“You did it.”
“I should’ve gone with the guys. To sit on that place.”
“Having an army there will alert somebody. You’re here. Ready to make decisions. Thinking things through. Being the leader they need.”
I know she’s right.
“My father wants to help—whatever you say about him, he’s tenacious when he sets his mind to something. Rivera is one of the good guys. This will work, Stone.”
I think about what she said, how I need to trust somebody sometime. It’s hard.
“You and your guys aren’t alone.”
Something strange happens. There’s heat in my eyes. Pinpricks. What’s happening? Then I realize the pinpricks are tears. Am I crying? I’m more shocked than ashamed. When’s the last time I cried? Not ever. Not even in that basement. It’s because she’s right. So right I’m fucked up over it. So right I’m shaking like a motherfucker deep down inside.
Maybe I just don’t know how to feel okay. Maybe that’s what they took away from me.
Her cool hand settles onto my shoulder. “You blow me away,” she whispers.
I shut my eyes, not sure what she means. Not sure I want to know.
“You blow me away, Stone.” Her fingers close around my shoulder. Her touch is sweet. Cool beyond imagining. “I love you so much.”
A breath I didn’t know I was holding gusts out of me. She’s the rain, soothing the fire in me, washing the rage.
Before I can stop myself, I spin around and grab her small frame. I push her up against the wall and devour her mouth—mercilessly, hungrily.
I’m a starving man, and Brooke is the only food for me. The only nourishment in all of time, in all the universe.
I can feel her hands pulling at my shirt, busy and frantic, like she needs this as much as I do. It makes my heart swell up as huge as my cock.
She’s a wild thing against me, but small enough that I can hold her in both hands. I cup her face, tasting her lips. She’s trying for my fly and not really getting it. I don’t care. The feel of her fingertips grazing my steely dick is pure madness.
Her breath is soft and rhythmic in my ear. I kiss her cheek. I pin her to the wall and glide my teeth along her jaw line. I taste her neck, giving her a hard suck, marking her as mine. She cries out, but I keep on. I suck and pull at her neck as I yank up her schoolgirl skirt.
My hands rip at her panties. Find her soaked. I groan and release her neck. “You’re so fucking wet for me.”
She’s panting, watching my eyes.
Just that.
I love the way she watches my eyes. The sweetness of her trust. The bravery of her love. I grip her hair. I tilt her head back so she has to look at me. “I only ever want you to look at me.”
“Only you,” she says, panting. “Don’t stop.”
“I can’t be sweet like last time,” I say. “I can’t be gentle. I need you too much.”
“Fuck me,” she says. “That’s all you need to know. Fuck me. Now. Please,” she adds.
It’s the please that kills me. My perfect little bird, panting against the wall with her schoolgirl skirt around her waist, asking me please.
Like a madman, I’m tearing off my pants. They end up across the room with my shirt.
I grip her bare thigh and pull up her leg. I open her to me like a flower.
I press my chest against hers, heart pounding right into her tits through that schoolgirl shirt. The way her eyes are, I know she feels it. Then I guide myself into her and drive home. The tight silken warmth surrounds me.
She’s so tight and so ready, I nearly lose it. I begin to thrust, fucking her deep and hard.
“Yes, Stone,” she says, fingers squeezing my ass to pull me closer.
“Omigod omigod,” she moans.
I come out of my haze enough to slow. “You need me to stop?”
“It feels so good,” she says.
“So good,” I say, sliding a knuckle over her cheek, just hanging out inside her, feeling the way her muscles move and clench around me.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking at how beautiful you are. I can’t believe I’m inside you right now.”
“You’ll always be inside me.”
I kiss her again. Gently this time. I slide my hands under her hips, urge her up. “Wrap your legs around me, baby.”
She complies. I lift her and walk her to the bed, kissing the fuck out of her pretty face, staying hard as rock inside her. I yank away the blanket and settle us down on the soft sheets.
“Stone,” she says, looking up at me. Her dark hair is splayed out over my pillow, calm waves on either side of her.
“I’m here, little bird.”
I climb over her. I fuck her slow and sweet and easy. Not like she’s a piece of food about to be taken away, but like the woman I love. The woman who loves me.
I can’t trust a lot, but I can trust that. I can start with that.
Chapter 29
Stone
Two days later
The decision to keep Brooke’s old man alive and work with a cop and all that might’ve been easy for a better man than me. A no-brainer. Kids rescued. Faith in the system. No more violence. Brooke happy.
I’m not that man.
It took every ounce of restraint I had not to let loose on her father. It took everything in me not to drive over to that strip mall at top speed, get those kids out, and drive my fist into the men’s faces over and over and over again—enough so that there would be no faces left to pound. It would’ve felt amazing. I’d promised my guys vengeance. I wanted it, too.
I’m their leader, though. I got them out of that shithole, and somewhere deep down in my miserable self, I knew this was the way forward. So I held off. Buttoned down all my darkness.
Wasn’t easy, but I didn’t let my guys know that. They needed to see one hundred percent confidence. They needed to believe. And they did. They followed me, even in this.
It took almost twenty-four hours for Brooke’s dad to get that meeting with Uncle Bill Fossey. He called him up, told him there was trouble, and Fossey couldn’t get away until the next day.
Whatever Fossey said on that wire that Brooke’s dad wore, it was enough to get a search warrant…three hours later. So that was twenty-seven long hours of my guys looking at me sideways, all of us knowing those kids were down there, miserable. And we weren’t doing a damn thing to help them, aside from making sure visitors weren’t arriving.
Rivera actually helped with that—he had a utility crew and a police cruiser set up at the place across the alley, making it look like an issue with that warehouse there. The official presence scared the lowlifes off and served as an excuse for why the ones my guys intercepted never showed.
Those were long fucking hours, though. But sometimes when I really got silent and clear inside myself, I could feel it was right, deep down. And when I’d look into Brooke’s eyes, I could find it there, too. I could be better for her.
We cooked pasta while we waited. Knox and Cruz tried to get her into playing Destiny 2, their latest video game addiction, but mostly we stayed in bed, Brooke and I.
I thought about Nate a lot. When we were first out of that basement, I didn’t understand why he went the way he did, working toward his vet degree and healing animals instead of making guys pay. We’d give him so much shit for playing the game. But now when I look at him, I think he got himself free in a way we didn’t.