by K. L. Donn
“Fuck,” I hear him growl seconds before he pulls me off of him. “When I come, it’s going to be in your sweet, little pussy, Ashley, not your filthy mouth.”
Before I can get a word in, he tosses me over his shoulder and carries me to the back of the house where our bedroom is.
Declan
Her mouth around my cock is pure unadulterated pleasure. I dream of Ashley on her knees before me far more than what could be considered normal. When she’d just nearly sucked me down her throat, I had to stop her.
Sure, I want to fill her full of my seed, but I haven’t been inside her sweet heaven in months, and my only interest right now is filling up her insanely welcoming pussy. Giving her as much pleasure as she gives me.
No more words are spoken as I lay her back on the bed, falling between her legs. Spreading her thighs, I enjoy her squirms as I stare at the magnificent sight before me. Her dewy lips soaked with pleasure from sucking me off.
Leaning in, I lick her from bottom to top, inhaling every last drop of her essence as her back bows off the bed and a light hiss of pleasure passes her lips.
As she tries to close her legs, to ease the pressure from her passion, I force them open as wide as I can get. Climbing up her body, my lips meet hers. A sensual slide as she arches her body into mine.
“Please, Declan,” she begs.
Nipping her chin, I whisper, “Please what, cupcake.”
Her breath hitches as I press my hardness to her core, “Please, daddy, take me.”
“Whatever you want, baby,” I murmur as I fill her heated core.
Wrapping my arms around her, I start a slow, sensual slide in and out of her body. Our forms slick with sweat as we move. Moans rent the night as I hit a particular spot inside or her, or she tightens her sheath on me.
With her legs firmly wrapped around my hips and nails scoring down my back, I fight to hold on to the sweet torture loving her has become. I battle to control the beast.
“More,” her breathy voice whispers in my ear.
Picking up the pace of my thrusts, I slam into her body, eyes closed, my face buried in the crook of her neck as she cries out in pleasure. When I feel her body tense, her pussy turns to molten lava as she screams through her orgasm.
Tightening around my cock, I stay still as she rides the waves of ecstasy. As she finishes, I continue to pump in and out of her, a brief tingling at the base of my spine my only warning that my own climax is impending.
Gripping her hips, I force myself as deeply inside of her as I can just as jets of semen unload into her. Breathing heavily, I allow the desire to consume me as I feel the liquid fight to stay inside of her.
Her hands smoothing up and down my back bring me back from the brink of hedonism I feel whenever I’m with Ashley.
Turning my head, I kiss her neck lightly, “I love you, cupcake.”
Her silence at my confession screams of shellshock until she replies, “I love you, too, Declan.”
“You’re moved in.” I finally confess what I’ve been doing the last few weeks.
“I know,” she whispers, her voice filled with laughter.
Of course, she fucking knows. I can’t get anything past my girl.
“You all right with it?” I ask, not sure if I could let her go if she wasn’t.
Her hands come to my cheeks, forcing me to look up at her. “Declan,” she sighs my name like a prayer, “you’re all I want. Living with you sort of comes with that. You couldn’t be rid of me if you tried.”
Her happy smile is all I need.
With my heart full and her happy, I take her again. Just like I promised.
Epilogue
Ashley
“One moment. In your life, there will be one moment in time that has the power to determine who you are. What you’ll do. How your future will turn out.” I stare out at the stadium of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. All young people like I used to be, or wanted to be.
I wonder if someone had come to my high school and spoke about what I’m about to share with them, would things have been different. Always wondering…
“My moment was nothing defining at the time. I was no more than a snot-nosed brat that thought I was better than everyone else because I had the pedigree. I had the money and the perfect family.” Taking a breath, I watch them, sitting in their own little cliques. Some whispering to each other, others looking around possibly trying to figure out why I’m here or where their best friend of the week is.
“My moment wasn’t so much a point in time as it was a person. With feelings, and heartache, and more trauma than she ever deserved. My moment was Cecilia Marks. She was broken, and I preyed on her. I shattered her beyond repair.” Pausing, the whispers start. “At least, I thought I did. You know what’s so amazing about broken people? They aren’t nearly as defeated as you would believe. They fight, and they claw their way out. They push back; not physically maybe, not even emotionally, but one step at a time. They build a wall so high you can no longer penetrate them, and right there, that wall? That’s strength. There’s no weakness because it takes an inhuman amount of power to ignore the darkness and let in the light.”
