IT’S ALMOST TOO MUCH WHEN I walk out and see Liam asleep on Stone’s chest. Of all the times, he’s stopped by after work or on the weekend over the last couple of weeks, I can’t recall a time it’s sat so heavy on my heart before. Maybe I’ve taken his presence for granted. Maybe I’ve not even given it the notice or credit he deserves. But right now, the heaviness of it falls around me like the snow of the Chicago February that is surprisingly absent this year.
Initially, his presence in my life was nothing more than casual sex that turned to loathing when stereotypical assumptions were made and venom replaced desire. How we arrived here, in this unknown territory where friendship and love are present, yet unstable and disorienting, can only be attributed to the amazing man I now know him to be, and my own self-admittance that my assumptions were wrong.
An even harder blow to my pride is the certainty that he has known and understood the reasons for my biased opinion of him, and instead of holding me accountable for my mistakes, he chose to prove himself to me. I’m not sure if he’d ever admit that to me willingly, but it’s there, in every action, every word, and every touch, no matter how few and far between they are.
I reach for my phone on the coffee table, unable to stop myself, taking a picture to freeze this moment in time. It all feels too right, too fleeting and soon to be the life of someone other than myself.
Reaching down I pick Liam up and move him quickly to my chest, Stone’s eyes blinking open at his absence.
“I’m going to put him in his bed.”
He nods.
When I put Liam down in his bed, I hesitate just a moment, noting the change I can already see in him since his birth and closing my eyes at the thought of Madi and wishing she were here to see each little detail of him.
When I walk back into the living room, Stone’s lying on his side, flush against the back of the couch with arms open.
“Lay with me.” Such a simple command that carries such unobtainable promise. But it doesn’t matter.
Hair still damp from my shower, dressed in an oversized t-shirt and a weary heart, I do what he asks, his arms wrapping around me as I lay in front of him.
“You smell good.”
“Nice change, isn’t it?” I laugh.
“You always smell good, sometimes just different.” He nuzzles into my neck. It’s so natural. It all seems so simple. If only I could let go and let him in and he could do the same.
But what are we doing? We’ve slipped into some middle ground between fuck buddies or friends without benefits and co-parents. Everything and nothing at once. All the while, I’m still struggling with myself to process even being around him, my body wanting one thing and my brain screaming another.
“Relax, goddess. Just close your eyes and try to get some sleep while you have the chance.”
I freeze, feeling caught like a thief in the night, unaware that my battle was visible to him. He wraps his arms tighter around me, my body relaxing of its own accord, each part of me fitting perfect against each part of him.
“Tell me something about you that nobody knows,” I say.
“Like what? A secret?” He pokes up my side, attempting to make light of my question. I shut him down.
“Seriously.” I turn to my back so I can see him, propped on a pillow looking down at me. “It doesn’t have to be a secret, just something about you.”
He looks into my eyes, before looking away, aware that I’m not letting it go. I need this. Something tangible that I can hold onto and justify my need to be around him. A part of me doesn’t want to know the answer, but a bigger part of me needs to know. “
Why did you get into fighting?”
His eyes snap back to mine, but the fight quickly leaves them as he recognizes my need.
“At the beginning, I was just a kid who needed to punch something. I tried to understand why my mother left us, but all it did was make me angry. Really angry. That anger turned to aggression and I guess you could say her suicide created the fighter that I became. I fought at school daily and then Jerry would beat my ass when I got home.”
I swallow thickly.
“Why didn’t you tell your service worker? Surely with them being foster parents, you could’ve reported them?”
“We had a decent home, food and clothes, and we had Celia. There was a point that I thought I hated him, sometimes I still think that, but really, I owe him. We’re all raised different and I know it sounds cruel, but it gave me the will to never quit. He knew I needed to be an animal to survive.”
My heart aches for him.
“He knew I needed an outlet, and after he lost his job, he needed money. So, that summer he entered me into training with the underground league.”
“Celia didn’t have a problem with it? I mean, Liam’s not even my son, but there’s no way I could be okay with him doing something like that.”
“I get what you’re saying, and now I would agree with you. But you and I come from very different places. Celia didn’t find out for a while, but she was mad when she did until she accepted that we didn’t have a choice. She prayed over me nightly, asked God to protect me and keep me strong. And he did.”
It’s hard for me to understand how God played any role in a childhood like that, how he’d be okay with allowing a thirteen-year-old boy to be put in harm’s way for grocery money.
