Jerk It by Lani Lynn Vale

CHAPTER 16

If you are not yelling at your kids, you’re not spending enough time with them.

-Mavis to Murphy

MURPHY

She smiled. “Sadly for you, you got the weepy Pope. I cry at almost everything.”

I hadn’t seen her cry often. The worst time had been when she was delivering Vlad, and that’d been because of the pain.

So I wasn’t sure what to think of her words.

“Is it time to go?” she asked, breaking into my silence.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “If we want to make it on time.”

She sighed and stood up, which put our bodies into closer contact.

She pressed her hands to the wall of my chest, and the normal stirring that always hit me when she was close did.

She snorted out a laugh. “Dying and you still want me.”

“Dying. Dead. I’ll want you until I’m no longer able to breathe air,” I told her honestly.

She sighed, then leaned forward to press her forehead against my chest.

Unfortunately, the reaction to her didn’t abate, and despite the tender moment, my dick had to ruin it.

She shifted and accidentally rubbed it just right, making a groan fall from my throat.

The last few weeks had been a lot of nothing.

I couldn’t exert myself because I tired easily.

And, taking the doctor’s words to heart, Mavis had gone out of her way to make my exertion as little as possible.

That also meant we hadn’t ‘done it’ all that much.

Which sucked.

On one level I knew they were right. Sex, no matter who was doing the work, was a strain on the body.

But goddamn did I miss her.

I hadn’t even had her that long before she’d pulled the plug on anything sex related.

But tonight? We had fifteen minutes to spare, and I was no longer going to take no for an answer. Not when we both wanted it.

And, according to the studies, you only lived once.

Reaching my arm around her back, I set the oxygen tank on the bathroom shelf behind the toilet.

Then reached for the cannula that was in my nose.

She frowned when she saw me take them off, her hand automatically going up to replace it where she wanted it—because, again, she couldn’t stop herself from mother-henning me.

But I stilled her hand and then pulled her closer, pressing my erection into her.

The denial that I knew she was about to cry out was smothered against her lips as I took her mouth with my own.

She sighed, and then her body went lax as she gave in to the feelings that were coursing through her.

I wasn’t dumb.

I knew she was just as turned on as I was.

There was no way to deny it.

Not with her labored breathing, or the way her eyes went glassy.

Not to mention she kept giving my lips and my dick area surreptitious glances when she thought I wasn’t looking.

Her hands went down my sides, her fingers digging in slightly to the ever-widening area of my waist, and I had a moment of self-consciousness hit me before she completely obliterated my every thought.

“God, you’re so hot,” she breathed, her fingers moving to the front of my sweatpants where she proceeded to pull me in closer. “I want you.”

I knew she did.

I wanted her, too.

“But only if you’ll allow me to do all the work,” she ordered.

I could do that.

I could also give her exactly what she wanted, when she wanted it, as long as it didn’t involve me stopping.

Because not only couldn’t I stop, but I wouldn’t.

I was tired of wanting it and being denied.

Well, there was only so much denying I could do.

“And later, when you’re still out of breath, I want you to remember this moment right here, and think about why we can’t keep doing this. Eventually, we’ll have to stop,” she persisted.

It was the same thing she said every single time I convinced her to ride my cock.

And I replied with the same thing that I always did but added a new three words toward the end that she never saw coming.

“When you’re old and gray, I want you to remember this moment right here,” I told her. “Because I want you to remember that I lived like I was dying until my last breath.” I waited until her breath hitched before saying, “I love you.”

Her head whipped up, and I had to jerk back to avoid getting heat butted.

“What?”

Instead of answering her, I showed her.

I lavished her mouth with my every word and feeling. I ran my hands lovingly up the length of her spine, down the small of her back, around to her slightly rounded belly, then to the most beautiful thighs in the world.

Right when she would’ve moved, would’ve shifted those legs to allow me access, I twisted us around until I was on the counter, sitting on my ass beside a shit ton of feminine wares, and she was straddling my hips.

The dress she was wearing—the one that drove me wild from the moment she walked out in it over an hour before—rode up until it exposed her beautiful ass to my roaming hands.

She was wearing a thong, so when I easily slid it to the side, and then ran two fingers through her slit from front to back, she cried out.

“Have I told you how much I fuckin’ like when you wear a thong?” I asked curiously.

My eyes went over her shoulder as she buried her face into my neck, and I had a half-second’s thought to get up and close the door but decided to hell with it.

