Tainted Forever

by Terri Anne Browning

  His throat bobbed, remorse and shame clouding his face. “I’m so sorry, baby. I swear, I didn’t mean to do this.”

  I caught his hands and pulled mine back. He released me instantly. “I know you didn’t mean to. That’s why I didn’t drop you on your ass then and there.”

  “Can we talk?” he asked, his eyes pleading.

  I looked away, knowing if I didn’t, I would give in. “There really isn’t anything left to talk about, Jace.”

  “Maybe you don’t have anything to say, but I have plenty.” He leaned down, his face coming closer. I tried to turn my head, but his scent filled my nose anyway, and my body began to shake in reaction. It had been so long since the last time we’d made love, and I wanted him so fucking badly. His nearness alone was making my breasts swell and my nipples harden, pressing painfully against the material of my bra. “Just give me a chance, Kin. Let me explain about Eden and why—”

  “Stop,” I whispered fiercely, stepping back from him. “All the chances for explanations have come and gone.” I looked at him then, letting him see my tears, my pain. “You had a year to tell me, and you stayed silent. You blocked me out even more than you normally do during that time, and I’m disgusted with myself for letting you treat me like that.”

  “I’m sorry,” he groaned. “Baby, I never meant to push you away. Fuck. I just didn’t want her crap to touch you.”

  “All I have ever wanted was to come first with you, Jace. That was why we broke up when you first came out here with the band. I thought…” I sucked in a shuddery breath. “I thought when we got back together, things would change. We loved each other, we were finally back together after months of fighting, and I thought we could move forward. But I was living in a fool’s paradise. You couldn’t even bring yourself to confide in me about your sister, and I get that you were trying to protect Kassa. Really, I do. But you could have told me. You should have told me.”

  “I know,” he agreed, cupping my face in both his hands. “I know, baby. And I’m sorry about all of that. It’s not going to happen again. I promise you.”

  “I wish I could believe you, but you’ve already broken my heart twice. I’m not giving you a third chance to stomp all over it.”

  “I won’t. Not ever again.” Tears filled his eyes, and he didn’t seem to care that anyone in the store could see us. “Take me back, Kin. Let me prove how much I really do love you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I bought a ring when I got back to LA after you left me in Virginia,” he announced, and my heart leaped in my chest. “I was stupid for not asking you to marry me the second you turned eighteen. I was crazy to think we didn’t have to get married until later on. You are the most important person in the world to me, and I fucked up by not showing you that every single day.”

  I pushed his hands away, stepping back. “Don’t. I’m not arguing with you about that here.”

  “Marry me, Kin,” he commanded, his voice rough with emotion. “Let’s stop this madness and get back the happiness I took for granted.”

  “I said, stop it, Jace.”

  “Why?” he demanded. “I love you. You love me. Let’s get married.”

  “Because you being sorry isn’t reason enough to get married!” I exploded. “Marriage wasn’t even on your radar until I brought it up the night we broke up. You freaked out, like I was asking you to commit murder instead of asking you why you didn’t even want to move in together.”

  “Kin, just let me explain.”

  “Here we are,” the manager said merrily as she appeared with Jace’s large gift bag in one hand and pulling a small cart with my own present behind her. As soon as she felt the tension between us, she paused. “Is everything okay?”

  I put some much-needed distance between Jace and me, giving the woman a tight smile. “Thanks for everything. I’ll take that, thanks.” I bent and lifted the wrapped box. I was glad it wasn’t overly heavy so I wouldn’t have to struggle to get it into my Range Rover. Avoiding Jace’s gaze, I walked away.

  Outside, I set the gift on the ground and opened the back of my Range Rover, but before I could lift the box again, Jace was there to do it for me. Placing it securely inside, he turned to me and cupped my face. “I love you.”

  My chin began to tremble. “Stop.”

  “I know you’re not ready yet. That you need more time. But we will discuss this, and you will listen to what I need to tell you, baby. I can wait, barely, but I can.” He touched his lips to my forehead before stepping back. “Don’t cry,” he ordered, his voice hoarse. “I don’t want you driving upset.”

