Free Me

by Laurelin Paige

  We needed a picture of it. I knew that much. Evidence.

  But I didn’t care much about practical tasks at the moment. I was swept up in something else. The ugly. That as much as I wanted to forget about the person who gave me half my DNA, as much as I wanted to ignore that he ever existed in my life, he’d always be marked on me. Even when the bruises faded, he’d still be there. He’d still be the source of my ugly.

  JC slipped in to face me, blocking me from my reflection. “This is where I’ll start.” He took my hand from my face and held it in his. Then he leaned in and kissed along the bruises, carefully, tenderly. “Here,” he said between kisses, “he touched you here. And here.” He didn’t stop until he’d covered every tinted spot of flesh.

  When he was done, he trailed his lips across the bridge of my nose to my other cheek. “How about here? Did he ever hit you here?”

  I nodded, and he placed a kiss there.

  “And here?” as he moved under my eye.

  “Yes.”

  Another kiss. “And here?” Above my brow.

  “Yes.”

  So it went until he’d covered my skin from my forehead to my jawline. Each gentle kiss a gesture of love. Each “and here” an acknowledgment of pain. My face was wet from my tears as he moved down my neck, and while I knew that he’d eventually press his lips against every part of my body, there was something else I needed. I needed life breathed into me in a big way. Needed my system jolted.

  “JC.” I waited until he’d lifted his eyes to mine. “Be rough with me. Please. I need to know I’m real. I need to know you’re real.”

  He hesitated a moment before breaking into a wicked grin. “Thank you, Gwen, for telling me that. You know how hot it makes me when you trust me with your needs.”

  He proceeded to show me, claiming my lips like a predator, devouring me. Our mouths still locked, he picked me up and spun me around. He set me down on the counter and loosened my towel. This time as he moved his mouth down my body, he didn’t ask where I’d been hurt. Instead, he covered all of me. Every inch. Nipping and licking and sucking. He left hickeys on my chest. Bites that would later bruise covered my breasts. He kissed me and he marked me.

  He covered me with love.

  I was already moaning and writhing when his lips found my clit. My core was tight, high-strung from all his attention. So when he sank to his knees, his nails digging painfully into my thighs, and sucked the swollen bud of nerves into his mouth, I immediately found myself on the brink of orgasm. “Fuck, JC. I’m going to come.”

  “Good girl. Tell me more.” He tipped my hips back and threw my legs over his shoulders, opening me wider to him.

  I put my arms back and braced myself on my elbows, searching for the words I knew he liked to hear while he pleasured me. “It’s building. I’m getting tighter. God, it feels so good. You make me feel so good. You make me feel so loved.”

  Fingers plunged into my wet center. The second he hit the sensitive spot against my wall, I went over. I cried out his name, my legs tightening and shaking while my whole body—every nerve ending—ignited and flared with warmth.

  My vision was still clearing when he brought his fingers out and used my slick juices to slide a finger into my ass. I was tight and snug, but I opened up easily to him. With his mouth still adoring my clit, and the rush from my first orgasm still clinging to me, the brush of his fingertip against my tender tissues set another climax gathering.

  I surrendered then. Completely. Totally, letting the waves crash over me, through me. He was going to love me big, and I was going to resist, but here, under the ministrations of his mouth and tongue and fingers, I could let go. Here, I could let him love me whole and entirely. Here, his love was full, and I knew how to accept it.

  ***

  When I was limp and boneless, JC carried me to the bed. “How are you? Can you take more?”

  Despite the two overwhelming orgasms that had wrecked through me, he had yet to fill me, and I wanted that. “I can take more.”

  “Good.” He dropped his towel to the floor and my eyes flew to his erection standing thick and ready. Just the sight of it sent another stirring through my veins. It hit me then, how lucky I was to have found him. This creature who could care about my body and my spirit in equal measures. This man who could fuck me and fall for me too. It was absolutely fucking incredible.

  Before joining me in bed, he turned the lights down and messed with his phone until music started playing. “Is this okay?”

  “I love Maroon 5.”

  “Listen to the lyrics.”

  I’d heard it before, but I listened now as JC turned me to my side and slid behind me. The words were about being scared, scared to love. And the singer asks his woman to say yes, to take a chance on their relationship. The title repeated over and over in the refrain—My Heart is Open.

  Damn, it could have been my song for JC.

  Was he trying to tell me he understood how I felt? He was always so in tune with me—it wouldn’t surprise me.

  He didn’t explain the choice. As the song played, he kissed along my back, trailing his lips underneath my shoulders and along my scar there. His cock pressed into the crack of my ass, hot and hard. His hand curled around to my chest and squeezed my breast, then pinched my nipple to the point of pain. I’d thought I was spent, but with the music and his twitching erection and the way he was worshipping me, glorifying me, a new hum began to sing between my legs.

  The song was over by the time he’d covered every inch of my backside, but after a second of silence, it started up again.

  He rolled me over to my back and nestled between my legs. His cock pressed against my center, and I squirmed, trying to get it in the place I wanted it. But JC held me still.

