Breathe Me (A 'Me' Novel)

by Williams, Jeri

  “You like that?” he asked. Faster, harder.

  “Yes…yes.” Harder, faster.

  “We fit, you and me, we fit fucking perfectly.” Harder.

  “Yes, yes. Faster,” I pleaded, wanting him to crawl inside of me. I couldn’t get enough of this, of him pounding into me, invisibly marking me forever. I felt hot, too hot. My skin was on fire and prickly and my nipples hurt inside my bra. I grabbed his head and pulled him close, the sensation becoming too much when he suddenly twisted my nipple in his mouth through my bra and I cried out, my body shaking around his, heat pooling within my core.

  Deklan leaned back, grabbing my hips, and slammed me down hard before letting out a “fuck” on a hiss, then stilling, collapsing, and sandwiching me between his body and the wall.

  “Fuck, Harley…” He trailed off, and I wondered if it was because he didn’t or couldn’t admit or say out loud what we both knew just happened between us, that it had changed us, made me and him an “us,” because no matter what, I knew I wouldn’t forget this moment ever, and I think he felt the same.

  Sometime later, I was lying cuddled on his chest after we collapsed on the floor, feeling a sense of bliss that I had never felt before, and I thought that what he said about us fitting together was accurate. I somehow knew that my life would be forever changed by meeting him.

  Confession time: I had a list of things that guys were supposed to do, and that was how you would know they loved you. Granted, I compiled this list based off of every romance, non-romance, paranormal, and self-help book I’d ever read, but still.

  One, they’ll kiss you on your forehead. I don’t know why, but the simple act speaks volumes. It’s as tender as a lover’s caress, and it means you are loved, cared for.

  Two—and this one I always found to be the most stupid, but I secretly wanted it to happen—they get so pissed at you that they argue with you or leave or are total dicks only to come back later, having some epiphany in three chapters or less, and confess their love, because if they are passionate enough to leave but strong enough to came back, it means something grand.

  And lastly, they say they will have sex with you only once but keep coming back for more, like they need to, like they can’t function without you. I wanted someone to need me. I want him to need me like I needed him.

  Deklan didn’t do any of these things, but in a moment of weakness, he had let me in and shown me a little part of himself. He was honest to a fault, and I believed that he would always keep it truthful with me even if it hurt to hear it. He seemed protective of me, which drew me to him more, although he could have protected anyone from that asshole from the other day. He was different with me; this I knew from the first time I met him, and when he was so cold and fierce with everyone else but not with me. I kinda thought that all of that meant something, that he was my something grand.

  “I never thought my mother actually hated me,” I started to say, wanting to fill the silence in the wake of my rampaging thoughts. I needed to get this off my chest, and he wasn’t kicking me out, so I continued. “I always knew that she didn’t like me much, but I always thought it would work itself out, and that despite it all, she really did love me, you know? It wasn’t until I was six or seven that I was really aware of her utter dislike towards me, and at seven, that split my world open to know that my mother didn’t love me. I learned from that age on that love wouldn’t exist for someone like me, someone who would never be touched by it. She never held me after falling and scraping my knee, never consoled me after receiving a bad grade in school, never congratulated me on a job well done. No, none of that ever happened for me. I was laughed at after falling, ridiculed after failing a test, and kicked or punched when I was already down, and I accepted that that was going to be the life I knew, the ‘love’ I knew about.”

  “Harley, stop this shit,” he said.

  I propped myself up on his chest to look into his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s…? Really, you think I can just sit here and listen to this shit and not want to fucking punch something? I don’t hit women, and I use the term loosely with your piece-of-shit mother, but fuck it if I don’t want to put my foot up her ass right about now. That’s what’s wrong.”

  Wow, I didn’t think anyone cared what happened in my life, especially after the fact that I’d had to endure it for so long. I was used to people looking the other way, not asking the right questions, not caring enough to see I was slowly dying. It was weird that someone like him could empathize with me so much that he was angry. Really angry.

  “I didn’t think you’d care,” I told him honestly.