  “Jace—”

  “I love you,” he said again before walking toward his car.

  Chapter 14

  Kin

  Lucy’s five-bedroom house felt suffocating with all the people there to attend her baby shower. Every member of her father’s band, as well as Harris’s father’s band, were in attendance, along with their wives and the majority of their children. I knew most of them, considered them all family.

  That was what I loved the most about Lucy’s misfit family. Each and every one of them had taken me in without blinking. I was Lucy’s friend, and that made me special. It meant I was family to them. With the Demons and OtherWorld, you didn’t have to be blood to be a part of their inner circle. You just had to love at least one of their own, and you instantly became one of them.

  “Daddy, Devlin,” Lucy said with a laugh as she stood still so both grandfathers could touch her stomach. Their hands were so big, they swallowed up most of her expanded stomach. And it was so damn cute, I melted a little.

  A look of wonder crossed both drummers’ faces as they stood there, feeling their granddaughter kick against their hands. I’d only been there an hour, but it wasn’t the first time I’d witnessed them doing this. It was like they were moths and Lucy’s pregnant stomach was the brightest flame in the universe, too irresistible not to be drawn to.

  “Let’s get her into karate,” Devlin suggested. “Then we won’t have to worry so much about anyone messing with her. She can just kick their scrawny asses.”

  “Good thinking,” Jesse told him with a grim nod. “Don’t they have classes near the gym?”

  “We should check it out tomorrow. Maybe have Emmie do a background check on the people who run it.”

  “It’s okay, I’m not really here,” Lucy said with a roll of her eyes. “Please continue mapping out my daughter’s future karate career.”

  Jesse’s gaze finally landed on her just as Devlin’s name was called from across the room and he went over to speak to them. “How are you feeling, Lu? Maybe you should sit down. You look tired.”

  Her smile was warm, but she shook her head at him exasperatedly. “I’m fine, Daddy. I’ve told you that five times already. How about getting yourself a drink? Kin helped me make some punch earlier, and it’s really good.”

  “Please sit down for a little while,” her dad urged, concern lacing his voice. “It’s your baby shower. Let everyone pamper you. You still have a week before your due date. Here, sit down.” He grabbed one of his sons by the back of his shirt and jerked him up out of the chair where he was talking to one of the other kids.

  “Jesus, Dad,” Lyric complained, straightening his shirt and moving to sit on the arm of the couch beside his twin. “You could have just asked me to move.”

  Lucy started to move toward the chair, but apparently she wasn’t waddling fast enough, because Jesse picked her up and deposited her in the now-vacant chair. Grabbing a decorative pillow off the couch, he pulled the coffee table closer and propped Lucy’s feet on the pillow.

  “Mom!” Lucy called out. “Daddy’s freaking out again.”

  “You sit here. If you need anything, someone will get it for you,” Jesse instructed her. His dark eyes landed on me. “Won’t you, Kin?”

  Unable to hide my amusement, I nodded. “Of course, Mr. Thornton. That’s why I’m here.”
<
br />   “Daddy, could I have some ice water?” Lucy asked him with a flutter of her lashes.

  “Of course, baby.” He kissed the top of her head and practically sprinted into the kitchen.

  Lucy fell back against the chair. “This pregnancy is going to give him a heart attack.” She rubbed her hand over her stomach. “Hurry up cooking in there, little one. We have to get you out into the world so Poppy can stop freaking out so much.”

  “Poppy?”

  Lucy grinned up at me. “They have all picked out the names they want Hayat to call them. Daddy is Poppy, and Mom is Gammy. Devlin is Pop-Pop, and Natalie will be Nana.”

  “It feels really weird to me that Natalie is only in her early thirties but will be called Nana,” I told her, glancing across the room to where the woman was currently standing with both her brothers. She was gorgeous with her long dark hair and those killer blue-gray eyes that seemed to be a Stevenson trademark. Every one of them, including the children, with the exception of Violet, had those same eyes, even Drake’s newborn son, Damien.

