Page 23 of Atonement

“Because,” she looks up suddenly, answering without pause as she bites her bottom lip. “Because, I knew that would’ve ended you. I knew that would’ve pushed you over the edge. I lost my children, Dec. Our children. I couldn’t lose the only other part of my soul I had left. My last reason for breathing. You, Ace.”

I’m stunned, speechless, wrecked as my mind races and I take in all she has just said. She falls silent for a moment, the quiet stretching between us like a ticking bomb, threatening to explode worse than ever before if we both don’t silence our pride and say what needs to be said.

What’s in our hearts.

When she doesn’t continue after a while, I go to speak but she quickly cuts me off before I can get the chance. “Even if living beside you these past seven years has made me walk through hell on earth, Dec, and even if,” she whispers as tears prick her eyes, “walking beside you, has made me wish they took me instead.”

“Mags, I...” but my words fail me as I fall speechless and get lost in her tearful stare. Instead, I pull her close and nestle her head under my chin, not able to look her in the eyes any longer. Having her here with me, like this, is more than I ever wished or ever could’ve asked for.

“You want to know the saddest part?” I ask as she buries her face against my chest. “I tried.”

She doesn’t say a word. Silence stretches once again between us, and I can tell she’s struggling to understand.

“I tried to kill myself, Magnolia.” Her body tenses in my arms, she goes to speak, but I pull her closer and stop her before she can cut me off again. “A week, maybe two after they were gone. But I couldn’t. I failed. Just like I failed us that night. I wanted nothing more than to not live anymore. To not breathe in a world without them. But how can I leave this world and enter a whole new hell without you in it, Sweetheart? I couldn’t leave you. Not even for them. But fuck, Magnolia, I want you to know I tried.”

“I don’t blame you, Dec. For anything,” my heart bursts at her words as my throat tightens. After all this time, I can’t believe my ears as she tells me everything I’ve needed to hear. “Truth be told. It took every amount of courage I had not to want to end myself.”

“’I’d feel better if you did,” I whisper, feeling a void from the release of my self-inflicting penance after all this time. “Blame me.”

“Masochist,” she laughs, attempting to lighten the mood.

“Sweetheart,” I growl, as I lift her thigh and pull her naked form up against my side. “You have no idea!”

She smiles against my chest and let myself get lost in this tiny moment of bliss between us. A moment when we’re both bared to each other, body and soul. When there is nothing left unsaid between us. When the past isn’t holding us back and we can pretend we love each other like we used to. Once upon a beautiful time, before our son and daughter were taken from us, held for ransom, beaten and then brutally murdered to prove a sick point. A sick message, that we’re never in as much control as we think we are. The silence between us stretches, serving as an admission of surrender, if only for this brief moment. And I take it, relish in it, drown in the fact that for maybe only this one-second, in our fucked-up once upon a time, we’ve both won.

But time does what it does best in our blissful exchange, it passes.

“So, what do we do now,” she sighs.

Fuck if I know, because I can’t promise her she won’t look in my eyes when the sun rises and not want to kill me tomorrow when our past becomes too heavy a weight to carry. I also can’t guarantee that I won’t want to rip her clothes off and force her to remember how good we could still be, if she’d only let me back in after that inevitably happens.

It’s a sick dance we waltz around ever since our life ended seven years ago. A morbid tango, as she sways me one way and I try to swing her around to the other.

“Well,” I sigh, as my palm falls to her ass, and I give it a tight squeeze, pulling her harder against my side. “We still need to cut our little friend, Timmy, loose. I’m sure he’s sweated under enough pressure for one lifetime, don’t you think.”

“Or?” she suggests, mischief hanging in her tone that makes my balls tighten and my dick start to harden.

“Or,” I hiss, as I pull her up to straddle my hips, then groan in pleasure when she rocks her wet cunt against my thick length. “You can tell me to go to hell and I can fuck your sassy mouth into submission again. Your call, Sweetheart. But just so we’re clear, my preference is the latter.”

“Is that so, Ace,” she smiles as her face drops towards mine.

Her mouth parts and she licks my bottom lip before sucking it into her mouth. Any restraint I have left snaps as I grab her hips possessively and tempt her to rock them against my now throbbing dick. She obliges, flawlessly, as she raises her hips, grabs my thick cock in her small hand and slides her wet sex slowly down, taking me completely inside her.

“Fucking hell, Magnolia,” I hiss, as she lifts and then thrusts down with enough greed in her slick heat to make me want to blow my load inside her right now. She moves fast. Hungry. Selfishly. Over and over again as my mouth falls open and I watch her through a thick haze, mesmerized by how sexy she looks riding my cock.

“Hell, Ace?” she asks, but I almost don’t hear her as my mind clouds, our bodies slap together, my fingers dig harshly into her hips and we both cry out from the feeling of my thick cock buried deep inside her. “Is that what this is?”

“Fuck! If this is hell, I would’ve gladly killed myself seven-years ago.”

Her movements stop as she takes in what I just said, her eyes clouding over with fresh tears. Something snaps inside me, a desire to keep us here, where the weight of all we’re forced to carry is lighter. Not dragged back down into the past that’ll end us the longer we stay there. Reaching behind her, I slap her ass hard and hiss out as she screams, her pussy tightens, and she braces her hands against my chest.

“You want to know what happens now,” I growl. “You ride my fucking cock like the damn queen we both know you are. I’ll tell you when you can fucking stop.”

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