  “Listen to me, and listen good because I will only say this shit once. I don’t just show anyone my back, let them in like that, and that explosion between me and you just now never fucking happened before in my life. So I more than fucking care, babe.” He gripped my waist and squeezed for emphasis.

  What did that mean? I knew what I wanted it to mean, but what did he mean by it? I didn’t want to fully believe that he liked me as much as I liked him—no, more than liked him. I thought I was falling for him, be it because of the idea of falling for him or because he protected me and I was enamored by the act and not him. I wanted to rationalize with myself and say that all of that was possible and probably true, but my stupid-girl heart and body told me that it was him. He was the one I was falling for. Just him.

  “What happened to you?” I asked again, hoping this time to get an answer.

  “You got enough in your head. You don’t need my shit, too,” he said, then rolled over, placing me underneath him, and started kissing my neck. My bra had been removed when we had collapsed onto the floor, and he slowly made his way down my neck to the swell of my breasts and the first cuts. I self-consciously moved to cover them, and he stopped me.

  “Don’t.”

  “But…they’re gross. I’m gross.” I turned my head, unable to look at him, fearing his eyes would mirror my thoughts. He moved my hands above my head, pinning them there with one hand, then he began tracing my sensitive skin with his other hand.

  “Feel that?” he asked as his short fingernail ran down the valley between my breasts and back up again, sending shivers down my spine.

  I only nodded, unable to form a coherent syllable at the moment.

  “I don’t see this shit,” he said, tracing a cut. “I don’t feel that shit. I feel this.” He scraped his fingernail across both my nipples, causing heat to pool immediately between my thighs. “I feel this.” He dipped his head and took one of my nipples in his mouth, sucking gently, then releasing it. “I feel this.” He moved his hand lower to my belly button and traced it with his thumb before easing down to the juncture between my thighs. “I feel this.” He moved his hand lower and cupped my knee, then slowly moved it upward, exposing my sex. “And I sure as fuck feel this.” He slid two fingers into me, and I gasped out his name as he started to fuck me vigorously with his fingers.

  I felt his erection hit against my hip bone as I pushed down on his fingers. It was like my body was going off instincts on what to do. A third finger went in, widening me, filling me completely as his knuckles slapped against my lips.

  “Deklan, oh god, shit, fuck!”

  He put pressure on my clit, and I bucked against him, clawing out my orgasm on his back. Holy shit, how many different ways could he make me feel?

  Chapter 29

  Deklan

  After giving her more orgasms, I needed a shower to wash off the hot, sticky mess we had made and get my thoughts together. Having grown up with Royce, I was aware of a parent’s cruelty, but Harley’s mother was not just cruel but also evil. I didn’t hit females, but if I ever saw her mother, I would shake the fucking shit out of that bitch until her fucking teeth fell out. She had broken down Harley to make herself feel better—I knew the type—but she was done with that shit. I was in the picture now.

  I came out of the shower half expecting Harley to have bolted, but there she sat
in the middle of the bed, hair a mess, only wearing one of my shirts. She was more innocent and fragile looking than before.

  “You good?” I asked, going over to my duffel and slipping on my jeans.

  She looked down, trying to hide her embarrassment.

  “Babe, didn’t we discuss this? Don’t do that.” You would think after giving her multiple orgasms and putting my mouth on every part of her body, she would be past this embarrassment shit.

  “Yes, it’s just that…” She trailed off with a look of mortification on her face that had me intrigued. This had nothing to do with her life or her mother. There was a different sense of embarrassment there. I stood my ground and gave her an expectant look. After a minute, she rolled her eyes and told me, “It’s nothing. I’m just sore.”

  “Why are you embarrassed about that? I should have thought about your back, but I was a little busy,” I said, but noticed she still had that look on her face. “What?”

  “It’s not my back—well, that’s a dull ache. But I’m not sore there,” she supplied, and the realization hit me. Me being the asshole that I was, my head, both of them, swelled with that knowledge. I knew I had been rough with her, but fuck if I couldn’t have helped it. She released something in me, and I couldn’t stop myself after that. I was not sorry, though.

