IF ALL ELSE FAILS, SET HER ABLAZE
I like to think of myself as a hopeless romantic, with a dirty mind.
~ Hunter Everhart
Hunter
NO ONE IS sleeping tonight. After Grant’s visit and dinner, Willow withdrew from everyone. I wanted to soothe her, to love her, and to take the pain away. She didn’t let me or anyone else close to her. I remain awake, leaning against the wall outside her room waiting for a sign. A sign that she’s okay, or that she wants me nearby. It’s been a long night. The tension has increased now that everyone is supposed to be asleep. Listening to Grant Beesley Jr. talk about his family, set everyone on a state of alert.
We don’t know if Willow is going to lose her shit. I’m confident she won’t. Hazel asked for Harrison’s untraceable phone to make a phone call. We don’t know who or what happened, but afterward, she remained close to Fitz. In fact, she moved her sleeping bag to our room where my brothers are watching her. I think we’re all afraid she’s going to have a nervous breakdown. We knew almost everything about her. Yet she had kept a big chunk of her life a secret. It included living alone since she was sixteen. During high school, she worked part-time to compliment the stipend her parents sent.
She moved in with her grandfather after graduation to earn money because the neighbors who cared for her almost lost their home. She felt compelled to do something since they raised her. I recall seeing her tired from weekly traveling to North Carolina and back, staying up all night working on homework or the projects her grandfather assigned her. Yet, she never had money to spend on frivolous things.
“I’m saving for something special,” Hazel used to say.
Until the weekend when she traveled to San Francisco. It was her twenty-second birthday, and she decided to spend it in California with her friends. She came back the next morning broken. Ever since then, she’s had more time to spend with us and money to spend on herself.
The rustling coming from Willow’s room makes me turn. I rise and open the door. She’s sitting against the wall with her legs crossed. She’s tearing the pages of her journal. I push myself to enter the room and close the door behind me. The room smells like Willow. Coconut, flowers, and that sweet scent unique to her.
“Willow?”
She sets the journal on the floor, lifting her gaze. “What would you do if you were him?”
I take a step back, balancing from the force of her question.
“Who would you choose? Your daughters or her?”
“Both.” I don’t falter. “I would find a way to help my wife while being with my children. They would need at least one of us.”
Walking to her, I slide along the wall, sitting right beside the most confused woman. I feel her body shaking, and hear her soul screaming. “You’re you. Remember the way you protected your sister when you were children? You’ll be a fearless protector.”
I place my hand on her bare knee, caressing her leg, slowly driving it toward her core. “Stop thinking about a future that doesn’t exist yet, Willow. Concentrate on the present.” I take off my shirt, picking up one of the markers she’s using, and hand it to her. Instead of taking it, she climbs onto my lap. Her lips press against mine, they are firm, soft, needy, and rejecting. Everything she’s feeling is personified through them. Opening my mouth, I let every emotion inside, too. She sways her body, rubbing herself against by growing, hardening dick. Fuck, fuck. Be strong, don’t touch her.
That’s impossible. My hands start roaming her body—remembering every curve. She peels off her tank top, releasing her tits. Pushing herself closer to me, my hips roughly driving themselves faster and faster against her body. I outline the taut tips of her breasts with my tongue. My hands move downward, skimming either side of her body to the elastic of her shorts.
“Willow,” I say her name as a prayer, a confession, and defeat. “We shouldn’t.”
“I need this, Hunter. I need the peace I feel when you drive yourself deep inside me.” She moves from my lap, my body missing hers already. “I ache for you. Tonight, I’m giving myself a pass. I’m letting my emotions drive my body. Please.”
As I nod, she undresses and unbuttons my shorts, too. My erection bounces as she frees it. Climbing back on my lap, she centers herself over my hard erection, moving forward. “Tonight, I’m in charge,” she says as she slams her hips against mine, burying my shaft deep inside her.
“Fuck.” I grip her hips with my fingers driving myself even deeper. Her back arches, crying out along with me. Her hips move as she slides up and down, riding slowly. Every inch of me filling her tightness. Fuck, she’s so fucking wet, soft—like sliding inside of warm velvet. I’m close to losing my shit as the grip of her walls squeezes me hard. Our bodies are in exquisite harmony with one another. Soaring together, reaching for that peak.
“Touch me,” she orders. This version of Willow is making me fall apart. I stop myself. She needs to lose herself in the moment—I want to make the moment last forever. At least for the entire night while she’s driven by her passion.
My mouth sucks her nipples with tantalizing possessiveness. My hands slide across her belly, all the way down between her legs. Her eyes flutter open when I find her clit and rub it. I gasp as she grounds herself harder on to my pulsating cock. My free hand moves around her tight ass, I wet my thumb with her soaking juices and slip it into her pucker. She loves when I fill all of her. This would be complete if I could tell her how fucking crazy I am about her. How much I love her. That this time it isn’t an illusion. I have a dream for us and if she allows it—it could become everything.
Suddenly, her movements stop. Her eyes open. My hands freeze as she looks at me in a way I’ve never seen. Her eyes are bright, filled with life. “You’re thinking. It’s too much and too loud.”
“What?”
“I need you to stop thinking about it.” She climbs off my lap, walking to the long dresser that sat on the other side of the room. Resting her torso on it, she turns her face to me. “Write it while you fuck me.”
“Lose yourself inside me and let me lose myself inside you. Everything else can wait.”
She opens her legs; the scent of her arousal hangs in the air. Grabbing the marker, I move closer to her, fitting myself inside her. One arm wrapped around her waist, my fingers finding her clit. My right hand scribbling words. The ones I can’t say. Her inner muscles clamp around me.
“Don’t come yet, Willow,” I order her, pushing myself inside deeper.
Writing faster as I propose to her to spend the next millennium with me. Everything I haven’t told her.
I missed you when you weren’t around.
I need you constantly.
I want every day of the rest of my life with you.
I want to trace your body with my lips.
I want us to sink deep into each other.
I want to be inside of you.
I want to cuddle in bed.
I want to fight.
I want to have make-up sex.
I want to fall asleep with you by my side.
I want to be the reason why you smile.
I want to grow older with you.
I want to be the exception to your rules.
I want to be the person you will trust with your heart and your soul.
Because I love you all of you just as you are.
I place the marker on the table, changing my pace as I get ready to come apart. I pull out, flipping her around and pushing her against the wall. Her legs close around my waist; her arms hold onto my shoulders. Her walls grasp me tighter as she tosses her head back. Her body is shaking. The heat of her juices pouring onto my pelvis, making every muscle in my body vibrate. My core tightens, and I capture her mouth drinking her orgasm as my body vibrates. My cock jerks deep inside her. I feel it as we both fall apart, collapsing on the floor.
I hold onto her, waiting until she falls asleep. I move us to her sleeping bag, adjusting the blanket and molding her curves against my body.
“I love you,” I mumble against her ear, kissing her long neck. My eyes close, as I promise that this time nothing will tear me apart from her.