Page 114 of Free Heart
It’s been agessince Dan has plowed me the way he is right now—since before the accident. I’m bent over the bed in the van, like I was that first night months ago. He’s gripping my shoulders instead of my hair and pounding me without mercy. The ball gag holds back a lot of my cries, but the tears are undeniable as I shake and break on his cock, coming with a toe-curling, sheet-clenching, muffled shout. Ecstasy rides me as hard as he does, and I claw at the bed, groaning and twitching, while he keeps that steady pace that’s so good now that it hurts.
My distress over the conversation with my dad at Papa Bear is blanked out again and again by pleasure. When Dan finally grips my hips, shoves deep, and unloads inside of me, I’m bleary-eyed and confused about what time it is, why I was upset earlier, whether I’m satiated or not, and if Dan is totally through with me.
It turns out he’s not.
He turns me over, shoves my knees up to my chest, and starts to finger-fuck my ass. His cum slides over his digits, slicking theway. I twist and sweat, and only when I’ve hit several more high points of pleasure, do I unsnap the ball gag with trembling hands and beg him to stop.
He does without hesitation, wiping us both off with a towel, and then helping me get settled on the bed. Collapsing beside me and nuzzling my hair, he whispers, “Feel better?”
I huff a wet laugh, moaning, “I can’t feel anything. Or maybe I feel everything.”
“Hmm, sounds like I fucked you good then.”
I laugh again, but it turns to half-sobs, and Dan holds me as all kinds of emotions riot through my heart—grief, joy, hope, fear, sadness. I’m a mess, and Dan doesn’t mind. He plays with my hair, which has grown out enough that I can pull the top into a short, stubby ponytail at the back of my head. It’s free now, though, tousled from our bed play.
“He can’t stay in West Virginia,” I say after a long time, once my feelings have calmed and Dan’s covered us both up with a blanket. “And the thing is, I understand. I couldn’t stay either. I had to get out. The grief was suffocating. The place was killing me.”
“Mm.”
“I don’t want him to sell the house. Because if he does, then the song’s over. It’s gone. Forever.”
Dan toys with my hair some more and says nothing.
“But that’s not fair, is it?”
He shrugs.
“It was a long song,” I go on. “I spent most of my life in that house, and it was even longer for him.”
“A pretty epic song,” Dan says, going along with the metaphor.
I take hold of his hand and bring it to my chest, clutching it to my heart. “This with you—our time together—it could be a short little tune.”
“Rude.”
“It could. So, why does it feel harder to accept that the longer song of my childhood and teen years is going to finally, permanently end?”
“It won’t end,” he says. “You’re made of it. You’ll keep on living that song for the rest of your life. Good memories always stay. The songisyou.”
I try to process that.
“You’re a song, you’re a seahorse, you’re a series of smiles, you’re an ocean and a lake and a dream…” Dan’s babbling now, tired and overstrained from the intensity of our lovemaking. “You’re mine.”
I snuggle close to him, breathing in his sweaty scent.
I’m his, yes. But how longisthis song of ours going to be?
I think of what my father said earlier before he left with Martin. He’d come over to me, taken hold of my arm, and said:
I’ll love your mama until the end of time. There’s no end to that kind of love. But my life isn’t over, son. I’ve got to move on. Peggy Jo’s a nice lady. We have a lot of life left in us both, and if things go well, we could enjoy each other for a long time to come. But it doesn’t mean I don’t love your mama still and until the end of the end. Understand?
He’s right. No matter how our lives go from here, our love’s a song that’ll last forever.
Until the end of the end.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Dan
