Ash: A Bad Boy Romance

by Lexi Whitlow

  “You’re such a good girl, Sunshine.” He strokes my hair, and I relax my throat like I used to when we knew each other before. It seems like a different life, but my body remembers him, remembers how good it feels to take him to the back of my throat, to listen to him groaning. He pulls out and strokes himself, moaning and panting. I lick from his head to his shaft, my tongue making contact with the tips of his fingers, skin salty and delicious. Gently, I move his hand away and take his head in my mouth again, circling it with my tongue before taking him to the hilt. “Such a good girl,” he murmurs again. I rock on my knees, and I feel his muscles begin to tighten just before he pulls away.

  My pulse quickens. “Did I do something? Did I forget how—”

  “No, baby. I just want to make you come again.” He lifts me up to my feet and sweeps me up, carrying me toward the bedroom.

  I shake my head. “The chair. Put me on top of you.”

  He growls and swings us both down on the chair, sitting so I’m positioned right over his cock. He lifts me up by the waist and his mouth finds one breast and then the other. I try to push myself down, but he shakes his head.

  “Not yet, Sunshine. I want you nice and wet when I come inside you. God I love to feel how wet you get for me.”

  His breath is hot and heavy against my skin. And everything about me feels like it’s on fire, brain buzzing, my legs parted just inches above Ash’s huge, hard cock. It’s like the conversation we started earlier vanished into dust as soon as he touched me. The thing with this man—when I start with him, I don’t get satisfied. Instead, I want more, need more, until mind and body are buzzing and I can barely breathe.

  “Please let me ride you,” I moan. “I just want to come. Please.” His tongue traces a line between my nipples, and he bites down slightly on one as he moves a hand from my waist to the waiting, wet V between my legs. He taps once, and then twice on my clit, pressure as light as a small breeze. I shudder, and the sweet pleasure of his touch nearly sends me over the edge. I lick my lips and think of his cock in my mouth, my body arched over him, hungry with need. Slowly, he lowers me down on the head of his cock, stretching me like he always does.

  “So wet. So tight.” He lets me down a little more, and I gasp. He looks me in the eye as he cups my breasts, brushing each sensitive nipple with his thumb, “You didn’t have any other men while you were away. I can tell.” It’s a statement.

  I shake my head. “No, I didn’t.”

  He slides me down lower, so I’m almost at the base of his cock. I’m still not free to ride him like I want, but I feel a slight sense of relief. Still, I need—I crave—what comes next. Riding him. Coming hard while his cock is inside me.

  “Tell me why you didn’t.”

  “Because I—”

  He brings me to the base once and then lifts me again. I cry out.

  “Because I didn’t want anyone,” I gasp. “Not if they weren’t you.”

  He sighs. “Good girl. Now you can have what you want.”

  He lets me go, and I throw my arms around his shoulders, leaning into him and riding him. His cock is almost too big to take, but I fell in love with that feeling when I first slept with Ash—like all of my senses are focused on that one point in my body. I ride him harder, faster, angling my clit so it meets his skin with every movement. My nipples stiffen, red-pink blush building from the base of my belly to my cheeks, muscles tensing and releasing. The unstoppable tide rises from my core, and I moan loud, shuddering, falling against him.

  “I love you. I never stopped.” The words fall out before I can stop them, and they come in a rushed whisper, my chin on Ash’s shoulder. I’m panting hard, nearly crying. Ash takes over, lifting my hips and using me like he likes.

  “Good,” he growls, thrusting into me from below.

  We’re so close, so connected that I feel his voice rumbling through me, climbing through my body and invading my consciousness. I moan, my body utterly lightweight, as Ash holds me by the waist and brings me down again and again onto the full length of his cock.

  I grip his shoulders and stare into his eyes, focusing on the whitish tips of his lashes. The waves build in my body again, starting where he fills me and expanding out to every cell, every fiber. I come, slower this time, my pleasure drawn out, eyes rolling back in my head. There’s nothing that will keep me from falling now, nothing to make me not want him. He might not know that, might not comprehend it in the visceral way that I do. I cry out and bear down against him.