  “I heard it today,” he said, his eyes finding mine. “In the cab ride from the airport to the club. I downloaded it immediately. I realized it’s everything I want to be with you. I want to tell you yes. I want to be here for you until you tell me yes back. Even with the things I can’t share, Gwen, even with the words I can’t say yet, my heart is open.”

  If there were such a thing as an emotional climax, I had one. Something inside me burst and spread through my chest, through my limbs, down to my toes, up to my head. It was hot. Tingly. Bliss.

  His gaze still locked on mine, he entered me. In one thrust, he was stretching me, filling me the way he’d filled my heart. Perfecting me.

  “Yes,” I cried. “Like that. Yes.” Yes, I love the way you feel in me. Yes, give me more. Yes, my heart is open too.

  He moved in and out, not fast, not too slow. He was enjoying me. He was telling me how he loved me. He was proving his yes. His hips circled, nudging my clit. I moaned and sighed. I gasped. I sang.

  And he continued to cherish my skin, brushing his fingers across my thighs and hips, finding my scars, caressing them tenderly. “As many times as it takes.” His mouth hovered above mine, his breath hot. “I will kiss away your bruises. I’ll kiss away your pain.”

  I wrapped my arms around his neck. His attempts to heal me were valiant, and I appreciated them more than words could say. But he needed to know the process was ongoing. That true healing would take time.

  I brushed my lips against his and told him. “Most of the scars are on the inside.”

  “I can be there too.” As if to prove it, he pushed my legs in toward my chest, and on his next stroke, he hit deeper in me, deeper than I thought I’d ever felt him before. Deeper than anyone had ever been inside me before.

  He kissed me hungrily, licking into my mouth. Everywhere I felt him—with my lips and tongue, against my skin, inside my pussy, inside my chest and head and limbs. He infiltrated my senses and my soul.

  And when his tempo picked up and he pounded into me with sharp, unyielding jabs and the tension pulled tight in my core, I held on. I waited. When we went, we went together, open and free, our climaxes uniting into one glorious, brilliant explosion.

  ***

&nb
sp; We made love through the night and fell asleep wrapped around each other with the dawn.

  I woke midmorning to his voice, harsh and angry. He was on the edge of the bed, the phone at his ear. I’d missed whatever he said, but emotion was written all over his body. He was more than angry. He was completely enraged.

  He ended the call without a goodbye, simply letting the phone fall from his hands and to the floor. He stood and paced the room for half a minute before screaming, “Fuck!” and throwing his fist into the wall.

  I gasped, both because he’d startled me and because violence in any form made me uneasy.

  Still shaking his hand, he spun toward me, his eyes finding mine. Immediately, his face softened, but his body remained tense.

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Is it one of the things you can’t say?”

  He didn’t answer. His breathing had been fast and heavy, but now he took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.

  Then he climbed back on the bed and knelt before me. “I want to talk about us. Let’s talk about us.” He took my hands in his. “Can we?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” I was apprehensive. Edgy. Cautious. “What about us?”

  He kissed the back of one hand, then the other. “I love you, Gwen. You know that I love you, right?”

  “I do.”

  “And you love me?” His tone was urgent and panicked. Not at all like normal.

  Concerned, I shifted so I was kneeling too. “I do. I do love you, JC. What is it?”

  “This is good,” he said under his breath. “This is going to work.” Then he smiled, his grin unsteady but sincere, his hands tightly wrapped around mine. “Gwen. Marry me.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I laughed.

  There was no other appropriate response. It also helped to relieve some of the strange tension building inside of me.

  But when I was done laughing, he was still looking at me with earnest, intent eyes. He obviously wasn’t joking.

  “JC.” I sat back on my heels. “Stop being weird and talk to me about what’s going on.”

  He tightened his grip on me. “I’m serious, Gwen. I’m asking you to marry me.”

  I blinked a few times. I hadn’t even had any coffee yet. There should be a universal law that made caffeine a requirement before serious conversations and proposals.

  I looked down at our hands joined together and found that the knuckles on his right hand were red and scratched from his punch to the wall. He was lucky he hadn’t hit through the sheetrock. “Oh God, honey. Does it hurt?”

  He glanced at his hand then returned his attention to me. “I can’t feel it. It’s numb. Marry me.”

  This was the third time he’d said those words and the first time that they actually got through to me. My throat and chest tightened and critters began flitting around in my stomach, and while some of the sensation felt pleasant I had no doubt what I needed to say. “I can’t marry you, JC.”

  “Why not?” The response came fast and even. Prepared. As though he’d been expecting my no.

  I pulled my hands out from his while I tried to come up with the answers that should be completely obvious. “Because it’s too soon. Because we don’t even know each other. Because we only just said we loved each other.” I slid out of the bed, uncomfortable being so near to him while he was acting so off.

  “But we’ve felt things for longer than that. And what does time matter anyway? We love each other and that’s what counts. Marry me.” He was so confident in his delivery. Each time, two words—marry me. As though saying them over and over would make the difference. As though I would be convinced eventually, and he just needed to be patient.

  “JC.” I found my underwear and put them on, feeling too vulnerable without any clothes on. “I can’t—” I took a deep breath.

