I was going to upchuck on his shoes. He stepped closer and gently rubbed my back all the same. I swallowed a few times before I could push through the bile to speak.
“I thought about him, about his hands on me.”
His hand tensed on my back and his feet shuffled on the gravel.
“Please don’t leave me,” I begged without thinking.
“Never again,” he answered firmly.
I looked up from where I was still bent before him and I saw the hate and hurt wash from my beloved’s eyes. The strength I’d always known and loved reflected back and helped me firm my wobbly knees.
“I won’t touch you again until you’re ready.” He held his hands up tentatively. “But I’ll be right here.”
“I missed you,” I murmured as I reached up and threaded my hand through his.
His face softened as his thumb rubbed mine. He smiled down on me and I knew which smile it was. The small, sad one. I held my breath for what he’d say next, wondering if it would be a clap of thunder or the soft spatter of the rain.
He bent down and brought my hand up to his mouth, and grazed my knuckles with the swell of his bottom lip. “There are no words for what I feel for you.”
I had to keep my hands on Mercy; otherwise, I wouldn’t believe she was real. That this moment was happening. I’d come here to kill a man, but instead, I was being given new life. I had to keep them on her but be careful too.
Her skin goose bumped in the rain, but she still looked pale in the small trace of light like a specter. Like someone who might disappear at any moment. She trembled, and I found myself shaking when I reached out for her. I wrapped my arm around her and her slightness made my breath catch. I’d left her to wither alone and I hated myself for it. I’d spend every moment she’d let me making it up to her.
That was what had made me abandon my anger tonight. It wasn’t that Mercy forgave me but that she even wanted to. She’d dangled herself in front of me. She knew my past, my truths, and still wanted my future. I would worship her like the goddess of forgiveness and suffering and sweetness she’d become.
“I love you,” I murmured against her skin then pulled back to watch the rain make waterfalls down her body. “I’m sorry I forgot that.”
She shuddered, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the storm or my words. Her thick blonde eyelashes closed, clumping the plump of her cheeks and collecting the raindrops that drove down. My heart battered my chest, and I licked my lips, desperate for the taste of her.
But I’d promised.
And unlike the promises from before, I’d keep this one. If it killed me, I’d keep this one.
“I’m sorry I forgot myself. I’m sorry I forgot you.” I reached up and cradled her cheek.
“Did you really forget this?” she asked as she gestured between us. “I mean, how could you?”
I sighed. The honest answer was that I didn’t know. Not really. The concrete and steel of prison helped. The twisted version of that night I pieced together too. But standing here in front of her, I knew neither of those were enough. Not to erase this. Erase us. Thunder rumbled again.
“Can I get you out of the rain? I’ll tell you anything, everything.” I traced her chattering lips with my thumb.
She turned out of my arm and grabbed my hand from her cheek in one swift move then started toward the other branch of the trail that began at this spot. The one that cut down the cliffs to our beach. I almost told her no, that navigating it in the dark, in the storm was foolish, but I got the sense that I didn’t get a say in those types of things tonight. Instead, I let her guide me down to where it had all started.
The trail turned to slick mud and traversing with only lightning to light our way from time to time made my heart skip a beat. But instinct kept my footing. It even let me reach out for her once or twice when she slid. She looked back with a shy smile each time I did.
I tried not to think about what had happened at the top of the cliff. About what lay at the other end of this trail. I still w
anted to kill him, the urge was a scratch at the back of my throat that I just couldn’t swallow away.
He’d tried to take her…
“Race you to the cave.” Mercy broke through my haze and brought me back to myself. Or rather, to her.
She took off like she was dodging the droplets, sand spraying up behind her, and for a moment, it was so simple. It was me and her and this beach and the rain. We could heal like that. Right? The boy, the girl, the ocean, and the stars.
I walked slowly, savoring each of my steps, watching each of hers until she rolled under the sandstone arch that held our initials. Her eyes found mine immediately, and I prayed she saw the same thing as me.
