by Hazel Parker
At my age now, that would have been something I could have moved on from, as I had. But in my early twenties? There was no way. I would have been too scared of the blowback.
So…
What did I actually want personally?
Did I want to get married again and have a family? Did I want to be with Splitter, or was that another Jacob—a great guy who, in the long run, wasn’t going to work out?
Even my faith feels like its being sacrificed right now.
I valued the stability it gave me, the sense of community it gave me at church and the belief in a better world. But it was certainly fair to say that right now, I was feeling a little unstable and confused.
I realized that if Splitter was hiding some things, some personal things, the only way to drag them out was to confront him. Speaking from a distance as we had this morning would only serve to provide false hope; things had a way of sounding really good on the phone or email that did not in person. There would be none of that here—I had to confront him and we had to have a fully honest talk.
I got out of my car, not even pausing to contemplate my actions, and went inside the warehouse, crossing my arms. Splitter was behind the bar, nursing a drink. I stood on the other side.
“What was that all about?” I said sternly.
“What?”
“Kicking me out,” I said. “You didn’t do that because you were afraid of me dying. I mean, you might be, but that can’t be it.”
Splitter looked like he was about to say something back, but perhaps realizing I was on to his games, he shut up.
“You know, I once had a man hold me at knifepoint outside my office telling me that if I didn’t stop defending my client, he would kill me himself. And you know what? I never stopped defending the client. You know why? Because people don’t follow through on threats so easily. It’s not as simple as just taking a gun and shooting someone. There’s a lot it takes.”
I then walked around the bar so that there would be nothing between us.
“I think you pushed me away because you don’t want to see where this can go.”
Splitter took a gulp his drink, sighed, and put it on the bar.
“Have you ever been told that you should be a therapist as well as a lawyer?”
I arched an eyebrow but did not respond. I supposed, like a good therapist, I needed him to speak what was on his mind and let his words fall out.
“Yes, I’m scared. I have never had a relationship like this. And you are not only the most beautiful woman that I would ever have been with, but you are one of the most accomplished. You are beyond what I can put into words. And I don’t think I’m good enough for that. I’m just a mechanic at Peters Auto Repair and a member of the Savage Saints. I put up fronts with my anger to look cool to the rest of the Saints, but that anger has become so much a part of me, I have difficulty turning it off sometimes.”
He sighed.
“Amber, I don’t know what to do. I do not want to see you hurt. You realize the Devil’s Mercenaries are far beyond anything that you have probably dealt with, right?”
“While that is true,” I said, “I’m also not scared of them. It would take a lot of guts to kill a public figure like me.”
That was perhaps too cocky and too brash a statement to make, but between Splitter and me right now, I did not want anything other than the unvarnished, unpolished truth to come out.
“Put the DMs to the side. How do you feel about me? What do you want?”
“I want stability and security,” he said.
There we go, I thought. It was a truth that he had not really acknowledged before.
“And yet, I recognize most of my life goes in the opposite direction.”
Self-awareness. Very good.
“When I saw you, I think maybe I liked you—and still do, by the way—in part because of what you represented. You represented that ‘normal, successful’ life. You represented the girl who could bring me some peace, calm down my inner demons, all that jazz. But then, maybe, when I started to bring you in and I saw some of the same chaos in my world coming into yours, I realized that maybe it wasn’t going to be such a great idea to keep you around. That to have you in my life would corrupt you. I don’t know; I’m just blabbering too damn much right now.”
“No, Splitter, its fine,” I said, the defiant, confrontational tone a little more subdued now. “If it makes you feel better… I think I can say the same for me. This whole time during my divorce, it’s been pressure, pressure, pressure. Pressure from the outside world to find a man worthy of my stature. Pressure from men of power to sleep with them and join them. Pressure from my family to not embarrass them. Ironically, one of the few people who did not put pressure on me was Jacob, but obviously that’s not important since he and I are as separated as two strangers can be.”
I sighed.
“You were one of the few people I have ever met whom I felt no pressure around. You are a man who is free to almost do whatever he wants. I know, yes, that you have this trial going on and there’s pressure with that. But you and your motorcycles are free in a way that I will never be. If you want to help a charity, you can. If you want to tell your mother you love her, you can. But if you want to speed at over a hundred miles per hour down the 405? You can. If you want to have a massive party on the beach? You can. You can be free. I cannot. Because of the nature of my job, image matters.”
I sighed again, feeling oddly liberated by the confession of all of this.
“This is the kind of thing that I don’t think about daily, but put so bluntly, I think its obvious now. There’s just so much pressure… and then, when you said that you didn’t want me around for fear that you would get me killed, it felt like pressure to quit… and, well, I guess we both thought we were getting something in the other person that maybe we aren’t quite.”
“Or, we are,” Splitter said with a smile. “But, as life would have it, things can get a little complicated.”
