Creed

Chapter Eleven We Win

Present day…

“Sylvie?”

I stood completely still, the roaring in my ears deafening, my eyes opened but blinded, every nerve in my body vibrating like I was receiving way too many volts but my lips moved.

“Stop talking.”

“Baby.” I felt two big hands settle gently on either side of my head.

“They didn’t do that to you,” I whispered.

“Sylvie –”

“Take it back.”

“Ba –”

My hands shot straight down in fists, my head jerked back so far pain pulled at my neck and the words carved jagged through my throat as I shrieked, “They did not do that to you!”

His arms folded around my head as he yanked me to his body.

“We’re done for tonight,” he muttered into the top of my hair.

Oh God.

That wasn’t it.

Oh God.

There was more.

My legs gave out under me but Creed caught me, lifting me up in his arms. I shoved my face in his neck as we moved through my house. Then we were in bed, Creed gathering me close, tucking me tight, curling over me so he was mostly on me. He was the only thing there was, the only thing I could see, the only thing I could feel.

“They didn’t do that to you,” I whispered into his throat but it was a ragged plea.

“Quiet, Sylvie.”

My body bucked violently as the sob tore through me.

Creed’s hold tightened.

My fingers fisted in his shirt.

“They didn’t do that to you. They didn’t do that to you. They didn’t do that to you. They didn’t do that to you. They didn’t do that to you. They didn’t do that to you.”

“Sh, baby.”

I shushed.

He held me.

My tears quieted.

He still held me.

“Creed?” I called.

“Sleep, baby.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Sleep.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“I don’t know.”

I sucked in a broken breath.

Then I whispered, “Right now, I don’t either.”

My eyes opened and I stared at the alarm clock.

Then I threw the covers back from the bed, jumped up, rushed out of my room, down the hall and through the living room. I smelled bacon cooking so instead of going right out the door, I ran into the dining room and stopped dead halfway in.

Creed was at my stove. He felt my presence and turned.

“Charlene,” I whispered.

“I went over. It’s all good. She’s cool. Helped with the kids.”

I spared at him and started trembling, head to toe shakes.

He didn’t miss it.

“Come here, Sylvie.”

“I need time.„

His haad jerked then his eyes locked on me.

Ca5tiously, he replied, “Honest to Chriqt, give you aNything. Anything, baby. But lost enough time. Can’t give you that. Space, maybe. Time. No.”

I shook my head. “No, I mean… I need time befora you tell me the rest.”

He closed his eyes. He did this slowl9.

Then he opened them and whispered, “That, I can give.”

I took off runnhng, right at him, direct. I hit kitchen tile, turned and launched myself through the air.

Creed caught me.

My legs wrapped around his hips and my mouth hit his hard.

He dropped to a knee then he dropped me to my back.

We fucked on the kitchen floor.

And burned the bacon.

My fingertips moved over the scar, my lips chasing them all the way across his cheekbone, his temple and through his hair.

His hands at my ass tightened, his fingers digging deep.

I dropped my lips to his ear.

“He’s dead.”

“You said.”

“No. I mean Daddy.”

His fingers dug in deeper. “Too bad.”

“Yeah.”

“He buried in Kentucky?” he asked.

“Yup,” I answered.

“Soon’s we see to Knight’s shit, road trip. We’re fucking on his grave.”

My head shot up and I looked down at him.

He grinned up at me.

My invisible sun’s rays warmed me straight to my soul.

Only sun ever that lay on his back in a bed.

God, God, I missed my sun.

“He deserves it, baby, and I’m adventurous but graveyard sex…” I paused. “I don’t think I have it in me.”

“Then we’re fucking on that fuckin’ golf course he loved so goddamned much.”

“That I can do.”

Creed gave me a smile.

“He told me his favorite hole was sixteen,” I shared. “He said it was tough but beautiful.”

“Right, on the green of sixteen, I’ll drill my favorite hole.”

He said this while smiling.

I burst out laughing.

I wandered into the back room with two fresh, cold ones. I got close to Creed sitting in one of the chairs, facing dusk. He ignored the beer I offered and hooked me around the waist, gave a rough yank and I landed in his lap. He curled his arm around me and lifted his long legs to rest his bare heels against the windowsill.

