Login with:

Facebook

Twitter

Tumblr

Google

Yahoo

Aol.

Mibba

Your info will not be visible on the site. After logging in for the first time you'll be able to choose your display name.

Breaking Free

Chapter 34

"You, you're everything I want.
And I, I am everything you need.
This night is cutting into me
You tie me down, you watch me bleed
And we risk everything
Tonight!"

In This Moment “Scarlet”



Fear coursed through her body, breaking down her resistance to be brave and strong in the face of danger. In fact, it wasn't until the moment when Daryl had pressed her against a tree in order to hide from the men that Gage obviously sent out to check the fence and clearly search for them, that Mia had been forced to accept the true level of danger they were actually in. While the concept had been there, it was not until that very afternoon when she had been forced to accept the fact that the situation she was in was far from secure.

Reality was a bitch sometimes.

She had somehow managed to keep her shit together long enough to get back to the house and, amazingly enough, talk to Heather, although her body had felt like it was shaking like a leaf during the short conversation. Luckily, Heather's attention had been focused on Daryl, something that would normally grate on Mia's nerves, but at that moment, she had been grateful for the distraction. Had Heather's full attention been on Mia, she was certain the woman would have noticed the quake in her voice and the tremble of her hands as she struggled to remain calm.

Fear clutched at her heart as she turned to face Daryl once they were inside the house, behind the relative safety of the closed front door. “He knows,” Mia whispered, nerves causing her voice to shake even more so than it was during the talk with Heather only moments before.

She glanced up and locked eyes with Daryl, the intense icy look that normally lived in his gaze softened when he realized just how upset she truly was. “It's gonna be okay,” he said, his words as low and full of gravel as always.

“But-” Mia started to argue, but failed as the fear in her heart formed into hot tears in her eyes. She hated for him to see the tears, despised showing anyone what she considered to be a weakness, but they weren't going away and there was nothing she could do to hide what she was feeling from the man that was staring at her intently. Sniffling, she admitted,
“I'm scared, Daryl.”

“I ain't gonna let him hurt you, I promise,” Daryl replied without skipping a beat. His reassurance should have calmed her nerves to a degree, but they didn't. He didn't know what he was dealing with. Shit, she didn't know what they were dealing with, since Gage had never in a second acted the way he was doing now. The Gage she had grown up with had been kind hearted, loving and, she hated to say it, but a pushover...absolutely nothing like the man he had turned into. That man was unpredictable, because that man was a pure mystery to her.

Mia startled at the feel of Daryl touching her. She was unprepared for the feeling of his hands on her skin, the soft touch of his thumbs as they wiped away the tears that had spilled over onto her cheeks, to the gentle nature that he obviously worked so hard to keep hidden. Giving in to the need for comfort that her body and soul ached for, Mia leaned into his hold. She couldn't rest her head against his chest the way she used to with her husband, given that Daryl was only an inch or two taller than she was, but with a slight bit of slouching, she was able to lean in against him and seek out what she craved.

“I promise,” Daryl said with his lips pressed against her hair, the rumble of his voice soothed her fear and Mia relaxed in his hold. “I ain't gonna let him hurt you. It ain't happening. I promise.”

Slipping her arms around his torso, not at all surprised to find muscles beneath the loose shirt he wore over a gray tank. She had felt the compact, raw strength hidden away beneath the baggy clothes he favored when she and Blake had struggled to get Daryl's unconscious weight up onto the back of her horse the first day they had met, but feeling the corded muscles today, under different circumstances, was a different feeling altogether.

As though guided by their own desires, her hands flattened against his back. Palms down, they caressed their way down towards the small of his back, relishing the feel of his strong form. It had been a long time, too long actually, since she had felt the warmth of a man's body, and she didn't realize just how much she missed the feeling.

Slipping the tips of her fingers beneath the edge of his shirt, Mia slid them across the band of bare skin and tilted her head back to stare up at Daryl. Surprised to not find any objections in his gaze, Mia channeled all the fear in her body into the desire that had lived there for weeks, since Daryl had first barreled into her life and recharged the sensuality she had been missing since the last time she saw her husband. Of course, while there wasn't any verbal objections from him in regards to her actions, the fact that Daryl stood stock still and didn't offer up a response didn't exactly scream that he wanted what she was silently offering.

