Holding Her in Madness (7 page)

More than anything, I watched and learned that my little firecracker has a lot more going on in that damn head of hers than any other girl I have known in my life.

I quite honestly can’t tell you if she is fighting with herself or something else. I can tell you that there is more too little Ms. Lillian Shaw than meets the eye, and she has me so damn twisted up in knots that I don’t know what the fuck to do with myself.

“So I take it we’re walking to our destination?” she asks.

“Yeah, I guess it looks that way, doesn’t it?” I point to the line of trees on the opposite side of the road. “And this is our turn right here. Perfect timing to shut your damn questions up, you little spoilsport.” I swat her ass.

She narrows her eyes on mine, causing me to laugh.

Damn, I laugh more with this girl.

“Stop slapping my ass, Leo!”

I raise my hands in surrender. I have to grab my stomach with one of my hands I’m laughing so damn hard. “There was a horsefly, babe! I swear to God, it was the size of a Buick right there on your ass! I was saving your ass. That’s what I am. Your ass saver. Write that down just in case you ever need an ass saver.”

“Uh huh, you’re gonna need a… a-a lifesaver...” She stops and I watch her face as her mind tries and fails to come up with something. When resignation is evident on her face, she stomps her foot against the forest floor. “Gahhhhh!”

Kneeling over to catch my breath I’m laughing so hard, I cough. When I can finally breathe, I look up at her, still chuckling, “Lifesaver, firecracker?” Laughter bursts from me again, bouncing off the trees and forest.

“I... Dammit!” She starts laughing with me then slides her hands over my still bent-over back and lays her head between my shoulder blades. “I started talking shit before I could come up with something good to come back with.” She’s still laughing at herself.

But I’m not laughing anymore. That’s who the real Lil is. That is my Lil. My firecracker.

Never afraid to laugh at herself. Never afraid to say exactly what she thinks.

I wrap my arms around her and pick her up so we’re nose to nose and kiss her sweet mouth.

See...y’all think you know her. But you don’t know her like I do. Lil used an ugly brush to paint herself in her story. Isn’t that how each and every one of us would do it? Or at least the honest ones would. There isn’t an honest person who wouldn’t use an ugly brush to paint their story. Remember that the next time you think you know Lillian Shaw. Remember that when you want to judge her so fucking harshly.

I let her slide down my body, capturing her face in my hands, and lean over her to rest my forehead against hers. Closing my eyes, I whisper to her what is not on my tongue.

I love you, firecracker.

“Come on. We’re almost there, babe.” Then I grab her hand and start pulling her towards the sound of water.

“I haven’t been this way before. Allen and Jason always went that other way.” She’s still walking but trying to point behind her towards the direction of the house yet remain on her feet.

Damn, she’s cute as hell.

“Well, you’re gonna love coming to the woods with a man instead of some boys, baby. You just wait.”

We start heading up the last hill and her mouth starts up again. “Pssh... I have been in the woods most of my life. Me and Allen stayed in the woods when we...”

We hit the top of the hill and Lil hits her brakes. So does her mouth. When I look back at her, her jaw is hanging open and her eyes are as big as saucers.

“Ain’t never been woods like this though, has it, firecracker?” I chuckle and strip my shirt off right before I haul ass towards the water, grasp the rope, and swing like a motherfucker, flipping and landing ass-first in the pond.

When I break the water’s surface, a shout escapes my chest, “WOOHOO! Fuck yeah!” I tread water for a minute, wiping the water from my eyes, then look around for Lil. “Baby, you changing?”

“Yeah!” I hear from behind the duck-stand-slash-wooden-pond-diving-board. Then her blond head pops up from behind the little wall. “Shit, is this damn thing safe?” She’s chewing her lower lip to hell and back, and her brows are furrowed as she looks around, uncertain all of a sudden of her choice in dressing rooms.

I laugh. “Yeah, it’s safe. I jump from it all the time! Come on. Jump to me!”

