The Jerk

by V. K. Ludwig

  Three seconds later, the mattress moved and swayed, and his shaft pressed against the junction of my legs. His fingers dug into my hips, and he pulled me back against him, the head of his penis slathering itself in my wetness and prodding against my folds.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked but did as told, letting my body roll onto my back. “I thought you love taking me from behind.”

  He stroked my legs apart and lowered himself down, then grabbed himself and guided his penis toward my entrance. “I do, but right now I’d rather look at you.”

  As soon as the tip entered me, he let go of himself and cupped my cheek, slowly parting me and easing himself inside. He licked his lips and pressed them into a thin line, his face scrunched up from pleasure and constraint.

  Impatient for more, I slung my legs around his back and pulled him deeper, taking in all his heat, and all his masculinity and all his strength. Our moans combined and resonated the room. I threw my head back and let my hands dive into his hair, tousling the strands and grabbing a fistful each time he pumped.

  “I love this so much,” I whimpered, trailing my fingers across his strong chest and down his muscle-ripped stomach.

  The way he synchronized the roll of his hips with mine tormented me from the inside, bringing about a primal lust and desire no book ever warned me about. Everything about Adair triggered the most primitive feelings within me, threatening to pull me in deeper than I ever wanted to go. They robbed me of any rational thought, making me surrender myself to this man without precautions.

  “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” He kissed my chin and caressed my neck with his tongue, gliding in and out of me slowly but intense. Then he stroked over my hair and whispered, “You know I’d kill for you, right?”

  “Mmh… huh?”

  “I’d kill for you,” he repeated, sending another thrust deep into my pelvis. “And I’d take a bullet if that’s what it took to keep you safe.”

  His words sent me into a haze, and my entire body vibrated in response to them. “What are you saying?”

  He remained silent, only answering in a rocking motion that felt so deep and connected as if it had so much more ambition than just bringing release. As if it served a deeper purpose.

  Each time he pulled back the pleasure retreated, only to come back full force when he thrust inside me, pushing me closer to the edge of my orgasm.

  “I want us to come together,” he whispered. “And I want you to look at me while we do.”

  I gave a nod.

  He smiled and placed a single kiss on my lips. “Tell me once you’re close, okay?”

  I spread my thighs wider, receiving each of his gentle thrusts and letting him grind against me. My body convulsed at each one of them, melting my body against his and dazzling my senses.

  His eyes locked with mine and no matter how often I blinked or squeezed them shut overwhelmed by pleasure, he found them each time I opened them up again. They had something tender to them, something earnest as if he tried to communicate a message in a language I had never learned.

  For a moment, I lost myself to whatever meaning it had, and let my hips meet his, only to separate a moment later. He drove deeper and intensified his rocking, but continued at his slow and steady pace.

  “Mmmh,” I moaned, my body growing more and more tense at each of his thrusts.

  I tossed my head to the side, but he grabbed my chin and pulled me back. “Now?”

  Another moan.

  Trembles shook my body.

  I clenched my eyes shut.

  When I opened them again, his eyes immediately found mine. They said all those silent things I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear, yet they filled me with an odd kind of delight.

  “Now?” he asked again.

  I wanted to whisper yes. Wanted to scream it at him in a burst of lust and desire. All I could manage was a tense nod.

  “Look at me.” He stroked my hair and guided my eyes to find his. “Look at me and feel how I’m coming inside of you. I want you to really feel me.”

  Another tense nod. After that, a single deep thrust that sent us both over the edge. Our bodies trembled and tensed against each other. Our lips only heaved under the explosion of our shared climax. Our eyes never parted.

  Adair remained inside of me, his hips stiff and unmoving no matter how much I squirmed underneath him. His eyes lay focused on me, and his lips trembled underneath his stuttered attempts of taking in a breath.

  He shoved his hand underneath my neck, pressed the other against my behind, and threw himself to the side. One second later, I lay atop of him, our bodies still connected. He took my face between his hands and gave a tug, then placed a kiss onto my forehead before he pulled me against his chest.

  “That was beautiful,” he whispered and let his fingers stroke along my back. “I kinda wish we never had to end this. Don’t you?”

  I rested my head on his chest, listening to his pounding heart and how the air sucked into his lungs. “Yeah.”

  The moment I pushed myself away, his arm pressed me tighter against his body, and his head poked up. “You don’t always have to leave, you know.”

  There was an unspoken request to his voice, impossible to turn down by how tender he looked down at me. I nestled back against him, letting a new kind of intimacy roll over me like a wave that nourished something deep inside me I had no name for.

  I let my finger trace around the raw edges of the scar on his stomach. “Just don’t let me fall asleep.”

  “What’s so wrong about falling to sleep here with me? The way you’ve been avoiding it, I guess you’re worried a nap in my arms might make you fall in love with me.”

  My palms turned sweaty against his skin, and I gulped down a knot inside my throat the size of a fist. “Very funny.”

  He said nothing else, but the rise and fall of his chest turned shallow and constricted. So did mine, chained by a question that made concern and contentment sweep over me in equal parts. Did Adair fall in love with me?

