Falling into You: A Falling Stars Stand-Alone Romance

by A. L. Jackson

  I shifted her just a fraction so she could see herself in the full-length mirror standing in the corner of her room.

  Her tits jutted and perfectly round. Nipples puckered and begging for my touch. “Look at you,” I whispered at her ear.

  I cupped her tits in my hands. She pressed into my hold as I rubbed my thumbs across the diamond tips.

  A quiver rolled down her spine.

  “Perfection.”

  I turned her around and urged her back onto the bed.

  Girl naked.

  Staring up at me as I flicked the button of the dress pants and shoved them down. My cock steel. Pointing toward the sky. Begging for her.

  She whimpered when she saw me. Girl devouring me with those eyes. Same way as I was devouring her. “It’s you, Richard. You who makes me shake. Never before have I met a man who can command my breath.”

  “You own me,” I murmured low.

  The truth.

  The girl was my sheer, utter undoing.

  The one thing that could make me veer course. Should have known I’d been heading for her all along.

  She leaned back on her elbows, her heels planted on the bed, stomach quivering in anticipation. She watched me with that molten, trusting gaze.

  “You’ve shattered me.”

  And I was gone.

  Lost in her eyes and that stare and her heart.

  I climbed up over her and kissed her hard. Demanding it all. Her sweet heart thundering in the space and her shy wickedness coming out to play.

  Girl this perfect combination of innocent and vixen.

  Loved that about her.

  Our tongues stroked. Taunted and teased while our bodies rose to this heightened level.

  Heat lapping.

  Flames steadily filling the space.

  Our spirits humming.

  Perfected in this.

  And I needed her. Fucking needed her to know what she really meant.

  “Love you, Violet. Love you,” I muttered at her mouth while her fingers scraped and pled and tried to drag me closer.

  I rocked back onto my knees and took hers in my hands, spreading her wide. I didn’t stall before I dove down and took a long lick through her slick, hot pussy.

  Girl nearly shot from the bed. “Richard. Oh. God. Please.”

  “Love the way you taste,” I growled, edging back to get a good look before I went back in and parted her slit with my tongue.

  Hands fisted in my hair.

  Close to painful.

  It sent a shock of lust rocking down my spine. My dick so hard I could barely see.

  Lust sending waves of dizziness through my head.

  Rational side of me knew this should be impossible. That I shouldn’t be touching this girl. And the selfish part of me knew there was no chance I would ever let her go. “Could stay right here forever, Violet. Right here between these legs.”

  She moaned, writhed, begged for more.

  I gave it to her. Teasing her with my tongue, licking and suckling at her swollen, engorged clit.

  Cries jutted from her mouth, and she pushed closer. “Oh. God. Richard. Love you touchin’ me. Missed it. Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”

  Didn’t plan on it.

  I pressed two fingers into the tight warmth of her sweet cunt. Her walls clamped around them. I fucked them deep, dragging them across that spot that kept making her buck and moan, licking and sucking her the whole time.

  “Richard.”

  The air shivered.

  Crackles of greed.

  I pulled my fingers out so I could spread her on both sides, and I fucked her with my tongue.

  Driving her mad.

  Wild.

  Girl bucking and pleading and demanding more.

  More. More. More.

  Wanted to give it all.

  My love and my life and this devotion that wasn’t ever gonna end.

  I kissed all the way back along the crease of her ass, tongue rimming that hole, girl nearly coming undone right there.

  I grinned.

  Couldn’t fucking help it.

  Loved that she loved to play.

  That she trusted.

  That she craved it.

  Gave it.

  Took it.

  I edged back so I could give it to her.

  “On your hands and knees, baby.”

  Violet’s eyes flashed in need, and she flipped around, no hesitation, pressing back toward me as she swung her gaze over her shoulder.

  Girl holding me with that unrelenting stare.

  I took two handfuls of that bottom, my dick rubbing along her crease.

  “Please, Richard. I’m long past teasing.”

  “You need this?”

  “I’m beggin’ for it.”

  I grabbed myself by the base, running the tip of my dick down her cleft until just the head was dipping into the welcome of her delicious folds.

  I nudged in an inch, a moan locking in my throat, girl whimpering and pushing back.

  “Take it,” I told her.

  She did, wiggling and adjusting and taking me deeper.

  I groaned, watching my cock disappear into her body.

  So good.

  So right.

  This girl my all.

  “Yes,” I hissed.

  She slammed back, taking me to the hilt.

  Her thighs trembled, and I could tell she was struggling to adjust.

  She was so tight. Her walls held me in a needy clutch.

  No girl should feel this good.

  My cock throbbed in a thousand tiny pinpricks of bliss.

  “You feel that, Violet? Feel what you do to me? How good you feel? Nothing. Nothing in the world compares to this. Nothing like being in you.”

  “No one. Never. Richard.”

  I grabbed her by the hips and started to take her in rigid, deep, demanding strokes.

  Her sweet body rocking back to meet me with each thrust.

  Violet’s head was rolling from side-to-side, her hair all over the place. I grabbed a fistful of it, tugging her back so I could get to that mouth.