“Hell no!” She glances back towards the ladder behind her and shifts her feet around, testing the wood’s strength.

Come on, firecracker. Come on.

Her head comes up and she has a smile from one ear to the other. Her fucking eyes are lit up like a blue fire. “You don’t think I’ll jump, do ya?”

Baby, I know you’ll jump
—
as soon as you get out of that head of yours. And I’ll fucking catch you every single time too.

“Nah, you won’t jump.” I splash towards her and tease like I’m turning around to swim away.

BOOM!

She lands behind me a split second before I feel her little razorblade nails rake down my back from my shoulders to my waist and grasp hold of my swim trunks, yanking them down in a feeble effort to stop herself from going any deeper.

My head is under the water and I feel her little limbs scaling up my body to push herself up. I grab her around her waist and kick twice, bringing us both back up to the surface of the water.

“Holy fuck! I jumped!” she squeals through a huge smile, wrapping her arms around my neck and her short little legs around my waist. Her excitement is so fucking contagious.

“You sure did, baby,” I laugh before kissing her sweet smiling lips.

“That was awesome as hell, Leo! Wow! Where’s that rope at!?” She looks around the bank of the pond. “I wanna try to flip from it like you did.” I bite her chin and rub my hardening cock against her, earning a shudder from her and some hooded blue eyes snapping up to mine. “What are you doin’?”

Her chuckle rubs her chest against mine and I feel her nipples harden through her bikini top pressing into my chest.

“Don’t play coy with me, Lil. You know exactly what I’m doin’... or what I’m about to, anyway.” I bring one hand up from her waist to cup the back of her head before my mouth crashes against hers, tongues plundering, teeth crashing, mouths sucking in the hottest fucking kiss known to mankind.

Jesus. Fuck, I love this girl. How will I make it if she never feels the same way I feel?

I shove my negative thoughts—really fucking easily by the way—out of my mind when Lil starts rocking her sweet little pussy against my aching erection. Then I feel her hands yanking my shorts down, wrapping one hand around my shaft, and leading it to her warmth while her other hand holds her bikini bottoms to the side.

She arches her back a split second before she impales herself on my cock so damn hard and fast that it has groans spilling from both our mouths.

Lil’s head falls back, mine falls forward, and my mouth sucks and kisses the wet skin of her neck and shoulder. My teeth sink into her flesh before sucking it back into my mouth to lave the pain away, marking the pale skin under her hair at the same time.

I’ve barely even moved yet but her tightness grasping around my cock has me at my breaking point already.

“Leo... Leo...” Her hips are doing all the work, rocking back and forth against mine.

I remain still in an attempt to get a hold of myself and my control, but also to let her work this out. Let her learn what she likes, have some control, and make her moves. I want her sure of herself with me, to know that no matter what she does, I’m with her, and dammit, I fucking love it.

“Shit... Leo!” she moans into my ear between gritted teeth as her hips rock faster.

That’s it, baby.

Her pelvic bone finds a rhythm against mine, and in less than a handful of her hip movements, I feel her walls beginning to quiver around me. Half a second later, her tightness grips me like a steel fucking vise as her orgasm tears through her body and out of her mouth, echoing through the forest. My vision tunnels as I catapult into euphoria, coming harder than I have ever cum in my life. I repeatedly thrust into her over and over until I’m spent, barely able to keep us both above the water’s surface.

Her cheek is lying on my shoulder, and her wet blond hair is plastered to her face and my chest. Her warm breath skates across my wet skin, and I feel my raging emotions and adrenaline begin to calm.

I swim us over to the bank and grab a tree root, pulling myself from her and fixing her bottoms before I tuck myself away and wrap my arms around her to bring her as close to me as I can.

I whisper into Lil’s ear, “That was good, baby. You’re so good to me.” I feel her moan before her lax little arms come up to rest on the tops of my shoulders.

