I need to see her. I need to hold her. We need to mourn this together.
“Tell me how to get into that house,” I say, my decision made as I reach blindly for my car keys. “You said there was another way in.”
“There is, but it’s risky. I’d need to make a phone call.”
“Then make it.”
Ten minutes later, I’m on the road heading south, but it’s not me driving anymore, it’s grief.
Grief for a son who was conceived in love, then killed by a bastard called hate.
CHAPTER 32
ADA
The night is calm. The world is still.
Outside, the garden looks like the motionless surface of a black lake, where the reflected stars might shine undistorted, and the half-moon would be a perfect silver crown.
It’s also a blanket of shadow that lets all the bad things in.
Opening the window a crack, I cross the room and climb back into bed. After the thunderstorm, I expected the temperature to drop, but it’s left a suffocating wet heat behind that’s making it impossible to sleep.
Kicking the white bed sheet off my legs, I flip my pillow over to the cooler side. As I do, I think about a boy who doesn’t want to ask questions about me anymore, and a pink-haired girl who looked at me like I was the answer to all of them.
Has Frankie seen my note yet?
Closing my eyes, I imagine Bambi with him right now, relaying all my words. Maybe they’re in his new casino, or in the kitchen of Danny—Viper’s—house…
I wake an hour later to a dark room with no moon. My eyes are deceiving me because there’s a moving shadow at the foot of my bed.
A heavy hand clamps down on my mouth seconds before my fear kicks in.
“Don’t be scared, Ada,” he says huskily.
Frankie.
Is he crazy?
I want to scream at him to go—that it’s too damn dangerous for him to be here—but the second he removes his hand I’m grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him down to me, our mouths finding each other’s for one of our brutal, breath-stealing kisses.
Yanking my legs apart he slides in between them, overwhelming me with his huge frame, fighting to remove my sleeping T-shirt and growling in frustration when the collar tangles up with my hair.
There’s something wrong with him. I can feel it in my bones. His touch is too heavy, too violent—it’s like he’s in the worst pain of his life and my body is the only thing that can cure him.
“Talk to me,” I whisper as he drags his jeans down past his hips, the smooth head of his cock bobbing against my naked pussy.
“How do you always know, Ada?” he says with a groan. “How can you always tell when I’m falling?”
“Because I see you,” I whisper. “I see all of you. All the damage and ruin. And I love them, Frankie. I love them, the same way you love mine. I hurt when you hurt. I heal when you heal. Don’t you see? We’re a circle that never ends now—a flawed and flawless catch-22. We don’t exist without the other.”
With another strangled groan, he mutters, “yes”, and then he’s driving into me without warning, the sheer size of his cock making me bite down on his shoulder to stifle the screams.
Oh my God.
Without pausing, he starts to move—driving in and out so savagely it feels like he’s forcing all his scars inside me.
“Do you feel me, Ada?” he rasps. “Do you feel how fucking hard I am for you? No other woman, baby. None. For fourteen years, I lived for you…this moment of being inside you when all the other bullshit goes away.” Pulling out, he flips me onto my front and fills me up again in the space of a heartbeat, my core exploding with heat as my clit pulses in time with his frantic assaults.
He’s pounding me into the mattress now, his big hand wrapped around my throat as he splits me in two. I dig my elbows in and fist the white bed sheet, my teeth tearing through my bottom lip as I stifle another cry.
His fingers tighten and I start to lose focus. There’s not enough air in my lungs.
“This is what they do to us, Ada,” he hisses. “They hold us hostage between life and death.”
“Frankie!”
Fear and pleasure are colliding. My mind and my body are in free-fall, all over again.
“This,” he grunts, between thrusts. “This pussy, this body… Do you know how much I want to fuck you with my gun too, Ada? To see you arch your back and take the weapon that’s going to end this misery? To milk it like you’re about to milk my cock, smearing my bullets in your essence, so when they die it will be by the both of us.”
“Oh god,” I moan, feeling the waves start to build already.
The thought excites him too because he’s fucking me like an animal now. Raw and dirty. Pleasure laced with pain. Fisting my hair and biting my skin.
“Do it,” I whisper.
With a growl, he lets go of my throat, and flips me back over. I see the glint of metal in the pale moonlight before cold steel slides between my legs.
“Take it,” he orders, panting harshly, pushing his gun in another inch, pulling my legs wider apart so he can watch everything. There’s so much hate in his voice, but there’s so much love too.
“More,” I croak, and he works it in even deeper until there’s not a part of my pussy that doesn’t feel cold yet wanted.
When I start to rock my hips, welcoming it like I welcome him, he curses and mimics my actions with his hand. “I could come just from watching this, Ada.”
“Then come,” I urge. “All over me. Inside me.”
With a growl, he rocks back on his heels and takes his cock in his other hand. My fingers trail down through my breasts and over my stomach to seek out my own pleasure—gasping when I feel how stretched and swollen I am down there from the intrusion. Knowing I could come at any second from a single touch.
Gently, I push his hand away, and the weapon slips from my body. At the same time, he starts to work his cock viciously, bringing himself close to my entrance, brushing against my clit on purpose and making me writhe for it.
“Mine, Ada. Forever.” A beat later, the first spurts of his hot cum are coating my lips, the sensation tipping me over the edge, and then I’m burning and gasping along with him. A beat later, he’s driving back inside me, still coming, with a groan so full of anguish I wrap my arms around his neck and hold him close as we both shudder and curse our way to the other side.
When we do, reality comes crashing in.
I don’t know why he broke the rules and came here tonight, but I know it can’t be good.
He knows something.
He can’t tell me, so he’s showing me—loving me so hard and so dirty—filling me up with a million sensations before I’m numbed with shock.
“Frankie.”
Dread creeps in when he doesn’t answer. The unthinkable invades my thoughts.
“Tell me.”
In response, he seeks out my mouth again, keeping my face trapped between his hands, as if he knows how close to the truth I’m sailing, and he doesn’t want me to blow away just yet.
When I whisper our son’s name, his grip tightens.
When my tears start to fall, he grinds his forehead into mine to share this agony.