Falling in Deeper (Wicked Lovers Series Book 11)

by Shayla Black

  Stone gripped her thighs, willing her to move her hips and stroke them both to ecstasy. “Baby . . .”

  “Yeah,” she promised as if she understood, then raised herself to his tip before she lowered down in a slow, torturous slide.

  “Shit.” He blew out a breath as the tingles screamed across his skin.

  Every instinct inside him roared that he should roll her over and pound her deep until she couldn’t remember her own damn name, much less a tragedy she’d witnessed years ago. Stone knew that wasn’t possible, so he checked himself and let her set the pace.

  Experimentally and excruciatingly, Lily wriggled her way up his shaft, then glided down again, inflicting maximum damage to his self-control.

  “Does that feel okay?” she asked hesitantly.

  Okay? “Oh, Jesus, baby. You’re killing me.”

  But for all the torment of her slow slide, experiencing every nuance of each sensation made Stone marvel. He was finally inside this woman he wanted more than his next damn sunrise. Now he was filling her up, knew exactly what she felt like closing around him. Lily was finally, truly his. Possession was nine-tenths of the law, so he intended to possess her well and often.

  She gave him a hesitant smile and picked up the pace just enough to deliver a new level of torture. Every glide of her walls dragged over his cock, giving him more friction than his unhinged brain could handle.

  When she leaned forward and dug her nails into his shoulders, her shirt gaped, exposing the delicate mounds of her breasts and the berry-sweet nipples topping them. And whatever train of thought he’d had fucking evaporated.

  Lily picked up speed and steam, tossing back her head and breathing hard. She clamped him with her thighs and the walls of her cunt. He reached under that blouse he wanted to rip away and clutched her hips, finally giving over to the need to pull her into every stroke as he shoved up deeper. He surged faster, harder inside her. Lily cried out, her cheeks flushing, her body writhing in graceful abandon.

  With a hiss, Stone decided to shove her closer to ecstasy.

  He worked one hand down to the plump flesh of her mound and settled his thumb over her clit. Slick, hard, ripe. Fuck, yes.

  At his touch, she turned frenzied, thrashing on top of him, slamming him deeper inside her stroke after stroke. Stone held on for dear life. The need swelled and jerked and hacked at his self-control.

  Her nails dug deeper. Her breathing turned uneven. She fixed her stare on his digits as her cunt clamped down and every stroke became labored. She lost her rhythm entirely. Her eyes turned slightly wide and panicked. “Stone!”

  Relief and primal need took over as he lifted her by the hips and slammed her down on his cock while he arched up, hitting some sensitive spot inside her that had her keening out in a wailing cry of pleasure, spasming around him in quick, tight pulses.

  With a growl, he gritted his teeth. He needed to see her. All of her.

  Stone didn’t ask permission, didn’t wait, just tore her blouse open. Buttons pinged, fabric parted, and he clapped eyes on her flat belly. His brain registered the uneven skin and slightly silver stripes low on her belly with shock.

  Then nothing mattered. The need to be one with Lily and mark her as his hit hard. He didn’t have time to argue, so he braced himself by clasping her wrists in an unyielding grip and anchoring them at her sides as he surged inside her, one animal stroke after another until the dam inside him unleashed the torrent of cataclysmic need. The spike of ecstasy had him shouting, gripping at her, going deeper than ever, and coming as if he hadn’t taken care of himself barely an hour ago. Hell, as if he hadn’t come in months.

  The rush seemed to go on forever, and his body jerked uncontrollably as he emptied himself utterly inside her. Even after his body had ceased shuddering with pleasure, he couldn’t get control, couldn’t regulate his breathing. Forget blowing her mind. What they’d just shared had been right, meant to be. Stone felt that certainty in every cell of his body. She’d changed his fucking life.

  Before he could catch his breath and hold her close, tell her how much she amazed him and assure her that what he’d seen on her belly made no difference to him, she scrambled for the sides of her tattered shirt and tugged them back together, stabbing him with an accusing glare as she wrenched free. “Damn you!”

