by A. E. Murphy
He sits beside me and takes my hand in his. “Thatcher is gone. That man is gone. They can’t hurt you.”
“I was so scared.” The fear feels so real, so fresh.
“You don’t have to be anymore.”
I look at him, my eyes spilling fresh tears. “Don’t I?”
“No. I have you.”
“No you don’t. Nobody has this. Nobody gets it.” I stand and walk to the window. “I’m sick of this.”
He stands too, watching me with a wary gaze. “Sick of what?”
“It’s over.” I laugh. “It’s all over… like you said; we’re safe, we’re happy, we have a baby on the way.”
“Exactly.”
“So why won’t you let me move on?” I shout. “We almost died, both of us. He was a trained killer. He could have heard you and killed you too. But we’re here… we’ve been through so much. Why won’t you just let go of it all?”
“I don’t want to push you.” He says it softly, his eyes glistening. “The last time I tried to push you, you left. I can’t lose you again.”
“You’re not pushing me!” I shout, growling with frustration while picturing myself shaking him. “I remember everything that happened that night, but I’m okay. I’m okay because I’m with you and I’m happy and I know that you’ll keep me safe. I know you’ve changed. I know you’re not who you used to be when we first met, but what you fail to realise is that I loved you then too.”
“Cerise…”
“Stop looking so fucking ashamed. You’re not a bad person. You did some shitty things, we both did, but we’re here. We have this chance and you’re making us waste it because you’re scared I’m made of glass?” I shake my head at him. “Why are you forcing me to live in the past when you’re literally the only person in the entire world that has the power to make me forget everything?”
We stare at each other, a connection forming between us, and I see his resolve slide away like sand from tilted glass.
“Make me forget,” I beg, holding out my hand to him. “Let me make you forget.”
Just when I think he’s about to walk away, he strides towards me and crushes his mouth to mine.
I sigh, relieved to feel his strong hands caress my back down to my rear.
“If you need me to stop…” he whispers in my ear after kissing a tingly trail from my mouth.
“Shut. Up.” I grab his face, surprising him, and kiss him even harder. My lips ache from the pain but I don’t care. I’m tasting him properly for the first time in weeks.
Scared that he’ll change his mind as the strength of my need for sex rises significantly, I grab the front of his top and hold it tight, right before I shove him towards the bed. He lands with an ‘oomph’ on the bed, making me smile triumphantly.
Licking his lip, he smiles up at me with heated eyes and nods for me to come closer.
I oblige, lifting my shirt over my head and tossing it, then I grab the bottom of his and pull it upwards. He takes a moment to kiss my bare stomach after sitting up to allow me to rid him of his clothing.
My fingers trace a gentle pattern from his neck to his shoulders and back again. He shivers and I love it. I love that he feels that way.
“My turn,” he smirks and I squeal with glee when he flips me over, onto my back, and rolls between my thighs. Gripping my hands, he pins them above my head in a large fist and sinks his teeth into my neck.
I cry out from the blissful pain and arch my back, wishing he could sink something other than his teeth into me.
“Tobias,” I plead, writhing beneath him as he tortures my neck and chest with his lips and tongue.
For once he doesn’t make me wait. He kicks off his trousers and then yanks off mine, groaning with frustration and then laughing with me when they get stuck on my ankles.
My laughter is silenced when he tugs me up to sitting position and nudges my lips with his swollen head. I almost forgot how big he was.
I taste him, suck him, kissing and licking, loving every noise he makes, loving the way he tugs on my hair as though trying to control himself.
“Enough,” he demands and pushes me back onto the bed.
My lips are numb.
I love that too.
“Fuck!” I cry out, surprised when he suddenly closes his mouth on me down there. “Stop teasing me…” I normally love the foreplay but I’m so desperate to be filled that it’s just a tingly inconvenience right now. “Tobias!”
My thigh stings with his first slap, making me yelp and growl.
“Nice kitty.” He grins and then goes back to dining on me.
“Oh… OH!” I grip the sheets and his hair. I squeeze his head with my thighs. I almost cry as my eyes blur with tears forced to the surface by all of the nerves he’s tormenting so deliciously. “Stop!”
He stops suddenly, leaving me feeling cold as the clitoris he was just flicking with his tongue buzzes with disappointment.
“Why’d you stop?” I shout, leaning up to look at him.
“You told me to.”
“When have I ever meant it?”
For a moment I stare at him, glaring, but then I see his lips twitch and I know he’s just winding me up.
“Fuck you,” I snarl, sliding onto the floor with him before he can stop me.
With my back against the side of the bed and him on his knees, I literally impale myself on his length as I let gravity pull me down. We both cry out.
It has been so fucking long.
Giving me a moment to adjust, he brushes my hair from my eyes and then lifts me so easily back onto the bed with us still joined at the hips.
He tenderly brushes my lips with his and kisses my eyebrows, then my cheekbones, cheeks, jaw. Then he finally starts to move, slowly at first, easing me into it as he whispers his genuine declarations of love into my ear.
Sliding in and out, just a fraction, enough to make me pant wantonly.
He picks up speed, his gentle pushes becoming more rapid, his pulls becoming longer.