Mercy shuffled to the side and let my bulky body fold in next to her. I’d gotten bigger, and she’d gotten smaller but it was everything else between us that filled the cave up so completely. Now that we were down here, breathing in all those secrets and lies, all those emotions, I didn’t know where to start.
She shivered beside me and that small movement was merciful; it gave me something to do. I reached for a few pieces of the garbage that had blown into the cave and shoved them under the remnants of wood from someone else’s fire. I pried off a few of the flaking pieces from the log that people had drug in for a seat and stacked them neatly. I pulled out my lighter and held it to the paper in the center of my small cone.
Driving rain was the only sound besides our breathing as that fire slowly caught and came to life. Mercy held out her hands toward the orange flame and smiled.
“Thank you,” she said just before she leaned in to me.
“I should be the one thanking you,” I said as I copied her, more for something to do than that I was really cold. “That you might forgive me…I didn’t think…”
“I asked you before and I’ll ask you again, how could you ever think otherwise?”
I sighed again and watched the flame dance beneath my heavy breath.
“They drugged me and it made me forget. I forgot that night. I forgot what happened. And then I heard your voice out in the forest and I forgot so much more. I never really pieced the memory back together right.” I rubbed down my face and smoothed my beard.
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” She simply readjusted where her temple rested on my shoulder.
“I don’t know,” I answered softly as my gaze moved from the fire to the rain just beyond us and up to our carved initials. “Maybe I never really pieced myself back together right either.”
“Wedding vows are richer, poorer, good times and bad, sickness and health. I wanted all of that with you, Dantè.”
I twisted to kiss the crown of her head and closed my eyes as tight as I could against the storm that brewed inside the cave, so different than the one outside.
“I would have died for you,” she murmured.
“I knew. And God, I would have too.”
“And now?” She finally lifted up from my shoulder. I felt the intensity of her gaze but I couldn’t turn to meet it. Not after everything I’d done. Not with the real meaning laid bare.
“I don’t deserve the chance.”
“Goddammit, Dantè, I said it before. Not even thirty minutes ago. You do too.” She scooted a little bit away from me.
I reached for her. I had to. “Look, Mercy, maybe I deserve my life back. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I should kill Diego for what he did. Maybe he deserves to live. I’m not really sure.” I pulled her knuckles to my lips again. “But I hurt you. And because of my pride. Because if I’d let you see me in jail like you wanted to, we wouldn’t be here. If I came back like I always promised, we wouldn’t be here. If I had trusted your heart like you trusted mine…”
She let me keep her hand but she didn’t speak.
“I’d ruin a man for doing what I did, Mercy.”
“Say that again.”
My whole face scrunched in confusion.
“Be protective. Be ruthless. Fight for me.” Each of her commands grew a little stronger. “Say it again.”
I couldn’t help my smile as it slowly spread. She understood this. She understood me. Even what I’d become, and it made lust and love and want, and something even more primal than all three, course through me.
“You are perfect and priceless, and anyone who doesn’t know your value deserves to be punished,” I said it roughly, letting what her words did to my stomach curl in languid tendrils.
Mercy purred and I pushed closer.
“You could punish me. You could ruin me. I would take anything at your hands, because they are yours.” I let my voice drop, a snarl on the end of it.
“And?” She reached up and let her fingers trace the tattoo that adorned my chest.
“And you are mine,” I growled and grabbed her, pulling her to me, about to angle her under me.
Only to drop her a heartbeat later.
“I won’t break any more promises to you. Not if I’m lucky enough to get to make them in the first place.”
She turned toward me and slid her feet between my hip and my hand. “Promise me you won’t leave me again.”
“On every drop of water in the ocean.” I trailed a single finger up her denim-clad shin, checking in with her for every inch.
“Promise you won’t let them come between us again. Not what they did in the past and not what you can do in the future.” She slid forward and punctuated her words with a defined poke to my chest.
I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes. This was the end. Mercy was asking me to grant just that.
“I promise.”
