Boxer Beast

by Marci Fawn

  I call her name, demanding she notice me because I commanded it before she can notice me first and run away. I don’t want her to run away. She can’t.

  I run to her.

  Faith

  The voice is too familiar for it to be real. I’ve always thought about River, but these past few months have been hectic, horrible –

  Every time he comes to mind, I push the thoughts of him back. His towering frame, his eyes, his voice… Even his hair. I allow myself to think of none of it, filling my time with fixing up our old house for Dawn. She’s out of preschool – graduated early, my smart little girl – and not old enough for kindergarten yet, so I put her in daycare.

  Not any daycare, though. A personal one. I didn’t know nannies were still around, but you figure things out when you’re desperate to fill your time. So desperate that you go back to college to finish that English degree you never caught up on, because you were desperate to be married and find a father for your child.

  A father figure, because her real one wasn’t there for –

  I look up, my hair falling in my eyes as I see him. Running to me. His frame bigger than ever, and it looks like he’s taller, more commanding, but that might just be because I haven’t seen him in a while –

  My legs go weak and I can’t even think about running. I’m glued to the spot. Not because I’m scared, but because I want to see him. I’ve wanted to see him for long. He runs to me, and he doesn’t say a word as he throws his arms open, slamming into me and pushing me down onto the grass beneath him as he hugs me.

  “Did I hurt you?” he pulls away a little to look at me, concern evident in his eyes.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head as I hold back onto him. This can’t be real. I giggle at the craziness of it, wondering if I’m losing my mind. “No. No.”

  “Good,” he nuzzles his nose against my skin, moving his face to the nape of my neck and settling in there. “Good.”

  It takes a while for him to get off me. We don’t talk. When he finally moves, he just pulls himself over so that he’s lying next to me in the patches of grass. Then he grabs me by the waist and pulls me so I fall into him, against him, almost lying on top of him.

  “Well,” he says, his voice more confident and sure of himself. The River I’m used to. The River I love, even though his voice is trembling – he’s weak with emotion and so am I. “It looks like I’m definitely buying my old house now.”

  “What?” I say, looking over at him. I cling to one of his arms as I stare up at his face. He looks down at me, and I’m still not sure if any of this is real, or if I’m just manifesting him… Just imagining him because I want it to be real so badly. I can’t ask. I don’t want to know if it isn’t. “You weren’t sure?”

  “No, but now that I know you’re here…” He trails off, bumping his hip against mine. I laugh, the sound breaking off as my throat almost closes up with tears.

  “Uncertainty isn’t like the River I know,” I tease him, bumping back even as I remove my eyes from his. If he is real… I can’t let him see how hurt I am.

  But he is River, and if he needs me anywhere near like I need him, he needs to know. Especially when he says his next words.

  “And running away isn’t like the Faith I know.” His hand moves to my cheek, and he turns himself up, holding his weight on an elbow as he looks at me. He’s sitting so he’s angled on a side, almost like he’s doing a blank.

  He’s not on top of me, but he’s…

  Above me.

  I suck my bottom lip into my mouth briefly, bringing myself to look up at him again.

  “Okay, well,” he grips my cheek, tapping against my lips with one of his fingers lightly. He’s being kind. Playful. “It is definitely like you.”

  “River,” I say, needing to be close to him, nuzzling into him, holding him against the grass… “We need to talk.”

  He starts to stand, offering a hand to me and picking me up. He takes me into his arms and hugs me deeply for a second, before letting me go and holding onto my hand instead as he looks off into the direction of his old house. It’s still only about twenty feet away from mine, just like it was when we were babies, just like it was when we were children, and just like it was when we were teenagers.

  “And I need to go look back in that house,” he says, still carrying a joking tone, like he’s worried that if he gets too serious, he’ll hurt me.

  And I’m glad that he knows he might, because right now it seems like I’m going to break down in his arms, even though for weeks he was the cause of that breakdown. Is the cause. “Come with me.”

  I hold onto his hand still as my other arm grips his elbow, holding onto him with everything I have as we cross the lawn.

  “Your porch needs some work,” I say, watching River break into the front door of his house with some lock picking skills I could never forget he has. “And you need a key.”

  “Hey,” he defends himself, looking up at me before looking back to the knob. He has one of my bobby pins in his hand and it looks… Oddly right there. But still weird.

  “I wasn’t expecting this to go back up for sale. And I don’t know where I put the key.”

  “You’re back in the habit of losing things?” I ask, moving as close to him as I can without interrupting his break-in.

  The lock pops and he looks up at me, triumphant, pushing the door open and turning on the switch next to the door. Lights turn on in his house and I notice that it’s still the same as it was a few years ago – except for the rug when you first enter the door. That’s new. I wipe my feet on it as I enter, River mock bowing to me to indicate that I should go in first.

  “I don’t lose what’s mine.” He says it with such confidence and the way he’s looking at me makes me realize he’s not talking about the house. He closes the door behind him, and the fresh night air – for the first time, I’m happy I chose to take some evening classes – disappears.

  We’re left with the scent of each other and this old house. He’s not wearing cologne. But there’s something about him that smells undeniably…

  River.