  “Everything about my family is weird,” Lucy said with a laugh. “I mean, my sister’s sister-in-law is my mother-in-law. But it’s perfection to me.”

  “Here, Lu,” Jesse said, appearing as if by magic, and thrusting her glass of ice water into her hands. “Your mom needs my help in the kitchen. Kin, I’m trusting you to make sure she stays right here and wants for nothing. You hear me?”

  I patted him on the arm. “Of course, Mr. Thornton. You go on and help Layla. I’m going to be right here with your daughter.”

  “Thanks, sweetheart.” He dropped a kiss on his daughter’s head, then one on mine.

  I closed my eyes, savoring the love of the Demon for a moment. I adored Lucy’s parents, even if her mother had become a bit much for a little while during the wedding planning the year before. But they had always treated me like one of their own children, and it was something I would always cherish.

  “Don’t stand there,” Lucy complained. “It’s making my neck hurt looking up at you.”

  I glanced around, looking for somewhere to sit in the large, yet overcrowded living room, but finding none.

  “Here, baby,” Jace’s deep voice murmured as he produced a folding chair and placed it beside Lucy’s.

  My heart contracted as I looked at him. In dress pants and a black button-up, he looked beyond yummy. The skin on my forehead where he’d kissed me the day before tingled and burned with the imprint of his lips at the memory, and I had to quickly avert my eyes before he could see I was still replaying our last meeting over and over again.

  “You two need anything?” he asked, glancing at Lucy before turning his attention back to me. “You want more food?”

  “We’re good,” Lucy answered for us, and he nodded before heading back to the side of the room where he’d been for the last half hour talking with Harris and a few members of OtherWorld.

  “So, you two talked yesterday,” Lucy whispered, leaning closer to me. “That’s all you would tell me before everyone started arriving.”

  I blew out a frustrated breath and nodded, leaning in a little. “I helped him shop for a gift for today, and it was nice, you know?” She just stared at me with curious brown eyes. “It felt like we could be friends. And that’s exactly what I want. You and Harris appointed us both as Hayat’s godparents, and I want to take that seriously. Which means Jace and I need to get along.”

  “Friendship is a step in the right direction,” she agreed.

  “But then he wanted to talk about what happened. About the breakup and…everything.”

  Lucy’s brows lifted slightly. “And?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Lu. What’s done is done. We can’t go back.”

  “But maybe if you talked to him, you could find some middle ground. Maybe you—”

  “No, Lucy,” I whispered fiercely, stopping her before she could finish. “I let him break my heart twice. I don’t have the courage to let him do it again.”

  “He told me he bought a ring,” she confided after a tense moment passed between us, earning me a glare from the twins who sat just a few feet away. Those two baby Demons were just as fiercely protective of Lucy as their beast of a father was. They couldn’t possibly have heard our conversation, but that didn’t matter. They could feel their sister’s tension, and obviously, I was the cause of it.

  “He mentioned that yesterday.” And my heart had been doing funny things ever since. I honestly didn’t know how I felt about him buying a ring, or him asking me to marry him the day before. Everything was jumbled in my head, and I didn’t know how to clear it. My heart was doing cartwheels in my chest just thinking of his proposal, even if it hadn’t been romantic in any shape or form. He still said those words, and they weren’t because he was distressed and throwing it out there to try to appease me like he’d done the night of our breakup. They seemed sincere.

  But marriage was a million miles away from where I wanted to be with him or anyone else right then. I needed to focus on myself, learn to love and respect myself all over again before I would ever be ready for a relationship of any kind with anyone, least of all Jace.

  “And?” Lucy grasped my hand, squeezing.

  “And nothing,” I hissed, shooting Jace a look to make sure he wasn’t paying attention, only to find him looking straight at me. There was no way he could hear what we were saying, and from the look on his face, he didn’t.

  That look was hungry, and I felt like I was starving. I wanted him…so fucking badly, damn it. But sex wasn’t going to fix anything. Certainly not my aching heart.