She moved even closer to me, her chest almost pressing against my arm, my chest. The fire danced on one side of her body, but it was my skin that danced when she was so close. She leaned in and I learned that the heat of the fire was nothing compared to that of her sweet breath against my ear.
“Promise me forever, Dantè Rogue.”
“On every constellation in the sky.”
He’d come back to me. He’d come back for me. Mercy Graves was Dantè Rogue’s, and not the storm or the sand or what had come before him that night could deny those things.
“On all the constellations?” I asked just because I knew how he would answer.
“Not on Cassiopeia.” He leaned into me, and I felt his breathing hitch up with each labored puff on my skin. “Never on Cassiopeia. Never on you.” His lips brushed my shoulder.
Hours ago I was convinced that I needed to build myself up strong enough to weather this world without Dantè. The world had proceeded to prove me wrong. And while it wasn’t perfect and pretty and resolved, he said all the things I needed to hear to build back the pieces of me. He said them and he meant them. I could tell by the earnest pull of his eyes in the flicker of the firelight.
I smiled at his words. At the fire he’d built for me. At his declaration carved years ago in sandstone and said aloud again tonight. I smiled and I knew I needed him forever but also here.
Here.
And now.
“Promise me you’ll go slow,” I whispered, my nose barely brushing his cheek, my lips doing the same.
He bowed his head and pressed a kiss to my collarbone, his thick eyelashes fanned out on his cheeks.
“I’m not going anywhere, we don’t have to…”
“Promise me,” I insisted.
He reached behind me, to the skin that still knew his touch, and he tenderly traced the constellation of freckles on my back.
“On what’s left of my very soul.”
He traced the freckles again as he slowly lowered me to the sand. I felt each tiny grain that slipped into my overalls but couldn’t turn back. Not now. Not with Dantè over top of me. He was gorgeous in his disguise. He’d become a man while he was gone, all hard plains and sculpted muscles, blanketed in dark tattoo ink. My fingers wanted to walk the art of his body until they knew the sweeping lines by heart. The way he trembled as he slid between my legs and froze…spoke of how he just might let me.
I shook similar
ly when I finally did reach for his skin. That he was here, solid and strong, not a specter steadied me. Where I’d thought of Diego before, I knew nothing but gratitude this time. For being safe. For being loved. For feeling fire inside me just as real as the one beside me.
“I didn’t think I’d be here ever again,” he whispered before he bent to kiss the swell of my left breast.
My heart responded as it hit against his lips and the sudden sharpness stole my breath. I couldn’t find the words to answer him. To tell him that deep down I’d never given up hope, but this time he didn’t need me to.
He moved his kisses just a hair bit higher, to my breastbone, to the dip of my collarbone, then to the curve of my neck as it bled into my shoulder. He kissed each swath of skin so tenderly, my body melted beneath him.
Even as he reached for the button of my remaining strap.
My breath caught again, feeling anticipation coil in my belly. It didn’t ease when he deftly undid the button. Or when he pushed my overalls down around my hips. And my heart stopped completely when he hooked his hands beneath my tube top and started to pull it up. I sat up to help him, my arms threading overhead as my shirt shortly followed.
It wasn’t until his big hands wrapped around my rib cage and pulled me to his lips that my lungs filled back up. My hands found the same safe space, splayed across his back and I held on. So tight. And I kissed him back just the way he should be—like he was life itself for me.
His hands slid into my pants and I arched up to let him push them down but he used the heel of his hand to gently press me back down. “Not yet,” he breathed against my lips. “The sand.” His breathy laugh warmed the embers already smoldering inside me.
“I need you,” I managed.
“You have me. I promised.” His hand meandered between my thighs and traced the shape of me.
That touch. That fucking touch. He knew me so well, knew where to stop, where to circle. My body remembered him, his callused touch, and I craved it. I closed my eyes and savored each little touch. He started thrusting in and out of me and I whimpered. This time he let me. And he let my hips roll up and down with the rhythm of his movements.