I reach up and cup Stone’s face, tracing my finger over the scar above his brow, to the one at his chin. His eyes dance across my face, I’m sure trying to read me as much as I’m trying to read him.
I want him to touch me, to kiss me and fuck me and let me take some of his pain. Right now, I want to be the one he turns to.
He leans down slowly, brushing his lips over mine, his breath warming me. When he plants his lips over mine, I revel in the feel of it, expecting him to deepen our kiss, to reach under my shirt, between my legs. Something. Anything. But he doesn’t.
“I better get Bruno home. You need to get some sleep while you have the chance.” He sits up before standing from the couch. As soon as he releases a singular whistle, I hear the click of Bruno’s paws coming down the hall from his post in the nursery.
I want to stop him, ask him to stay and take me, but instead I compose myself and walk him to the door. What’s going on in his head? What is he feeling? Why is he leaving?
I want to ask him all of these questions, but I don’t. His eyes hold a certain emotion I can’t place, and I’m too detached to ask.
Self-preservation is key with Stone.
“Call me if you need anything tonight.” He clips Bruno’s leash to his collar, standing and pulling open the door. I nod, words failing me. He looks at me for a long moment before stepping through the door and closing it behind him.
I stand there and look at it forever, trying to make sense of what just happened with him. A knock wraps on the door and I open it quickly without even looking through the peephole. The look on his face is one of disappointment.
“Lock the door and don’t ever open it without looking first.” He leans in and kisses my cheek. “Goodnight.” I want to argue and tell him I’m twenty-six years old and don’t need another father, stir up some emotions other than the ones left lingering.
“Goodnight,” I say to his back as he walks to the elevator. He looks over his shoulder expectantly and I match his glare with one of confusion. Closing the door, I make a show of locking it, the slam of the bolt locking into place loud enough to echo in the hallway so that he hears it.
The couch feels empty when I sit on it, feeling the slight warmth left in Stone’s absence and not denying that I want him there. Why are we torturing each other? I made my mind up weeks ago that I knew he wasn’t like Damon, but I’ve spent the weeks since warring with myself over the possibility that I could be fooled—or betraying Madison.
This stops now.
I pick up my cell phone and pull up Mom’s number.
“Hello?” I didn’t even think to look at the time when I called her. I glance at the clock on the wall. It’s barely eight.
“Mom, are you busy?”
“No, is everything okay, Lydia?”
“I need you to come sit with Liam. I know it’s getting late, but I really need you.”
“Oh, okay, honey. Give me thirty minutes.”
I hang up the phone and pace before I can even think what to do next. I wash Liam’s bottle from earlier and prepare a couple for later, putting them in the fridge and checking to be sure the warmer is on for when Mom needs it.
As I walk around the living room, putting random things away and staring blankly into the void, the need to go to him grows.
I’ve spent so much time fooling myself. Not him- me. If I ever thought for a second that I could deny what happens when I’m around him, or the effect he has on my body, my soul, I was so wrong. Whatever this hold is that he has over me, I must know if I have the same over him.
I know he wants something from me, but I’ve yet to figure out what. Everything seems so backward and out of order. I don’t know where to start with us.
I stalk to my bedroom, pulling a pair of jeans from the end of the bed and tugging off my leggings. The only way this can be settled is face to face and I’m going to his house.
I’m sure he’ll think I’m insane, but I’m going anyway.
Mom barely knocks when she arrives, but it sounds like a wrecking ball in the silence of my apartment. The unwelcome and empty silence.
“Hey, Mom.” I open the door, grabbing my coat and bag from the rack as she walks inside.
“Is everything okay, Selene?”
“There are two bottles made in the fridge and the warmer is on. Diapers and wipes on his changing table. He’s been asleep an hour. Text me when he wakes up.”
“Lydia—”
“Mom, just give me a couple hours. We’ll talk about it when I get back.” I hug her and close the door behind me before she can argue. She knows me well enough to know that I wouldn’t have called her to come stay with him if it weren’t important.
The cab drops me in front of Stone’s house in West Loop, his truck parked in the driveway. The house is mostly dark, only encouraging my nervousness as I make my way to the front door.
I finally ring the doorbell and wince when I hear the loud rumble of Bruno’s bark. I watch as lights come on in a cascade direction from upstairs, coming downstairs. I’ll never forget the look on Stone’s face when he opens the door and sees me standing there.
Like every ending to all my favorite books added together.
Like the beginning and the future of my life.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I know it’s late and you were in bed, but it couldn’t wait until tomorrow.”