Her moan turns into a giggle. “Yeah...that sure freaking was. Wow!” Her smiling eyes look up to mine before she kisses me and says against my mouth, “Way better than jumping or flipping, huh?”

Both of us chuckle before sighing.

Then we just stay still. We float there as still as water in a jar.

As I hold her to me in the pond while looking up into the light blue sky, feeling her fingertips drawing circles on the skin across my chest, a sense of dread begins to skirt around my consciousness and filters briefly into the back of my mind.

This dread isn’t something I know for certain is there. It only makes itself known as a sort of sixth sense, but that sixth sense is enough to have me question how far I’m willing to let myself continue to fall for Lil.

It also has makes me realize that it’s time for me to up my motherfuckin’ game.

The emotions I have for Lil are very new to me if you haven’t figured that out yet. Before she came flying into my life my descriptive word bank for my feelings consisted of: hungry, full, fun, not fun, fuckin’ sucks, awesome, cool, and I could give a rat’s ass.

That’s about it.

However, the more time I spend with Lil, the more I feel new emotions and the better I am able to put the right words to the emotions in my head.

But not speak them. Hell no. I’m not even close to being able to say what the fuck I feel.

It’s the beginning of August, and things between me and Lil have gone from pretty serious to very fucking serious over the last month. I’m not sure exactly when it dawned on me that my little firecracker was in love with me as much as I am in love with her because shit has been like a fucking whirlwind with us, but when it hit me, it hit me hard as hell.

So hard it made my damn eyes cross. I’m not lying.

Another odd thing I’ve noticed is that, for some reason, the closer we get to the end of summer, the more withdrawn Lil becomes. She gets withdrawn...yet clingy. It’s the craziest shit I’ve ever seen. Something else I watch her do is retreat back into that fucking head of hers.

I can’t fucking stand it either. I fight her ass… I try to pull her back out, but it doesn’t work. All it does is make her shut down even more.

So I do the only thing I can... I do everything in my power to prove to her that I’m not going anywhere when summer ends. That I fucking love her no matter what season it is, and nothing will change that.

I have big plans for my little firecracker next weekend. I’m nervous as hell that it isn’t going to be enough, that it won’t be as grand as I have it planned in my head... I’m even more fucking nervous that I’m going to do something to fuck it up.

I talked to my mom on the phone last night for a fucking hour telling her about Lil. Ma’s excited. Really excited. She made me promise to bring Lil to Cali so she can meet her.

Ma even told me that she was proud of me, which is fucking absurd. All I did was catch the girl. Don’t know how I fucking did it, but thank fuck I did. It’s still nothing to be proud over, I didn’t make Lil as perfect as she is. I didn’t have anything to do with the beautiful woman Lil is inside and out. Her parents did that shit, not me...

Speaking of her parents, I haven’t mentioned it to Lil, but I since I have plans on becoming a permanent fixture in my firecracker’s life, that means it’s time I man the fuck up and reach out to her dad.

I haven’t come up with any specifics on how to do it yet, but before Lil starts school, I will introduce myself to Mr. Shaw and fuck... I’ll tell him that I’m in love with his daughter, tell him that I don’t have much, but everything I have is hers, and I plan on spoiling the shit out of her and making her happy for the rest of her life. Tell him that I’ll never leave her and I’ll never ever fucking hurt her.

Like I said... That whole plan needs more details and thought. I’ll tuck that clusterfuck convo away for more thought after I get through Lil’s surprise date I have planned this weekend.

I’m gonna knock my firecracker’s socks off, people. Just wait.

Damndest thing about my firecracker is this: Nothing prepared me for her, so I never knew what I was waiting for, what I’d been living for. And when she came into my life like something out of this fucking world, I fought it. Hard.

Until I was tired of fighting it and just surrendered who I’d always been, for who she is. When I did, it hit me that nothing makes me stronger than her. All it took was my giving in and feeling what it feels like to be hers for me to see that she is what I’ve always been living for, even before I ever knew her name.