Kristen Ashley - Creed

I tugged gently and his head came up.

I drank him in.

Scar and all, he was beautiful.

To tell him this I slid the fingers of one of my hands to his face, running the tips along his cheekbone, down his nose to trail the path of the line of his lower lip. I trailed them over the scar on his upper lip then up again over the scar on his cheekbone, his temple and through the white streak in his hair. Once I’d accomplished this, my other hand slid the hank of hair that had fallen to his forehead to the side and, as expected, it fell right back to its original position.

I didn’t get to try again as Creed’s big body shifted up over me, settling in, covering me.

He pressed one hand under me so he was braced on one forearm in the bed but still holding me while his other hand curved against the side of my head, thumb sweeping out over my cheekbone and he spoke.

“To respond to your earlier comment, beautiful, yeah, like I mentioned before, I like ass play. But it’s not what you think. It’s tight, it feels good, absolutely, but that’s not it. It’s about trust. It’s about sharing. It’s about giving. For most people it’s about losing your inhibitions and opening yourself up to the next level of intimacy. And with you,” his face dipped closer as his voice dipped lower, “it’s about me giving back what was taken from you and you trusting me to do it. That wasn’t huge. That was something so big, there isn’t a word for it but the closest I can come to it is that it’s beautiful.”

He was not wrong so I agreed, “It was beautiful, baby.” My arms slid around him and held him tight. “And so are you.”

Creed’s eyes, already warm, warmed more, warming straight through me before he grinned and stated, “Glad you didn’t renege on your part of losin’ the challenge.”

I grinned back. “Me too.”

His thumb moved over my face, my cheekbone, down to my jaw and over my lips as his eyes watched and his grin faded.

Then his gaze came back to me.

“That month I was following you, watchin’ you, seein’ how you lived, dressed, what you did, I knew somethin’ had gone wrong. I didn’t know what. I thought you were with Dixon and he cheated on you, didn’t treat you right. The only thing I knew, your Daddy lied, you weren’t happy.”

I contradicted him gently, “Actually, I was happy, Creed.”

“Not the way you deserve to be happy,” he returned immediately.

I didn’t have a reply to that mostly because it didn’t need one. He was right.

He continued to hold my gaze and I knew he read what lay behind it when he whispered, “I’m glad you’re happy, my Sylvie.”

He gave it to me, kept giving it to me, open, honest, putting it right out there so I licked my lips and gave it back to him. “I have the only thing I ever wanted lying on top of me, so thanks for making me happy, Tucker Creed.”

Creed, being Creed, kept right on giving.

“Right back at ‘cha, baby.”

Okay, shit, God, shit!

I loved this man. I knew it but way back when, being young, I didn’t understand.

Now I did.

I so did.

It was time to steer us into waters that didn’t include me possibly bursting into tears and blubbering like a big girl.

“So, you’re the boss tonight, what’s the plan? Are we gonna sleep all oiled up or are we gonna shower before we go to sleep?”

“Sheets are fucked up. We shower, we gotta change them or we’ll get oiled right back up again.”

This was true, so I gave him the info he needed to make his decision, “I know one thing, I’m not changing sheets tonight.”

Creed smiled. “Then we sleep oiled up.”

That worked for me.

He rolled to his light, I rolled to mine and I barely had it out before I was hauled back to the middle of the bed, tucked close to Creed.

My body, tired out, relaxed, loose, felt sleepy. My mind didn’t.

I was thinking of him following me for a month and wondering, if the roles were reversed and it was me who found him again, how I’d feel. What I’d do. How difficult it would be to stay remote and not approach, especially if I discovered he hadn’t left me of his own free will but had been coerced into it.

“How’d you do it?” I asked his throat in the dark.

“Do what?” Creed asked back.

“Follow me, watch me, go through my shit and keep distant? If it was me –”

His voice held a hint of humor and a hint of hardness when he cut me off. “You would have shot me.”

I tipped my head back and grinned at his shadowy face. “Yeah. But if I figured it out, if I learned it was as it was, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

His arms around me pulled me deeper into his warm, hard body as he replied quietly, “If it was you, except for the scar, I haven’t changed. Got older but not changed. There wouldn’t be a reason to delay approach. You…” he trailed off and didn’t speak again.

“I changed and that freaked you out?” I guessed.

“You did and you didn’t but the way you did meant my approach needed to be cautious. That tough skin, those sharp edges, both of them you had in a way a man could work a lifetime and not break through, proceed with caution and still get sliced to shreds. I wanted you back and I needed to find the right way to finesse that. When I went through your house, I saw you’d kept my necklaces so I had hope but I knew I couldn’t go gung ho. I had to understand what forced the change in you and I had to get that from you so I could form a plan.” His hands slid up my still slick back. “Which is what I did.”

And I was glad he did.

I pressed closer and said softly, “It killed.”

His hands stopped moving so his arms could wrap around tight. “Yeah, watchin’ you. Followin’ you. Goin’ through your stuff. Knowin’ your life didn’t go as I was promised it would but something went down that was not good, yeah. It fuckin’ killed.”

I closed my eyes and shoved my face in his throat.

“It’s also over,” he went on.

“It’s over,” I agreed, holding him close.