I don’t know why, but the way Splitter smiled at that moment had me in a tizzy all over again. And this was an almost lockdown sort of tizzy—I wasn’t leaving this place tonight.
That was determined right then.
“And… what would be simple to you?” I said, brushing my hair to the side.
“Simple?” he said. “Well, I think the simplest thing I can say is that I like you, Amber. Putting aside everything that was just said, I think I can say that for sure.”
“Really,” I said, smirking. “Then prove it.”
I didn’t need to tell Splitter twice what I needed. He walked over to me, put his hands on my cheeks, and kissed me.
Initially, his kiss was reserved, like he was scared after what had happened last time to push too hard. I let this go in the beginning stages since it was a nice prelude… but soon, I was needing the full Splitter experience.
I was needing what I had refused myself for so long. I needed him to ravage me, to take me. I needed to know what it was like. I would lose my mind around him if I didn’t. I trusted him, I liked him, and I had no reservations anymore about having him have me.
After a few seconds, I grabbed his hands and placed them on my chest.
“Take me, Splitter,” I gasped in between kisses. “Don’t hold back; have your way with me.”
It was as if I had removed the one barrier for Splitter to do just that. Because what followed from there on out was Splitter with no boundaries, no reservations, and no stopping points—just as I wanted.
First, he ripped off my shirt, leaving me with just my pants and my bra on. I carefully kicked my shoes off as he lifted me in the air—yes, by my ass, and yes, it felt fucking incredible—and carrying me to a nearby bedroom. He literally threw me in the air, causing me to yelp with surprise, but when I oriented myself and saw him taking his shirt off, I was all smiles.
Sure, it was not just rougher, but far rougher than anything Jacob had ever done. And sure, there was a ton of nerves on my part. Would I
perform to his expectations? Was this going to be something I regretted later?
But at the moment, it was all pleasure. I released myself to Splitter to let him lead our little dance as far as he could go, and I would follow him wherever the pleasure took us. If it took us to the outer bounds of what was right and what was wrong, well, I’d figure it out then. But for right now, I was content to release the pressure on myself and replace it with Splitter’s body.
He came over to me, unbuttoned my pants, and yanked them off. In the process, he also yanked my underwear off, leaving me all but naked, only my bra was on. If ever there was a spot to stop him, this was it. With my body fully exposed to him, there really were no barriers left. Now or never.
I chose never. Never to back out. Never to leave. Never to stop.
And when Splitter crawled over me, and I felt his bulge press into my wetness, causing me to squirm with pleasure, I knew I had made the right decision.
He nibbled on my earlobe and then my neck, at least taking gentle care to not bite so hard that there would be hickies the next day. He moved to my bra, removed it, and tossed it to the side, leaving me completely naked. I had never felt such a sexual charge in my life—my wedding night with Jacob had been good, but not necessarily overwhelming.
This?
Oh, heavens, I might need to pray for a week for the number of sins I was about to commit.
I reached down into Splitter’s pants and felt his enormously hard and large shaft, almost feeling terrified about what it would do when it got inside me. I told myself to shut up and enjoy what was to come… including me… but heavens, it was almost too much of a good thing.
But then Splitter put his mouth between my legs, pressed his tongue into me, and I was soon gasping and panting so hard that the notion there could ever be “too much of a good thing” was vanishing as quickly as my Catholic guilt.
He had me shaking and squirming all over the bed with what he was doing. I couldn’t even begin to guess, because every time I thought I picked up on what he was doing, he was doing something else. He was moving fast, but somehow, it all felt appropriately quick—like a roller coaster that would have sucked going any slower but felt dangerous and out of control if it went any faster.
Except this roller coaster was going up, up, and up, and pushing me closer and closer to a feeling I realized I had never had before.
Sad to say, I admitted then I had never actually come with Jacob.
But it sure wasn’t sad for very long, because it was now all but inevitable that Splitter was going to get me there.
I grabbed for his hair, desperate for anything to hold on to. I clenched my legs around him tight as my entire body squeezed with anticipation.
And when it came, I screamed so loudly that all of Green Hills must have heard me. The rush was so unexpected—like getting punched, but in the opposite direction in terms of pleasure and pain. It was much stronger than I had ever thought, and I felt sure that my body would never recover—not that I wanted it to recover from something like this.
When it finally became too much, like being tickled but with waves of heat and pleasurable tension, I begged for Splitter to stop. He… sort of did. He slowed down, somehow making it even more pleasing. I had to physically squirm away to get him to stop.
I had never had anything like that.
I couldn’t believe I had never had anything like that.
Then again, Jacob had been the only man I was with before, so maybe it wasn’t unbelievable.
But I couldn’t think straight right now.
My God.
How… how…
“That,” I said. “Fucking amazing.”
I couldn’t even fathom the strength to apologize for saying the f-word. It was truly one of the few times that the adjective felt appropriate.
“Oh, don’t worry, there’s more coming,” Splitter said as I heard his shorts hit the floor.
