My eyes opened in the soft morning light. Precious little soft light ever came into the prison, instead it usually bored in from the high windows like lasers, dust motes swirling violently in the heat waves. But in the early morning, just after dawn, the light came in softly, picking up the few warm hues present in this cold place and making them glow. I'd decorated our cell in warm hues to chase that light, maroons and yellows with some orange 'accent pieces'. What a laugh. Not accent pieces like the perfect pillows and curtains in the Better Homes and Gardens magazines the women had scavenged and read until the pages fell apart. Here it was piecemeal, whatever we could get. Strips of cloths wound around furniture leg posts, rag rugs made of whatever could be scavenged. It had taken two years of me patiently hoarding magazine and newspaper pages that had warm colors to finally twist them into fibers to make our orange, red and yellow rugs. And I had given up one month of sweets rations to get that coverlet for our bed from a Woodbury woman, the bed Merle had so stubbornly made from the prison singles that had been in the room. He refused any help except for what Daryl gave him, coaxing the screws out of concrete with hand tools and twisting supports until they gave way. He had beaten remaining hand up so badly wrestling with the metal that I almost couldn't stand it but the look in his eye when he showed me his hard work touched me so deeply. He had done this for me, made a true double bed on which our yellow sunburst coverlet rested upon perfectly. Over the course of the next few days I had done my best to show him my appreciation for his efforts and the new bed was officially christened.
I shifted softly against him, I wasn't worried about waking him. He always slept closest to the door with me pressed against the cool prison wall so that he could defend against any threat. But I knew that my sweet man was slowing down a bit, he wasn't a 'spring chicken' anymore and now that the threat of the Governor was gone and formal communication was happening between settlements, society was falling back into structured existence. Walkers were still a threat but now that people were cooperating walkers were becoming more manageable. Merle wouldn't admit it, but he had taken some hard knocks and he needed a little more sleep nowadays. And I was happy to give it to him, Lord knows he'd given me everything he had and more. I softly slid my arm under his and wrapped it around his chest, snuggling my nose into the back of his weathered neck. He didn't move and his deep breathing didn't break. I closed my eyes and smelled him, the unique smell that was Merle. His skin smelled clean, his hair smelled of cigarette smoke, his sweat was slightly acrid, and we both smelled of each other's fluids because of our activities last night. I'm so glad my Daddy moved in with Mrs. Potrose in a different block, I know he hated hearing the sounds of our love. I understand, I was his last baby, but that wasn't going to keep me from Merle. Merle was my first and only and I would never deny him the pleasures of my body. I was fascinated with his strong body and the pleasures it unendingly gave me. One scrape of his whiskers against my skin and a few sweet thangs hoarsely uttered against my ear were enough to make me shake and rub against him like a cat in heat. My common law husband made me feel like a shameless harlot from the Bible and it felt so damned good that I was lost.
Now I'm hot. How can even thinking about him like that make my body change? I toss the blanket off of me but snuggle closer into him, craving the kiss of his skin against mine. His skin and hair are as soft as any girl's, hard to believe for the toughest man on the block. It took forever to finally convince him to let me cut his hair. He used to shave it to the skin with the prison clippers and I hated it. All that beautiful curly hair going to waste! It wasn't till I finally cried about it that he let me cut it and that was before we even ever lay together. I was his first real friend here in the prison, the one who stuck up for him when the others excluded him. No one wanted to look past his admittedly awful behavior to look at the motivations for his actions. I could see them clearly, even long before he could. All anyone had to do was to see that he was taking care of Daryl. It was hard for Merle to accept that Daryl had come back for Carol and he lashed out at everyone, especially Michonne and Rick. I could see it as clear as day, but no one wanted to listen to someone they considered a kid, even though I was legally a woman in my own right. Michonne had seen the hearts in my eyes when Merle arrived and she tried to talk me out of my infatuation. To her credit she did listen to my opinions. I don't know what transpired between them when he kidnapped her, but I believe that had she not backtracked behind him and taken out the Governor when Merle got caught in an ambush we would have lost him and maybe even her. She and Daryl trucked him back to the prison, broken and unconscious, and when I first saw him I thought he was dead. I guess I passed out and when I came to she was sitting next to my bed, thoughtful as always. "You're the only one who can save that man," she said before she stood up and exited my cell. And I knew right then and there that she had told me God's truth. This is why I was saved from suicide, it's why I was put on this planet at this time. I would save Merle Dixon using every molecule of love I had.