  But maybe I could.

  I looked for a shirt to put on while I tested the idea out in my mind. I’d never thought about marrying JC. I never thought I’d marry anyone, actually. So the idea of a union like that at all was peculiar and foreign.

  But now that I was thinking about it…

  It wouldn’t be the worst thing. Having a place to come home to every night—or morning, in my case—a place that was more of a person than a location. A place that was safe. A place that was filled with love. It was a warm thought. One that spread and grew and felt less ridiculous than it should.

  I found JC’s t-shirt on the floor and pulled it over my head. When I turned around, he was standing not a foot away, expectant. “You can’t? Why can’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I could.” Shit, did I really just say that?

  I wandered into the front room, nervous energy driving me to keep moving.

  He followed. “Maybe. You said maybe.”

  “Maybe,” I said again. “I need some time to think about it. Like a lot of time. This is completely out-of-the-blue and crazy, but out-of-the-blue has worked in my favor before.” I’d jumped JC that night in the club without any premeditation. “Still. I’d need some time. At least a few weeks. Maybe longer. So my answer is maybe.” What the fuck was I saying?

  I forced myself to breathe, in and out, instead of having a full-out panic attack like I kind of wanted to have.

  Maybe isn’t yes, I told myself. Maybe is fine. Maybe is acceptable.

  Jesus, how could I even be considering this?

  I turned to him, hoping he’d be happy that I hadn’t exactly said no.

  He wasn’t. He was frowning, shaking his head. “I don’t have…” He made an exasperated noise, sort of like a sigh with a little bit of a groan. “I’m not asking for ‘in a few weeks.’ Today, Gwen. Marry me today.”

  “Oh, no. No way.” Hell, no. In fact, now I might actually have a panic attack because how could he even be thinking that I would marry him today? It was ludicrous. It was unfathomable. It was completely and utterly insane.

  Had I fallen in love with a lunatic? That would be my luck. And whether or not he was a lunatic, was I ruining everything I had with him by being the only sane one between us?

  I took more deep breaths, did more wandering of the hotel suite at a speed that could better be described as pacing, except that it was not in any sort of straight line.

  JC was right on my heels. “Stop freaking out. I’m serious. This is good.”

  I circled around the couch, but he turned so when I got to the other side, he was waiting there. “We’ll fly to Vegas and be man and wife before nightfall.”

  I turned and headed toward the bedroom.

  “Think about it, Gwen. We could spend the whole night making love.”

  I spun around so fast I practically bumped into him. “We can spend the night making love without getting married. Here. In New York City.”

  He circled his arms around my waist, lacing his hands to hold me still. “I know, but it will be different.”

  His arms were heaven. His arms were peace. They calmed me and comforted me even though they made me a little bit dizzy at the same time.

  Not dizzy enough to think about taking his proposal seriously. But dizzy enough to remember how much I loved being held by him.

  “Think about how much better it will be to be married,” he said. “We’ll be together like this all the time. Together for real. Nothing can come between us.”

  I put my hands around his neck and placed a kiss on his sternum. “That sounds wonderful, JC. But that’s not what marriage means. Those are things you decide in a relationship together, and they don’t just happen overnight. They don’t just happen with a ring and an I do.”

  He leaned his forehead against mine and rocked us from side to side. “So let’s decide to be together all the time. That we’re together for real. And that nothing can come between us. And we’ll seal the deal with a wedding. I have to go to Vegas anyway.”

  He was so sincere, so persistent…and he’d been so magnificent to me, especially in the last twenty-four h
ours. And I loved him.

  But that just wasn’t enough.

  “No.” It was enough to make me feel bad though. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t do that.”

  He pushed me away, frustrated. He ran a hand through his hair then put it on his hip. “Why not?”

  I shook my head, not knowing how to answer anymore.

  “Why. Not?” he repeated, separating each word. He placed his palm on his chest. “My heart is open, Gwen. Is yours?”

  “This has nothing to do with my heart being open, JC. This is about practicality.” I wrapped my arms around myself. I was frustrated now too. I didn’t like having my feelings challenged. I had a hard enough time accepting and acknowledging what I felt. To have it then scrutinized and confronted made me very uncomfortable.

  He hit the closet with his fist, not as hard as he’d punched the wall, just loud enough to make sound. “Fuck practicality. Marry me.”

  “I said no.” My tone was low and stern. Final.

  Irritated, I headed to the nightstand and started looking for my phone. I knew I should call Norma soon and find out what she wanted me to do about Dad, but mostly it was an excuse for something to do. Look for my phone so I didn’t have to stand there and have a face-off with my one-day boyfriend about whether or not we should get married. Today.

  I didn’t find it on my side of the bed, so I crossed to the side JC had slept on and found it under the Advil. I took three of those as well, swallowing them without water. I needed them, and not just because my face was throbbing.

  JC stood the whole time by the closet, watching me.

  When I looked up at him, he took advantage of my gaze to try again. “Tell me why. Give me a good reason why. Do you not really love me?”

  How long does it take Advil to start working?