I looked up just in time to see him putting a condom on, and my eyes grew wide. I hadn’t yet even recovered from the first orgasm in my life, and now he was going to put that inside of me?
I would never walk again. It was clear cut that was going to happen.
“Oh, Splitter,” I said, my voice more of a pant than an actual speech. “You’re too much.”
“You’ll survive,” he said in not exactly a reassuring voice—more of a “shut up and enjoy it” voice.
I locked eyes with him, seeing not Splitter the man but Splitter the hungry animal. The empathic, emotional, and easy-laughing guy whom I had gotten to know over the past few days was replaced by some sort of primal hunger that yearned to be inside of me. This was not a front, not in any way—it was too real.
This was something else. This was a man who was going to do whatever he wanted with me, be completely unapologetic about it, and then promise to do it over and over again.
Why, again, had I waited so long for this to happen?
I didn’t need to answer my own question, because by the time I would have, Splitter had gone inside of me, and my whole body shook again as his shaft seemed to somehow stick inside of me, with my lips opening up just enough for him to enter. It still, even with that, it felt like I could barely contain him.
What happened next felt less like me physically experiencing him thrusting in and out of me while on top of me, and more me immersing myself into a sea of pleasure, barely able to contain my head above water. The ocean surrounding me was Splitter and his primal drive, and I could barely stay afloat. I locked onto his eyes as if looking into the sun, and the sight was blinding in how intense that was too.
I wrapped my arms around him as if trying to envelop the world—which Splitter was for me at that moment. I curled my legs up around him as well. I had to close my eyes a few times because Splitter was driving into me so hard that that line between pleasure and pain was getting straddled just a little too finely.
And you know what? I was quickly realizing that the pain actually was pleasurable.
I had to tread carefully, probably wouldn’t go very far in this particular encounter. But, heavens, Splitter had so much more I wanted him to show, and I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I saw what kind of pleasurable pain Splitter could endow on me.
Why did I never try this? This is incredible!
Perhaps most incredible, then, was how Splitter then seemed to flip me on top of him in one motion. He swept his arms around me and pulled me close, driving himself into me from the bottom. I felt trapped to his body but trapped wasn’t the right word; it implied I wanted to escape.
Oh, there was nothing I wanted to escape about this right now. This was just too good. Too damn good!
So good that I wanted a piece of it.
I put my hands on Splitter’s firm chest, lifting myself up and then swinging my hips on him. Splitter leaned his head back, moaning and groaning as I went to work on him. Once again, I realized this was something I had never really done around Jacob: had never had the chance to fully express a sort of sense of power during sex.
So many first times.
Better late than never!
A short while into it, I noticed Splitter’s grunting picking up. Inside me, I could feel him swelling, as if about to burst. I briefly hesitated, then remembered he had the condom on.
“Give it to me,” I said.
I wanted that feeling of having made a man come. It wasn’t just a beautiful thing—it was a powerful thing. It was control. It was dominance. It was something that I had to have.
“Give me your come, Splitter,” I moaned. “I need it!”
Splitter’s grunting got faster and faster as I knew he neared the edge. He all but gasped in a high-pitch voice right as he got there.
I gave it some good pulses, and Splitter was unloading into me, his body twitching into me as he grabbed my hips so tight there would be marks the next day. I kept shaking my hips on him until he begged for me to stop.
When I finally did, I giggled, leaned forward,
and kissed him.
I almost said something, but the silence felt like the only proper way to communicate. When we finally did stop, I pulled off him, leading to a loud groan of pleasure. I looked at the man whom I had just had a surprising amount of control over.
I waited for the feelings of guilt and shame to come. The embarrassment at having slept with someone so quickly after the divorce. The dishonor of having sex outside marriage.
Never happened.
I had made the right choice.
“Oh, fuck,” Splitter said.
“Language, mister,” I said as I snuggled up to him.
“For real,” he mumbled, drawing a big laugh from me. I kissed him again, and all was well.
“You can say whatever you want,” I said. “So long as it’s honest.”
I leaned into Splitter’s chest, listening to his slowly decelerating heartbeat. For at least the next few hours, until we awoke… things were going to be fine. Just fine.
“I promise.”
Chapter 13: Splitter
I didn’t open my eyes at first when I woke up the next morning.
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to leave the feelings that had come from the night before.
Finally, something good had really happened. I had been intimate with Amber—but more than that, it wasn’t just sex. It was a connection that was laid out in the open.
Of course, the sex had been great. I almost never had bad sex. Maybe it was a tad arrogant to say, but I knew what I was doing. Emotional vulnerability was something that I wasn’t very good at—last night’s prelude to sex had told me as much—but the actual act of sex was great.
That, however, was a side note to the comfort that I felt with Amber. That she had gotten me to confess as much as she had was something that not even Trace could claim. Maybe it was because my life depended on her, or maybe it was some other fucking crazy reason I couldn’t think of right now, but goddamnit, she really did a number on me.