  A heaviness settled onto my body. All the while, the motion of Adair’s body against mine rocked me to sleep.

  Chapter 14

  Adair

  Ruth lay nestled in the crook of my arm, a strand of her hair tickling across my skin whenever she breathed out. Of all the moments we had shared with each other, having her asleep in my arms must have been the most special one.

  There she was, so innocent and so beautiful, trusting herself into my care in a most vulnerable state. At that very moment, I believed I was enough, granting myself the right to hope for the improbable.

  No matter how hard we fucked or how often we did it, nothing measured up this minute. Nothing. And it was then that I realized that our agreement wouldn’t cut it anymore. Coming inside of her meant little if I couldn’t hold her against me after. Talk to her. Open up to her. Taking her all in.

  I needed her all and everything. Needed it now and for the rest of my life. Damn. She was all the things I ever wanted: a friend, a mate, a partner. For a moment, I pictured my life without her, only to let my gaze return to her from that dull blackness which would devour me whole if she’d leave my life. For the first time, I realized I was in love.

  “I knew it!” Hazel hissed, her head poking halfway through the gap in my door.

  “What the fuck!” I tugged on the blanket and draped it over Ruth. “Whatever happened to knocking?”

  “Seriously? Whatever happened to knocking?” She pushed the door open and parked one hand by her hip. “How about, whatever happened to touching a woman that isn’t your wife? And this… this looks like you touched plenty.”

  Ruth took a deep breath, making my very next heartbeat a paralyzing one.

  “Sh! She’s still sleeping, and there’s no reason for you to yap like that.”

  She lowered her voice into a whispered snarl. “No reason, huh? You are the only family I have left, and you’re gambling away your life. For a fuck
?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not like that.”

  “So you’re telling me you guys are getting married?” She pointed at Ruth and whispered a sarcastic laugh. “Because last time I checked, she wanted nothing to do with that.” She dropped her hand, and her shoulders slumped, pacing the tiny doorframe. Left. Right. Left. Right. “Please tell me you proposed, and she said yes.”

  My next breath turned into a struggle for air, my throat suddenly dry and rough and awfully aware of how rancid my answer tasted on my tongue. “Not yet but —”

  “Great.” She swung her arms up and dropped her hands onto her face. “What better way to kick off my wedding than to bury my brother a few weeks before? Fix it, before I fix it for you!”

  At that, she turned around, each of her steps fast and filled with what some might have confused with anger. But it was concern. That and a just fear for my life. Ten minutes later, she shouted another, “Fix it!” from the hallway.

  Click.

  The door shut behind her and let a cold draft into my room, but not nearly as freezing as the prickling along my limbs. Hazel would never have given us away, but it didn’t change the fact that she was right. I had to fix this, and there was only one way of doing it.

  Another ten minutes passed until Ruth’s eyes blinked back into the moment. Her head tossed from one side to the other as if to orient herself. When her eyes met mine, she hid the sweetest smile behind her palm. “I fell to sleep?”

  “Snored like a sailor.”

  “No, I didn’t!” She gave a playful punch against my shoulder. “Stop messing with me. It’s bad enough that I fell to sleep here, so please spare me your jokes.”

  “What’s so bad about it?”

  “What?”

  I turned onto my side, rested my head against my hand, and sucked in a breath. “What’s so bad about falling to sleep here with me? You didn’t like it?”

  She combed her fingers through my hair. “Yeah, it was nice but… I mean… I just believe it’s taking things a bit too far. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  The muscles along my neck twitched, and a heavy sensation settled deep inside my stomach. Come on! Ask her! Don’t be a coward.

  “Actually, I don’t agree at all.” I pushed myself up, pulled my knees against my chest, and reached out for her hand. “What if I told you I wanted to take it even further?”

  Her brow arched. “Excuse me?”

  “Look…” I let my voice trail off, allowing myself to take that one deep breath I needed. “I get we said this would only be —”

  “Don’t!” She quickly pressed her palm onto my mouth and suffocated my voice. “I got no clue where this is suddenly coming from, but let me tell you this: I don’t wanna hear it. Not now. Not ever. We talked about this, Adair. You agreed.”

  When she took her hand back and fumbled herself out from underneath the blanket, I reached out for her arm. “Can I say something?”

  “No.”

  A tingle of numbness started at my fingertips. “Are you saying you won’t even let me ask the question?”

  “It won’t change my answer!” she shouted and swung around, her eyes wide open and a tremble pulling on her lower lip. “Why would you insist on ruining what we have?”

  “Because it’s not enough for me, Ruth!” I let my hand reach for her cheek and gave a gentle tug. “Look at me.”

  “Stop it. I hate when you say that.”

  “No, you don’t.” I caressed her cheek with my thumb. “You love it when I ask you to look at me. Just like you love lasagna with zucchini and zombie movies. And I know you love being with me.”

  Her eyes caught mine, the gaze inside them dull yet tears glistening behind it all. “I love being with you and I won’t deny that. But I can’t marry you, or anyone else for that matter. I don’t understand how marriage works, Adair.”

  “You didn’t understand how sex worked either, but we figured it out together. We can figure out married life.”