  Stone reached for her again, but Lily dashed out of the bedroom and across the hall. The door slammed. He heard the snick of the lock and her fist pounding the hard surface with a cry.

  He stared in shock, in regret. Damn. She hadn’t been ready for him to see all of her and he’d fucked up. Not the first time. It probably wouldn’t be the last either. The question was, could he repair the damage his curiosity had done to her trust? Or would she insist they were done?

  * * *

  SHAKING, Lily started the tub. As the water heated, she paced the little bathroom. Maybe Stone hadn’t seen or noticed. Maybe he didn’t know what those marks on her belly meant.

  When she marched back toward the sink, the mirror overhead reflected her from head to hips. Even at a distance, she could see those silvery paths up her lower belly that neither cocoa butter nor time had totally erased.

  Out of the corner of her eyes, she caught sight of steam rising from the tub. She whirled away and plugged up the drain with an old-fashioned stopper and held in a shocked sob.

  Why had he done that?

  What was he thinking now?

  What would he say when she had the courage to leave the bathroom?

  Lily grabbed her ponytail holder off the counter and shoved her tresses up in a haphazard bun around her crown, then sank into the tub, curling her knees to her chest and rocking.

  She had no idea what to do.

  Behind her the click of the lock sounded, followed by the squeak of the hinges as the door opened.

  Shrieking, she jerked her gaze over her shoulder, keeping her knees pressed to her chest. “How did you get in? I locked that door.”

  “That’s the downside of being involved with an ex-con, baby. I still know how to get into shit I shouldn’t. I’m sorry I upset you. Tell me what’s going on.”

  She sent him a rapid shake of her head. “Go. I need a few minutes to myself.”

  Stone peered at her with narrowed eyes and perched himself on the edge of the tub. “I don’t think you do. See, when I give you ‘time,’ you tend to burrow back behind your defenses and think you need to handle everything yourself. You convict yourself of terrible ‘crimes’ you have almost no fault in, and close yourself off from everyone who wants to help you.”

  “You don’t understand. That’s not—”

  “True? Yeah, it is. This time, we’re going to try dealing with your feelings my way. Head-on.” He looked as if he had to hold down his temper. “When did you have a baby?”

  His words were like a fist to the stomach. With their impact, her belly button sank back into her spine. Her shoulders rolled forward. She couldn’t breathe. “Don’t.”

  “I thought we were in this together and that you’d told me the truth about everything.”

  The damn tears that wouldn’t fall welled in her eyes again. “Everything about Canton. Everything that’s important to stopping him.”

  “I’ve been as deep inside your head and body as a man can go, Lily. I have been straight up with you every moment of every day we’ve been together. I have put my life on pause to protect you. Doesn’t that, anywhere in your head, entitle me to hear the whole goddamn truth?”

  With every word, his volume increased. When he finished, he stood, stared, waited. She wanted to lash out at his anger, but he merely looked hurt.

  Lily shook her head. She couldn’t talk to him about this. She couldn’t talk to anyone. She never had. The pain cut too deep. Telling him would only carve another notch in her soul.

  He clenched his fists. “I’m fucking in love wi
th you. Does that mean anything? Will you try to give me a chance to help you?”

  His admission only made her ache more. Lily didn’t know what to say. Stone couldn’t love her. She was a mirage of vintage style and shy flirtation. The girl underneath was distraught and messed up and wouldn’t be good for anyone.

  “Whatever you’re feeling will pass,” she managed to choke out.

  That only pissed him off more. He took hold of her arms, lifting her out of the tub. Water sloshed around her as he displaced it with one yank of her body. She dripped and gleamed. But with sunlight streaming in, there was no way she could hide the stretch marks shooting from her lower belly, ending a couple of inches below her navel. He zeroed in on them. His jaw clenched; then he fused their gazes together, willing her to understand.

  “It fucking won’t. You might have a hundred ways to fool yourself, but I don’t bother with that shit. I know better. You’re it for me, and what we just did in that bed together proved it. I’m smitten. Gone. And I can’t stand it that you don’t trust me enough with the truth.”