  He groans, muscles tensing, coming inside of me and filling me. He bucks hard into me, his kiss brutal and deep, red stubble rubbing against my cheek.

  “My beautiful girl,” he says, his hands roaming over my body. I’m still throbbing around him. And the man, even though he’s fucking thirty-five, is still hard. I collapse into him, legs still splayed, muscles sore.

  “Yeah?” I close my eyes and welcome his kisses. There are still burdens, yes, but it feels like we’re not beholden to them anymore.

  “I was faithful to you, Summer. Every minute.”

  My pulse quickens. I never expected that he had really waited for me. It must have been difficult, looking like he does. I can nearly hear panties setting on fire each time we walk on a crowded street.

  He doesn’t wait for me to reply. Instead, he pulls me closer and whispers in my ear. “When the time is right, I want you off of that pill. We might not have the money now. We might not be steady enough—but I want a family. With you.”

  My blood runs cold, and I freeze against him. I’m glad he can’t see my face. Because this is the one thing I can’t give, the one thing I can’t even try, not after what happened.

  “I can’t...”

  I can’t. I can’t. I lost the first one. The doctor said after it happened once, it could happen again.

  The words stick in my throat, and I feel hot tears streaming down my cheeks. I’ve given up my anger, my grief, and all the ideas I had about a life in this little town. But this is the one thing I can’t give up.

  “Don’t say anything now.” He kisses me again. “But I’m ready. Now, or any damn time.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Three Years, Three Months Ago

  Penn Station

  By five in the afternoon, I develop a good enough lie that my wife believes me and heads to the damn station by herself. The bus leaves at seven, and I told her I’d be there at the very last minute.

  I considered telling her I didn’t want to be with her, that I didn’t love her, that I wanted my life here more than I wanted one with her.

  But when I looked at her face today, excited and nervous and exuberant all at once as she packed her frayed green scrubs, I knew I couldn’t do it. What’s more, I knew she wouldn’t go without me.

  So here I am, sitting a safe distance from her stop at Penn Station, another anonymous man with a black hoodie pulled up over his head. My heart is heavier than it has ever been, and somehow I feel more alive than I ever have—but it’s because of the pain, pervasive, like it’s pounding through me.

  What kind of man marries a woman just to break her heart? Just to watch her walk away?

  Throat tight, fists clenched, I fight whatever the hell is happening in my mind and the bullshit it’s doing to my body at the same time. For a few seconds, it feels like I might heat up and explode from the inside, like one of those people you hear about who spontaneously combusts.

  Jonathan Ash has never felt like this.

  And never over a woman.

  An old man passes by my bench, his arm so close it nearly brushes the fabric of my hoodie. He turns and looks at me, catching my eye, laugh lines crinkling up as he smiles.

  “Waiting for someone?” He asks, voice raspy.

  “No,” I grunt. “Just waiting.”

  “That’s too bad,” he says and turns to walk away, leaning into his cane.

  “Why’s that?”

  He turns back to me and shrugs his shoulders very slightly. “Life is be
tter when you have someone worth waiting for.”

  The old man wanders off, leaving me with that bit of ridiculous crap advice that sounds like it came off the back of an inspirational coffee cup.

  “Wait—” I shout after him, but he can’t hear me and walks off to the trains.

  When I turn, I see Summer, wearing her green dress and a pair of sandals. I hadn’t even realized it was warm today. I pull my hoodie tighter over my head and watch her, trying to fight the rage swirling inside. At first, she looks calm, maybe even excited. I can’t help but think what an excellent doctor she’ll be, who she’ll become. Maybe Bianca was right—it’ll all be better without me. I shift uncomfortably, and a pain strikes me in my chest, like my lungs and heart are constricting together all at once.

