Hold On

by Kristen Ashley

  He was right.

  Fuck yes.

  I sucked him off, giving it everything I had, then giving in when Merry took over, holding my head, fucking my face.

  One hand tight to his ass, the other hand tight around the back of his thigh, I took it. I loved it. Fuck, I was thinking I’d come getting it. And when a moan slid up my throat and sounded against his driving dick, he pulled out.

  Then I was up, and before I knew it, I was facedown on his bed.

  My whole body jerked after he reached a hand around, made light work of my fly, and yanked my jeans down.

  My panties went with them and then my hips were up.

  “All fours,” Merry growled.

  I pushed to my hands.

  Merry thrust into my pussy.

  My head flew back.

  He fucked me harder.

  I twisted my neck and looked back at him, panting, gone, but still able to encourage, “Give that to me, baby.”

  He pounded deep, eyes to my ass, his cock thrusting inside me, grunting, “So fuckin’ gorgeous.”

  I dropped my head, rearing back, gasping, “Yeah, Merry. Please, baby. Keep givin’ that to me.”

  He did and he didn’t have to do it for long. I was so primed, I exploded, my arms dropping down, my head flying back. I was trembling even as I was burning—so beautiful, all Merry.

  He thrust in, stayed planted, and pushed so I came off my knees, going forward. My legs spread-eagled to accommodate him, flat on my front, he got me in position and resumed moving, driving hard.

  My orgasm shifting out, wanting another one, I started to lift up to get my forearms under me in order to drive myself into him.

  His hand came to my neck and he gently pushed, grunting, “Baby, stay down.”

  My eyes flew open. My mouth went dry.

  And my mind blanked.

  I wasn’t there.

  I wasn’t anywhere.

  Not anywhere.

  It came to me that I felt my body being fucked.

  I was wet. So wet.

  Wanting it. God, I wanted to get fucked.

  I tried pushing my forearms under me again.

  The hand at my neck tightened and I heard, “Stay down.”

  Stay down.

  I stayed down.

  The cock thrusting into me kept doing it. I heard the grunts of effort. Flesh hitting flesh. Then his hand at my neck tightened further as he drove deep, stayed put, and groaned.

  I stared at the comforter.

  It took a while, a long while, then there was gliding. Slow, sweet, gentle.

  Had he been sweet?

  He’d been sweet.

  But not to me.

  Never to me.

  To who he wanted me to be.

  I felt lips touch my shoulder.

  That felt sweet.

  But he wasn’t sweet.

  I knew sweet.

  Now I knew sweet.

  It wasn’t him.

  “Be back.”

  He slid out. I felt covers flipped over me. The bed moved.

  He was gone.

  I threw the covers back and bolted. On my feet, beside the bed, I saw my jeans and panties.

  I didn’t bother with the panties, I yanked on my jeans.

  Where was my bra?

  Fuck.

  I couldn’t find my bra.

  Fuck it.

  I needed a top.

  “Cher?”

  I saw my bag in the corner.

  That’s where I’d find a top.

  I ran to it.

  “Cher.”

  I dug through.

  Who packed this? There was nothing there. Makeup. Deodorant. Socks. Jeans. Some panties.

  I needed a goddamned top!

  “Baby, what the fuck?”

  I felt a hand light on my back.

  I whirled viciously, swiping it away.

  “Jesus.”

  “Don’t fuckin’ touch me,” I bit out.

  “Cherie—”

  “Do not ever fuckin’ touch me,” I clipped.

  I saw a hand come my way, aiming at my jaw, and heard a soft, gentle, sweet repeat of “Cherie—”

  I attacked.

  Savage.

  Wild.

  I hit. I kicked. I clawed. I bit.

  I heard grunts. I heard curses.

  I nearly got caught but leapt away and kept fighting.

  Verbally.

  “You hold me down, do you see her?” I asked, my voice grating with fury.

  “See who?”