  Our tongues fucking in time.

  This war of greed that both of us were gonna win. “Not gonna let you go, Violet. Never again.”

  “I wouldn’t survive,” she whispered, her truth banging against the walls.

  “You’re mine. Mine, sweet girl. You feel it…what I do to you? You were made for me.”

  Pleasure wracked my cells. Gathering fast. Gaining speed as I watched my cock driving into the sweet relief of her pussy.

  Violet whimpered, “More,” as her hands curled into her comforter to keep herself steady.

  That pleasure whipped. Streaking my spine and lifting my balls.

  I eased back so I could circle her ass with my thumb, and I pressed into that tight, puckered hole.

  A desperate whine left her, her pants rising into the air.

  Whipping around me.

  The girl dropped her chest to the bed, her head turned to the side, watching me as she reached under us. Blunted fingernails scratched at my balls. Nails raking that sensitive flesh, swirling around my hole.

  “Oh god. Fuck. Violet. You are destroying me.”

  I took her faster and harder. She met me thrust for thrust.

  Girl demanding it.

  I would give her my all.

  Everything.

  My heart. My truth. My life.

  “Touch yourself, baby.”

  And she went to town on that clit.

  That was all it took, and the two of us were going off like an atom bomb.

  Leveling everything. Girl writhing and moaning and trying to cover her cries by burying her face in her mattress as this fire took us whole.

  Boundaries incinerated.

  Nothing left but ashes.

  Words falling from her mouth that she tried to bury in the sheets. “Don’t ever leave me, Richard. Don’t. My heart can’t take it. I can’t. I can’t.”

  All those
vulnerabilities slipped back in.

  Two of us completely bare.

  Nothing left to hide.

  I had to tell her.

  Had to.

  Couldn’t go another day keeping this deceit because I no longer knew who it was that I was betraying.

  Knees giving out under the weight of what I had to do, I eased us down to our sides and I curled my body around my girl.

  Her spirit thrashed and her heart hammered out of control.

  Like that moment we’d just shared had crushed every wall. Stripped every barrier. Tore away the veil.

  Got the sense she was lying there, staring right at my secrets.

  I pressed a kiss to the base of her skull. “Baby…I need you to listen…need you to hear the truth.”

  It cracked on the fear.

  Every cell in her body seized, and she gripped me by the hand, twining our fingers together, her ring glinting in the hazy rays of infiltrating moonlight. “Not tonight, Richard. Give us tonight.”

  I nodded against the back of her head, my nose in her hair, inhaling the girl.

  Violets and grace and the good.

  I tugged her sweat-drenched body closer.

  Refusing to let her go.

  Refusing the wedge of terror that tried to slice its way into my soul.

  “When we wake up in the morning, I need you to hear me out. Listen. Let me explain.”

  Her nod was wary. “Okay.”

  I breathed out in something that wasn’t quite relief. “Okay.”

  I held her as we drifted. As we floated. As we soared.

  Girl content to lie in my darkness.

  I opened my mouth and began to quietly sing.

  I closed my eyes

  I fell into a dream

  Watching through a looking glass

  Nothin’s what it seems

  Shards of ice

  Cold, bitter bliss

  That’s what I get

  For stealing that first kiss

  She sighed and sank deeper into my hold as I moved into the chorus.

  Now I’m lost

  Lost in your mystery

  I lost sight. I lost my right

  Staring at eternity

  What’s come. What’s gone

  Never gonna be reclaimed

  Because clinging to this moonflower

  Is where I’ll forever be chained

  Clinging to this moonflower is where I’ll forever be chained

  I eased up and whispered in her ear, “And I’m never going to let you go.”

  Thirty-Five

  Violet

  My phone vibrating on the wood of my nightstand nudged me from the most blissful sleep I’d ever had. Powerful arms were wrapped around me from behind, and he held me in the haven of his body, his heart this steady thrum, thrum, thrum that lulled me into a transcendent peace.

  The barest light glowed against the window, and I carefully untangled myself from Richard’s hold when my phone vibrated again. I pushed up to sitting on the side of my bed. Squinting against the sleepiness still trying to drag me under, I thumbed into the screen so I could find out what was so important this early in the morning, and I saw that I’d missed three calls and a bunch of texts.

  David Jacobs: I need to speak with you.

  David Jacobs: I’ve been calling. Please return my call.

  David Jacobs: It’s vital I speak with you immediately. I’m coming to your house.

  A shudder ripped through me.

  Head to toe.

  This sticky chill that slicked my spine.

  Ice cold.

  It sent alarm freezing my heart to a stalling point.

  Sitting there staring at my phone, I knew I was about to get news that I wasn’t sure I was ready for.

  Wasn’t sure I could handle.

  I blinked through the waves of grief that threatened to take me under.

  A dark, dark sea I could feel coaxing me into its depths.

  Fear slogged through my veins, slowing my movements when I pushed from the bed, unplugged my phone, and quickly fumbled to get into a pair of jeans and a tee, my hair a wild disorder from the twist it’d been in for the wedding and then Richard destroying it last night.