Only then did he take his beer.

He sucked some back. I sucked some back and my eyes moved over the detritus of the Chinese delivery we’d consumed that was spread across the low table. We ordered everything that struck our fancy, which meant we could have fed twelve.

Leftovers for days.

Right on.

I’d called Knight early, filled him in and told him we needed another day. He was down with that.

I knew he would be.

So all day it was Creed and me. His body. My body. Fucking. Drinking. Eating. Some talking. More fucking.

I had never had a boyfriend other than Tucker Creed. We’d made love once and he was taken away from me. So I didn’t know make up sex could be so fucking great.

Especially when you had sixteen years to make up for.

“I want you to meet my kids.”

My head jerked so I could look at him even as my entire body tensed.

“What?” I whispered.

His eyes locked on mine. “I want you to meet my kids,” he repeated.

“What, like, now?”

He grinned. “No Sylvie, they’re an eighteen hour drive away so not now. Not tomorrow. After this job. After we’re cool. I’ll bring ‘em up.”

Oh shit.

“Creed –”

His arm gave me a squeeze.

“Sit on that. Don’t react. Just sit on it. Think about it. There’s time.”

“Okay.”

He held my gaze and didn’t let go of the subject.

“Not sure where you are but I’ll state clear where I am. I gave you up once. It killed me. It was figuratively but it still killed me. I’m not doin’ that shit again. I’m further than you on this. In a way, I’ve been with you for over a month. You haven’t even had a week. So you sit on knowin’ in your future you’ll meet and get to know my kids. But, just sayin’, in your future, you’ll meet and get to know my kids.”

“Well, you’re just sayin’ that, I’ll just say that sixteen years have passed so we should discuss that after, as you put it, we’re cool.”

“We’re cool,” he stated firmly. “We’ll just be… cooler.”

I grinned at him and muttered, “Right.”

He grinned and muttered back, “Righ4.”

I took a draw off my beer.

Creed wasn’t done laying down the law.

“They took yo5 from me, they took shit from yïu. They’re dead. Now I’m givin’ your shit back.”

My eyes went back to him and I asked, “What?”

“Yesterday, what I said?” he stated this as ! quEstion but stopped way before I knew wH!t the fuck he w`s on about.

“Uh… babe, yesterday you said a lot.”

‘In bed,” he added detail just not enough.

“You said a lot there, too.”

“Sylvie, think back. What’d I say I was going to cive you back?”

Oh that.

Shit.

“Creed –”

“Safe word’s Geronimo. Remember that. Then we play.”

How was he turning me on again? We’d been through at least six condoms and that was just him. He didn’t have the capacity to orgasm as much as I did, unlucky for him. I’d had twice that.

“Creed –”

His hand dropped so he could put his beer on the floor then it drove into the side of my hair, curled around the back and pulled my face close to his.

“You like sex, a lot. Far’s I can see the only hang-ups you got, that animal gave you. You find, as we play, you got more, that’s cool. Those’re yours. I’ll have a mind to that but you do not fear what he taught you to fear. You and me work so you live easy. We work that shit out, we take it slow. I mean all of it. You find you can’t work past it, that’s okay with me but we try. We try to get rid of that, of him. So it’s just you and me and when we fuck, the two of us are the only ones there and it’s all sweet and easy.”

“I’m thinking,” I said gently, “this is just as much about you as it is about me.”

“Fuck yeah,” he agreed. “Straight up, I like adventure. I like control. I like ass play. We try it, you don’t like it, we’ll find what we like but not him taking it from us. You with me?”

I was. Kind of.

Before I could tell him that, he went on, “Chelle didn’t like any of that shit. She couldn’t relax.”

Oh no. We were hitting a danger zone.

“Uh… we’re doing good here, Creed,” I started. “I think we should maybe put the brakes on and coast the rest of the night on that goodness before we share deeper.”