  “See her. See her. See her! When you hold me down, face in the bed, motherfucker, do you see her? The woman you wish you were fucking?”

  “Cher, that’s—”

  “Do you?”

  “Baby, it’s only you.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “It’s only ever been you.”

  “Fuck you!”

  The two words rent the air. They weren’t a crack. They weren’t a slice.

  They were a slash.

  They went through me.

  I felt them.

  I just wanted them to go through him.

  Leave him bleeding.

  Leave him.

  Destroy him.

  Get him out of me for good.

  I had to go.

  Fuck.

  I had nothing on up top.

  I didn’t care.

  I turned and ran.

  I didn’t make it out the door. I was caught with an arm at my waist.

  I started fighting again.

  I was shifted to the side, pressed front against a wall, nearly immobilized, only able to kick back.

  But I wasn’t hitting anything.

  “Calm down.” The growl came at my ear. “Talk to me. What the fuck’s the matter with you?”

  “No more. No more of that shit. Hold me down so you can’t see me. Fuck me. Think of her.”

  “Have you lost your goddamned mind?”

  “You think I don’t know?”

  “You don’t know.”

  “I know.”

  “Jesus, Cher. If you knew, you wouldn’t say this shit. You wouldn’t even think it. It’s you, for fuck’s sake. Been you since the beginning. Never her. Christ, woman, I’m in love with you. Mia does not factor.”

  I stilled.

  Mia?

  “You gonna calm down?”

  I stared at the wall.

  Merry’s wall.

  Merry’s wall in Merry’s bedroom in his crappy condo.

  I’m in love with you.

  The words should have given me something else.

  Instead, they opened me up for it to come.

  And it came.

  Oh yeah, it came.

  The pain.

  The pain of shame.

  Fast. So fucking fast. No way to hold it back. It tore through me in a way I couldn’t hold it back. Not anymore. I couldn’t bury it. I couldn’t stop it overwhelming me.

  My legs buckled under the weight of it and I slid down the wall.

  I didn’t hit the floor.

  I heard, “Jesus, baby,” and I was up.

  I curled into him, and when we were down and my ass was in his lap, I burrowed into him.

  Through this they fell.

  The tears.

  Uncontrolled.

  Choking me.

  Drowning me.

  They felt strange. Hot. Ticklish. Shameful.

  Hateful.

  “I’m right here, Cherie,” he murmured, one arm holding me tight, the other hand stroking my hair. “Not goin’ anywhere. I’m right here. Talk to me. Where’d that shit come from? What’s goin’ on, honey?”

  I tried to suck in breath.

  Through the sobs, I barely got any in.

  I burrowed closer like he could give me oxygen.

  “Okay, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Just hold on and get it out.”

  I did as told.

  I held on and let it go.

  He held on too. He stroked
me.

  And he absorbed it.

  This went on for what felt like years before I started to quiet.

  He said nothing. He didn’t push. He didn’t ask.

  He just kept holding me, stroking me, and letting me let go.

  Just like Merry.

  Perfect.

  “I should have known,” I whispered into his skin.

  “Shoulda known what, brown eyes?” Merry whispered back.

  “He did me on my stomach. Hands and knees. Only those. He never let me look at him. I thought it was his kink, but I should have known that wasn’t kink. It was sick. I didn’t know that if he let me look at him, he would have seen me. Me. And he wouldn’t have been fucking Feb.”

  I wheezed as Merry quit stroking and both his arms tightened so hard, I couldn’t breathe.

  Just as quickly as he did it, his arms loosened.

  But not by much.

  “I triggered a memory,” he muttered.

  He did.

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  “Fuck.”

  I pushed even closer. “Not your fault.”

  He was silent a second before he urged gently, “Give it to me.”

  I took my moment of silence before I said softly, “In the beginning, before I learned, learned what he didn’t like, he held me down and would say it. ‘Stay down.’”

  “Fuck,” he repeated.