  Lily gasped. He wasn’t upset that she’d given birth, just that he believed she lacked faith in him? “That’s not the problem.”

  “Then tell me what is.”

  “Talking about what happened, it’s . . . agony.” She turned her face away. God, she really couldn’t look at him and think about all the lives she’d destroyed. And she didn’t want his to be next.

  “I want to know you. I want to hear everything about you. I know it hurts, but if you purge it, it might get easier. Tell me.”

  She’d been so judgmental when they’d first met. He was an ex-con. Dangerous. Not good for her. So no matter how she’d wanted him, Lily had shut Stone out. Now that she knew the man? She’d never known one better. Certainly not her sperm donor of a father. Thorpe was a great guy . . . but unyielding and remote. She suspected that he only bent and smiled for Callie. Axel had moved mountains to help her. He cared, but he couldn’t fake love—nor would she want him to. He’d been a good mentor. Though they hadn’t shared anything real or deep, even he knew this truth. There’d been no way to avoid it.

  After all she’d been through with Stone in the past few days, didn’t he deserve to know, too?

  With a sigh, Lily nodded. “Give me a chance to get dressed, and I’ll tell you.”

  “You don’t need to cover up your boobs to explain what’s bothering you. I’m naked, too. Let’s do this together.”

  She paused. He was right. What good would hiding behind clothes do? He wasn’t trying to shield himself. Maybe having a naked body while she bared her soul would help her finally feel as if she’d really purged this part of her sadness.

  Drawing in a calming breath, she focused on the facts. She could start her story with those. “When I was fifteen, the cutest guy in school showed interest in me. He played football. I was a cheerleader. We went to homecoming together and held hands in the hall. It sounds so cliché now. When we’d been dating a few months, he started pressuring me to have sex and told me that if I didn’t, he knew plenty of girls who would.”

  “He sounds like a self-centered, immature little bastard.”

  “Completely. But I couldn’t imagine losing my boyfriend because I refused to ‘prove I loved him.’ I would be a laughingstock. Girls would whisper about me behind my back. Besides, I’d eventually have sex anyway, so it didn’t matter who I did it with first, right? I liked him well enough.” She rolled her eyes. “These were the things I told myself. I was young and stupid, and my mother worked three jobs to try to feed me and my little brother, so she wasn’t really around to give me advice.”

  “So you had sex with him and you got pregnant.”

  She nodded. “I found out two days before my sixteenth birthday. He’d planned to take me out for dinner and a movie that night to celebrate, like on a real date. I was so excited. I’d bought a new dress with money I didn’t really have. I told myself that, of course, he loved me and I loved him. But that home pregnancy test changed everything. The day I found out, I told him. He dumped me, called me stupid for getting knocked up, and said he knew I’d been screwing around behind his back. Which wasn’t true.”

  Stone nodded. “Asshole. That was how he absolved himself of any responsibility.”

  “And he spent the night of my sixteenth birthday with another girl, one he knew I didn’t like. I heard he knocked her up just before graduation and they eventually got married.”

  “Did he not know how to put on a condom?” He scowled.

  “He didn’t like them. They were ‘unnatural.’ He swore that if we timed it right with my cycle, I couldn’t get pregnant. What I didn’t understand was that I’d never had a normal cycle, so I didn’t know when I might be ovulating.” She sighed. “I didn’t understand a lot of things, actually.”

  “You were a kid. And without parents to guide you . . .”

  “I didn’t know what to do. Once I found out I was pregnant, I knew my mom would freak. I hid it as long as I could, but she eventually figured it out. She kicked me out of the house.”

  “At sixteen?” He gaped as if he could scarcely believe what she was saying. “You may have screwed up, but she had a responsibility to finish raising you. Where did she think you and the baby were going to go?”

