Chapter 17 Mehar
Mehar
As bad as I tried to keep myself occupied with business plans and Youtube meditations and beauty product research for my eventual spa, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I was upset that he would kill my brother, but my brother made his bed and he had to lie in it.
I just prayed to a God I wasn’t even sure I believed in anymore that he would be honest with Quest and lead him to Mega.
He came through the door after midnight looking like a man who had left pieces of himself on every road between here and DC.
I was on the couch reading one of Mrs. Pak’s handouts on chemical peels because I couldn’t sleep and studying was better than staring at the ceiling wondering where he was and what he was doing and whether he was safe.
The fire was still going, low and warm, casting everything in an orange glow that made the living room feel smaller and softer than it actually was.
Quest walked through the door and came straight to me. He didn’t stop at the kitchen or take off his jacket or say a word. He just sat on the floor in front of the couch and buried his face in my lap.
I froze for a second because I had never seen this man do anything like this.
Quest didn’t fold. Quest didn’t lean on people.
Quest carried the weight and walked upright and handled his business and came home looking the same way he left.
But the man sitting on the living room floor with his forehead pressed against my thighs and his hands gripping the fabric of my sweatpants was not that man.
Something had happened tonight that had cost him more than he wanted to say out loud.
I put my hand on the back of his head and held it there. I wasn’t gonna push him and I wasn’t gonna ask questions. He’d talk when he was ready and if he wasn’t ready, that was fine too. Either way, I was here.
He stayed like that for a few minutes. Then he lifted his head and looked up at me and his eyes were clear but heavy, carrying something behind them that looked like it had been building all day and finally found somewhere to land.
“I’ll burn the world down for you,” he said. “But I need to know you won’t run from the flames.”
I looked down at this man on the floor in front of me with firelight on his face and blood on his knuckles that I was just now noticing and I didn’t flinch and I didn’t look away.
“I’ve been walking through fire my whole life, Quest. Yours ain’t gonna be the one that scares me off.”
He held my eyes for a long second, searching for something. Whatever he found must have been enough because he exhaled and some of the tension left his shoulders.
“How much do you trust your brother?” he asked.
“Completely. Why?”
“Mega’s gone. We hit his house tonight. Empty. Somebody tipped him off and Mekhi thinks it was Bryce.”
“Bryce wouldn’t do that. He gave you that address because he wants out. He’s got Samaya and a baby coming and he’s not trying to go back to Mega. If Mega ran, it’s because Mega is paranoid and strung out, not because my brother tipped him.”
Quest nodded slow. Not fully convinced but willing to take my word for now.
I could see the war behind his eyes, Mekhi’s voice in one ear telling him Bryce was full of shit and mine in the other telling him Bryce was solid.
He was choosing which one to trust and the fact that he was sitting on my floor instead of Mekhi’s told me he’d already made his decision even if he wasn’t ready to admit it.
“Have you talked to Serenity?” I asked.
His face changed. Not a lot, just enough for me to catch it. A flicker of something that looked like guilt crossing his features before he shut it down.
“Nah. I haven’t.”
“She was with Mega for months, Quest. She knows his habits, his routines, the places he goes when things get hot. If anybody can tell you where he’d run, it’s her.”
“You’re right.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “Damn. I been so focused on Janelle and Mega and Mekhi that I forgot about my own sister. She’s been out of rehab for days and I haven’t even called her.”
“Call her tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” He leaned his head back against my knees and stared at the ceiling. “I put her in rehab and then just… moved on to the next crisis. Like she was handled. Like checking a box.”
“You can’t carry everything, Quest.”
“I’ve been carrying everything since I was eighteen. That’s all I know how to do.”
I slid off the couch and onto the floor next to him.
The rug was thick and warm from the fire and I pressed my body against his side and put my hand on his chest. His heartbeat was steady underneath my palm.
Whatever had happened tonight, whatever fight he’d been in, whatever he’d lost, his body had already recovered.
It was his mind that was still catching up.
“You’re not carrying everything alone anymore,” I said. “You got me now. So put some of that shit down.”
He turned his head and looked at me and something shifted in his eyes.
The grief burned off and something darker moved in behind it, something hungry and desperate that I’d seen before but never this raw.
He kissed me hard, no buildup, no warming up, just his mouth on mine with a force that pushed my head back and his hand gripping the back of my neck holding me in place.
I kissed him back with the same urgency because I could taste what he needed and it wasn’t tenderness.
He needed to feel something other than loss.
He needed to be inside something that wasn’t falling apart.
And I needed him to know that I wasn’t going anywhere, and sometimes words don’t land the way your body does.
He pulled my shirt over my head and I pulled his off and then his hands were on my waist, rough and impatient, pulling me onto his lap.
I straddled him on the floor in front of the fireplace and felt him hard underneath me through his jeans and I rolled my hips against him and watched his jaw clench and his eyes close and his hands grip my hips hard enough to leave marks.
“Take these off,” I said, pulling at his belt.