He motions toward the living room. “Here, have a seat. Let me put him in the guest bedroom.”
I nod and take a seat on the couch. The minutes it takes him to put Bruno up seem like forever. I pick at my fingers and try to rebuild the courage I had when I left my apartment to journey here—determined. But when he comes back in, my eyes registering for the first time the sleep pants hanging off his hips, and the nakedness of his upper body, courage isn’t what I feel.
He sits down beside me on the couch, his arm stretching out across the back.
“Where’s Liam?” he asks. Of all the questions he could ask, all the comments he could make about my being here, the fact that his initial concerns are of mine and Liam’s well-being is only more evidence that he is a good man.
“With my mother, so I’m not sure how much time I have, but I couldn’t fight the feeling that earlier things were left unsaid, or I’m confused.”
He takes me in, giving every word undivided attention. “I felt like it was best that I left.”
“Best for who? You?”
He looks away, rubbing the back of his neck. “For both of us. I didn’t want your pity, and you shouldn’t want me because you feel sorry for me. Of all the reasons I would want you to finally fucking give in to me—want me, that isn’t one of them.”
“Is that what you think? I didn’t want you out of pity, I want you because I feel connected to you. I felt like you finally opened a door to let me in.” I stand from the couch, unable to sit and feeling like running. “Why would I pity you? You meet everything head on and give it, and anything else that stands in your way, a giant middle finger, Stone. You don’t get my pity because I look at someone like you and I see a fucking warrior, a fighter. Me? I’ve walked around most my life just begging for this God to give me some pain, make me hurt, help me feel human like everyone else. Help me relate.” Tears come unbidden down my cheeks. Big, fat, heavy and un-fucking-wanted. “I don’t pity you, I pity myself because I’m the only person I know that hasn’t experienced real life.”
Stone stands from the couch, wrapping his arms around me, holding me so tight.
“What you’ve gone through with Madison, and what you’re doing with Liam, that’s the most selfless thing I’ve ever witnessed.” He cradles my face in his hands, thumbs wiping tears from my eyes. I try to shake my head, but he doesn’t let me. “Look at me.”
I open my eyes and look up at him, the look in his making my chest ache.
“You are a fucking fighter, Lydia.”
I pull him in tighter, my emotions morphing into need and want and all the desires I know only he can fulfill. Deep down in all the important parts of myself, I know it’s him. It’s been him. I’ve tried my best to push him away and all that’s done is wedge him in deeper.
“Stone, I don’t want to push you away anymore,” I whisper. The tips of his fingers dig so imperceptibly that if my body didn’t know his touch, would’ve never registered. But my body knows his touch.
“Then don’t.”
“Do you still want me like that?”
“You thought I stopped?”
I pull away enough to kiss his cheek, his jaw, looking in his eyes before I feather my mouth across his.
“You should have. I’m no good for you.”
“Let me remind you how good we are together.” He takes my mouth, hands touching all of me, covering me and pulling me as close as I can get to him. “Come to my bed. Let me have you.”
In answer, I begin to remove my clothes, dropping them to the floor like each one of my reservations. The need to bare myself to him overwhelms me, my heart.
His gorgeous erection presses thick against the cotton of his sweatpants and it’s all I can do not to drop to my knees. Where questions and concerns used to be, worship and unadulterated lust remain. When I’m naked, shaking in want before him, his eyes taking in every inch of me, I want to beg him to touch me. Just before I open my mouth to do so, he reaches out and lifts me, carrying me up the stairs until we reach his bed.
I’ve never had to tell him what to do with my body. He knows. As much as I’ve tried to fool myself and him both, there’s never been fear or distrust. I’ve always trusted him.
He lays me across his bed, the look in his eyes murderously erotic, dark and wanton. When he pulls me to the edge, spreading my legs completely, wedging the heels of my feet against the divide of the mattresses, the look morphs into something so beautifully intrinsic that I can’t breathe as his eyes narrow on me.
“I don’t give a fuck what you or anyone else says, Lydia. This body—” He runs a finger through my folds, my hands flying above my head, grasping at the comforter beneath me. “This fucking fantasy land, right here. It’s mine. And I’m going to show you why.” His fingers enter me and my body instantly responds, pulling him in.
“More,” I plead.
“It will never be enough. We both know that. Don’t we?”
I nod in answer because it’s true. I knew that first night, but it was so different then. It even felt different then. Now it’s so fucking good and I don’t just want it with my body. I want him with my heart—my soul. He kneels, running the flat of his tongue up the entire length of my pussy. He pumps his fingers, rubbing my clit with his thumb.