I watch his eyes squeeze shut and a shudder pulses through his body as I lose myself, orgasming gently around his throbbing length. He doesn’t stop; he doesn’t give me time to adjust and I spiral again, this time violently.
“That’s it, Wild One,” he murmurs in my ear. “I’m going to flip you now.”
“What?” He does just that, sliding out of my sensitive core and then just flipping me onto my knees with a little help from me.
As he kneels behind me, I gasp when he positions himself over my folds and then pulls me down onto him.
“You feel amazing; I don’t want to stop,” he admits and I mumble an incoherent agreement. His hands grasp my breasts, massaging gently as we roll our hips together.
It’s surprisingly tame for all of twenty seconds and then I’m eating bed sheets as he shoves me face first into the mattress and starts pounding into me from behind. His fingers tweak my still sensitive nub. It’s insane. I need him to go faster and faster. I demand it but there’s a limit to even his speed, which feels so frustrating in this moment.
Especially when he starts to slow down his movements and I know what that means. He’s trying to control himself, but I don’t want him to.
As much as I don’t want this to end, I really need to feel him lose himself in me.
“Behave,” he orders, smacking my rear gently. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I breathlessly say as I push my hips back into him and circle slowly.
He pulls out again and kisses my spine.
“What are you doing?” I groan, turning to look at him as he moves to the closet. His length bounces, still completely solid.
I wait for him to return to me and my eyes widen when he pops a glass ball on a cord into my mouth.
“Good girl.” He tugs it from my lips and then pushes me backwards so I’m spread eagled on the bed with my feet on the floor “Relax.”
I know where this is go
ing and the second it pops inside, I breathe again.
The second he pops inside my normal entrance I start writhing and begging for him to make me cum, again.
I want to wipe that smug grin off his face but then I just want to sit on his face.
The burning is too much. My eyes roll back into my head as he grinds into me in an erratic rhythm.
“Can’t… breathe…” I say and then it happens. This time it isn’t gentle or violent; it’s a fucking massacre of every cell in my body. I’ve never felt anything like it. I hook an arm around his neck and bite his shoulder as the pleasure rushing through me becomes almost too much. I feel the ball leave me when he tugs it, which only seems to extend the feelings I’m having. When he roars out his own release, clinging to me just as tightly as I cling to him, I smile and this time whisper my own declarations of love in his ear.
We collapse side by side, too warm to touch, too sweaty and gross. So we link pinkie fingers instead and gently fall asleep, only to go again less than an hour later, and then again in the shower.
The next day even he is too sore and tired to go to work, so we spend the day sleeping, eating and snuggling in front of crappy movies and epic game sessions.
All is literally perfect in the world.
“What are you doing?” I mumble, peeking open an eye and looking at Lockhart, who has my hand on his lap.
It feels like yesterday when I caught him fingering the scars on my wrists, a faraway look in his eyes. When he caught me looking, he shushed me with a kiss and then kissed every single part of them. It almost made me cry.
“Nothing.” He brings my hand to his lips and pats his chest for me to snuggle up to him. Not one to pass on such a brilliant offer, I do just that. “I have to go back to work today. The place is falling apart without me.”
“Me too.” I sigh. “I already let Dane and Kai down yesterday. We have songs to write.”
“I don’t want to leave your side.”
“That’s a one-way ticket to a quick divorce.” I bite his pebbled nipple, making him tut and scratch at it with the hand not around my body.
I look up at him and admire his face. He’s so handsome. I wonder what features of his our daughter will get. I’m praying for her to have his eye colour.
“Promise me that you won’t force me to stay at home with the baby,” I say suddenly, surprising us both. Before he can interrupt, I explain, “I have an actual tour next year. I don’t want to leave her behind and I don’t want to be made to feel guilty for taking her with me.”
“Like I said before we even planned to have children, she’ll fit into our worlds and she’ll grow up with so much love and happiness. She doesn’t need a constant home for that. It’s unconventional, but…”
I dive on him and kiss his face over and over. “We’re so well matched it’s not even funny. I love you, Tobias Lockhart, and she’ll love you too, probably more than she’ll love me.”
“I love you too.” He smiles softly and stretches with me still on his chest, so I bite his nipple again. His smile becomes a glare. Knowing I’m likely about to get spanked, I giggle and try to escape, but he pins me down before I get to the edge of the bed.
We both go into work sore and late.
Oops.
No regrets.
Yeah, it’s actually so exciting to be working with so many strong women and men who have seen such a darkness in life.” I smile, glancing at my band buddies to get one of them to try and change the subject.
“We’re really proud of her.” Dane grins. “We’ve done a few things with her and it’s changed our perspective on women. We were never disrespectful guys, but we grew up thinking a certain way and now, seeing how our actions or words as men can literally alter a woman’s entire life is terrifying.”
“After witnessing what she went through, it’s scary. One day she was laughing and trying on Halloween costumes, the next she was just this hollow, bitter person,” Kai continues.