Feeling brave, yet completely and utterly afraid at the same time, Mia lifted her face to Daryl's and tentatively pressed her lips against his. His lips were still beneath hers, painfully so, and Mia felt the lurch of embarrassment and heartache claw at her from inside as she started to pull away from him. A shudder exhaled from Daryl, an exhalation so deep and shaky that Mia wondered how long he had been holding it in, but that wonderment was cut short when his hands tightened around her arms and hauled her back towards him with a guttural moan.

His lips descended upon hers, the whiskers around his mouth scratched against her skin in a way that was altogether sensual and not painful, though Mia had no doubt they would leave red marks around her mouth. Sensitive skin or not, she gave in to the rough feel of his kiss and fed it with the desire and need that churned deep inside her own body. A need fueled by fear, a desire fed by the aching loneliness that plagued her soul, and a passion that burned hotter than she had felt in eons.

It had been a very long time since she had wanted anyone as much as she wanted Daryl at that very moment. Her skin tingled as the slow burn of arousal pooled in the pit of her stomach and clenched between her legs with a need so fiery she thought she might pass out or simply catch on fire at that very moment. Tightening her hold around his narrow waist, Mia pressed against Daryl as tightly as she could, leaving barely enough room between their bodies for a breath to slither through.

She was half a second away from crawling up his body and eating him whole, consuming every bit of passion that his body could give her, when the unfortunate sound of someone clearing their throat doused the hot moment like a bucket of ice water over a raging bonfire. Frozen, her hands shoved up his shirt and his wrapped tightly around her biceps with enough force to inevitably leave bruises, their bodies pressed against one another and his tongue halfway down her throat, Mia wanted to weep when Daryl slowly released his hold on her and took a step back, although the desire he obviously felt for her was still quite evident, even though he tried his best to adjust his position to hide that fact.

Face flaming red with a mixture of embarrassment and arousal, Mia gathered her composure as quickly as possible and glanced over her shoulder towards the front door. Luckily, she was certain the intruder wasn't Gage, solely based on the quite intrusion and lack of outrage that followed seeing the two of them making out like horny teenagers. Seeing Blake standing with his back pressed against the closed front door, his face as red as the flame colored hair on his head, Mia managed to speak, although it sounded more like a squeak to her ears.

“Blake,” she uttered, hating the shrill sound to her voice. “What's up?”

Thankfully, her young friend had the decency to skirt around the topic of what he had just seen and, instead, carried on with what he had obviously been sent to do. “Meeting's starting soon. Gage, he uh, sent me to find you two.”

In the literal heat of the moment, Mia had somehow managed to forget all about the meeting and cursed. “Let me change real quick. You go ahead, I don't want you to get in to trouble because of me.”

“He said not to come back unless you were with me,” Blake choked out, embarrassment strangling his words as well as continuing to color his cheeks. Darting his eyes quickly to the silent man standing opposite of Mia, he added, “You, too, Daryl. I, uh...he's got something planned, not sure what though. Just, you know, something that he wants you there for.”

“I'm sure it's a barrel of fun, whatever it is.” Mia shuddered at the thought, knowing damned well that what he wanted was to rake hot coals over her skin in regards to sneaking out and going swimming again without his permission. As if he would have given it had she went to him to ask.

After a quick dart upstairs to shimmy out of the now only slightly damp clothes and into dry, clean underwear, jeans, tank and boots, Mia clamored down the stairs to find Daryl and Blake in damned near the same position as when she had left them moments before. As unreadable as always, Daryl barely glanced in her direction when she reappeared and simply held open the door as she followed Blake outside onto the porch.