“And bottom line, it meant you weren’t in Kentucky livin’ a good life without me but open for an approach. It might have sucked for a while but now we got the future we both didn’t think we would ever have, so it was worth every fuckin’ minute.”

I didn’t experience what he did, watching me, following me but I suspected he was right about that too.

“Yeah,” I replied quietly.

“Yeah,” he repeated, gathering me even closer.

I lay in his arms and knew I’d been giving. I knew I’d let him in. I knew he understood this and it was making him happy.

But I didn’t know if he understood it all.

So I gave it to him.

“Creed?” I called.

“Right here, baby,” he whispered.

Yeah he was. Right there. Now and forever.

Now and forever.

I tipped my head so the bridge of my nose rested along his jaw and whispered back, “No matter what’s in our future, no matter if our luck stays good or turns back to shit, from this moment to your last on this earth, know down to your fucking soul I love you. I trust you. You make me happy. There’s been no one but you and there never will be. Okay?”

I felt him lift his head then I felt him move so he could bury his face in my neck and his voice was gruff when he murmured into my skin, “Okay, my Sylvie.”

I drew in breath then reached with my lips to brush them against the skin of his neck.

He settled back, kept me close and ordered gently, “Sleep, baby.”

“Right, Creed.”

In Creed’s arms, sated by his lovemaking, knowing I’d wake up to him tomorrow, my mind cleared and as I’d been doing all night, I did as ordered and slept.

A cool spring evening in Kentucky, seventeen years earlier, Creed is twenty-three, Sylvie is seventeen…

“I hate him.”

Creed’s hand slid soothingly up my spine. “I know you do.”

It was late at night and we were lying in the dark in Creed’s twin bed.

I had not had a good day.

It started with my Mom calling for the first time in ages to tell me she was divorcing her husband and asking me if I wanted to come out to California after I graduated.

To this I told her that I’d lived without her in my life for years, she’d left me to Daddy and the stepmonster and now that she was again facing being alone and lonely and needed me, because she abandoned me when I needed her, I wasn’t available to plug that hole. I used different words but she got my drift and informed me that she wasn’t surprised, seeing as he’d raised me, that I’d turned out just like my father.

Then she hung up.

A totally awesome phone reunion with Mom.

Not.

Since I’d called Creed to tell him about the conversation with my Mom before coming over, to make my day better, he drove us an hour and a half into the city so we could have an actual going out date and not be seen.

This made my day better, obviously. It got even better when Creed shared his Mom had a new man and she was spending her nights messing up his house and life which meant our evenings would be clear of her.

He also shared that he talked with a realtor about putting his house on the market. He further told his mother he was doing this and told her she was going to have to pull herself together, find a job and a place to live because he was moving into his own pad.

Since she was drunk and she had a new guy to mooch off of, she didn’t react. She would, when she used her guy up and he sent her packing but by then, hopefully, it would be too late.

I knew I shouldn’t feel that way about Winona Creed. I knew I shouldn’t want, even wish that Creed would scrape her off even before he would do it because we were leaving. I knew it made me not a nice person. But she’d never done anything for Creed, so I figured turnabout was fair play.

After our date, after we made out by my car and after I went home, my day being salvaged by Creed (as usual), it went straight to pot again when Daddy and the stepmonster fighting woke me up.

It was its usual loud and vicious then I heard the thump and I knew from years of experience it was the stepmonster hitting the wall thump not the stepmonster hitting the stairs or floor thump.

So I did what I always did. Got up. Got dressed. Snuck out.

And went to Creed.

Now I was lying on my side in his bed, my cheek to his chest, my arm around his belly, his arm under me, curled around, fingers stroking and our legs were tangled.

“I hate her, too,” I told him.

“Shouldn’t hate her, beautiful. Pity her but no reason to hate her.”

I lifted up and looked down at his beautiful face in the shadows. “She went after him. She broke up his marriage to my Mom. She didn’t get what she thought she’d get but she stayed so she could have what he could give her. She’s a drunk. She’s miserable and there are not enough shoes and purses and jewelry in the whole world to make it worth him treating her like garbage and beating her.”

“She’s got nowhere to go,” Creed pointed out.

“She’s got a brain and legs that work, she can find somewhere to go,” I returned.

Creed’s arm curled tight around me and he pulled me up and partially over his body so we were face to face.

“You see it as easy but your Daddy’s got a long reach,” he reminded me but I shook my head.

“I told you what they were fighting about tonight, Creed. He’s got another new woman and he isn’t even trying to hide her. He won’t miss the stepmonster if she went. He’d just replace her. She’s willing to do anything to keep her position and that’s just crazy.”

“Seems that way to you, baby, but it isn’t. It’s bigger than that, what he’s doin’ to her, for years, fuckin’ with her head.” His arm gave me a squeeze. “I get you, how she went about worming her way into his life. That was not cool but the punishment isn’t worth the crime. I remember her, way back then, before she connived her way in and he dragged her down. She was somethin’. Now she’s broken. All she knows is the life she has with him. She has no skills, hasn’t worked in over a decade. She’s got a great house, a great car, great clothes, status in town and your Daddy’s a powerful man. We can look from where we are and say without a doubt the devil she doesn’t know is better than the devil she knows. She’s buried so deep under all that shit, no way she’ll see it that way.”