  “Not your fault, Merry.”

  “We’ll avoid me fuckin’ you on your belly in the future. And definitely those words.”

  I closed my eyes tight. “No.”

  “Cher—”

  It took a lot to pull my shit together and give him my puffy eyes, my red face, any ability to look at me at all after that scene.

  But I did it and I did it because he was Garrett Merrick.

  I looked at him.

  He wasn’t freaked. He wasn’t disgusted. He wasn’t angry.

  He looked troubled.

  And he looked upset.

  For me.

  Yes, that’s why I could look the way I looked after what had just given me that look and give the evidence of it all to Garrett Merrick.

  “He doesn’t get that,” I told him.

  Merry put a hand to my face, rubbing his thumb through the wet on my cheek. “Whatever you want.”

  “All that was going down, us getting together, my neighbor, your ex, Trent and Peggy, I didn’t…” I trailed off but finished, “You were my first…after him. I should have guessed I’d need to keep a handle on it. I didn’t guess.”

  Merry didn’t reply. He just watched his thumb slide across my cheek.

  “You think I’m a girl,” I muttered.

  His thumb stilled and his eyes cut to mine. “What?”

  “Freaking out. Falling apart. Sobbing in your arms,” I explained.

  His face froze and his body under mine got tight.

  And his voice sounded weird when he noted, “Honey, you are a girl.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And I’m pretty fuckin’ glad you’re a girl.”

  He would be.

  “Of course, but—”

  “And seriously, you havin’ it totally together with this relationship thing was fuckin’ with my man mojo. Takin’ on my shit. Balancing me and your kid. Building two relationships at the same time—the one we got, the one you gave me with Ethan. Weathering every storm like it’s nothin’ but sprinkles. Not a big fan of you losin’ your mind in my bedroom after I fuck you. But there are far worse things than bein’ there for my girl while she cries in my arms and lets go of some serious shit that’s burning a hole in her soul. It means something to me that you trusted me with that. It means something that you trusted me to be strong enough to handle it.”

  I stared at him.

  “Though, don’t make it a habit. My brown-eyed girl is a girl, but she’s also a tough chick,” he went on.

  That was a tease. He didn’t mean it.

  I could cry in his arms every day of my life and he wouldn’t give a shit.

  (Though, I’d never do that.)

  I kept staring at him, doing it for the first time since it all went down with Dennis Lowe, feeling safe, being safe, totally safe to let it go.

  But as I did it, my eyes filled with tears again.

  I felt one break free and slide down my cheek.

  Merry watched it go.

  I started talking.

  “I was so stupid.”

  Merry looked back at me.

  “So stupid,” I repeated. “He didn’t want to meet my mom. He never asked us to his place. I never met any of his friends. His bullshit in bed was fucked up. Even if it was kink, I should have had more self-respect than to let him do that to me. And it wasn’t that I didn’t see it, Merry. It wasn’t that I didn’t put it together. It was all textbook at the very least for him being married but also him bein’ possibly fucked in the head. So it wasn’t that I couldn’t put it together. It was that I refused to see it, because after my dad, after a bunch of shit guys treated me like crap, after Trent, I needed so badly to believe. To believe I could find some happy. So I refused to see. And that’s bad enough just for me. But I exposed Ethan to that. I exposed my baby boy to that kind of crazy just because I wanted us to have a little bit of happy.”

  “You weren’t stupid, Cherie.”

  “I so was.”

  He gave me a squeeze. “In all their years together, how many signs do you think Lowe gave his wife?”

  “I know, but—” I tried to cut in.

  I failed.

  “I never met her,” Merry spoke over me. “But every word said about her was that she was nice, people liked her, and no one said she was dumb. Men like him, it’s part of the sickness, sweetheart, finding the skills to hide he’s sick. He needed something from you and he turned on the charm to get it, by that time having had years to hone his skills at manipulating things to get what he wanted to feed the sick at the same time hide it. He played you, Cher. That’s all he did. The reasons why were worse than the usual player who uses those skills to get you in bed or a con man who does the same to orchestrate his score. But in the end, that’s all it was. And you are far from the first person, woman or man, mother or not, who trusted someone enough to get played.”