  At 6:45, right on cue, I see my cousin Damian catch her by the arm. He’s even bigger than I am—and he looks like he works for the mafia, which isn’t a coincidence because he most certainly does. Summer reels back and drops her suitcase, nearly falling over the bench behind her.

  I can’t hear the fucker, but I think he’s saying the lines he’s supposed to say.

  Ash never loved you. He doesn’t want you. You won’t see him again, Summer. Don’t even try.

  Damian will be good at delivering the lines since he’s a fucking asshole with a very limited range of emotion.

  Summer tries to fling herself away from him, but he keeps her grip on his arm.

  If you can’t say something yourself, send your bigger, uglier cousin to do your work for you, you miserable fucking asshole. You didn’t even need to marry her—and there she is—the only fucking good thing that ever happened to you—leaving.

  I watch as Summer’s demeanor changes. Instead of pulling away, she clutches Damian’s arms like she can’t stand anymore, and she starts crying. I’ve never been good at reading lips, but I can almost hear what she shouts across the station.

  “I’m an idiot. I’m such a fucking idiot!” She screams the last part and stomps hard, narrowly missing Damian’s foot.

  Damian looks like a deer in the headlights. He’s not exactly the type to comfort a woman. But I give him one thing—he stands there like I told him to, and then he walks Summer to her bus and watches her get on.

  I watch her get on too. Cullen’s deal—written and signed by a lawyer, per Bianca’s wishes, said I had to stay away until her program was complete. However long she decides to stay.

  I crack my knuckles and watch the bus depart.

  “I love you, Summer,” I say. “And I’m not signing any goddamn divorce papers.”

  Present Day

  Summer wakes up in the morning, totally fucking frantic, like there’s an emergency at the hospital and she can’t possibly get there in time. It’s the only time I’ve seen her act like this, but I check her phone, and it’s free of notifications. But she keeps pacing back and forth in front of the bedroom door, wearing one of her long night-shirts and near tears. I hop up and pull on my clothes, heart pounding.

  We’d gone to bed like normal. She was happy.

  Wasn’t she?

  The only thing that was different was what I said, and that was a good thing, wasn’t it?

  Shit, you fucking idiot.

  I run out into the living room—or what passes for a living room in my shitty condo—and catch her when she’s passing by. “Summer—” I start.

  She nearly freaks out when I touch her, but then she calms down and lets me lead her back to the sofa. She sits as far away from me as she can, then curls up in a ball and pulls a blanket over her feet.

  “I’ll just wait,” I say. “You can tell me what’s going on in your brain when you get your shit together.”

  It takes her a good goddamn long while of breathing and calming down, but then she finally talks. “I had a dream,” she says.

  “Okay. Whatever it is, it wasn’t real.”

  “It was real.” She says it with deadly certainty. “I’ve been dreaming it over and over in the past week, and tonight was the worst yet because—because you couldn’t leave well enough alone.” She spits the last words out at me, but then she takes another breath. “I’m sorry. We just got back together—”

  “Tell me the dream.”

  When she looks at me, her eyes are puffy and red, like she hasn’t slept at all. “It’s always the same. I’m in a hospital in Damascus, and I’m alone.”

  “Damascus—” Shit. Summer was in Syria after she left, and then she vaporized out of there so fast it was like she was never there at all—no explanation, and no information on where she went after that for five months.

  “And the doctor is coming in. I’m bleeding and I can’t stop. They tell me that there was a baby with a heartbeat, but she’s gone.”

  “She?”

  “And then the doctor tells me it would be dangerous for me to try to get pregnant again.” She pronounces her words slowly, and her hands are active and fidgety like they are every time she’s nervous.

  “It was a dream. Just a dream, Summer.” Because of the way her voice sounds I know that’s not quite true, but there’s nothing else I can really say.

  “It wasn’t. It was real. Not quite like that, but... I can’t get pregnant.”

  “How do they know that?” I knit my eyebrows together.