He lifted his chin but said softly, “My point, baby, is she couldn’t relax and that was on me. That was on me because you were in the room. She didn’t get it fully until I gave it to her fully but she’s not a dumb woman. She understood. And she was fuckin’ a man who had another woman’s name inked in his skin. She didn’t miss that and not only because it’s hard to miss. I don’t want him in the room with you and me. Now, do you understand me?”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“Good,” he whispered back.

I sucked back more beer. He grabbed his from the floor and did the same.

I trained my eyes to the dusk.

Then I asked it, “Just, you know, for the future, do you get along with her?”

“She puts up with me for the kids,” he replied instantly. “Other than that, she avoids me. She’s got another man’s ring on her finger now. After they got married, she came over to my place, drunk off her ass, and gave it to me. Now I’m the one in the room. He knows it, her man. Loves her, puts up with that shit. Sucks. She’s a good woman, probably not her intention, but she paid me back all the same. I live with that, what I did to her, to him, to them. Guilt lies heavy. I dicked her around, she lives with the pain of that every day. I live with the guilt of it every day.”

I looked at him. “Can we work that out for you?”

Creed looked at me. “No. That’s my penance and I deserve it.”

“Life happens, Creed, and shit happens with it. We all can’t live buried under the shit.”

His brows shot up. “Seriously?”

“Well… yeah.”

He grinned. “Baby, just days ago you were determined to live under your pile of shit. Are you free of it that easy?”

“We’re not talking about me.”

“We weren’t. We are now.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Stop being smart and logical. It’s annoying.”

He threw his head back and burst out laughing.

I turned away and sucked back beer.

“Sylvie,” he called when he finished laughing.

“What?” I answered the window.

“Look at me.”

I looked at him.

His eyes moved over my face then his hand came up to rest against the side of my head and his thumb moved over my face as he watched it. Then his hand slid down my neck, my chest to press flat where my heart was beating.

“Some people get to live life. Some people survive it. We’re survivors. We can carve out our pieces of happy, and, I swear to God, baby, right now, you got my vow, for you and for me, the rest of our lives, I’ll bust my ass to carve our piece of happy. But we’re foolin’ ourselves if we think we can set aside the shit that happened to us, the shit done to us, the shit we’ve done, and move on. It’ll be with us forever. We just gotta learn to live with it. We bury it, deny it or pretend it isn’t there, we’re fucked. It’ll surface and tear us to shreds. We acknowledge it and keep on keepin’ the fuck on, we’ll be good.”

“You hurt a good woman,” I noted cautiously.

“Not then but now, I’m glad it happened and it’s done. Because, if I was still tied to her when I got up here and found you, I’d get untied. Doesn’t say much about me but I’ve come to terms with the asshole I am. What it does say, is what you mean to me. So, it’s good it happened and it’s over. I’ll hang onto that as I carry that weight.”

That was as beautiful as it was horrible.

Life.

Or life as Creed and I knew it to be.

My eyes went to his throat and I whispered, “I killed a man.”

“You saved a life.”

My eyes went back to his. “What?”

“In my business, I’ve killed two. Both of them, I remember. Both of them stick with me. It is not for me to judge if they deserved to live or die but, in the situations we were in, it was them or me. I saved me. You saved you. I did not deliberately hurt Chelle but I did it all the same. That’ll stick with me. You killing that animal, that’ll stick with you. You may not be grateful that it’s with you but I am because it means, right now, you’re with me.”

I stared into his eyes and said quietly, “He deserved it.”

“Your call. You lived his shit. Way you tell it, I absolutely fuckin’ agree.”

I bent my neck and rested my forehead against his jaw.

Creed’s arm tightened around me.

My eyes to his throat, I asked, “So, what are your plans for our piece of happy?”

“One day at a time. That day starts with me wakin’ up beside you in bed, that’s my piece of happy. I’ll find yours and make sure you get your piece.”

What he said worked for me.

I pulled in a breath.

Creed lifted his bottle to his lips and sucked down beer.

Then I gave him everything.

“I’m terrified out of my mind.”