Sparing one glance at him before heading towards the center of town, hoping to gleam some insight into what he was feeling, Mia thought for half a second she saw a glimmer of guilt in his eyes before he shut down before her, emotionless as the robot as she had often thought of him as after Gage had shoved him into her house. Unknowingly misreading the guilt in his eyes, figuring it had something to do with going swimming, she let it go and headed straight towards Gage and her unknown fate.

Mia had no way of knowing that what was going through Daryl's mind had little to do with the temperamental and unpredictable leader and everything to do with giving in to his feelings for her and forgetting, even for a moment, the red-haired woman named Lily that he had long since given his heart to and failed. There was no way she could know that, because as much as he knew about her, she knew nothing about him.

Not that she could worry about that now, because at that very moment she was walking towards the crowd in the center of town with cement in her shoes and fear clutching her heart tighter with each step. As if sensing her arrival, Gage turned around the minute she stepped into the ring of people circling around him and glared at her with enough emotion in his gaze that Mia damned near threw up from the panic in her belly.

“About damned time you showed up,” Gage growled, stepping away from the handful of men he had been talking to, the ones unloading crates and bags from the horse drawn trailer she and Daryl had seen coming into town earlier. Grabbing hold of her bicep, the same location Daryl had been holding onto only moments before, but with far less intensity, Gage led her towards the opposite side of the crowd. “I'm not even going to ask where you've been. I don't want to know, because it'll just piss me off and I don't feel like being pissed off right now. But we will talk, just later. Got it?”

Without bothering to let her answer his obviously rhetorical question, Mia simply managed to get in a slight nod of the head before he jutted his chin towards the sidewalk where Mae was squatting down talking to two kids. “We've got new ones. I want you to get them settled, get them whatever they need, make sure they're comfortable, okay? They're younger than usual, probably scared.”

Glancing towards Mae, Mia took in the ragged appearance of the two kids and felt her heart lurch and stomach drop at the sight. They couldn't be more than eight years old, nine or ten at the most, and looked absolutely terrified. Fear over her own situation dissipated at the sight, and her motherly instincts took over. Nodding, she started towards the girls once Gage let go of her arm, “I've got them. Don't worry, Gage. You know I'll take care of them.”

“I know you will, Mia. You've always been good with kids,” Gage's voice softened as he stared down at her and Mia could have sworn there was sadness in his eyes when he continued, “You'd have made a great mom.”

Choking back the emotion suddenly in her throat, both from the mention of the kids she had always wanted and never had, but at the sight of a Gage that she had thought she had lost. But, that moment was fleeting when the hardness slid back into his eyes like a shield against the outside world, and he started to leave, but not without a warning before he went. “We'll talk later.”

She was spared his lecture or worse, for the time being, but Mia had no idea how long she could evade his temper. Sighing, she turned back to the two children and Mae and buried the emotions coursing through her at the moment. It was time to put her ass in action, not to worry about Gage or stress over Daryl, there would be plenty of time to do both of those things when she was lying in bed alone in the darkness later that night.

Notes

Thanks everyone for being so patient with the lack of update last week. As promised, I managed to get 2 chapters written this week, so I will be posting one tomorrow, as well. :)

Comments

@Serenity
I look forward to it....always was one of my favourite stories on Fan fiction.

Lewis Lewis
6/5/18

@lewis7


Glad to see you under any name! Thanks so much for all the comments! I am hoping that my muse shows back up, so I can write some more. I have had some ideas about writing short, one shot stories with Sam and Daryl from Need You Now. There were several scenes I had sketched out that didn't make it into the actual story, so I would like to write them out and post them if muse cooperates.

Serenity Serenity
4/25/18

Back to signing in as Lewis 7 as mel2a has stopped working!!
Love this story and really going to miss it and your brilliant Daryl story telling.
Will keep an eye out for you for future stories.
Thank you for your stories and writing talent.
xx

lewis7 lewis7
4/22/18

@Arubaredx


I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for commenting and good luck with the move!

Serenity Serenity
4/19/18

In the middle of packing to move so everything is crazy, but managed to finally catch up on your final chapter:) A very joyful ending, and very deserved for them too. Very much enjoyed this journey.

Arubaredx Arubaredx
4/18/18