Page 58 of Judge's Mercy

Myla throws her arms out wide, and her head lulls to the side dramatically. “I have no bones. You fucked them out of me.”

“Good thing you’re pocket-sized.” I pull out, watching my cum leak from her slit. The sight makes my cock twitch.

“Hey, weirdo. Eyes up here,” she says through a yawn.

Trailing my gaze up her body does nothing to stop my dick from twitching again, trying so hard to get back in the game. “You have no goddamn idea how sexy you are, do you?”

I pick her up and carry her to my bed. We’re both exhausted after little sleep last night and our activities today, so even though it’s only late afternoon, I carry her to my bed, hoping she’ll stay. I kneel on the bed and lower her to the mattress, dipping down to give her a chaste kiss so I don’t hurt her lip.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

Her arm barely leaves the mattress to give me a thumbs up. “Boneless, remember?”

My grin lasts through cleaning Myla and me up. She didn’t even fight it when I parted her legs and ran a washcloth down her pussy. That earned me another cock twitch.

“What’s with all the antique furniture and grandma decorations?” she asks as I climb into bed and cover us with the patchwork quilt.

“A lot of it was here when I moved in.” After the events of the afternoon, I’m still a bit raw and emotionally drained. I don’t know if I have it in me to tell her anything else that would embarrass me further.

“And the rest?”

I sigh. “You’re going to think this is stupid, but I like to pretend I have certain memories that most people take for granted. When I was a kid, that meant I used my imagination to give myself the family I always wanted. Each night, I’d relive my day, only this time, I’d be part of this family I made up. I’d go to school, play video games with my older brother, and fight with my younger sister. That family was every bit as real to me as the nuns or Father Kerrigan. I loved them. But as you grow older, your imagination gets weak until one day, they were just gone.”

“That’s not stupid; that’s sad.”

“It was, and I spent years trying to figure out how to get back the sense of belonging I had with my imaginary family. One day, after I left the group home, I was at a thrift shop to get a new pair of shoes and saw a pocket watch. It wasn’t anything special; the nickel plating was rusted, and it didn’t work, but I bought it anyway. Later that night, as I was lying on a cot in the middle of a gymnasium full of other unhoused men, I held it in my hand, closed my eyes, and thought up a story about how it was my great-great-grandfather’s and was given to the eldest child of each generation until it was mine.

“From that moment on, I started collecting things that I could give a story to. Like a special plate that my siblings and I used to leave cookies on for Santa, or Grandma’s old sofa I couldn’t bear to get rid of because it held so many memories of trips to her house, or the patchwork quilt that was my mom’s first sewing project.”

“Judge—” My name is a sad whisper, and I realize my chest is damp from her tears.

“Please don’t cry. It’s not sad to me because having all of these things around ease my grief of a life I didn’t have.”

“I’m not crying over how you coped. I’m crying because I spend so much time picking out all my parents’ failures and never take time to remember the good. I’m realizing how incredibly selfish I am because I got to experience all the things you dreamed of as a kid.”

I kiss the top of her head. “You can’t think of it that way. There will always be someone who had it better than you and someone who had it worse. It doesn’t invalidate your experience or your problems.”

“That was a good Judge-ism.” She rolls onto her back and wipes the tears off her face and my pec.

“Judge-ism?”

“It’s what I’ve decided to call all the things you think of that are the exact right thing to say.” Her voice is a breathy whisper as Myla teeters on the edge of consciousness.

“Get some sleep.”

“I just need to rest my eyes for a minute. Then I’ll go.”

“It’s okay if you stay.”

“We’ve crossed too many lines today, Judge. I can’t cross this one.”

She’s right, but it doesn’t make it easier to digest. She’s made it clear from the beginning that she doesn’t want me. She wants my cock, she wants me to keep her secrets, and she might even want a friend, but she doesn’t want me. Somehow, that hurts more than everything else I’ve been through, yet when she rolls away from me, I still curl my body around her and pretend she’s mine.

I’ve always been good at make-believe.

CHAPTER TWENTY

MYLA

---