“Sucks, baby,” he whispered. “But I get that and I’ll help you work through it. For me, we had this one day, that was it, I walked out your front door tomorrow and got shot dead, I’d die happy. And I’d die happy because, even for a day, I had you back with me. Seems I lived a dozen fuckin’ lifetimes knowin’ that would never be. Havin’ it means everything to me. So, I’m not scared. Two things in my whole life I wanted. My Dad back and you. Now, you’re tucked close to me, so that works for me.”

My sun’s rays warmed me straight through.

I shifted my head to press my face in his neck.

Creed held on tighter.

He was chained to the floor, lying in the corner, the dried blood on his face, matting his hair.

Daddy was standing in the room with him and a bottle of water was on the floor between them, just out of his reach.

His lips were dry, crusted, chapped, split.

Daddy moved, toeing the water an inch closer, still out of reach.

“Give her up,” Daddy demanded.

He lifted his head. His sky blue eyes vague with hunger, thirst and pain, he still directed them at Daddy.

The word was weak and it cracked in the middle.

But he said it.

“Never.”

Daddy kicked the bottle of water and it flew across the room, liquid splashing everywhere but none of it where it needed to be.

My body jerked then shot up to sitting in the bed. My knees came up, my hands went back into the mattress and I fell heavily into them.

“Sylvie?”

Creed’s arm was heavy along my waist. The last thing I remembered before the dream was us whispering in bed, me tucked close mostly under Creed like he held me the night before when I was sobbing.

Clearly, we fell asleep cuddled close.

I felt the bed shift with him coming up on his forearm.

“Sylvie,” his voice was firmer.

I didn’t reply.

The dream still had a hold on me.

I threw back the covers and knifed out of bed. My movements frantic, I dashed to the dresser, yanked out panties and tugged them on awkwardly. I left that drawer open even as I opened another one and tagged a babydoll tee. I pulled it over my head as I raced out of the room, down the hall, through the living room, the entry, the dining room to the kitchen sink.

I snatched a glass from the cupboard, turned on the water, filled it, put it to my lips and sucked it back. Water dribbled down the sides of my mouth, down my neck, wetting my tee.

When it was empty, I filled it again and repeat.

As I was drinking, I felt a warm body press against my back, hands on the edge of the sink in front of me. That body arched and I felt a face buried in my neck.

I emptied the glass, filled it again and repeat.

Creed didn’t move.

I emptied the glass and dropped it into the sink with a crash.

“They could have killed you,” I whispered.

“They didn’t,” he murmured against my neck.

“They could have killed you,” I repeated.

One hand left the edge of the sink and snaked across my belly but his face didn’t leave my neck. “Baby, they didn’t.”

“I read somewhere that it takes only three days to die of dehydration.”

Creed didn’t respond.

I told him something he knew better than me.

“They had you a month.”

His lips went to my ear. “They’re dead, Sylvie. We’re here. We’re together. We’re breathin’ and they are fuckin’ dead.” I listened to him pull in a breath before he finished, “We win.”

We win.

I dropped my head.

Creed’s other hand left the edge of the sink and wrapped around my chest.

He held me that way a long time. Then he moved from me but took my hand, guided me gently from the sink and out of the kitchen, through the dining room into the living room where he took me to the couch. Positioning me with his hand in mine, he let me go but put both his hands to my shoulders and pressed lightly.

I sat on the couch.

He leaned into me and framed my face with both hands, so close, his shadowed, scarred for me beauty was all I could see.

“Wait here. I’ll be back,” he whispered.

I nodded, moving his hands with my head.

His hands tipped my head forward, he kissed the hair at the top then he let me go. I watched his shadowed form leave the room.

He came back in less than a minute and I noted vaguely he was wearing jeans. He also was carrying a bag.

He came to the couch, upended it and a bunch of small, mismatched jewelry boxes fell out on the couch beside me.

“Knight gave me your name, I wasted no time findin’ you. Saw you then I flew home and got these,” he murmured.

He tossed the bag to my coffee table and pawed through the boxes in the dark. He found the one he wanted, flipped it open and with a tug, yanked out a necklace.

I stopped breathing.

The gold glinted in the moonlight. I saw the gemstone pendant hanging. I couldn’t see the color in the shadows but I knew.