  I looked away from him before he did and met Lucy’s hopeful eyes. “I want him to want to marry me because he can’t live without me. Not because he’s sorry or thinks that’s the only way to get me back. I want him to… Fuck! I don’t know what I want from him, but I do know I don’t want it like this. It feels like he’s paying a ransom to get me to be with him again, that I’m holding myself hostage from him, and he’s negotiating with a ring to get me back.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” she released a sad-sounding sigh. “But you shouldn’t give up, Kin. He loves you and—”

  “And I still love him,” I told her honestly. “But loving someone isn’t enough sometimes, babe. This is one of those times.”

  “I’m sorry, Kin.”

  “It’s fine. I’m dealing with it and trying to move on.” I turned my hand over in hers, interlocking our fingers. “I know you love us both, and I’m sorry you are stuck in the middle. Just stop trying to push us back together. Okay?”

  She blew out a frustrated breath. “Yeah, yeah. Fine. I’m done. I won’t do it anymore.”

  “Promise,” I commanded, knowing if she didn’t promise, I couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t stop.

  Another sigh left her, but she nodded. “Yeah. I promise.”

  Chapter 15

  Kin

  By the end of the shower, Lucy’s house was flooded with new baby essentials and furniture. Harris enlisted all the Tainted Knights guys to help him carry everything up to the nursery, while Kassa and I hung up all the new outfits and put away all the other items so Lucy could remain in the chair her father had refused to allow her out of.

  Downstairs, Layla and Natalie were busy cleaning up, and Lucy was still sitting where I’d left her. She had a pained expression on her face, but when she noticed me watching her as I came down the stairs, she gave me a bright smile. “Thanks. I could have done it. Apparently I’m on lockdown.”

  I kept my eyes fastened on her as I moved closer, not wanting Jesse, who was just a few feet away talking with Zander Brockman and Nik Armstrong, to hear what I was about to ask his daughter.

  Reaching her, I bent so I could speak close to her ear. “Are you having contractions?”

  She was quiet for a moment but finally nodded. “It’s okay. Nothing to worry about. It’s just Braxton Hicks. They come and go. I’m fine.�
��

  I leaned back, watching her face. She looked uncomfortable as hell, but that just as easily could be because she was so close to her due date and her stomach was huge. I rubbed my hand over the baby bump, felt Hayat kick at me as if she didn’t want me to bother her mother, and grinned. “I’m not going home,” I told her. “I’ll crash in the guest room. I have this strange feeling things are about to get very, very interesting very, very soon.”

  She shifted restlessly. “Just don’t tell my dad,” she whispered. “He will lose his mind.”

  “He nearly lost your mom when she had the twins early. Of course, he’s worried.” I picked up her empty water glass. “Need anything? I’m going to help out in the kitchen.”

  “My back is killing me.”

  Since we were no longer whispering, Jesse heard what she said and was on red alert. “Lu? You okay?”

  She rolled her eyes at me but smiled warmly up at her dad. “My back is hurting from sitting in the same spot for so long, Daddy. I think I just need to stretch.”

  “Go lie down, Lu,” he urged. “Stay off your feet.”

  “Yeah, okay. Love you, Daddy.”

  “Love you, baby.”

  I set down her glass and offered her my hands, helping her stand. As she did, she gasped, her face twisting in pain. I moved to block her from Jesse’s eyes, keeping a hand around her back as I walked with her to the stairs.

  “Tell Harris,” she said with a groan as I helped her sit on the edge of the bed in her room. “Wait. Don’t tell Harris. Just ask him to come here. I don’t want him getting hysterical. It’s just a few contractions. Even if this is labor, it could take forever before I’m even able to go to the hospital. The contractions have to be so far apart before they will even consider me in active labor.”

  I backed out of the room, worried about her. “I’ll be right back. Okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said nervously.

  The nursery was only across the hall, but I sprinted the short distance. Inside the baby’s room, Jace and Harris were setting up the dream glider and a few other things with Cash and Gray’s help, while Kale and Sin unboxed several other items.