“You’ve told me multiple times,” she whispered against my throat.

She started to reach between us, pulling my cock out of my sweatpants.

At first, the thought of wearing sweatpants anywhere was abhorrent to me.

I was always—always—dressed appropriately.

Having years where the only thing you could wear—let alone afford—was a pair of four-dollar sweats from the Dollar Store, I’d had my share of wearing sweatpants out in public.

Except, beggars couldn’t be choosers when the only thing you could fit onto your ass any longer was the stretchy shit seeing as your weight fluctuated by ten pounds every single day thanks to your water retention.

Meaning, I didn’t complain anymore about where I wore the sweats.

But it was instances like this, the ease in which she was able to pull me out over the elastic waistband, that I realized that wearing the slouchy pants did have their benefits.

Especially when the woman that I loved used them to her best advantage.

With one breath, she had me out of my pants, and inside of her.

I hadn’t even had time to move my hands or guide her where I wanted to go.

She did all the work, sheathing me inside of her until there wasn’t a single inch separating our pelvises.

“Goddamn,” I breathed, resting my forehead along the length of her collar bone.

She didn’t say anything after that, and neither did I, as we both got lost in the sensations she was evoking from the both of us.

A fast punishing rhythm was enough to even take her breath away.

And when I was coming about three seconds after she’d hopped on my cock—okay, it was more like four and a half minutes—she laughed.

“You’re kind of quick on the draw, aren’t you?” she teased as she licked my Adam’s apple.

I growled and reached between us, circling her clit with the pad of my thumb.

Her hips jerked in response, and I grinned as I leaned forward and sucked the sensitive skin of her neck between my lips.

“Everyone’s gonna know what I did to you,” I breathed after I let that skin go. “They’re going to read it in every single line of your body.”

She moaned, her body moving against my cock that was still hard for her.

Even dying, there was no way for that to go down.

I’d probably literally be on the brink of death, and as long as she was near, my cock would be hard.

Her breasts jerked against my chest, and then I felt the tell-tale sign of her pussy tightening on my cock.

Long seconds later, she pressed her forehead to my lips and said, “I love you, too.”

“Are y’all done or do we need to tell everyone we’ll be another ten minutes?” Taos yelled.

Giggling, Mavis reached for my oxygen and replaced it on my face.

I hated to admit that I needed it.

“Coming!” she cried out.

While she cleaned herself up, I used that time to catch my breath, grinning wickedly when I watched her get ready to go.

When she came to wash her hands at my side, I slipped off the counter. “I’m gonna start heading that way.”

She winked at me, and I smoothed my hand down her ass in a light caress before making my way out of Taos’ house—something I was now very much aware of when I made my way.

I blinked, surprised to find Taos leaning against the door waiting for us.

Together we all got outside and made our way to the van that I hated.

“Next time, close the door,” Taos grumbled as he stood there waiting for me to get inside.

I shrugged. “That was an exertion I wasn’t willing to make.”

Taos’ laughter was cut off by his car door shutting.

I moved to the front seat and got in, grinning like the loon that I was.

“What was that last comment?” Mavis asked as she got into the driver’s seat. “I didn’t hear.”

“He said to be careful,” I lied.

Mavis frowned but nonetheless drove us to the restaurant where we would be having dinner.

The moment we arrived, a wave of uncertainty hit me.

“This is going to cast a pall on the night,” I admitted.

“It is,” she confirmed. “But it’s going to be even harder if they’re hit with this out of the blue. For some reason the gym likes you.”

I shot her a look. “You like me.”

She rolled her eyes. “No. I love you. They like you.”

I felt my heart squeeze.

I couldn’t stop myself from catching her by the ponytail and pulling her in for a kiss.

“No more of that!” Taos wrapped his knuckles on the car window. “We have things to do.”

I rolled my eyes after removing my lips from hers. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Thirty minutes later, the entire table was silent.

“Fuck,” Jasper said. “I knew when I saw you that something was wrong. But something wrong to me in my head, and the something really wrong with you, are way different. Shit, man. I’m sorry.”

“I’m assuming with the oxygen you’re carrying around, as well as the edema and lack of sleeping you were talking about, you’re in the end stages,” Soren, the ER doctor, said.

I shrugged. “That’s what they say.”

“Do they have any idea about the transplant list? Are they just going to leave you in the dark about it? Like do they just call you and say, ‘Oh, hey, we got you a heart?’ Or do they have any idea…” Sophia trailed off, not sure what she was trying to say.