  Walking over to her, I grabbed her by her ankles and pulled her legs until I was positioned at her center, her back flat on the bed. She looked up at me with expectant eyes, and sore or not, if I wanted her again, she would let me.

  “That’s because it’s missing something,” I said cockily. I couldn’t help it.

  She stared at me a bit, then burst out laughing, one of those loud, goofy laughs, and I realized it was the first time I had ever heard her laugh.

  It moved shit in my chest.

  In between laughs, she said, “I’m not laughing at you, I swear.” She tried catching her breath.

  When I gripped her hips and lifted her ass off the bed, grinding my hungry erection into her, her gasps turned into a groan.

  “Deklan…”

  “I know, I can’t stop either. But you and me need to have words, plus I’m out of condoms.” I cupped her pussy and felt the heat radiating off it. Shit, she was already ready, but I forced myself to ease up and let go. The moment I did, she crawled back up to the head of the bead and waited.

  “We’re done,” she stated and wouldn’t look at me, like she had this shit figured out already. Don’t think so.

  “Nah, babe, we are far from done. What’s going to go down is I’m taking you home, you’re packing your shit, and you’re coming with me.”

  I was done leaving the people I cared about behind, and there was no denying the fact that she had evoked some feelings in me.

  “Deklan, I can’t just leave…”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “Because.”

  “ ‘Because’ is not an answer. Why the fuck not, Harley?” I asked again, losing my fucking patience. I would think that all she needed was a way out, and I had provided one for her, so why the fuck wasn’t she taking it?

  “It’s not that simple,” she said.

  “Yeah, the fuck it is. You get your shit and you come with me.”

  She jumped off the bed and began grabbing her clothes, putting them on hurriedly. There was no way she was leaving, but I let her go through the motions.

  “It’s not simple for me like it is for you,” she accused.

  “You don’t know shit was easy for me,” I said, trying to rein in my temper. She was hurt; she was going to lash out.

  “I know you used to live here. You had a happy family and you left. Where is my other shoe?”

  “Yeah, I had a happy fucking family, with a father who beat the shit out of me just because and a mother who looked the other fucking way and a brother who…nah, you’re not turning this shit around on me.” She almost got me.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?” I pushed. She didn’t reply, just kept looking for her other shoe, which I saw under the bed. I could have told her that, but nope. “Why?” I asked again, harder.

  “I’m scared!” she screamed.

  Finally, the truth.

  “I have nothing,” she said. “I don’t know how to do this, how to fit in. I’m always going to be broken, Deklan, and someone like you can’t want someone like me.” She flopped down on the bed, looking dejected.

  “So you’ve got this all figured out, huh? Your fucking mother hit you that hard that you can’t fucking see what’s right in front of you?”

  She gasped. And yeah, that was a fucked thing to say, but she needed to hear it.

  “You don’t tell me what I want and where you fit. You fucking fit.”

  She shook her said. “Don’t you see? I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to fit, how to love. I’m going to go with you and think that you don’t want me, that I’m not enough for you, that I’m a fuckup and how much my mother was right. I’m going to cling to you and push you away because I hate myself and I don’t even know who I am. But most of all, I’m going to need you to want me, to love me, especially when I don’t love myself. Can you promise me that? I just need someone to love me.” Her eyes glazed with unshed tears.

  If I thought I had feelings for her before, I hadn’t even scratched the surface. I was drowning in them now. She was so hurt and fractured that she couldn’t see what I saw, why I wanted to keep her.

  I walked over to her and gently pulled her up from the bed, then forced her to look into my eyes so she would see this shit, feel it. As slowly as I could, I placed my hand over her rapidly beating heart while her eyes looked up at me, pleaded with me not to hurt her more than she already was.

  “I got this, okay? I got this.” And in that moment, I fucking knew. Knew I would always have it. I was about to suggest we just relax for a beat when my phone rang. I knew who it was, and what he was calling to say.