“We have all learned that we aren’t alone. At all. We just think we are and it’s crazy how it doesn’t just affect us either. I mean,” I shift from one foot to the other, “Tobias had such a hard time dealing with it too. He felt like he’d failed to protect me and then I felt as though I’d failed to support him while I was going through what I went through. It’s a maddening situation, hence the fact we’re opening our first sponsored safety centre in England in February next year.”
The crowd claps loudly and I feel like crying with happiness.
I feel a twinge in my stomach and wince. I’ve been getting them for a while. I should have listened to Tobias this morning when he told me not to get out of bed. He’d wrap me up in bubble wrap if he could.
The problem is this interview… It’s so bloody important for the band, company and Another Day Charity that I, Ms Kane, Georgia, Dane, Kai and Eliza have founded. It’s a rehabilitation centre for women and men who have suffered an assault. It’s free, sponsored by numerous companies and generous donors across the world.
I have high hopes that this will help in the huge leap for equality across the sexes.
The slogan is simply,
‘Love and be Loved’
To say it has taken up hours of my time is an understatement, though we’ve still managed to put a new album into the world that was better received than the last.
I close my eyes and wriggle uncomfortably in my damp seat.
“This interview needs to end,” I whisper to Georgia, who looks at me, confused.
“What’s wrong?” She leans into my ear to ask but everybody is looking. The room is full of reporters with their cameras and such. I don’t reply; I simply smile and wink at the crowd as Dane finishes answering a question directed at him.
“Cerise?” She questions.
“Nothing.” I pat her hand and smile again to hide the discomfort I feel as another contraction flutters through me. It’s just the beginning stages so I’m not too worried. It’s more the fact that I’m going to look like I’ve peed myself when I walk off stage. “Okay, I lied.”
She frowns when I nod downwards, towards my crotch. She doesn’t understand, so I nod again, discreetly but more urgently.
When she still doesn’t get it I snatch her hand and rub it on my inner thigh.
She bokes around the words, “Ewww, I can’t believe you just made me touch that.”
I laugh and sit back triumphantly, breathing and tensing when another pain comes.
“What do we do?” She hisses.
“I don’t know. I was hoping you’d know!”
Then she smiles as though I just told a hilarious joke before cupping her hand to her mouth and snarling, “I can’t believe I touched your pee. That’s just something you do not do with friends, you feral bitch.”
“Wait…” I frown, feeling the urge to face palm. “That’s not pee. My water broke.”
“Your water broke?” She does not say this quietly at all.
“You fucking suck,” I sigh through the very corner of my mouth as suddenly all cameras and flashes are aimed at me.
Kai, who is sitting to my left, raises his brows questioningly.
“Yes, it’s exploded all over this poor chair and my favourite maternity jeans.”
“We’re going to have to end this interview,” Kai says into the mic and then turns to Dane and barks, “Call Lockhart.”
Kai acts every bit the man in charge and gentleman by ripping his jumper up and over his head. He helps me to my feet and ties it around my waist to hide what he can of the spill.
“She has three weeks left.” Dane sounds panicked. “Is it safe? Will the baby be okay?”
“Dane,” Georgia and I snap at the same time, but it’s Georgia that adds, “You’re not helping.”
“I’ll call Gran.” Eliza grins, skipping around me like fucking Bambi.
The pain radiates through my pelvis as I’m helped backstage, shouts, flashes and yells echoing behind me.
I’m made to wait with
a cup of tea, wearing nice clean clothing from the dressing rooms as Tobias rushes to get to me. I haven’t spoken to him yet. I’ve been too busy focusing on this god-awful pain in my lady parts.
It only gets worse and, by the time Tobias arrives, I’m holding onto Kai’s hair and screaming in agony.
Me and labour are not a good mix. I don’t like labour. Not at all.
Tobias, on the other hand, looks fucking ecstatic and I want to punch him.
I’m carried to his car and waved off to have what should have been the most relaxing water birth ever.
Instead, after twenty-six hours of nothing but pure agony, two hours of pushing, twenty minutes of Lockhart crying as I beg him to make it stop, I’m taken up to surgery and my very fat, rather large daughter is brought into the world with the help of forceps.
She tears me front to back, almost yanking out my womb with her, and makes it so I’ll likely never have a baby again because FUCK THAT.
On the flip side, seeing Tobias hold his daughter with so much love and joy in his aqua eyes, it made it all worth it.
“You cried.” I smile at him as they clean me up after stitching me up.
“I did,” he admits, smiling at me and holding our gorgeous, pink cheeked giant baby up. “I still might. She’s wonderful.”
“She needs liposuction… like yesterday… before she made me push her out of there.” I grumble, making him laugh because he knows I don’t mean it.
Moving to me with her cradled to his chest, he kisses my forehead and asks, “Are you ready for her yet?”
I shake my head. “I just want to watch you with her for a little bit longer.” Because I’ve genuinely never seen a more beautiful sight than the sight of the man I love falling in love with the baby I carried for thirty-seven weeks.
“She looks like a Shay,” I say as I run my fingers over her thick, black hair and then the rolls of fat that line her forehead.
“Beatrice.” He says and I’m sick of this name argument.
But then I see my bag on the floor and see the open Twix chocolate bar poking out, my major craving for the past ten weeks.