  “Ash, do you hear what I’m telling you? I can’t get pregnant. I can’t sustain a pregnancy. Screw the fact that we’re fucking broke. I mean, forget that, right!” Her voice is wracked with the grief she’s been hiding all this time.

  “Doctors aren’t always right,” I say. I try to take her hand, but she pulls it away.

  “Ash, I was pregnant when I left.”

  It feels like the walls are crashing down around me, like the world is melting away and I’m back at that bus stop, watching her go.

  “You weren’t,” I whisper.

  “I didn’t know.” She pulls away further and puts a pillow over her knees. “I had no idea. I’ve always had endometriosis, and my old doctor said I’d probably have a lot of trouble getting pregnant because of that.”

  She looks up at me, and I nod, like I’m taking all of this in—like I could possibly understand it or get it in any real way. Like my heart’s not about to explode, because nothing she’s about to say could possibly be good.

  “What happened?”

  “I didn’t think I could—and then I did. I was.” Her voice is quieter now, like she almost can’t bear to say any of it. But the words come out quick and steady. I give her credit for being able to get any of it out, because I couldn’t speak that clearly right now if someone held a gun to my head and told me to string two sentences together. My heart is pounding out of my chest.

  She takes a deep breath. “I lost it. It had a heartbeat, but I had so much scar tissue—I lost it. I had surgery in Damascus, and then I transferred to the Ukraine. And I put it behind me.” Her voice breaks at the end, but then she clears her throat and wipes away her tears. “That’s why we can’t—I can’t.” She sighs and keeps wiping away tears, but they keep coming.

  I go to her and pull her into my arms, but she tries to push me away. “I should have been there,” I tell her. I kiss her on the top of the head, and she pushes hard against me.

  “Stop it, Ash. You made a decision—and I didn’t tell you. You couldn’t have been there.” Again, she struggles against me, but I don’t let her go.

  “I had every plan to go, Summer. Cullen made me stay.”

  “You didn’t,” she mutters. “You left me there. You didn’t even say goodbye.”

  “I watched you get on that bus. I had Damian make sure you were safe. And I paid Cullen off and came to North Carolina a month after that. I knew you’d be back—”

  “No. No, you weren’t there. Bianca told me you kept working for Cullen, that you went to Jersey.”

  “I didn’t. I watched you. And I let you go.”

  “Why?” Her voice cracks, and she starts crying again, but this time she folds into me a
nd holds on to my arms.

  “You were better without me.”

  “I wasn’t. I was so alone. Losing a baby is the loneliest thing in the world.” My shirt is wet with her tears.

  I remember that feeling in the pit of the chest, the one I sat with when I watched Damian walk Summer onto the bus, when she left New York for good. And I watched her go—to a fate far lonelier and more painful than any I could have imagined. I hated myself so much for letting her out of my sight, and that hate comes raging through me all at once again, far worse than I’ve ever felt it before.

  “I fucked up, Summer. But I did it for you. I swear I did it for you.” My throat constricts like it did that day, but this time, I let tears come to my eyes. I hold Summer, and I my tears fall. “I love you so much. Please, please stay.”

  I hold her close, and we’re both quiet for a long time. I close my eyes and feel her breath evening out, her body relaxing. She wipes her eyes again and looks up at me.

  “Why wouldn’t I stay?”

  I laugh even though everything inside of me still hurts. “Well, I am amazing. I understand your decision.”

  “What about—”

  “A kid? Well, aren’t you a doctor? There are things you can do, right? Fertility things?” She bites her lip and laughs, maybe a little morbidly. “And we can adopt. I don’t care.”

  “Those kinds of things, they take years. And money we don’t have.”

  I shrug and kiss her on the top of her head. “Life is better when you have someone worth waiting for.”

  She lets that sink in. And I think it might be somewhat better advice than you’d find on the side of a coffee cup.

  “Why did Cullen make you stay, Ash?” Her voice changes, and my stomach drops. I was hoping we’d come to that at a different time. “What did he have hanging over you?”