Taking a step back from the microphone, I look to my left across the stage for my strength. A sip of water soothes my dry throat as nerves fight to challenge me to back down. I won’t.
“My name is Ashley Powers, and in this room, beyond these walls, and on this campus, I was a bully.” Standing tall, I let their garbled, indistinct voices wash over me, let their judgments be expressed because no matter they say, I’m better than that person I used to be.
As the students begin to quiet down and some teachers I recognize straighten up with smiles on their faces, I begin again. “I was once the mean girl. The one everyone followed because they thought I was cool. I slept with the popular boys to prove I was better than those same girls. Do you want to know what I really was?”
“A bitch?” a snarky voice from the back asks.
I smile. I know that voice. “Worse,” I snap back.
“A slut?” There’s a bit of laughter in her voice now that I know only I can detect.
“Guess again,” I call, placing my hand on my hips feigning impatience.
“Desperate?” she asks walking towards the stage.
Pretending to be thoughtful, I wait until she’s waddling her way up the stairs to answer, “Desperate could be a good word for it.”
Standing side by side, we look to our captive audience. “So what were you?” a shy young woman from the front asks.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” I can tell she doesn’t like to be put on the spot.
Her face flushes red as she answers me. “Amelia,” she says faintly.
“Well, Amelia, I was lost. Alone. Scared. Maybe even insecure.”
“She really was a bitch,” Cec interjects again.
“Oh, shut up, you,” I murmur back.
“So who’s she?” another student asks.
Turning towards my sister-in-law and her very pregnant belly, I smile as I answer. “She’s my best friend and the love of my brother’s life. She is Cecilia Marks. And I was her bully. I made her life pure hell for no other reason than I saw her pain and how it matched so closely to my own, and I knew I could exploit it. I honed in on it like a finely-tuned car and exposed every corroded wire until there was nothing left.”
The room fell into such a silence that you could hear a pin drop. “Don’t let her fancy words fool you. She was a complete narcissistic bitch. She made my life a living hell, and when her brother pushed his way into my life, begged me to love him, I nearly didn’t because of her. Ashley was not a nice person; she was the devil in stilettos with prettier hair,” Cecilia explained.
Shame no longer washed through me the way it used to. I was finally doing what I could to make sure the younger generations didn’t end up as shattered as us. I have become somewhat of a motivational speaker with the help of Becky, Felicia, and Zack.
&nb
sp; “Why did you forgive her? How are you even friends?” Amelia asked.
Grabbing my hand, Cec looked to the young girl. “There are so many awful things in this world. So many bad people. That sometimes we need to let go in order to be free. With Ashley, I saw her pain as my own. We connected in that way. Two years ago, her hatred nearly destroyed us both. When she hit her low point, and trust me it was nasty, I knew I had to be that person…” Her smile lights up the room. “I had to be the person she could trust to be real with her. I was her safe place. She pushed and shoved like a tug-of-war, though. It wasn’t easy, but so worth it.” Gazing back to the crowd she told them, “Just remember, that for every piece of pain and suffering you feel, there is always someone beside you suffering just as horribly. We all deal with it differently. We lash out, we suffer in silence–”
“We hurt ourselves,” I interrupt her. “And that’s what I did. I first hurt Cecilia which devastated my family and ultimately destroyed me. I shattered and crumbled before I finally became my own worst enemy.”
“What was your rock bottom?” a teacher in the back asked.
Inhaling and closing my eyes, this was the moment that would either resonate with these kids or roll right off their shoulders. “Prison.”
The murmurs sounded, louder than before. I can see some of the teacher’s eyes that used to know me, the old me, light up with triumph as if they knew I would end up there. Who knows, maybe they did. Some flash proud smiles my way, others had no idea.
“Why?” someone blurted above the noise.
I can do this. Deep breath, Ash.
“My bullying had always been verbal. I’d never crossed the line. I won’t lie and say I had some moral ethics that prevented it; I was vain. I didn’t want to break a nail.” My smile had some people laughing; Cec shoved me, telling me to get real. “Honestly, though, I had no desire to be physical. Maybe I was scared she’d fight back and kick my ass. As sweet as she is, she can make my big brother cower,” I mock whisper.