“From what I understand, there are a lot of factors that go into who gets a heart,” I admitted.

“There is,” Soren agreed as he tried to explain. “First, someone has to die that is a match for what Murphy would need. Geographically, that person has to die somewhere close so that the heart can get to him in time. Murphy also has to be able to show he’s able to get there to give the heart to him. He has to be healthy enough to receive the heart. Because if there is even a slight chance that the heart won’t work or be compatible with him, they’re going to give that heart to someone that they know will be able to use it.”

I listened with a dawning sense of horror.

Not because of what Soren was saying, but because of what Mavis was listening to.

I’d watched these past few weeks as any and all hope that she’d been carrying around had slowly dwindled over time. But I watched right that moment as the last remaining hope that Mavis had for me bled out right before my eyes.

I moved until I was practically plastered against her side, and then wrapped my arm around her shoulders.

Vlad, who was in the baby seat between us, leaned into not me, but his mother.

He must’ve sensed her mood right along with me.

Fran looked at her sister with a look of sadness on her face that likely reflected my own.

God, if I could just make one thing happen, one very small thing, it would be to erase my entire existence from Mavis’s life.

I wish I hadn’t hurt her like I had.

I wish…

“I think we should figure out what we’re going to do to make sure you can pay for this,” Jasper suggested.

That’s when I started to crack up. “I got it covered.”

“Listen, man.” Jasper leaned back into his seat, his large shoulder bumping his father’s similar large shoulder. “I can work it out with the station. We can put on a fundraiser. Not to mention we could hold a competition at the gym that could raise some. We can totally make this work.”

That’s when Mavis cracked her first grin of the night.

“Jazz, honey.” Mavis grinned wickedly as she reached for a roll to tear into pieces for her son. “It’s sweet that you’re the only non-nosey person at the gym, but Murphy is a millionaire. He won the lottery a few years ago, and has enough money to buy all of Paris.”

Jasper’s eyes went wide. “No shit?”

“No shit,” I confirmed. “I won the lottery about two years ago. Which is a far cry from where I was.”

“That fuckin’ sucks that you won the lottery and you can’t even spend it,” Fran frowned.

“Fran!” Taos elbowed his soon-to-be wife. “You can’t say that.”

I chuckled then, slightly breathless as I did. “It’s actually kind of refreshing, honestly. To be one hundred percent honest, it’s fuckin’ awful timing. If this had happened when my mom and I were struggling, I wouldn’t even need the heart surgery.”

Soren frowned. “What happened? I just assumed you were born with a heart anomaly.”

“Nope.” I shook my head as I caught a piece of Mavis’s hair and twirled it around my big finger. “Sadly, that’s not what happened. I caused this.”

“You did not cause this,” Mavis snapped.

Vlad looked at her, and like the good kid he was, offered her a bite of roll.

She took it, but didn’t place it in her mouth seeing as it’d been gummed to death.

I patted her on the shoulder but went on to explain.

“I had a heart attack when I was seventeen,” I explained. “They say it was due to my poor diet. I lived off of Ramen noodles and bacon that the butcher down the street gave us when I begged enough. For years we lived off of that. I also had myocarditis as a child after a viral infection. I recovered from that eventually, but ultimately, I wasn’t able to take care of my body as I should have. Because at the time of my heart attack, it was found that my blood pressure was two twenty over one sixty. Cholesterol levels through the roof. Good low, bad very high. Hell, I don’t even think that I got a damn veggie or fruit in me for about eight years or so. So it was no wonder that when I suffered that heart attack, it hit me as hard as it did. It damaged a lot of my heart, and that’s what started the downward spiral that I’m in now.”

“That fuckin’ sucks,” Madden grumbled. “That just really fuckin’ sucks.”

I looked at the man that I’d had a rough relationship with since the very beginning.

Madden, I knew, had the hots for Mavis.

There was no doubt in my mind that he did.

But he’d backed off when I’d sort of started to stake my claim when she’d started coming to morning classes, giving me no other options but to see her.

Now, looking at us, I wondered if I should’ve left it alone.

I wondered if…

A hand cupped my jaw, fingers curling lightly into the overgrowth, and I blinked, staring down into Mavis’s eyes.

“You’re mine, and I love you,” she whispered fiercely.

I closed my eyes and placed my forehead against hers.

“I love you, too,” I promised her.

That was the night that I had another heart attack.