He lifted his hips and I yanked his jeans and boxers down and his dick was right there, thick and hard and straining toward me, and I wrapped my hand around him and stroked slow and watched his head fall back against the couch.
The firelight caught the muscles in his stomach, the V of his hips, and I thought about how many women would kill to be in this position and how none of them ever would be because this man was mine.
“Mehar.” His voice was low and strained. “Stop playing.”
“I’m not playing. I’m taking my time.”
“I don’t have time tonight. I need you. Now.”
I pulled my sweatpants off and settled over him.
No underwear because I’d stopped wearing them to bed three days ago, partly because it was easier and partly because Quest had started ripping them off so frequently it was becoming expensive.
I hovered over him with his dick pressed against my pussy, hot and slick, and I made him wait.
Just a few seconds. Just long enough for him to look up at me with those dark eyes and understand that right now, in this moment, I was the one in control.
“You trust me?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then let me take care of you tonight.”
I sank down onto him slow. Inch by inch, letting my pussy stretch around his dick, feeling every bit of him filling me up until I was sitting flush in his lap with him buried so deep I could feel him in my stomach.
We both exhaled at the same time, his hands on my hips tightening, my nails pressing into his shoulders.
“Shit, Mehar.” His voice cracked on my name and his fingers dug into my waist. “You feel so fucking good. Every single time.”
I started to move. Slow at first, grinding on him in circles, lifting just enough for him to feel the drag and then sinking back down until he was all the way inside me again.
The fire was throwing shadows across us and I could see our reflection in the dark window behind the couch, my body rising and falling on top of his, his hands pulling me down onto him, both of us moving together in a rhythm that felt older than us.
“Look at me,” I said.
His eyes opened and locked on mine and I rode him harder, lifting higher, dropping down with more force, and the sound of my pussy taking his dick was loud and wet in the quiet room, mixing with the pop and hiss of the fire.
His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle flexing and his breathing was ragged and his hands couldn’t stay still, moving from my hips to my ass to my breasts to my face like he was trying to touch all of me at once.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said, and it came out rough and broken, not a compliment but a confession. “You know what you do to me? You know what this pussy does to me?”
“Show me.”
He grabbed my hips and started driving up into me from underneath, hard and deep, matching my rhythm and then taking it over.
I braced my hands on his chest and let him fuck me from below with a force that knocked the air out of my lungs and made my thighs tremble and I didn’t try to control it.
I let him have the pace. I let him take what he needed because tonight wasn’t about who was on top or who was in charge.
It was about two people pouring everything they had into each other because the world outside was trying to tear them apart.
“Right there,” I gasped. “Don’t stop, Quest. Right there, right there, right there.”
“I’m right here, Peach. I got you.” He pulled me down against his chest and wrapped one arm around my back and used the other hand to grip my ass and hold me open while he drove his dick up into me so deep I screamed against his neck.
“You feel that? You feel how deep I am? That’s where I belong. Inside you. This is mine.”
“It’s yours. All of it. It’s yours.”
“This pussy is mine.”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“This pussy is yours, Quest.”
He groaned and his whole body shuddered and he flipped me onto my back on the rug without pulling out.
The fire was hot on my skin and the rug was soft underneath me and Quest was above me, his weight pinning me down, his dick still buried inside me, his forehead pressed against mine.
He started stroking slow and deep, long pulls that made me feel every inch of him leaving and coming back, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him deeper because I wanted him in places nobody had ever been.
“I need this,” he said against my mouth. “I need you. You hear me? Everything else can burn. I don’t care. As long as I got this, as long as I got you, I’ll rebuild the rest.”
“You got me. I’m not going anywhere.”
He picked up the pace and I matched him, lifting my hips to meet every stroke, and the orgasm started building low in my belly and spreading outward through my thighs and up through my chest. He could feel it too because my pussy was tightening around his dick with every thrust and he was groaning with every stroke like the feeling of me clenching on him was unraveling something inside him that he’d been holding together all day.
“Let go, Peach. I want to feel you come on this dick.”
I came so hard my back arched off the rug and my vision went white and I grabbed his arms and held on while my whole body locked up and pulsed around him.
He watched my face while I came and something in his expression broke open, something raw and unguarded that I’d only seen twice before, and he buried himself deep and came inside me with a groan that vibrated through my chest and a grip on my hips that I’d feel for days.
We lay there on the rug in front of the fire breathing hard and tangled up and sweating.
His face was in my neck and his hand was on my stomach and I could feel his heartbeat slamming against my back through his chest. The fire was dying down and the room was getting darker and neither of us moved to fix it.
“Quest.”
“Hmm.”
“Call your sister tomorrow. She needs you even if she won’t say it.”
He pressed his lips against my shoulder. “I will.”
“And stop fighting Mekhi. Every time you two throw hands, you lose a piece of something you’re not getting back.”
He didn’t answer that one. Just pulled me tighter against him and held me on that floor until the fire went out and the room went dark and I fell asleep with his body wrapped around mine and his dick still wet against my thigh and the knowledge that whatever was coming next, we were walking into it together.