I knew.

He held it toward me.

“That was the one I didn’t get to give to you by the lake on your eighteenth birthday.”

I started shivering. My hand lifting up like it had a mind of its own, Creed draped the necklace over it, gem to my palm before he went back to pawing through the boxes.

He found one, opened it, yanked out another necklace.

“This one I bought for your next birthday,” he muttered and draped it, gem to my palm, over my still raised hand.

The tears hit my eyes.

Creed went back to pawing, found a box and tugged out another necklace.

“This one was when you turned twenty,” he whispered.

Wet slid down my cheeks.

Back to the boxes again, again, until the necklaces draped over my hand numbered fifteen.

When he was done, his hand curled around mine, palm to palm, his fingers curved around the chains and he leaned deep, his lips at my ear.

“You were gone but I had more than the tat, Sylvie. I didn’t get it then but I get it now. They never fuckin’ took you away from me.”

My breath hitched and my voice trembled as I told him, “I have the others.”

“I know.”

“They took you away from me.”

His hand squeezed mine, the pendants and chains digging into my skin.

“I’m back, baby.”

At his words and all they meant to me, nearly sixteen years of wanting just that, despairing I’d never have it, I lurched out of the couch, my free arm hooking around his neck. I barely got it positioned before I fell right back, pulling him down on me and into the couch.

Boxes went flying. His fingers scraped through the chains, gathering them. He lifted up and tossed them across our bodies toward the coffee table and he came back to me.

His mouth coming down, mine going up, we collided, lips opening, tongues out tangling. We kissed as his fingers curled into my panties at the sides. He tugged them down then tore his mouth from mine and moved away, yanking them off. His hands came to my hips, jerking them sideways, he got on his knees on the floor, pressed open my legs, his hands shoved under, fingers digging in my ass, he pulled me up as he went down and his mouth was on me.

My neck arched, my fingers slid into his hair, I pushed down as he pulled up and feasted on me.

Breathing hard, it came fast, it was going to consume me so I lifted my head and urgently whispered, “Creed.”

His head came up and he muttered, “Two seconds, Sylvie, condoms in the other room.”

I pulled myself up, my hands reaching for his fly. “Fuck it.”

“Sylvie.”

My head dipped back as I undid buttons and my eyes found his. “I need you, baby.”

He shoved my hands aside and took over for me. I tugged his jeans down over his hips even as he got up and put a knee into the couch. I spread my legs, he fell forward on his forearms beside me and thrust deep.

My mouth opened on a silent moan and I shoved it in his neck, my tongue coming out, tasting him there. I circled him and held tight with everything I had available to me.

“Baby, mouth.”

That was Creed. I dropped my head back, Creed’s mouth came to mine and he drove deep with his cock and his tongue.

My arms moved from around him, found his, trailed down and pulled hard so his weight hit me.

His head came up.

I laced my fingers in his and pulled both our arms over my head, twisting our hands so mine were to the cushions.

He ground deep with his cock and growled, “Fuck, baby.”

“Take me.”

“Fuck. Baby.”

It was guttural.

It was beautiful.

Creed pressed my hands into the cushions, his forearms pressed too, beside mine. He took his weight off me, angling his body up, his hips still driving deep. I watched his shadowed head drop and he looked down the length of our bodies in order to watch as he fucked me.

My legs left him, I brought my knees high and his pounding went deep.

My moan sounded more like a cry and his eyes shot to my face.

“I love you, Sylvie,” he grunted, driving hard, fast.

“Baby,” I gasped. It was coming over me.

He dropped down, holding me still pinned to the couch, his lips sliding along my cheek to my ear.

“Born to love you, Sylvie.”

I rocked my hips back to meet each thrust and panted, my fingers squeezing his holding mine down to the cushions.

“Born to love you, baby,” he repeated. “Die lovin’ you, my Sylvie.”

My neck arched, my pussy clenched, my clit spasmed, my thighs pressed tight to his sides, his mouth went to my throat and I cried out his name as I came with Tucker Creed still drilling deep inside me.

Oh yeah.

Fuck yeah.

He was right.

We win.