  My gaze moved to where he’d shifted when I’d slipped out. He now lay facedown with the sheet dipping low around his waist, just the faintest hint of his ass peeking out.

  Gulping around the jagged rocks that had gathered at the base of my throat, I tried to cling to the sight of him there. To use it as encouragement. As the reminder that I would do whatever was best for Daisy.

  No matter what.

  I did my best to claim the knowledge that I wasn’t alone. Richard would be there to support us. To help us. But I was having a hard time feeling any sort of security.

  Not when this feeling of dread rose to wash out anything else.

  This sense that doom was encroaching.

  I blinked back the tears burning at the back of my eyes, turned, and crept out of my room. Quietly, I clicked my bedroom door shut behind me and tiptoed downstairs and toward the front door.

  With each step, I felt that swell growing higher.

  A tidal wave that gathered strength.

  It rushed and surged and, by the time I was unlocking the front door and stepping out into the breaking day, I could barely stand.

  Stranded in a riptide.

  Because I could feel it.

  The devastation that approached.

  My mind banged with the reality of what was coming.

  I was gettin’ ready to be told my sister was no longer alive.

  I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready.

  “I love you, Violet,” her voice twisted through the air, choked and emphasized. “I couldn’t ask for a better sister. For a better friend. There is no bigger joy than getting to witness you find the kind of joy you have found because you deserve it more than anyone else. You are the meaning of family. I respect you with all I have and can’t wait to see the love and happiness you find in this life.”

  And I missed her. I missed her and I missed her, and oh god, it ached.

  It ached like mad as I watched a sedan blaze a trail up the drive, dust a dark cloud billowing behind it.

  He came to a stop, and David Jacobs climbed from the front seat of his car. His expression grim.

  He was in his mid-40s maybe, his hair receding at the front, the rest parted and tamed with product. Wearing slacks and a button-down.

  He held a thick folder in his hand that I knew revealed my sister’s fate.

  I tried to stand firm. To keep the trembling of my jaw and the shivering in my soul at bay.

  He edged forward. “I apologize for waking you so early in the morning, but I stumbled into some evidence a couple days ago. I followed the trail, and yesterday evening I received some pictures I’d been waiting on from a colleague in California. I was up through the night putting everything together. I was able to verify it this morning.”

  A tear slipped free. I swatted at it and tried to put on a brave front, when really, I was crumbling. “What did you find?”

  His grimace confirmed it was bad.

  “You might want to sit down.”

  “Just tell me.” It was a wheeze.

  He climbed the steps and moved over to the small table tucked at the far end of the porch. He set the stuffed folder on top of it, but he pinned it closed with his fingers. “What’s inside here is going to be hard to look at.”

  I braced myself, nodded, and those tears kept falling. “She’s gone.”

  It wasn’t even a question.

  “No, Violet. She’s not. At least, I don’t think so.”

  Relief slammed me.

  Staggering.

  My knees went weak, and I had to plant my hands on the table for support. “Where is she?” I begged.

  His head shook. “I’ve contacted the police in Los Angeles, Violet. I believe she’s been held against her will.”

  A horrified frown of disbel
ief pulled to my brow. “I…how could that be? She left here. I watched her leave.”

  I’d chased her down.

  Begged her not to go.

  “I’m not sure of the circumstances yet. The only thing I know is I’ve traced her to a house in an upscale neighborhood in Los Angeles. It’s empty now. We have confirmation that up until three months ago, there were both men and women being held there. Forced into sex slavery. Kept there against their will. Most strung out. Fed drugs and coerced into submission. The house was owned by the same record label Martin Jennings had worked for, Mylton Records.”

  He inhaled. “There was a raid several months ago. Two women had managed to get to the police and make statements. They were going to testify against Karl Fitzgerald. But by the time the police showed for the raid after Karl Fitzgerald was in custody, the house was empty.”

  Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.

  Nausea swirled and the earth spun. Whipping and whirling so fast I thought I was going to black out. I struggled to remain upright. To process what he was tellin’ me.

  My sister. What had she been through?

  And the two women—I instantly knew—felt it in the sinking of my spirit. They were the two women Emily and Maggie were talking about. The two who were supposed to testify against the men who had hurt them, the ones who were the smoking gun, the ones all of us were sure had seen their demise when they’d gone missing.

  Dizziness spun my head.

  So fast I barely could remain standing.

  “I have photographic evidence that your sister had been kept in that house.”

  My knees rocked again.

  He hesitated, his fingers still nailed to the folder, looking at me like he wasn’t sure I could handle what was inside.

  I wasn’t sure I could, either.

  My shaking hand went to my stomach like I could keep the nausea from crawling out.

  “Open it,” I told him, words scraping the brisk morning air while I felt like I was burning up from the inside.

  “These pictures are—”

  “Open it,” I shouted, cutting him off, unable to take it a second longer.

  He gave a wary nod before he flipped it open.

  Horrified grief gripped me by the throat, bile racing it, making me choke.

  She was there.

  Picture after picture.

  My beautiful Liliana.