Getting serious because what I did was no laughing matter, I confess. “I tripped her down a flight of stairs. Encouraged the boy I was seeing to kick her. I was a complete and total jealous bitch, and frankly, I deserved to go to jail.” Now for the hard part. “Cecilia wasn’t the one to press charges, though. My brother did. He wanted me to own up to my life, to be responsible. So I went to jail, and for one year, I knew what it was like to be her. For one year, I lost everything I thought I was and believed I deserved everything I got.”
I have to take a break. It is overwhelming to speak to people I barely know about my breaking point.
“What happened after?” Amelia asked.
“After?” I ask wistfully. “After, I was once again my own worst enemy. I kept myself sheltered from people. Pushed my family away, and when things got to be too rough, when my emotions ran rampant…” Pausing, I grip my forearms, rubbing the scars. “I cut.” Pushing my sleeves up, I bare my soul.
“Then she met me.” That voice. Shivers rack my spine every time I hear it. My heart palpitates. My pulse races.
“Then I met him,” I repeat. “Where my family couldn’t break through my shattered mind, he did. He didn’t let me off the hook. He didn’t let me hide from the hard truths. He made me own my life.”
Declan’s hands land on my shoulders, rubbing down my biceps and up to cup my forearms that are still displayed for all to see. “I watched her struggle with her emotions, fight to keep everything bottled inside when she should have been yelling and screaming and fighting to break free. Except this hard-headed nut didn’t want to be a bother to anyone who loved her.”
“I won’t lie to you and say every bully and their victim end up like Cec and me. We’re one in a million. Fate brought us together at a time when we needed each other and didn’t even know it. What I will tell you is that if you’re the one bullying, it’s going to eat you up inside. It will make you sick, you won’t be able to breathe, and it’s not going to fix whatever the underlying problem is.”
Cec interrupts. “If you’re being bullied, and for whatever reason think you deserve it, you don’t. Never does anyone deserve it. You are worth so much more than you give yourself credit for.”
“You guys only live once; you get that one moment to make a decision that will define you. Make that moment a good one. Make it count. Make someone count.” Relief swamps me as these kids, kids I used to be a part of, break out in applause and miraculously, a boy walks over to Amelia. I can tell he’s in pain as he says something to her making them both smile.
“You did so fucking good, cupcake,” Declan coos in my ear.
“Yeah?” I ask turning to him.
“So fucking good,” he murmurs, nuzzling my cheek.
Surrounded by the most important people in my life, a gymnasium packed with the next generation, and for the first time, I’m proud.
Proud of the life I’ve been given.
Proud of the impact I’ve hopefully left with these young kids.
Proud to be me.
The End
Author’s Note
Going into this book I knew it was going to be a love or hate read. While I hope you love it, I understand why you’ll hate it.
I hope most of you can understand the woman Ashley was in order to become the woman she is now.
With personal experience with self-harm, I felt it was a subject I could relate to unlike any other. I knew that in order to get Ash to a place where she could learn from her mistakes, move on, forgive and ask forgiveness she had to have a nearly unbreakable experience.
If this made you squirm, or become uncomfortable I’m truly sorry for that.
Sadly this is a reality all too common amongst people struggling to find their place in life for whatever reason. Life is hard, and the choice to get healthy again is harder.
About the Author
Like y’all don’t know about me already! Wait, you don’t? We let me tell you!
I am forever 29 years old (For real my birthday says I’ll be 30 this year, but I refuse) I have been with my amazing husband for 12 years and together we have 4 stunning children! (Biased I know!) For the last 8 years I have been a stay at home mom to care for them and now that they’re all older I can finally do something for me.
That something is most definitely writing! I love creating stories and sharing them with the world! I don’t get to read as often as I used to but you better believe my TBR list is longer then me! I absolutely love to hear from my fans so please feel free to contact me at anyone of these places:
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Playlist for From the Ashes
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For more information:
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Also by K.L. Donn
The Possessed Series
Bullied – Book 0.5
OWNED by Dominic – Book 1
One Dance for Case – Book 2
Tattooed & Alone for Christmas – Part 1 in the Hot Wicked Romances anthology
Lost & Found – Book 3 – Coming Feb 2017
The Protectors Series
Keeley’s Fight
Emily’s Protectors
Kennedy’s Redemption
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