  He smells like fresh water and salt. The ocean, maybe. Something else, too. I don’t know how to place it and I want to press my nose against his skin, to smell him, to taste him, to…

  I blush.

  I came here to talk. Instead of looking up at him and saying anything that could possibly embarrass me even further – god, if he only knew how angsty I was getting without him – I go through the living room, looking for the couch I used to be so familiar with when I was a child.

  Instead of walking smoothly through the room and landing on a sofa, though, I trip. River catches me before I can start falling, though, and for a second, we just look at each other. I’m about to look away from him again when I decide not to, moving a little closer as he presses his lips soft against mine, and we kiss.

  The kiss is gentle and needing, desperate and fulfilling, and…

  I kiss him again. He pulls away from me first and I’m already pulling him back to me, his hand moving up from my shoulder to my neck to my cheek. He slips his touch into my hair. It’s innocent, but I moan. And from the way he’s looking at me, I can tell he’s filled with lust too.

  “Do you remember how we’d sit on this couch and watch movies together when you couldn’t sleep?” He asks me.

  I nod. “Yeah,” my hand is on his chest, touching him again, needing to explore his skin. “And then we’d go to school in the morning without any sleep because we wouldn’t have time to get much sleep anyway, so we’d be exhausted.”

  “But not in high school,” he comments, picking me up in his arms and setting me on the couch behind us.

  “Don’t remind me about when things got complicated,” I rolled my eyes at him.

  “Like it’s not complicated when you run away from me,” he puts both his hands around my waist, not the way you do when you’re fighting someone and trying to drag them, but in that careful, deliberate
, dominating way that said he wanted me on his lap and there was nothing I could do about it.

  I scoot closer to him, wiggling my butt against his dick to lighten the mood, to make him smile, to make him… Hard. I gulp, needing to explain myself but so distracted by the way he feels below me. “I saw you, that day.”

  His hand is tickling at the back of my neck, moving into my hair as he pulls it back. He presents my neck to him, but he does nothing with it. His breath just tickles against me and he looks up at me, his mouth so deliciously close to my skin. “At the match?”

  I nod.

  “I saw you, too,” he says, quiet. “Faith… I was never going to do anything with those girls. Never. I was looking for you for ages.”

  “Again,” I say, sorry. But I don’t voice the apology. I already know he’ll tell me not to be sorry. “I ran away from you.”

  “You’re here with me now,” he presses a small kiss against my skin, and I have to clamp my mouth shut to keep from moaning. I can feel myself getting wet and it’s not helping that he’s rubbing up right against the meeting of my legs –

  “Faith,” he says, running a finger over my eyelids as I close them in delight. “It’s not like that. Please, believe me, it isn’t. I only want you. I want to be the best I can for you. To be here, forever, to hold you, to love you, to take care of Dawn – “

  And even though he’s hurt me so much, I know all of it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have run away from him. I adjust in his lap, turning so I straddle him, wrapping my arms around his neck as he looks at me. I kiss him on the lips, my hands going to his chest as I pull at his shirt.

  “I forgive you, so don’t say sorry,” I say, taking his playful tone from him before he can even start. “But if you’re buying this house… Hm.” I kiss him again, bumping noses.

  “Which house are we living in?”

  “That depends on which bedroom you like better,” he says, his hand dipping down the curve of my back to my ass. He squeezes, gently, and I grind myself against his manhood, forgiving him completely for everything we’ve been through, just needing to be with him to tell him we’re okay in the way that words never could.

  “Faith,” he kisses me again, moving a hand into my hair and pulling my neck towards him so he can kiss under my chin. “You want to be with me?”

  “Yes. Yes, more than anything.”

  I’ve been waiting for him for so long. Every thought of him I try to get out of my mind is just replaced by two more – I could never forget River. Never move on from him. And the fact that his house was sold… He’s back for a reason. I knew about what was going on with his family and their house-selling, just not the details…

  He kisses me on the neck, promising he’ll explain to me later, but that we need to focus on something else now. One of his hands slides up my stomach over my shirt, his hand squeezing my breast. Then he tosses me off of his lap onto the couch beside him.

  “Faith,” he groans, his voice low. “You remember where my old bedroom is?”

  I’m already standing. I do. We’ve never… Not in there. We’ve played games there, had sleepovers as young children, and I went in there once as a young teen, with the door open as we did homework, even though our parents knew there was nothing to worry about.

  I look at River – there should’ve been something to worry about. Our eyes lock. We’re both thinking the same thing.

  “Wait there.”

  I’m already running up the stairs before the words are out of his mouth.

  River

  Faith looks at me from where the bed. I don’t remember leaving that there, or if it’s even mine, or if it belonged to the people who last moved in… It doesn’t matter. In the back of my head, I remember someone saying that all our old furnishings had been left in here, so it must be mine. Faith went in when I asked, and here she is, staring at me.

  Eye contact. It does something to me.

  I knew what I wanted when I went in here, but now I know even more.

  I grasp the doorknob behind my back and shut it behind me.