  An uncomfortable silence sedated the room, making each second drag a bit longer, a bit less bearable.

  I had the urge to grab her and kiss her, but I didn’t. However much enough I felt when I had her asleep in my arms, the way she sure-fired her rejection made me want to drop into a push-up and recite Faust or Shakespeare or any of that literary shit.

  “I didn’t plan for this to happen,” I went on, the plea in my voice making me sound like a beggar. “When you offered me to have sex, I thought I stroke the sweetest deal in my life, and I realize any other clansman would have jumped at it, too. But it’s not enough for me anymore, Ruth. I want to hold you after. I want you to lean against me when we watch movies together. I want to hold your hand when we stroll to the village. But most of all, I want others to see you’re mine.”

  “But I am not yours, Adair. You are trying to make this something that it isn’t.”

  “Or maybe you’re desperately trying to tell yourself that there isn’t something between us.” I stalled for a moment, giving her time to realize. Time for some sort of enlightenment. When none came, I continued. “Don’t you see we’re good together? What is marriage at this point anyway, other than Rowan making it official?”

  With a single shake of her head, she slowed time, the dust in my room seemingly floating at a funeral pace.

  Ruth freed herself from my touch and rose from the bed, leaving me behind at the edge of the mattress. The heavy sensation inside my stomach had long spread across my core, consuming me from the inside.

  She picked up one clothing piece after another and dressed herself, her arms pinned against her stomach whenever she didn’t need them.

  “I love you.”

  The confession had spilled out of me without constraint, making Ruth stall mid-movement with a sock dangling from her toes. Two seconds later, she kicked her heel into the white fabric.

  Then she looked straight at me. “You think you love me because I’m the first woman you fucked.”

  Her words punched my heart — invisible, but no less hurtful.

  There was a coldness in her voice like never before, and it replaced the numbness in my fingertips with clenched fists containing little less than anger.

  “Don’t tell me what I feel and what I don’t feel.” I jumped up and walked over to her. “I fucked you many times, but this today was different, and you know it.”

  “How?”

  “I made love to you, god damnit.” Desperation made me sling my arms around her, and I pulled her into my chest, digging my face deep into her hair and planting kisses onto the strands.

  “Stop it…” She wiggled her shoulders and pulled her arms, dropping herself down and slipping away from me.

  Desperate and small, I grabbed for the last bar. “You promised you’ll marry me if you carried my child!”

  “There is no child, Adair, and you know it. I didn’t even menstruate yet.”

  With each step she took toward the door, my breath sucked in faster, leaving my veins bursting with adrenaline and my brain in a fog.

  “How can you be so fucking cold-hearted?” I snarled. “I don’t get it. Is it because you grew up without parents? Because you never experienced love? What is wrong with you?”

  She swung around in the doorframe. Her lips opened, then closed again. Then she swallowed an audible gulp. “You’re just saying those things because you’re hurt, and you’re insecure.”

  “Stop fucking analyzing me!”

  The moment a tear rolled down her cheek, she turned her gaze away. Her body followed soon after, and she hurried away and toward her room.

  I followed behind her. My heart louder than my angry footsteps. “So, I’m good enough to fuck, but not good enough to marry?”

  The door to her room closed right in my face. A click sounded from the lock, creating an echo inside my skull that wouldn’t quit bouncing.

  I kicked against the frame full force. “Fuck!”

  The moment I sunk myself to the ground, my holo-band lit up. I
raked my fingers through my hair and rubbed them over my face, then picked up.

  “What is it?” I asked with defeat in my voice.

  River’s hologram lit up. “Rowan wants us all to come down to the longhouse. Now.”

  “Roger that.”

  I took a quick breather and steadied my voice. “I assume you heard that. Please don’t leave the house while I’m gone. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  No answer came, the only detectible noises coming from behind the door something that sounded like muffled sniffles and perhaps even sobs. The thought of her crying filled me with an odd kind of satisfaction. I knew it was wrong, but that didn’t keep my pride from indulging in it. How can she not feel what I feel?

  I left the house, jumped into my truck, and drove down to the longhouse, the snow chains pulling me over fallen branches and tire prints molded deep into the mud.

  Blood lay spilled in a jagged line at the village center, and I imagined the cut across my heart to look about the same.

  This was the second time I had proposed to a woman, and the second time I was rejected. The first time stung my pride. But this time sucked the blood from my veins, the air from my lungs, and the life from my core.

  I stepped into the longhouse feeling smaller than ever, River’s snarky jokes making it barely through my dad’s words resounding from the dark depth of my memory.

  You’re not good enough.

  Still not good enough.

  Never good enough.

  “What took you so long?” River asked.

  “Shut the fuck up. I came as quickly as I could.”

  Oriel swung his palms up. “Where’s Ruth? The other women went to see Hazel.”

  “She wanted to stay at home.”

  “And you let her stay there alone?”

  I planted my ass on the only remaining chair in the circle. “How about you stay out of my business? I know what I’m doing, okay? Besides, we’ve got forty-five fewer rebels now, and I doubt anybody would assault a woman today.”