Merle shifted on the bed and saved me from my reverie. I don't ever really want to think about THAT time of our lives again! But the time afterwards, the time when I commanded his attention and told him I'd save him from himself and everything else on this planet – well those are the times that belong in the raciest romance novels and I love remembering every moment. At first he was so vile and hateful and dirty and I won't deny that even at his basest he sent thrills up my spine, but I told Merle Dixon I was a proper Christian girl and he was just going to have to buck up and fly straight to have me. Well, I knew my Merle would never be a proper Christian man but I knew he had a lot of room for improvement. I sensed early on that negative reinforcement would never work with him. The scars on his and Daryl's bodies attested to that. No, I would have to treat Merle Dixon like a puppy and give him a treat whenever he did good. And I knew that parceling off pieces of my body was likely the best strategy. Here I was on foreign ground, having been a God fearing Christian girl, a virgin who had barely tongue kissed before. My inexperience showed the first time we kissed deeply, he sensed my indecision and awkwardness and reveled in it. Oh, the awful dirty things he said to me, he had found my weakness and now my power over him was lost. When I realized it I started to cry and he pulled back to look in my eyes. I don't know what he saw there but after a few moments he pulled me into him, hesitantly stroking the hair that had pulled out of its braid. We stayed like that for some time, me shaking and crying, and him grimly silent. Then he straightened and pulled me with him, his hardened eyes studying mine. Then he said, "Best get on ta yer daddy Miss Beth, I'll call on ya tomorrow." Beth smiled against the back of Merle's neck. Somewhere deep inside there had been a Southern gentleman inside of Merle Dixon, and she had awakened it. The next day he talked to her daddy about courting her and asking his permission to see her. Now Merle was no saint, of course he would have seen her even if Hershel had said no, and even Hershel knew that. But Hershel had always seen a kernel of good in Merle, had seen the hell his daughter had been through loving the man from afar, and had seen the abrupt change in the man with respect to the group and to his daughter. He gave his cautious approval to Merle who received it in military fashion and moved to 'court' her openly. Beth surrendered to his skilled attentions only one week afterwards, goaded by the realization that each day could be their last. Neither one of them looked back from there, and though the age and experience differences had resulted in bumps in the road, no one could deny that the two were wildly and hopelessly in love. The opposites in their personalities so complimented one another that after a few months it was hard to remember a time when Merle and Beth weren't together. Beth glowed with happiness and Merle made great strides in improving his general demeanor.
Beth's heart swelled with intense love for her man as she pressed into his strong back and chiseled ass. She wanted him. She softly nuzzled her lips in between his shoulder blades and slid her hand down the front of him to his shaft. She smiled softly against his back as her hips gently nudged him from behind and she worked her way up and down his soft balls and hardening cock. His body was awakening and he turned halfway towards her. The graying bristle of his two-day beard glistened in the soft light and his steely blue eyes opened to appraise her. She smiled, her large blue eyes dancing in her heart-shaped face and she splayed her long graceful fingers in his pubic hair before grasping him firmly and pulling her hand towards the head of his cock. He looked at her in mock offense. "You startin' som'n you can't finish little girl?" he growled hoarsely in his early morning voice. Beth giggled and slid her nude body on top of him, rubbing herself slowly up and down his length. She kissed his chest and trailed kisses up his neck, along his jaw and finally to his mouth, then nuzzled her nose with hers as she lowered her wetness to fully engulf him. Both of them groaned with the pleasure of it and her hands went to the sides of his face. She lightly kissed his lips as her shining eyes went to his. Her lips curved into a smile. "Merry Christmas baby," she breathed, and Beth Dixon went to work pleasing her man.