  Without taking my eyes off hers, I reached into my pocket with my other hand and answered Matty’s call.

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s gone,” my little brother whispered, sounding so much like the little kid who used to follow me everywhere I went until he found Royce’s coattails to hang off of. I wanted to say something to comfort him—big brothers are supposed to do that shit, right? Only I stopped being a big brother the minute he stopped being a little one, and our days of heart-to-hearts rode out when I did. Without saying anything, I hung up. He would know that I wouldn’t say shit.

  I knew this was going to happen. We all knew. But just because you were prepared for death didn’t mean you were really prepared for it. The shit still sucked, and it would still hit you, and shit was hitting me hard. I turned and punched a hole in the wall while bellowing out a “fuck,” causing Harley to gasp, but to her credit, she didn’t flinch.

  “What is it?” she asked, all wide-eyed and concerned and shit, and that pissed me off for some reason. She had it bad. Her mother was a bitch and a half, yet she was concerned with my life?

  “My ma died,” I said without emotion in my voice, because I couldn’t let that shit in. I would only scare her more and wind up paying more in damages to this fucking room than my stay totaled. She moved like she wanted to comfort me, hug me, then stopped mid-step.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “Because someone you loved died,” she said simply. Like it was that simple.

  “How do you know I loved her?” I challenged. I was being an asshole, and I had no excuse.

  She grabbed my hand, intertwining our fingers, kissing my knuckles. “Because you came back for her.”

  There was no denying that, and I couldn’t fucking think straight, so I wiped her tears with the pads of my thumbs and pulled her to me and gave her the one thing I had given only one other woman in my life: a hug.

  Chapter 30

  Harley

  Hugs were always
uncomfortable for me. I never knew where to put my arms or if I was squeezing too tight or too light, and since I didn’t have much practice with them aside from the occasional spontaneous ones from Ember, I tried to avoid them. But with Deklan, I fit in his arms, my hands fit around his waist perfectly, like I was made for him, and it hit me: I fit.

  With Deklan, I fit.

  This feeling—the warm, fuzzy, tingly feeling I was feeling—this was what love felt like. In his arms I was loved. Even if he never said it, I felt it. I wasn’t familiar with death, just like I wasn’t familiar with love, but I knew that people often apologized for it even when they didn’t know why they were apologizing. It was just what you did, like saying “bless you” when someone sneezes. But I knew the reason I said it to Deklan was because I really was sorry. He was in pain, it was clear, and when someone you love is in pain, you’re in pain.

  “Come on.” He pulled apart from me, reached under the bed, and produced my shoe.

  “Come somewhere with me?” he asked. Actually asked, and not demanded in pure Deklan style. How could I say no?

  Nodding, I slipped on my shoe and we left the room. Once in his car, we sat in silence as he drove, one hand on the wheel, the other holding mine. I squeezed his hand every so often to let him know I was there, and he’d squeeze back, silently acknowledging it.

  When we pulled up on the curb outside his parents’ house and he turned off the engine, I expected him to get out and go inside, but instead he just sat there and waited. He stared at the house. In the driveway, I recognized Matt’s truck, and I assumed the older, expensive-looking car was his father’s.

  “Are you going in?” I asked, even though the last thing I wanted to do was go back in that house and face Mr. Kane, but if it meant helping Deklan, easing some of his pain, I’d do it.

  “No,” he said as he continued to stare at the house. He dropped my hand and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. A coroner’s car passed by us and turned into the driveway, and all thoughts I had about my mother vanished as I focused on Deklan. His breathing had slowed down, and his grip on the steering wheel got tighter and tighter. I wanted to reach out to him, but I was scared it would make things worse. I wanted to comfort him in some way, so I pried one of his hands from the death grip he had on the steering wheel and intertwined our fingers. If this was all I had to offer, holding his hand and waiting, then I’d do this forever. We watched as people came and went, and when they finally took her away, Deklan sat up straighter in his seat and whispered, “Good-bye, Ma.”