  Faith adjusts herself on the bed, moving so that her legs spill open as she sits. I look at her thighs and I can’t take it anymore. All of the pent up frustration I’ve had about us not being able to be together, about how we’ve had to be apart and how we’ve been playing this fucked up game of cat and mouse where neither of us is actively hunting the other and we’re both just running away…

  I can’t take it.

  I almost throw myself on the bed in my frenzy to get at her, my body landing on top of hers. She moans in surprise and I look down at her, my hands going to her side. I give her a firm squeeze, asking –

  “Are you okay?” My voice is low and almost a growl. She is finally mine, again. She’s always been mine but we’ve been apart far too long, and it’s almost like I’m making her mine again for the first time. And I need to make her mine.

  Completely.

  “Yes,” she turns her eyes up to me, and I notice that she isn’t doing that thing where she half-closes them anymore. I swear she will in her ecstasy but for now, I love the way she’s looking at me and I never want it to end. But I don’t want to just sit there on top of her looking in her eyes –

  I dive down to kiss her, my tongue swirling circles along her skin. She’s sweet where I’m sure I taste like salt, and I love the contrast. She moans and squirms, adjusting her hands to try to touch me. I let her get her hands on my chest and sliding down to the deep “v” leading to my dick before I stop her.

  “Faith,” I say, turning her on her side and holding her arms so they’re bent carefully behind her and she can’t touch me. “Don’t.”

  I say nothing else and she moans her understanding. I kiss her from behind her, freeing one of her arms for a second before holding both of them in one hand. I raise her hair and kiss the back of her neck; enjoying the full-body shivers she erupts into –

  I push her down against the bed. My old bed. I’m on top of her back and shoving her underneath me, trying to get as close to her as I can through the fabric of our clothing –

  One of my hands darts down to her ass and I slap it, hard. She squeals, bumping backwards against me, and I grind my cock hard against her bottom. I’m not going to make love to her and I’m not going to have sex.

  I’m just going to fuck her.

  I take both her arms, putting them on the headboard and telling her to leave them there as I pull her shirt away from her body and trail kisses down her spine. Her jeans go next as I unbutton them and throw them to the floor almost angrily, and then I’m at her panties. I know she loves these ones – light blue, she got them almost specifically for me… My favorite color – but I can’t help myself.

  My hands shake as I try to slow myself down, but I just fucking can’t. I rip the seams open and she gasps as the air hits her beautiful, pink pussy. I tap her sex, making her push back into me as my hand connects with the skin there –

  I tease her with my fingers for just a second, dipping into her cleft and clenching my fingers there before removing them to her protest. I’m on my knees behind her, my tongue dropping from the bottom of her spine to her butt. I bite a cheek, my mouth still moving down as I run my tongue over her inner thighs, kissing her on her pussy once before going back to her thighs, darting back and forth –

  She moans, begging.

  My cock is so hard and I can’t tease her anymore. I just need her to come, spasming, again and again as I mark her as mine. I kiss her pussy, deeper, harder, running my tongue along her slit from her folds to her prominent nub, catching her clit with my tongue and sucking it hard. Her legs shake and her hips move away from me, but I grab both of them, pushing her back into my face as I taste her, tormenting her until she shakes and collapses in front of me, tired from her orgasm. She tastes so sweet…

  But I’m not done. I grip her legs and her body is limp in my hands as she gasps, and I turn her so she’s on her back with her breasts to the air. I kiss her pus
sy one more time, sucking at it as she pulls her hands through my hair, begging me not to torture her – fuck, I want to, so bad –

  I kiss up from her pussy to her stomach, ending at her breasts as I suck a nipple into my mouth. I align my cock with her slit, rubbing the head along her and pushing the head in as she moans – the head, but nothing more. I bite her nipple so gently it’s almost impossible to tell I’m doing it, and then I move to the next one, and I’m back at her throat. I pull her hair, pushing another inch of my cock into her as she arches her back for me…

  Fuck.

  I can’t do any of this slow shit. I need her.

  Her hands aren’t on the headboard anymore. She clutches the sheets at her sides and I smile against her skin, my mouth moving to her mouth. I growl, kissing her hungrily, shoving my cock as deep into her as it can go. She moans, but my mouth on hers catches the sound. I thrust into her, again, and again. Finally, I stop, pulling out from her. I run a hand along her pussy from where she bends over in front of me, and then I slap it.

  “Oh!” She’s shocked, but dripping. I move that hand to her ass, slapping it and watching her ass move. Her tits jiggle and I hit her ass again, sitting down behind her and then taking her waist in my hands.

  “Get on my cock,” I growl against her neck as I bite it, pulling her onto my lap. “Now.”

  She’s ready to obey but not fast enough. I pull her back to my dick, enjoying this new position as I throw her wet pussy down on the length of my cock and impale her with it. My cock twitches inside her, and I’m not fucking her anywhere near as hard as I could be…

  Fuck.

  Her pussy pulses and clenches around my cock, and I can’t hold myself back anymore. I thrust into her hard, in long and deep strokes, one of my hands going down to her stomach and pushing her down so she fucks me back even when she’s not trying to. She’s moaning, gasping, and I feel her clench around me like she’s about to come –