  “She didn’t care. I’d been a glorified babysitter for a long time anyway. She favored my little brother. By then, he’d gotten old enough to take care of himself after school and cook his own meals if she couldn’t be there. I was just another mouth to feed and a teenage problem to deal with.” Lily tried to shrug those facts off, but deep down, they still hurt deeply.

  Stone gritted his teeth and shook his head as if he didn’t understand at all. That was a balm to Lily’s heart, especially when he took her hands in his and gentled his voice. “What did you do next? What happened to the baby?”

  Now the conversation got difficult. She tried to wrap her arms around herself, but Stone wasn’t having any of that. He hugged her to his chest and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Instead of feeling intrusive, his touch gave her strength.

  “I went to my friend Erin’s house. Her mom had gotten pregnant with Erin’s older brother, Corey, when she was sixteen. She understood and took me in. I moved into Erin’s room with her and kept going to school. I found a county clinic that gave me cheap prenatal care. I was working part-time and planning to finish high school. I had the future mapped out. Or so I thought. But nothing worked out that way. Erin was killed.”

  “Did Canton spare you because you were pregnant?”

  She tried hard to hold herself together. “I think so. I was thirty-eight weeks along. He told me if I said a word to the police about what I’d seen, he’d hunt me down and cut my baby from my belly and laugh while he killed us both.”

  More horrific glimpses from the past began to bombard her, the most terrifying times and faces. Images that haunted her to this day. The sounds of ripping fabric, the smell of blood, even too much male laughter still sometimes set her off.

  “Then?” he prompted.

  She clenched her fists and slammed her eyes shut. Just get the words out. “The baby was a girl. Regina Rose. Stillborn.”

  He froze. “Your baby was . . . dead?”

  “Yeah. The cord wrapped around her neck.” Lily’s nose tingled as the tears welled again. She tried to sob, tried to grieve. Her expression collapsed. She could almost cry. Almost . . . but not quite.

  God, when would she be able to put her terrible past behind her and have a decent future?

  “In less than a year, you got pregnant, you lost your boyfriend, your family cast you out, you watched your best friend be raped and murdered, and then your baby died?” He looked at her as if it was a wonder she’d survived. “Lily?”

  That wasn’t all, and as long as she’d come this far, she might as well tell Stone the rest of Cant
on’s sins. “All that, yes. About a week after Erin was killed, I gave birth alone. I left the hospital alone. I went back to my mom’s house, hoping she could spare a little empathy for me. When I got there, she made it clear I wasn’t welcome by calling the police. They came and picked me up and asked me questions about Erin’s murder.”

  Less than twelve hours after her daughter’s death, she’d been in a station house being interrogated until exhaustion set in. She’d still been bleeding, hungry, reeling.

  Stone gripped her tighter, holding her closer. “Let it out, baby. I’m here.”

  Lily looked down to realize she was holding him so tightly, her body was shaking. “I was weak and I wanted the interrogation over. I wanted justice for Erin. So I told the police I would testify. They set me up in a safe house and found me a doctor.” She sobbed—a dry sound without tears, a grief without healing. “While they pumped my IV full of antibiotics and fed me soup, Canton sent his goons over to my house to kill my mother and little brother. She had the merciful death. They slit her throat quickly. My brother, they tortured. He had over a hundred cuts on his body. He called 911 after they left and was able to tell the police that ‘one of Erin’s friends’ was looking for me, but it was too late for him. He died an hour later. He was twelve.”

  The guilt of so many deaths sat on her chest like an anvil, slowly crushing her. She wanted so badly to move on with her life, be happy. Every time she revisited that year, Lily remembered all the reasons she didn’t deserve peace or joy and never would.

  “Oh, Jesus, baby.” He stroked her crown and kissed her forehead. “I don’t know how you got through all that without crumbling.”

  “I did crumble.” She pulled away from him. “Don’t you get it? That’s why I can’t be normal. That’s why no one can really love me.”

  He took her face in his hands, forcing her to look into his dark eyes. “You are worthy of love and I love you. Canton took your family, your friends, and years of your life away. Don’t let him take your heart and soul, too.”