  I was staring at him again because something about the way he laid that out felt like a knot was being untied inside me. It had been tied together to hold back something important, something crucial, and whatever that was, it finally was let loose.

  Or maybe it was that and freaking out on him, attacking him, and dissolving into a sobbing mess in his arms.

  Whatever…that knot loosened, that thing inside me untied, it loosened something else.

  My mouth.

  Thus, I blurted, “I love you.”

  “No shit?”

  I didn’t stare at that.

  I blinked.

  Then I asked, “I say, ‘I love you,’ and you say, ‘no shit?’”

  “Babe, had my head in my ass, bein’ my own brand of stupid, so I didn’t see it. But when I looked back, I saw it.” His lips quirked. “So yeah. No shit. Seein’ as you been in love with me a long time.”

  Oh fuck.

  He’d figured that out.

  “I have not,” I lied.

  “Liar,” he called me on it.

  I started to push away.

  His arms got tighter.

  “Cherie, I love you too.”

  He sounded like he was struggling not only against me pulling away but also laughter.

  Regardless of the fact that I totally…fucking…loved hearing those words directed at me from Garrett “Merry” Merrick’s beautiful mouth, I was me.

  So I stopped pushing and glared at him. “I know. You shared that when you had me pinned against the wall.”

  “Honey, you drew blood and nearly got me in the balls…twice. It was either pin you or let you have at it and then go to the emergency room.”

  I felt my eyes get big. �
�I drew blood?”

  “Back,” he grunted. “Nails. It’s nothing.”

  I stretched to try and see his back. “Let me see.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  I glared at him again. “Let me see, Merry.”

  “Not right now. Later. Now, one thing we gotta get straight—”

  “I’ll talk to Doc,” I stated, guessing at what he wanted to get straight. “Ask him if maybe I should talk to someone about PTSD or something so you can fuck me on my stomach, because pre-ax murderer, I liked it like that.”

  Merry grinned at me. “Baby, you put up a helluva fight and you were seriously gone, but if you can be glib about therapy for PTSD for the sake of not losin’ a sex position, I think you’re good.”

  I hoped so because Feb and Morrie had good insurance, but I had no idea if it covered psychological shit and I had an extra name on my Christmas list now, an important one, and I was already giving up my candy and makeup habits (not all of them but some) in order to save to give it to him good. I didn’t need therapy bills.

  “Okay, so if you weren’t gonna get up in my face about seein’ someone to sort my shit out, what do we gotta talk about?” I asked.

  “The fact that you clearly think it’s weak to show emotion and to describe ‘weak’ you refer to bein’ a girl. Showing emotion isn’t weak. Showing emotion takes a lot of courage. Trusting someone to give shit to that you can’t hold inside anymore isn’t weak either. I know this because a wise, pretty, brown-eyed woman told me this not two months ago. And if we have girls, I don’t want you teachin’ them that they can’t be girls however they wanna be girls and that anything girl-like is weak. ‘Cause that shit ain’t right.”

  I was staring again.

  Then I was weeping again.

  Finally, I was blurting again.

  “If we have girls?”

  “You want more kids?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Then that can happen, fifty-fifty chance, and if they like butterflies and flowers and have no interest in bein’ tough chicks, gotta know you’re on board with that.”

  I was on board.

  So on board.

  Still whispering (and blurting and weeping), I said, “I love you.”

  Merry was whispering too when he replied, “Love you too, Cherie.”

  “Can I look at your back now?” I asked softly.

  He fell back, doing it twisting.

  When he had me back to the bed and him pressed into me, he said, “After I fuck you again.”

  My arms around him tightened as my brows went up. “Not concerned about another episode?”