“That’s one.”
At first I, don’t realize what he means, then I remember. I smile because it’s just like him to screw with me while he’s screwing me. When his teeth graze a lip of my sex, my hips thrust, knowing what he gives is what I need.
“Fucking bite me,” I moan, voice unknown and savage to my ears. He’s turned me into an animal and I’ve never been so happy to give in as he sucks the lips of my sex before circling his tongue over my clit and biting it.
“Two.” His smile is devious as I look down at him between my legs.
“Yes. Fuck, Stone. More.”
And he gives it. I feel the spiral of warmth start, his fingers curled and teasing inside me. When the flat of his tongue runs from my ass to my clit, I tumble over the edge, warmth covering me.
“Three.”
I come, more consumed and out of control than I’ve ever been, gripping the back of his neck and pulling him up my body. When his cock reaches my entrance, he doesn’t waste time, doesn’t ease in or take his time.
He fucks me. He thrusts in so hard my eyes water and my orgasm rolls over and over again.
“Goddamn, goddess.” His forehead falls to mine, fingers digging into my ass, spreading, lifting me with each thrust of his hips. “I’ve never missed something before, but I’ve fucking missed this—missed you.”
I grab his face, forcing him to look at me. I could say the million and one things I’m feeling, but instead I take his mouth with mine and kiss him like it’s the first and the last time.
From downstairs, I can hear the faint sound of a phone ring and although I immediately recognize the ring tone as my mother’s, I don’t move. I want this. I want him. I’ve let so many obstacles get in the way and keep us apart. The phone can wait.
I kiss his neck, whispering in his ear. “Take me from behind. Hard.”
He doesn’t even hesitate, grabbing my hips and flipping me, plunging in as soon as my knees hit the comforter.
“Holy fuck.” The words of a woman I don’t know fly from my mouth. Words from the animal I know I am.
He slaps my ass, each cheek, over and over. The warm sting grows every time his hand lands on the already tortured skin.
“Fuck, Lydia. You’re perfect.” He drives forward, leaning over me, gripping my hair and pulling me to him. “Let me have you. Not just tonight.”
I’m right there, right on the edge of a fucking precipice that I can’t and wouldn’t escape if a gun were at my head. He licks up my neck, sucking my ear into his mouth, his breath, his scent, all of it eating me alive. I reach up and grab the back of his head, kissing him with all I can in response.
I want this. I want him to fuck me like this every day for the rest of my life. I want him to be the only man who touches me, makes me come, holds me when I sleep, comforts my nightmares. I want it all. But words fail me. Reason and logic and reality fail me when he reaches between us and rubs his massive fingers over my clit, forcing me to come again as the warmth of his seed fills me.
Without pulling out. Without empty words of how good it was or promises for the future. He pulls us down to his bed and holds me like I need him to. Of course, I don’t have to ask because with Stone, I never do. He knows.
When I register my phone ringing again, I drift back into the realm of reality.
“Shit. I better see what Mom wants.” I move to get up, but he stops me.
“You stay here. I’ll be right back.” He eases out of me, moving off the bed and walking out of the room. Like he hadn’t just fucked me senseless, I watch his retreating form like I’ve never seen him without clothes on. All hard angles and taut perfection.
What does all this mean?
Where do we go from here?
It’s not like I haven’t been going through this in my mind, but now, it seems so pressing, like a timer’s just started and I’m racing the clock. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from pursuing this with him. Other than my fear of hurting Madison, I should be clawing at the chance to have someone as kind and loving and accomplished as him in my life. But it always seems like there can be a million good reasons going up against two bad ones, and the bad wins.
He walks back in, cock half hard and looking at me like he could do it all over again. He crawls in beside me, handing me the phone. As I unlock the screen and push my mother’s contact, he crawls over me, taking a nipple in his mouth. I glare at him.
“Lydia, where are you?”
“I’m in West Loop, on my way—”
“You need to get to Lurie. Now. Liz called me.” I sit up, Stone falling to the side, concern in his features.
“Okay. What’s going on, Mom?” I can hear Liam stirring in the background and I immediately feel bad for leaving her there to do my job.
“Selene.” I hear a quiet sob slip from her lips and I want to scream at her, tell her to spit it out, but then I think of the possible answers. The bad would almost feel more believable than what she does say when she finally speaks. “Honey, Madison’s awake.”